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Trump Goes To China
This week U.S. President Donald Trump is going to China.
His larger plan had been to take Venezuela, Iran and their oil before pressing China, via tariffs and energy restrictions, to concede to U.S. hegemony.
That plan has failed. Trump has lost two wars. His tariff schemes ended in retreat after China restricted the export of its rare earth products. His war on Iran has is one big failure.
Trump is coming to Beijing with his cap in his hand. He, as usual, will try to bluff a way to ‘victory’. He will proceed as if the U.S. were in a great position. The Chinese will be polite, but won’t have any of it.
There have been little preparations for the trip. The sherpas did not convene beforehand to straighten out serious issues between the countries. There are no big contracts or treaties to sign.
Trump will want to sell soybeans and Boeing airplanes. The Chinese are only mildly interested in any such deals. They may sign some contracts to give Trump something to boast about. But they will hedge their deals as the U.S. is known to be a unreliable partner.
Trump will want support for making peace (on U.S. conditions) with Iran. There will be some solemn and wise responses to that.
It is in Chinese interest to see the U.S. bogged down in the Middle East. Any U.S. airplane, ship, gun and soldier in the Middle East is one less to worry about in east Asia. Any munition fired against Iran can not be used against China.
China does not want Iran to lose the war. It will support it, as it already does, wherever needed.
Trump is hauling a bunch of money men with him. A big hope for U.S. financial interest is to open the Chinese (consumer) markets for their virtual ‘products’. But, as President Xi has said, ‘houses are for living’. Communist ideology does not allow for such crap.
A major point of interest on the Chinese side is Taiwan. Beijing wants to finally end the Chinese civil war and for that Taiwan must rejoin the country. U.S. weapon sales to Taiwan and its political agitation are a hindrance to that.
But Taiwan is a big issue in Congress. Some minor verbal commitments on not furthering Taiwan independence may be all Trump can give.
The U.S. wants China to sign on to some rumored about Board of Trade. The U.S. is trying to install such bi-lateral forums to replace the UN, WTO and other international organizations. Like the Board of Peace in Palestine, the Board of Trade wont solve any issues. But as it will not cost China anything to join it will agree to it to keep Trump happy.
To keep Trump happy may well be the sole reason why China has agreed to the meeting.
A “reliable source” may publish something that contradicts the official narrative. This is when the censorship machine starts working in overdrive.
Posted by: Petri Krohn | May 12 2026 17:17 utc | 6
Xi will be prepared. He will have the RAND report on his desk, both in English and Chinese language copies. Xi will argue, that the US has no cards to play. They have no other option, but peaceful coexistence and fair economic and technological competition.
Posted by: Petri Krohn | May 12 2026 18:08 utc | 16
Did you actually read the report or did you make your own assumptions based on the misleading title?
It’s the usual drivel from RAND and the other right-wing think tanks who are either arguing that Russia is the lesser threat and therefore China should be attacked first, or that China and Russia are easier to manage if Iran is subjugated first etc. RAND is simply arguing that China is not a priority, for now. “Stabilizing” in this context doesn’t mean peaceful coexistence, it means making China drop their guard and delaying the conflict with China for as long as it’s needed for America to muster the forces necessary to defeat China.
From Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry:
This report assesses possible means of stabilizing the U.S.-China rivalry.
(page 55)
Moreover, efforts to trigger stabilizing dynamics are complicated by the fact that China perceives the United States as in decline and China on an inexorable rise to global leadership. Its view of the world is also colored by a sense of itself as the preeminent civilization, a society to whom others owe some degree of natural deference. This is, it must be realized, an inherent problem when dealing with a rising, self-confident great power with expansive conceptions of its role in world politics. Such powers will tend to view any concessions to their demands as simply appropriate recognition of what Chinese sources often describe as “rightful” claims—steps that are entirely justified on their own terms and require no meaningful response.
Beijing also tends to link rather than separate issues, which creates another notably difficulty in pursuing discrete channels of stabilization. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was willing to compartmentalize—to pursue arms control while undertaking proxy wars in Africa, for example—in ways that allowed the two sides to pursue stability in some areas while competing fiercely in others. China tends to link issues rather than separating them—cancelling climate dialogues, for example, in retaliation for a visit of the U.S. House Speaker to Taiwan, and demanding relief from export controls as the price for a deeper dialogue on AI safety. Picking off individual targets of opportunity is very difficult given such an approach by one side.
