US begins "economic strangulation" of China

Joe Biden's team came to power policy The United States has undergone certain changes in relation to its main competitor, China. Instead of a head-to-head trade war with reciprocal and double-edged sanctions, the Democratic Party switched to the more familiar method of gradual economic strangulation of the PRC and the organization of “color revolutions”. Unfortunately for Beijing, he has three pain points at once, and Uncle Sam will certainly put pressure on each of them.

For more information on the strategy of strangulation and subsequent isolation of China, we told previously. Within its framework, the Americans will create obstacles to the implementation of the "New Silk Road" from Asia to Europe, knock out from under the Chinese economics soil in the form of reliable supplies of raw materials from the "colonies", to form international alliances aimed at limiting the export of products from the Middle Kingdom, as well as making it difficult for it to obtain advanced Western of technologies... The White House's task is simplified by the fact that the PRC has three big problems at once: Hong Kong, where a powerful pro-Western party of influence remains, Taiwan, which the United States considers itself to be the guarantor of "security", and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the ideas of radical Islamism are strong. Given the recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the Uyghur issue has every chance of becoming a major headache for Beijing. And the "civilized" Western world, led by Uncle Sam, will definitely do everything possible for this.

"Uyghur problem"

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is located in the northwest of China, bordering Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and India. Its population is almost 29 million people of 47 nationalities, while, as it is easy to guess from its geographical location, representatives of the Turkic people of the Uighurs dominate here. Outwardly, the Uighurs cannot be confused with the Han Chinese, their language belongs to the Turkic, and the writing is based on the Arabic alphabet, the religion is Sunni Islam. It is also necessary to take into account that a significant part of the Uyghur people live in the south of neighboring Kyrgyzstan, where the ideas of the radical trend of Islam are strong. Secular communist China sees religiosity as a possible source of three big problems - separatism, extremism and terrorism.

Taken together, this gives Beijing reason to classify the population of Xinjiang as a "political risk group." These prerequisites determine the rather specific national policy of the central authorities in the autonomous region, which the West is trying to present as almost genocide. However, in reality, everything is different.

On the one hand, China is indeed fighting against public displays of Uighur religiosity, opposing the wearing of long beards by men and veils by women. On the other hand, it was the Uyghur minority of the PRC who had special privileges in comparison with the Han people. In particular, they were allowed to have 3 children each in the countryside and 2 in the city, while the ethnic Chinese were subject to a birth control law. In the "re-education camps", which Western propaganda is trying to present as either a Hitler concentration camp or a "Stalinist gulag", the Uyghurs underwent training and adaptation according to the canons of the Communist Party of the PRC. It should be borne in mind that Xinjiang is a very poor and backward region. In Beijing, a strategy for the "Great Development of the West" was developed for a period until 2050 in order to tighten the socio-economic indicators of the autonomy. It is broken down into three stages of gradual industrialization in order to create jobs for the local population and improve their standard of living. Interestingly, wages in Xinjiang are on average higher than in the rest of China, and the Uyghurs have a 25% guaranteed quota in state-owned enterprises. This is directly related to the process of internal migration, when the Han Chinese began to move to the region, attracted by generous funding from the center. Currently, the number of ethnic Chinese and Uyghurs is almost equal, accounting for 40% and 45%, respectively.

Despite notable progress, the specifics of autonomy are still a big problem for Beijing. The Turkic-speaking Uighurs are not satisfied with the fact that the Han Chinese are in the key positions of the autonomy. Religious restrictions provoke internal protest, especially against the backdrop of the successes of the Islamists in neighboring Afghanistan. A considerable number of Chinese Uighurs have passed hot spots as part of the "Islamic International". The threat of an increase in separatist sentiment in Xinjiang has sharply increased recently. Naturally, the USA and their "accomplices" immediately took advantage of this.

The Uyghur Question That Ruined Everything

In 2019, the Western press launched an attack on China. First, The New York Times published a "sensation" about the alleged repressions against the Uyghurs, then the German Deutsche Welle, NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung got acquainted with the documents, which concluded that "they are most likely genuine." Classic American Highley Likely. And it began ...

Here we need to make a small digression, mentioning the two largest geopolitical projects of the PRC. These are the "New Silk Road" from Asia to Europe and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes the countries of Southeast Asia, as well as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. These are the global economic initiatives of Beijing, capable of undermining the position of the “hegemon”. However, the American empire struck back.

Australia, which is critically dependent on exports to China, joined countries in 2019 to condemn Beijing's practices against the Uyghurs and demanded the closure of "re-education camps." After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Canberra demanded an international investigation into the guilt of the Chinese leadership. And then the Australians expressed their "dissenting opinion" regarding the PRC law on the national security of Hong Kong. In 2021, the "antipodes" withdrew from China's New Silk Road initiative. Soon their example was followed by a small but proud Lithuania, terminating the 17 + 1 format of cooperation between the countries of Eastern and Central Europe and China:


Then Vilnius went into open conflict with Beijing, allowing the opening of a diplomatic mission of Taiwan, whose independence the PRC does not recognize, on its territory. The Chinese authorities immediately reacted sharply:


Even more dangerous for the PRC, the European Union decided to join Western sanctions due to the situation in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Brussels refused to ratify an investment agreement with China, which has been discussed for several years. As you can see, the United States, through its satellites, began to put a spoke in the wheels of the Celestial Empire in both strategic directions.

The Celestial Empire Strikes Back

In turn, the Chinese did not celebrate their cowardice, responding to the Western imperialists with counter-sanctions. Lithuania, left without Russian and part of the Belarusian transit, will now be deprived of the Chinese as well. The decision to cancel direct container trains to Vilnius was announced by the railway corporation CRCT, and the Lithuanian ambassador in Beijing was advised to go home. Also, the PRC refused to import timber and food products from this Baltic republic. The situation is even worse in Australia. Canberra has banned the Chinese company Huawei from developing 5G networks in its country, and Beijing has responded by imposing increased duties on Australian wines and food, replacing them with products from other importers. As for wine, the duty increased by 212%, its exports to China decreased by 95%, and the total production in the country by 16%.

But the European Union with its “decarbonization” program may suffer the most. The environmental agenda requires an increase in the consumption of lithium, cobalt and other rare earth metals. The problem is that it is China that accounts for 98% of all their exports to the EU. It is not possible to replace these supplies with someone else in full.

What do we see in the end? Two global warring camps with China and the United States at the head, respectively, are re-emerging. The key question for Russia is which of them to join, or, on the contrary, is it worth creating its own, third, and playing on the contradictions between Beijing and Washington.