Regarding the Huawei blacklisting — is it sensible?

© 2019 Peter Free

 

23 May 2019

 

 

Bite our behinds again?

 

Today, we contrast:

 

 

China's long-term economic thinking

 

with

 

the United States' maniacally exclusive focus on transient opportunity.

 

 

An example

 

Let's use President Trump's blacklisting of China's Huawei (electronics manufacturer) as an example.

 

From Bloomberg:

 

 

Last week, the Commerce Department placed Huawei and nearly 70 of its affiliates on an “Entity List,” which means that U.S. suppliers may now need a license to do business with them.

 

Both Huawei’s mobile phones and its network equipment rely on American components, including advanced semiconductors.

 

If the ban is applied stringently, it could drive one of China’s most high-profile companies — employing more than 180,000 people — out of business.

 

© 2019 Editorial Board, Trump’s Huawei Attack Is a Serious Mistake, Bloomberg (20 May 2019)

 

 

True, Trump's not always wrong

 

The President's determination to even the international trade field with China is not necessarily mistaken.

 

Nor is his neo-con concern that Huawei's obeisance to the PRC government makes it a security threat.

 

 

But, on the other hand

 

Even with those two items granted, I question the short-sighted strategic thinking that underlies the United States' impulsively motivated blacklisting.

 

Making determined enemies of 1.4 billion capably governed people is strategically questionable. Especially so, when our own piddling 0.329 billion are so incompetently institutionalized and led.

 

Forcing an adversary into becoming even more independently powerful (than it already is) is geopolitically wrong-headed.

 

 

And thus — China's foreseeable response

 

From the South China Morning Post:

 

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the nation to embark on a new Long March and “start all over again”, in the most dramatic sign to date that Beijing has given up hope of reaching a trade deal with the United States in the near term.

 

“We are here at the starting point of the Long March to remember the time when the Red Army began its journey."

 

"We are now embarking on a new Long March, and we must start all over again.”

 

While Xi did not directly mention the trade war or the United States, his remarks are being perceived as clear signals that the Chinese public is being told to prepare for hardships because of the worsening external environment.

 

The Long March was a military retreat between 1934 to 1936 undertaken by the Red Army, the forerunner of the People’s Liberation Army, to evade Kuomintang troops during the Chinese civil war.

 

The thousands of marchers covered some of the country’s harshest terrain and the feat is often evoked as a symbol of Chinese unity by the ruling Communist Party.

 

© 2019 Zhou Xin, Xi Jinping calls for ‘new Long March’ in dramatic sign that China is preparing for protracted trade war, South China Morning Post (21 May 2019)

 

 

History actually matters to "those" people?

 

The Long March initiated China's rise from world patsy to the economic and cultural behemoth that it is today.

 

President Xi's appeal is exactly parallel, in effect, to a Russian president eliciting memories of the culturally shared sacrifices made at Stalingrad and during the Great Patriotic War.

 

Most Americans have no idea how deeply these memories motivate both nations.  Genuinely capable strategists, however, should. Which is why President Xi brought China's past hardship up.

 

 

The bottom strategic line is

 

Forcing one's adversary to recall past sacrifices — and his successful rise specifically due to those — should be last thing a that competent strategist does in facing an already capable opponent.

 

Recall, in this regard, that China has already indicated that the route out of its economic vulnerability — vis a vis the United States — is to become stronger and more diversely independent.

 

When that happens — as it inevitably will under the circumstances that we are forcing — where is American leverage going to be?

 

Any of y'all allegedly great neo-con minds thought that one through?

 

 

There is also the harm done to Huawei's American suppliers

 

Is this another instance of shooting ourselves in both feet?

 

By the US disrupting major supply chains in this fashion, Huawei will just turn to China's own tech sources.

 

And these new suppliers will, predictably — given China's recent economic record — increase their technological ability to meet Huawei's sophisticated standards.

 

This improved economic base will strengthen China in exactly the way that its strategists are currently saying is necessary.

 

 

The moral? — We weaken our guys — and eventually strengthen theirs — by doing what we are doing

 

I can think of nowhere, except the United States, where such a dimwitted plan would pass scrutiny.