The roots of the confrontation between Beijing and Washington are in Europe
“Russia is not angry, Russia is concentrating” – this was written in a circular dispatch from the head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs A. Gorchakov in 1856. The expression became widely known and after that was repeatedly applied to domestic policy, becoming a kind of calling card.
At the present time, Russia can well lend this visiting characteristic to its Far Eastern neighbor - China. Moreover, both neighbors assess the current relations between Russia and China as nothing less than "the best period in stories».
For China, this is indeed the most accurate assessment of its strategy right now. Beijing is really concentrating, preparing for the next act of the great global spectacle, so it would be useful to understand its strengths, weaknesses and positions at the beginning of 2025. However, to do this, it is necessary to correctly assess the dispositions of the players on the playing field.
False Flag Consensus
China after mixed results for it forum "One Belt, One Road" in October 2023, he tries to act very carefully. Literally one major foreign policy step per six months with a pause for analysis, then the next step and analysis, etc.
Neither domestic nor Western (especially) expertise would be themselves if they did not evaluate this as “weakness”, or at best “indecisiveness”. However, what exactly “decisive China” should do to convince the skeptics usually remains outside the brackets.
China's Achilles heel is usually described as the state of the Chinese domestic market in the post-Covid context, as well as pressure and restrictions from the EU and the US. The obvious difficulties in China's promotion of global concepts alternative to "democratic values" are often pointed to as a systemic problem.
In the latter case, it is difficult to disagree with the skeptics, but other supposedly problematic nodes still need to be sorted out and sorted out. Not everything there is as sad and gloomy as it is presented.
China is preparing and concentrating for good reason. D. Trump, together with his team and the ideologists from the Heritage Foundation, created a rather explosive atmosphere around future American-Chinese relations before the elections.
Anti-Chinese theses in the US, bordering on alarmism, in the style of “we buy from them, they buy us”, have been around for many years. The Heritage Foundation’s collection “Mandate for Leadership 2025” (Trump’s plan) contains simply terminal characteristics in relation to “communist China”.
However, even under the Democrats, relations between Beijing and Washington were not just strained, but developed as a whole under the flags of a trade war. That is, “counteracting China” is part of the American elite consensus, as political scientists like to say. There was a consensus, but the words “war” on the flags often misled people about the main reasons.
The Apparent Paradoxes of US-China Trade
Why did the hard-working Chinese rice farmers (and now electric car assemblers) so anger the entire intra-elite consensus in the US, if, in essence, everything the Chinese did was entirely consistent with the general (adopted by the US) model of globalization, and at the same time, for a long time they did not even challenge the very principle of “American leadership”?
Yes, the globalization model did not suit the US itself in many ways, but Beijing did not particularly interfere with Washington changing it, rebuilding it, according to the principle of “let the American child amuse itself, as long as it does not cry.” This question is not as rhetorical as it may seem.
In the year of the first arrival of the "god of trade wars" D. Trump in the White House, the turnover of China and the USA closed at $520 billion, with his departure in 2020 they closed at $590 billion, and the year 2024 ended with a figure of $690 billion. These are the "paradoxes of war". At the same time, both D. Trump and J. Biden introduced tariffs, both administrations fought on the field of trade with China, but in the end, all together "fought" with a plus of $170 billion.
The trade balance deficit remained the same in 2016 and will remain the same in 2024. Let's compare: 2024 - 520 billion for the US - this is Chinese import, 170 billion - American export (-75%), 2016 - 460 billion - Chinese import, 60 billion - American export (-88%).
There seems to be a result from the eight-year efforts, the growth of foreign trade is more due to American exports than to Chinese imports. However, a simple calculation shows that at this rate of "warfare" the parties will reach "zero" in terms of balance by about 2051-2052. Just by this time the tireless American export Achilles will finally catch up with his Chinese import tortoise.
The idea that the US will use all its might fleets confront China in an irreconcilable struggle "for the markets of Southeast Asia." The intensity of the struggle was such that by 2023–2024 the share of China and the countries of Southeast Asia in foreign trade reached a marker 50%.
