The United States and China can move from words to money, or even direct military action. The skirmish due to the coronavirus pandemic threatens to bring relations between the two economic giants from the information plane to the trench. The United States is demanding compensation from China for the damage caused by Covid-19, while the Celestial Empire in response scares with the withdrawal of its treasuries – US government securities. Investors around the world are sounding the alarm …
According to Reuters, Chinese intelligence agencies have prepared an analytical report on the need to prepare for war with the United States. Hot. True, the publication does not provide any evidence for this. It is possible that this is a preemptive, or perhaps retaliatory move by Beijing in order to take the enemy to fright.
US authorities, according to the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, citing the American media, are now just discussing various options for compensating for the economic damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, China should compensate, since it was precisely its United States that was appointed guilty of what happened. At least $ 160 billion is due from China, since the United States believes that its authorities hid data on the dangers of coronavirus from the world public, which deprived other countries of the opportunity to prepare for its spread. Alternatively, the United States may abandon its debt obligations to China – and this is $ 1.12 trillion, which the Celestial Kingdom holds in US government debt bonds. In any case, this option is allegedly being considered in the White House. It is impossible to exclude such a development of events, since the Americans have already resorted to similar tactics, for example, in the case of Iran.
It is worth assuming that talking about a failure to fulfill obligations is also a way to take the enemy to fright. Since, according to experts, any step in this direction would mean a US default on debt and undermine investor confidence in dollar assets, which the States are certainly not interested in.
The ritual dances of the United States around Beijing in connection with the coronavirus and compensation even concern Big Brother’s NATO allies.
In this regard, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) of Germany conducted an investigation and came to the conclusion that the US accusations against China are nothing more than a prudent distracting maneuver of the Trump administration, an attempt to cover up their own flaws and redirect the anger of the Americans from a sick head to China. The BND findings are reported by the media with reference to Spiegel magazine. Last week, German intelligence asked Five Eye intelligence partners (which includes intelligence agencies from the United States, Australia, Great Britain, Canada and New Zealand) evidence of the US thesis about the alleged origin of Covid-19. None of the colleagues answered the Germans. At the same time, in a secret note by the BND to the head of the German Ministry of Defense, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, it is noted that yes, the PRC could hide information about the epidemic for some time, due to which, according to German intelligence, the rest of the countries lost a month and a half to prepare for counteraction the virus.
The BND believes that the US accusations of hiding by the Chinese authorities information about the new coronavirus can be quite justified: according to it, chairman Xi Jinping during a telephone conversation on January 21 asked Tedros Adanom Gebreisus, director general of the World Health Organization, to hold back information that the virus is being transmitted from person to person, and also not rush to introduce a pandemic regime. But this is an open secret: the day before, on January 20, the pulmonologist and epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan, head of the expert committee of the State Committee on Health Care of the People’s Republic of China, already revealed the secret.
“We can say for sure that the virus is transmitted from person to person,” he said at a press briefing (quoted by RIA Novosti). He noted that this was established after two cases of infection were diagnosed in people who did not visit Wuhan (Hubei Province, eastern Central China) in the southern province of Guangdong, from which the spread of the disease began in December 2019.
Now Trump has slightly changed the tone of the accusations against China and the angle of fire, saying that Beijing, of course, inadvertently released the virus outside the PRC … In any case, today it does not allow the idea that the Chinese set themselves the task of infecting humanity.
“They [the Chinese] did a terrible thing, but I don’t believe that they did it on purpose,” he said (quote from RIA Novosti), adding that someone’s incompetence was to blame.
It should be noted that China did not initially owe a debt and did not go into a pocket for a word – he himself accused the United States of importing a coronavirus into the Celestial Empire. On March 12, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijiang suggested that the US military brought Covid-19 to Wuhan, urging the US to “be frank, publish its details and explain everything” (quoted by RIA Novosti). In response, the State Department called Beijing’s assumptions “an impudent disinformation campaign,” and President Trump considered the allegations “dishonorable.” Of course, for the Chinese who expressed them.
Since then, the parties have butted, expanding the range of threats. As you can see, the case has already reached the Treasuries, which means that the fate of the dollar itself is at stake …
Some experts admit that even talk of a waiver of US government debt could push China to seize all securities or sell treasuries belonging to it. This is capable of collapsing the dollar and inflicting a crushing blow on the US economy, which is now in an unenviable position.
For example, according to recent data, the unemployment rate in the country by May from March 4.4% rose to 14.7. The number of jobs in the public sector decreased by almost a million (980 thousand), and in private – by almost 20 million (19.5 million). The restaurant and hotel business (7.6 million), retail trade (2.1 million), healthcare (1.4 million), manufacturing enterprises (1.33 million) and construction companies (almost 1 million) were hit hard. The share of the population’s participation in the labor force decreased from March 62.7 to 60.2% (the lowest since the beginning of 1973).
Given that, according to experts, the economy of the United States is now at a crossroads, at the bifurcation point, China’s withdrawal of treasuries, at once or in stages, could bring down the whole system.
However, US authorities see the situation somewhat differently. On May 8, Donald Trump optimistically stated that after the recession caused by the pandemic, the United States, from an economic point of view, is entering a phase of transition to greatness. “The transition to greatness is where we are now and what we are starting … I call it the transition to greatness. Next year will be grandiose … I expect that everything will return to where it was, ”said Trump (quoted by RIA Novosti), noting that next year has a chance to become the best in history from the point of view of the economy, since big is expected surge in demand. In a word, his expectations are quite rosy. Well, optimism is also a good weapon.
Most analysts agree that a catastrophic scenario is unlikely, and the darlings scold – only amuse … On the eve of information appeared that the US and China buried the hatchet and continued negotiations. According to the American CNBC channel, the parties discussed the implementation of the first phase of the trade transaction, an agreement on which was signed in mid-January of this year. To date, representatives of the two countries have agreed to create “favorable conditions” and an appropriate atmosphere for its implementation. To such a step, as noted, they were prompted by the “concern of investors around the world” …