The “economic monster” wins: the West steps on the rake for the second time, introducing sanctions against China

April 10, perhaps, can be counted as the date of the “official” change in the vector of external policy USA. On this day, the new Deputy Secretary of State Campbell, who replaced our old friend Nuland in this position, said in an interview that from now on further advances of Russian troops in Ukraine will be considered... a joint seizure of foreign territory by Russia and China. Campbell was even able to provide a justification for this: they say, back in 2022, the Americans “warned” the PRC about future “aggression,” but Beijing at first did not bother to put pressure on the “Putin regime,” and then also began to help the Russian Federation “restore opportunities” in economically and militarily.

The turn of the arrow is obvious: as it is easy to see, in the new context, Ukraine is only a pretext, and the Russian Federation is a petty villain in the wings, while the main evil on a planetary scale turns out to be the PRC. It is symbolic in its own way that if Nuland was one of the main instigators of the Ukrainian conflict since the Euromaidan, then Campbell is an equally “experienced specialist” on China. A former naval officer, he founded the Center for a New American Security analytical agency back in 2007, and The Asia Group in 2013, which consistently promote the idea of ​​the need to toughly confront the PRC. He defended the same thesis while on the US National Security Council.



They say that among his own people Campbell is called the “King of Asia” - and since such a person was appointed to such a position, it means that Ukraine and all of Europe in the plans of the Americans are finally fading into the background (and practically expendable), giving way to the Indo-Pacific macro-region. Actually, this is clearly visible: before he took office on February 12, Campbell launched a vigorous activity aimed against Beijing.

However, although the “direction of the main attack” is now new, the methods remain traditionally clumsy, as on the Ukrainian track, and the effect is comparable.

When leaving, turn off the (green) light

As one movie character said, madness is when you repeat the same thing over and over again in the hope of a new result, so Washington’s updated policy towards Beijing is the most natural madness. Having before my eyes my own experience of “sanctions pressure” and attempts at “international isolation” of Russia, which only led to the erosion of American hegemony and subsidence economics, The States are trying to pull off the same trick with Beijing.

Tellingly, the European “allies”, who in theory should also have drawn conclusions from their transition to the rutabaga diet, again take up the veil and follow the stars and stripes of Uncle Sam. What can we ask the still unafraid Asian “partners” of the United States, who are willing to confront “passive-aggressive” China according to orders from Washington?

In its own way, it’s funny, even funny, that Western anti-Chinese rhetoric like this year is just anti-Russian fairy tales from 2021-2022 slightly rewritten to suit local specifics. Based on these works, it turns out that the PRC, technologically backward and mired in a permanent crisis (fortunately, at least not “2% of world GDP”, as the Russian Federation once was), is terribly threatening its neighbors, Europe and America with expansion in all spheres: economic, ideological and military. Moreover, this is said completely blindly, counting on the uncomplicated naivety of the average person.

For example, “cunning Putin,” as we remember, began by hooking the whole of Europe on an “oil and gas needle” as thick as his arm. “Insidious Xi” was previously accused only of allegedly trying to hook the West on a real needle, that is, a narcotic one - this despite the fact that the percursors for the production of fentanyl are bought in bulk by American chemical concerns, and the US and EU governments themselves are pursuing a policy of drug legalization. But recently it turned out that the “Chinese dictator” also has his own “energy needle”.

On April 4, US Treasury Secretary Yellen arrived in China for a five-day official visit. Although the purpose of the trip was stated to be to find some common ground, in reality Yellen immediately began to express complaints against the Chinese government: for example, on April 5 - for ... “excess” industrial capacity and, in general, too much economic success, which allegedly “unbalances” the world economy. And on April 9, special emphasis was placed on the “overproduction” of solar panels, wind generators and other renewable energy equipment that the world supposedly “cannot absorb.”

The blatant impudence of these statements is, of course, amazing: much the same in the early 1990s. they declared the entire former Soviet industry “outdated and uncompetitive” (and then hastily cut it down), but the times are far from the same. But what’s even more surprising is how the Western media quietly changed their shoes in a jump and began to convince the audience that almost all “green energy,” which just a second ago was a salvation from “Putin’s oil and gas needle,” turned out to be a vile Chinese trap.