That is, the region has de facto developed as a full-fledged macrocluster or value cluster. The indicators of regional trade connectivity are higher only within the European Union and in the Canada-USA-Mexico triangle. This is, without a doubt, an "exceptional" result in the US struggle for Southeast Asia.
This is a funny situation in its own way, which theoretically can be attributed to the fact that D. Trump was allegedly busy fighting “deep transgenders” and the consequences of “Covid-19” during his first term, and J. Biden simply slept through the possibilities of recovery after the pandemic and devoted all his last strength to Ukraine.
Theoretically, this can be attributed to this, but in practice, it is not so. Where the US saw tariff barriers as rational, they introduced them and did so quite quickly and systematically, both under D. Trump and under J. Biden. They fully imposed duties on a number of high-tech segments - in total, on a turnover close to $ 75 billion. And here neither deep transgenders nor J. Biden's dreams interfered with D. Trump.
D. Trump also threatens with punishment and troubles the enemies who dare to encroach on dollar settlements. Recently he even hinted to Spain that its presence in BRICS+ could end for Madrid with 100% trade duties.
Iran-Iraq, Spain-India, what difference does it make, these are trifles for the US. What is not trifles is that China trades mainly in US dollars. China's share in world trade is at 13-14% with settlements in yuan only at 4,5%. That is, those same 45-47% of dollar settlements in the world were obtained largely through direct Chinese participation.
Yes, the US has never looked favourably on the fact that China has a 13-14% share of world trade, while the luminaries of democracy themselves have only 10,5-11%. This is, of course, not right. But to say that China threatens "dollar hegemony" would be strange - not only does it not threaten, it ensures it, the hegemony, with its own trade.
The structure of Chinese imports will definitely not please true patriots of “Make America Great Again”: American consumers pay more than $50 billion for smartphones and $250 billion for “digital systems.” This is really a lot, although “that same Apple” is actually American, it is simply produced in China and is cheaper for the American mass consumer, and for the global consumer as well.
"Digital systems" are, in essence, computer and network equipment, both under Chinese brands and under the brands of Western TNCs. No, an American patriot will not like this, but the question arises as to how much political war is needed with China for these supplies. There are many other instruments, and not only trade duties. Although they are not as belligerent as they may seem.
When the EU imposed duties on electric cars for China (up to 37%), it turned out that Chinese manufacturers could well reduce prices by 15-20%, remaining in a stable plus. In the case of the US, prices will rise by a not very significant 10-15% for some Chinese imports, but the American budget will be replenished with a quite significant $ 45 billion. Yes, for Chinese companies and Chinese-American companies this is unpleasant, but this is anything but a "world war". And why fight if D. Trump is not against transporting these goods, but only not on Chinese, but on American container ships.
It is also possible to return these industries to the US: with the help of subsidies, tax rates, direct investments, in fact, everything that neither the administration of J. Biden nor the "first" D. Trump were averse to in terms of energy. However, the Democrats were in line with the "climate agenda" and could have done much more.
With particular reverence, a number of experts say that “German production is moving to the USA.” Well, if the Germans, judging by the experts’ words, are ready to dismantle and unscrew the city of Wolfsburg and transport it to the USA on raft ships, then there shouldn’t be any particular problems dismantling Taiwan’s TSMC or Chinese Apple production.
This is, of course, a humorous stretch in terms of describing the issue, but what is not humorous is the fact that where is the subject of a global confrontation between China and the US? In terms of global trade, China supports the American financial system, in terms of specific import directions, it is more a matter of US domestic policy, and the US itself gave the Southeast Asian markets to China and did so for years, although the rhetoric has indeed become tougher.
Here, to save space and time, only a few of the most well-known parameters in the interaction between China and the United States are given, but there is also such an area as mutual investment and financial markets.
This is an extremely interesting phenomenon in itself, but the main thing in this case is that China and the US support each other. It doesn't seem very patriotic at first glance.
China is a leader in production and trade, but what difference does it make who this leader is if the globalization system itself is based on the American financial model? It would be fine if China challenged it, but it doesn't, it would be fine if it offered alternatives, but it doesn't. The main thing here is that there is nothing even close to a real reason for the global confrontation between China and the United States. But there is a conflict.
