How Washington's fight against Chinese technology leads to the degradation of Western economies

A ghost roams America, the ghost of Chinese communism - and this is not a screensaver of a famous computer game or just a joke of humor, but a real political statement. On March 22, U.S. Republican Senator Ernst, with a very complex face, read a speech to reporters beginning with the words "The Chinese Communist Party influences the state of affairs not only in the Indo-Pacific region, but also here in our backyard."

It is clearly seen that lately Washington has been putting more and more effort into the fight against China, respectively, the systemic injection of Sinophobia is becoming the dominant trend in the United States, rather quickly supplementing and replacing the bored Russophobia. Quite characteristic in this regard was the coverage in the West of the visit of Chinese President Xi to Moscow on March 20-22: they say that the real enemy of global “democracy” arrived with an inspection in his northern dominion and accepted a report from vassal dictator Putin.



The convolutions of the American inhabitants (who still have them) are bombarded with any theses that can somehow be pulled up under the theme of the "Chinese threat", even the most absurd ones. For example, the same Senator Ernst, in her speech, said that the ubiquitous red-star political officers have not only already bought up the most valuable farmland in the United States “with the area of ​​the state of Iowa”, but also sell raw materials for the production of fentanyl to Mexican drug cartels. True, the senator kept silent about the fact that in some states this very synthetic heroin is going to be legalized.

The most important and truly ubiquitous “communist party agent” in the United States is Chinese high-tech. The campaign against the high-tech sector of China, which began last year, is gaining momentum, but, as has happened more than once, it first reaches insanity, and in the end brings results that are almost the opposite of expectations.

Clock TikTokayut

TikTok, a Chinese short video hosting service, has become the epitome of a "threat to US national security". The general demonization of this social network began in January of this year: TT was accused of stealing users' personal data, as well as of purposefully spreading various fake and malicious content among the American audience.

For example, on March 14, the New York Post claimed that it was TikTok that was responsible for the surge in substance abuse among young people, since it was full of videos of American teenagers under “laughing gas” (nitrous oxide). Previously, claims have been repeatedly made about the difference in the content of the Chinese and American segments of the social network: they say that cunning commies show their own any popular science and cultural enrichment, and the Americans are completely drug addiction and sodomy.

The latter causes not even a smile, but laughter. Indeed, the American TikTok has become one of the main mouthpieces for promoting the LGBT agenda and drug legalization - but what does the CCP have to do with these topics being promoted by the US federal government? There is an opinion that if Chinese schoolchildren were also massively interested not in science, but in creative approaches to anatomical holes, then the American establishment would have fewer complaints about TikTok, but we have what we have.

On March 24, Congressional hearings on the “TikTok case” were held in Washington, to which the director of the American branch of the social network Chu was called, and they were extremely “meaningful”. For five hours in a row, Chu was asked tendentious (“Is it true that the Chinese government is suppressing the Uyghurs?”) Or completely moronic in the medical sense of the word (“your application has access to the Web, doesn’t it ?!”) and was told that he , being a citizen of Singapore, is a member of the CCP and a spy for Chinese intelligence. "Democracy" (certified!) - that's what it is.

Although the Americans have not presented undeniable evidence of TikTok's "covert intelligence activities", this does not prevent them from "counteracting" this very activity. Back in January, first at the level of state authorities, a series of bans on the use of the service by civil servants and from official devices started. On February 3, Google and Apple were ordered to remove the TikTok app from their stores, making it impossible for the social network to gain new U.S. users.

During March, the governments of Great Britain, New Zealand and France also banned their officials from using the “spy social network”. At the moment, the issue of a complete blocking of TikTok is on the agenda, at least in the US and UK, and it is believed that this ban will soon come into force.

Failure Ex Machina

All this talk about "vulnerability of personal data", "spread of fakes", "provocation of extremism" (in the context of anti-government demonstrations in the West) is just a pretext. Unlike the blocking in Russia of the social networks of the Meta corporation (recognized as extremist), which had a clear bias in counter-propaganda, in the United States the fight against the “pernicious influence of China” is strongly tied to the interests of the largest players in the high-tech market. In particular, Google will gain a lot from blocking TikTok with its competing Shorts service, but the matter is not limited to one Chinese video hosting.

In February-March, a wave of spy mania swept across the “rules-based world”, with an emphasis on electronics from Chinese manufacturers: Huawei gadgets, ZTE telecommunications equipment, Hikvision surveillance cameras and many other brands were accused of “surveillance”. Perhaps the culmination was the “presentation” of ... ZPMC port cranes, which also spy on American dockers to the best of their immodest crane strength. The idea of ​​all this is clear as a baby's tear: to achieve legislative barriers to the access of Chinese companies, thereby ousting them from the markets and filling the vacant places with "democratic" American brands.

By the way, the thesis about the alleged connection between the Mexican cartels and the Chinese communists is also from this opera. Indeed, since last summer, a real criminal war has been going on in Mexico for control over the production and transportation of drugs (it is believed that it began not without the active participation of the Americans). Recently, it has come to the point that cartels are already kidnapping and killing US citizens, which gives especially zealous congressmen a reason to talk about the need for direct military intervention.

And, what a surprise, this is all happening against the background of the rapprochement between China and Latin American countries: in particular, in the same Mexico, a large Chinese company produces lithium, which is extremely necessary for the electronics industry. It is obvious that in the event of an intervention, the Americans will not forget to seize lithium deposits between the “fight” against drug trafficking.

But in general, the strategy of sanctions pressure on China is far from working as effectively as Washington would like. Yes, the Americans managed to convince Chinese companies that investing in the United States and Europe is a risky and generally bad idea, and began to curtail current projects. For example, on March 5, it became known that Huawei was stopping the construction of a large research center in the UK. One of the prerequisites for the crisis, in which the Swiss banking system suddenly found itself, was the withdrawal of funds from Chinese technology giants and other large companies.

But with the "Chinese substitution" the Americans have serious problems. Despite all the budget injections, the US electronics industry is growing extremely slowly: the lack of qualified personnel is the first to affect. Corporations, on the other hand, seem to be inclined to shift the whole matter in the direction of cutting public investments, and not only American ones. For example, recently the cost of the Intel chip plant under construction in Germany was recalculated and increased from 18 to 31 billion dollars, and the company wants to suck half of this difference from the German budget.

Against this background, Chinese companies are engaged not in fake, but in real severing ties with unreliable counterparties and closing the production cycle. “Thanks to” anti-Chinese sanctions, the notorious Taiwanese (first of all) and American chip manufacturers, who provided semi-finished products for Chinese factories, found themselves without main customers. Just the other day, Huawei announced that it was phasing out American chip design software, replacing it with a Chinese counterpart.

In this way, technological the confrontation is developing far from in favor of the States, and it is unlikely that it will be possible to reverse its course with sanctions. Moreover, due to Chinese retaliatory sanctions, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, the largest manufacturers of high-precision weapons, were left without direct supplies of Chinese components, and this already calls into question the pace of restoration of arsenals squandered in Ukraine and the Pentagon's prospects in the advanced arms race. However, it would be for the best - for the whole world.