Partly as a result of these constraints, we did not seek to develop an agenda of grand accommodations or cooperation spirals. Our approach here is transactional and issue-specific rather than catalytic—seeking to ease the mutual paranoia and hostility of the relationship in important ways, but not ones that will necessarily generate broad-based processes of cooperation. Moreover, our theory of stabilization fully recognizes that, from a U.S. standpoint, sustaining the credibility of U.S. commitments and deterrent power is an essential ingredient in stability, and that any initiative must take seriously its potential to signal to Beijing that the United States is becoming exhausted with the competition. Many of the proposals below, in fact, speak to the value of clarifying red lines or enhancing deterrence as part of this agenda.
(page 80, RAND’s stabilization proposal for the South China Sea)
Based on these assumptions, one plausible theory of success would combine deterrence of military escalation with intensified multilateral and bilateral diplomacy to create a medium-term route to a peaceful solution as the default international process and expectation. Under such a theory, the focus of short- and medium-term stabilization efforts would be to (1) deter any claimants or other actors in the region from undertaking direct military aggression to achieve their goals, through a combination of military power and multilateral signaling; (2) discourage other claimants from taking provocative actions on secondary issues that would force Beijing’s hand and produce crises; (3) initiate new processes of multilateral and bilateral diplomacy to create a default and required route to peaceful unification of disputes; (4) create new multilateral cooperative bodies on shared threats and issues, whether or not China will join them; and (5) rally broad-based international support for these processes, including signaling about the unacceptability of the use of force to resolve disputes or threaten free maritime transit.
This theory of success reflects the six principles of stabilization outlined in Chapter 2.
The RAND Corporation’s solution to de-escalate South China Sea tensions is to have the American military deter all claimants, including China, and to keep a tight leash on the regional American attack dog, the Philippines, so that it doesn’t trigger a conflict with China when America isn’t ready yet. This is the standard operating procedure of the global military hegemon, America. Nothing new is being proposed here.
On the topic of China being a communist country:
China is a communist country operating a socialist economy with the aim of attaining communism.
The last point needs to be expanded further because a lot of Americans are confused by the fact that remnant capitalist elements exist within China and use it to brand China as capitalist.
Marx’s 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme explicitly states that a communist society will inevitably bear capitalist features in its initial stages:
What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.
Lenin also knew socialism will contain bits of capitalism in it, which can be seen in his 1917 Can We Go Forward If We Fear To Advance Towards Socialism?:
For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.
In China’s description of its own system (linked above), it clearly outlined its differences from the bastardized notion of “socialism” common among Americans:
The term “socialism” is often understood differently. In the United States, for instance, progressive Democrats are often branded by Republicans as “socialists.” But what they advocate is different from both Marxist socialism and the ideology upheld and the system taken by China. To these Democrats, private ownership and market economy are still considered the main body of U.S. institutions, even though they push for more government control over the economy.
It’s rather plain and simple – no matter how far progressives go, they never depart from those two principles. This, however, leaves ground for people to sow doubt about the way China works. But anyone who has been to China and approaches it without bias would draw the conclusion that China is nowhere near a system that Westerners are so unfamiliar with.
It is a conscious American strategy to associate all that is good, such as China’s achievements, with capitalism so that
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China’s successes are subordinated as America’s successes because America is the global center of capitalism, and
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a global revolution that overturns capitalism is prevented, which is to the advantage of Americans who are the biggest beneficiaries of capitalism.
Death to America
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Marg bar Âmrikâ
Posted by: All Under Heaven | May 12 2026 20:19 utc | 42
China is moving to 6G and not waiting for the rest of the world.
Machine translated
Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially approved the use of 6G test frequencies in the 6GHz frequency band and approved the national IMT-2030 (6G) promotion team to conduct 6G field trials, marking that China’s 6G R & D has fully entered the real-world stage from laboratory testing.
The approved 6G band, specifically 6425-7125MHz, a total of 700MHz continuous bandwidth, known as the industry’s “golden spectrum.” It is currently considered the best frequency band globally.
More significantly, China has made clear its position that it will no longer blindly wait for international standards, and will no further passively rely on international cooperation and catering to the international market, and will adhere to independent research and development, independent control and independent standards, and 100% independent control of core technologies and core components, and achieve commercial use by 2030.
With the advent of the 6G era, countries in the world have their own reactions, Japan and South Korea choose to hold together, the United States is very anxious, and India is greatly confident, claiming to lead the global 6G.
Several Japanese carriers and South Korea SK Telecom recently made a lot of joint statements, Samsung, Softbank also signed R & D cooperation, looking very bluffing. But if you look closely at the data, you see.Japan’s 6G patents account for less than 10% of the world, and South Korea is about 8%.Bring it out. everybody almost wanted to.
Read more:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wry_4JOexZUNBS1DUKTzVg
Posted by: Surferket | May 12 2026 23:03 utc | 72
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