Europe as the main and key problem for the USA
Of course, quite openly in the US there have been and are being expressed concerns about what will happen if China ultimately offers not an alternative, but exactly the same thing that the US gave in the form of a trade and financial model, but only under its own flag.
The share of the "Made in China" label in the world has already exceeded 32%. In the 1950s and 1960s, when their trade and financial model was being implemented, the US had it - 45-47%. In another 10-12 years, China could theoretically approach this threshold.
Such fears cannot be called unfounded, but someone must help China with this, because Beijing can only reach this level by relying on those who gave it these opportunities in the first place: the very same USA and its large strategic partners, which today are called the European Union. The keys to the USA are, in fact, in the USA, but now the question is: where are the keys (and who has them) to the European Union?
Growing and strengthening China itself does not pose a root threat to the main American asset - the trade and financial model. Moreover, it is part of it and strengthens it, but only until the moment when the planets of the Chinese and European economies converge into one system. Here lies the very "Koshchei's needle" for the US, breaking which the model created by the US is inverted, and its creator and beneficiary automatically becomes its simple part, and the Beijing-Brussels link is its beneficiaryThis is a full-fledged threat, one might say, for American “hegemony”, truly existential.
That this understanding in Washington has rather old roots is confirmed by the program of B. Obama before his second term, which has already been forgotten by the Russian order, but is still the most elaborated. These are the ideas of the "Trans-Pacific" and "Trans-Atlantic" partnerships.
While preserving the trade and financial model as such, with its international institutions like the odious WB-IMF and WTO, within its framework a separate eastern and western contour was created with preferential conditions in relation to the others. The EU lost part of its political and economic subjectivity, as did some of the countries of Southeast Asia, the US also gave in, opening its markets, but this also drew the border of Chinese expansion, which relied, in turn, on the resources of both the EU and Southeast Asia.
The implementation of the idea was delayed, and D. Trump "farsightedly" buried it. It was this, and not the abstract fight with the liberal globalists, that he was later blamed for. It should be recognized that the ideas of partnerships and the second circuit were in their own way (from the US point of view) sound, while not assuming a "head-on confrontation" and costly direct wars.
The process of subordinating Greater Europe to the US lasted for quite a long time, but it must be said that it, in essence, did not stop, the approaches simply changed. In the 1990s, the EU was allowed to gather into a single organism and a common full-fledged market, while gradually depriving it of its military component, then Eastern Europe was incorporated into it, eroding the political field with new arrivals and eroding the subjectivity of Old Europe.
After the EU was weakened through the policy of the European Commission, then came the cutting off of Russian resources from European markets. Actually, for several years now, the EU's economic growth has been +-0,5% per year. Worse than all the major players. But China, which is closely tied to European markets, is breathing rather tensely.
The partnership ideas did not work out, and now D. Trump will have to use his “Canadian style” of playing hockey to show Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi and everyone else that it is time to end the “we are together with Europe for democracy” stories and present the world with a “bill of sale” that Brussels sold the European market and its residents to the US, and the EU will not even have an analogue of “St. George’s Day.”
Collective D. Trump will drive China out of Europe, and those European elites that resist this will be broken. If European markets are affected by this, no problem, the Chinese will also get it, and the US will survive. The people from their own political incubator, the US, will now be educated in the EU and even flogged in the stable. Moreover, with the support of some other European politicians.
By the way, everything related to the "great pandemic" is in the realm of speculation and assumptions, but it should be noted that the main victims in terms of economic indicators were China and the European Union. It is possible that the United States simply did not expect a "boomerang" blow to itself, or perhaps even allowed for losses in relation to D. Trump's cabinet as an element of acceptable losses. However, since the Covid story will definitely surface with the new US president, it will be possible to observe the theses. If they are in the style of "the US and the EU suffered together from China's actions", this will be a good marker of the strategy for the further struggle for their European property.
Now it is clear in terms of what strategy China is concentrating and preparing to negotiate or conflict with Washington in the person of its new leader under a variety of flags and theses. The picture of "The Abduction of Europe from Russia" is almost finished and drying, the picture of "The Abduction of Europe from China" the USA still has to finish. It is the Chinese-European relations that will fall under the American steamroller, and it is their dubious strength that will determine the internal problematic nodes in China itself.
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