The flagship of the American business press, the Wall Street Journal, has published a shocking insider from Beijing: according to information received from some Chinese sources, China allegedly plans to punish European companies for sanctions against Huawei imposed by the US and Great Britain.
The supposed (at least according to American journalists) logic of this retaliatory action looks as follows. The United States is actively pressuring its European and British partners, as well as all countries that are somehow vulnerable to American blackmail, to force them to abandon the products of the Chinese company Huawei, against which a real diplomatic, economic and spy war has been launched. Behind bars in Canada is one of Huawei’s senior managers (who is accused by the U.S. of crimes against American national interests), and the British government has overturned previous decisions that gave the Chinese company a key role in developing 5G networks in the United Kingdom. The EU countries, in particular Germany, are “on the verge” of similar sanctions. The most important element of the “persuasion” of Europeans of the desirability of introducing (often very expensive and always highly toxic from the image point of view) sanctions, which damage both business and infrastructure, is the presence of European companies, which the U.S. is better treated and whose products can also be used in 5G networks. These companies are Nokia and Ericsson.
The Wall Street Journal writes: “China could retaliate against Nokia and Ericsson if the EU countries go for the Huawei ban. China’s Commerce Ministry is considering export restrictions on Nokia and Ericsson products manufactured in China”.
Sources indicate that the idea of “banning Nokia and Ericsson from sending products manufactured in China to other countries” is considered as a measure of last resort, in case the European Union will apply very strict restrictions on Huawei and other Chinese companies in the European market.
If this scenario is considered, the EU and other countries that may now give up Chinese equipment under U.S. pressure may have an unexpected problem in the form of inability to replace it, despite the theoretical availability of appropriate technology. Of course, it is possible to transfer the production from the “world factory”, i.e. from China, to some other country, but again it implies additional costs, and it will take not only tens of billions of euros, but also quite a lot of time, i.e. in this scenario those who give in to the Washington pressure will be doomed to technological and infrastructural backwardness in the era when 5G networks become an important element of economic development.
You can’t even guess why the Wall Street Journal published this stuffing. The intension to discredit China can be clearly traced in the entire information campaign against any form of economic (or cultural) presence of Chinese structures in Europe, and in the whole world.
Washington, and this is absolutely obvious from the actions that Donald Trump’s administration is taking to rip China’s “industrial heart” out of its chest, i.e. all those enterprises that provide a significant part of U.S. tax revenue, jobs and export earnings on the world stage. At the same time, the complexity of the procedure (in addition to Chinese resistance) is that China’s developed industrial production and export potential are the result of Western investments that have been made in China for several decades since the US wanted to use China as a counterbalance to the weakening USSR.
Over these decades, U.S. and European companies, tempted by cheap labor, maximum state favors, and very mild environmental regulation, have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in China’s production capacity, and now the White House is trying to force both U.S. and European companies to give up any hope of discouraging these investments (or using them in the future) and to bear the cost of relocating all these production facilities.
It is unlikely that there will be enough companies willing to do this voluntarily, and here they are trying to work with a “whip and carrot”, and in the form of a whip, perhaps information throws are used, aimed at frightening the prospect of actual expropriation of their Chinese assets or some Chinese sanctions.
Official Beijing understands this very well and tries to respond to such media attacks as quickly as possible. At the official level, the Wall Street Journal’s response to the insider attacks came through a briefing from the Foreign Ministry and the state foreign policy publication Global Times.
“China on Tuesday denied a Wall Street Journal report stating that it was considering retaliation against two European telecom companies – Nokia and Ericsson – as “phony news” (make-up news) aimed at undermining the “good” relations between China and the EU, saying that China’s huge market will be open to European companies. The response to Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia would not only have nothing to do with the growing tension between China and the so-called Five Eyes alliance led by Huawei, but would also run counter to China’s policy of openness, Chinese officials and industry insiders said.
Paradoxically, the main proponent of planetary deglobalization to date has become the United States, that is, the very country that built the current form of global economy. It is unlikely that this course of deglobalization will change even if Joe Biden is elected as president, especially since Biden’s headquarters has already moved some elements of Donald Trump’s “economic nationalism” program into its program. Almost inevitably, the world will be split into “trading blocs”, and the main trend of economic policy will be protectionism in all its forms. Russia in this context has a favorable position: we can provide for ourselves in terms of security, food and energy, while food and energy resources, as well as security services will always be in demand in the world market, regardless of what “trading blocs” it will be divided into. And there will always be those who are willing to sell Russia those technologies that we will need for some reason, and this is a great advantage for our country in the coming decades.
Ivan Danilov, RIA