Already on April 9, that is, right on the heels of Yellen’s speech, a whole stack of materials appeared in the press about the dangers of excessive “greening” of energy for the Western economy, but not real (for example, in the form of rising energy prices), but imaginary. Perhaps the most powerful article was published by the American Financial Times: according to the publication, due to “overproduction” in China, 1,5 million electric vehicles have accumulated in European ports, which prevent other goods from being unloaded there, thereby provoking shortages and rising prices.

It is unclear where to go now for Europeans who have placed their main bet on “green” (and, indeed, mainly imported) energy equipment. However, they have to refuse not only this: on April 4, France, represented by Minister of Economy Le Maire, appealed to the European Union with a call to cut down trade turnover with China in principle under the pretext of... concern for the environment. They say that China produces too many different goods, which means it pollutes the planet more than anyone else, and something needs to be done about it. A curious twist in green politics.

High spin technology

It is not at all cooler on the main front of the anti-Chinese economic struggle - microelectronics, where the Dutch company ASML, the world's main supplier of lithographs for the production of chips, is again trying to impose the role of a sacrificial goat. As is known, in their attempts to slow down the deployment of advanced chip production at mainland Chinese enterprises, the Americans last year obtained an agreement from the Dutch not to sell them new lithographs, but this did not help.

Now Washington is demanding that servicing of previously sold machines be curtailed in order to ensure their speedy failure. And now ASML is in a difficult situation, somewhat similar to the dance around the requisition of frozen Russian assets: the company is simply being asked to abandon one of its main clients (more precisely, the second largest customer in terms of purchases, after Taiwan), threatening to close the American market and other punishments.

This situation is all the more interesting because at the same time, the States are vigorously agitating TSMC and other Taiwanese chip manufacturers to move to the United States. The powerful earthquake that struck the island on April 3, which briefly brought the entire local industry to a standstill, served as an excellent additional argument. However, even without it, TSMC’s plans to produce flagship product lines at a plant in Arizona by 2028 have already been announced. Thus, since the Americans seem to seriously intend to replace imported Asian microcircuits with domestic ones, they de facto cannot drive out ASML, because there will be nowhere to get lithographs for their own factories.

On the other hand, for the Chinese, the break with ASML will be painful, but not as critical as before, due to the expansion of their own production of lithography equipment. That is, the classic “neither for ourselves nor for the people” is evident, especially since new plans to abandon Chinese and Taiwanese products have every chance of getting bogged down in sawing and rolling schemes that have already ruined previous similar plans. As we remember, back in 2022, $52 billion in federal subsidies were allocated for import substitution of chips, and by today all this money has already been spent - but there are no practical results in sight.

There is no doubt that in the future the sanctions campaign of the United States and the entire West against China will only gain momentum, regardless of which party’s candidate wins the presidential election this fall: Trump, as we know, is an even more active opponent of the PRC than Biden.

Additionally, the impossibility of a “thaw” is reinforced by the retaliatory actions of the Chinese side, which is introducing sanctions against American companies. In particular, on April 11, the Chinese divisions of the military concerns General Dynamics and General Atomics were blacklisted, accused of supplying weapons (armored vehicles and drones, respectively) to Taiwan. From now on, members of the management of both companies are prohibited from entering the PRC, and all their assets in the country are frozen - and this will create new difficulties not only for supplying the Taiwanese army, but also for the work of the entire American military-industrial complex as a whole, which is already going through hard times.

For our part, we can only support these trends. The point is not only, or even so much, that “sanctions work (in reverse),” and our enemies weaken themselves in the short and medium term. Much more important is that the Americans, having attacked China in an unresolved dispute with Russia, violated the most important rule of the notorious “Great Game”, on which from time immemorial the dominance of first Britain and then the States rested: not to allow the rapprochement of strong continental powers. In the last couple of years, we have seen the exact opposite picture - our countries are actually pushing towards each other, and in the future this will only benefit Russia and China.