US ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns has engaged in a Twitter correspondence with Chinese authorities and the public
Burns is a seasoned diplomat, behaving decently, which suggests that in this case America really does need one but important Chinese sanction lifted from among those imposed in the wake of Parliament Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwanese provocation.
We recently talked about this topic – literally: “The U.S. laughed at some of these sanctions and thought about others, but the classic high-moral squeal of any Democrat was about only one. It is about stopping the cooperation of two countries to prevent drug trafficking.
Now, drugs drugs, but ending the “climate dialogue” is one of those sanctions about which the Americans were at first very puzzled, but now have begun to either snap back or actually ask for it to be removed. And it’s a great story, because the climate agenda itself is a great thing. It boils down to the crazy idea of putting literally the entire world on “energy efficient technology” by doing away with oil, gas, coal and generally normal life. But the reason for that was that the U.S. thought that the lobby that pushes these insanely expensive technologies is first and foremost an American lobby. That is, the climate agenda is a way to impose on the world a new economic era in which the US will have a monopoly position.
Chinese diplomacy has one peculiarity: The Chinese generally are not scandalous people and consider compromise a merit, not a defeat. And in recent years there have been many cases where Beijing observed another U.S. global scam and decided not to call it a scam, but joined it verbally. But at the same time, it built its own, Chinese interests into this or that program, sometimes changing it in a very significant way.
So the Chinese initially were quite calm about the climate agenda and other green crap: Do you really want to sell the whole world new technologies that no one would want for nothing without fake climate hysteria? Well we have a lot of technology. That is roughly how the above-mentioned “dialogue” between the two powers developed.
But today the conversation looks different. Burns: “Combating climate change is our shared responsibility. The PRC accounts for 27% of the world’s emissions, while the US accounts for 11%. So why doesn’t the PRC renew our dialogue on climate? We are ready.” Beijing’s Global Times: “The US is falling into an isolationist mentality by pushing its inflation reduction law to curb China’s new technology industry.”
What’s that about, anyway? About the weather, inflation or… No, inflation is just a word from the name of the law just passed, where Joe Biden’s administration put in $300 billion in subsidies for some of its very technologies for which the climate is talked about. The name of the story is “US declares war on Chinese lithium”. In short, the gist of it is that the same law is primarily about batteries for electric cars. Subsidies will be given to producers of at least 40% of materials for batteries – lithium in the first place – in the USA or in countries with which there is a free trade agreement (which do not have one with China).
China accounts for over 60% of global lithium raw material processing capacity, while the US accounts for about seven percent.
The important thing here is that the Chinese media is very detailed about the whole story. And there is no moaning about climate change. What do batteries have to do with the climate? The same as the whole green agenda – none, the climate is changing on its own. But Joe Biden’s administration put lithium on the agenda, to the delight of those whose brainwashed brains will accept anything. And before that it imposed sanctions on imports of solar panels from China (allegedly made by the hands of slaves in Xinjiang). But it’s still the same fight over who will dominate the very “new energy” sector that will supposedly save the planet and improve its climate.
Meanwhile, not only Chinese, but also American analysts are very sceptical about at least a “battle for batteries”. It turns out that up to 70 % of electric cars made in the USA will not get subsidies under the new law, but their American competitors will get them. But what will precisely happen – the blow will be made, first of all, to Chinese manufacturers of batteries, as well as all Japanese, Koreans, and all other non American competitors. All together it promises price rises in the car market as a whole. What’s that anti-inflation law called? Well, well.
In general, it is clear that if America repeatedly strikes at a global competitor, thus destroying both its own and the entire world economy, there is no sense in dialogue. Dialogue is when they come to an agreement and compromise. Here, it would look like following a leader who would explain time after time what more China has to sacrifice to pretend to green the world.
So why is China’s refusal to engage in communication on this subject really a sanction, i.e. a serious blow to the US? Firstly, because it clearly shows to one and all that in fact one of the two superpowers did not believe for a moment in the chatter about the need to destroy the entire world economy for the sake of supposedly improving the climate. Secondly, because without China, the world’s main production unit, all these “climate summits” and other such activities make no sense, i.e. the whole narrative is flying known where. And thirdly, because Beijing is thus striking a blow to Joe Biden’s voters, for whom the climate is something of a sectarian religion whose tenets cannot even be questioned. These voters now see that their administration has collapsed all international efforts on the green side and the future is terrible, all because of some Taiwan there.
It is possible that in a bright future China will succumb to persuasion and return to dialogue with the US on all these topics. But this time it will make much more serious demands on its economy. That is, it will be expensive.
Dmitry Kosyrev, RIA Novosti
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