Video Infoblog: China blasts US hypocrisy in violating 'rules-based order'
Transcript
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if you only listen to Western media Outlets you would probably think that
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China is this evil Boogeyman that is out trying to destroy democracy and human
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rights around the world that is the very propagandistic narrative that we are often fed in Western media now it's
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completely false and today I'll be talking about Washington's hypocrisy and how the United States frequently
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violates these so-called rules-based International order that it upholds that
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it claims to defend but first I want to talk about the rhetoric of Western
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governments in his first state of the union address in 2022 U.S President Joe
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Biden claims that in the world today there is a battle between democracies
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and autocracies in the battle between democracy and autocracies democracies
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are rising to the moment and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and secure
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this is the real test so it's become increasingly obvious around the world that the United States
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and its allies in Europe are waging a new Cold War against China and Russia
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and the U.S government is trying to portray this new Cold War as a supposed
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ideological conflict between democracy and autocracy this is completely absurd
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and ironically the top European Diplomat that is the European Union foreign
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policy Chief Joseph Burrell he admitted that this is actually a false talking point and he said in passing to a room
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full of European ambassadors in Brussels on our side there are lots of
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authoritarian regimes this will coexist with the broader [Music]
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democracies versus authoritarians a big divide I wouldn't exist I wouldn't
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insist a lot on it because in our side there are a lot of authoritarian regimes
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we cannot say we are the democracies and the ones who follow us are also
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democracy that's not true that's not true I did a separate video about that very
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Frank admission I mean it's really important because it shows this entire narrative is completely bogus and even
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Western government officials know that it's an absurd narrative but they still use it constantly I will link to that
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video in the description below now a key narrative in this propaganda campaign
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this information war is the idea that we constantly hear from U.S diplomats that
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Washington and Brussels are defending the so-called rules-based International order we're
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not seeking to contain China we're not seeking to hold China back we are seeking resolutely so to uphold the
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rules-based international order the Chinese routinely are flouting which should be the rules-based international
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order that we all should want to pursue now the rules are never clearly defined
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so really it's actually an order in which the United States makes the rules and orders other countries around and
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this was also actually admitted to by France's former ambassador to the United
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States his name is and he said that really the so-called
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rules-based order is just an unfair Western order because when the Americans
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uh basically want to do whatever they want including when it's against the
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international law as they Define it they do it and that's the vision that the
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rest of the world has of disorder it's a western order and they accuse us of
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double standard hypocrisy now the reason that the United States and European
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officials have been trying to popularize this idea of the rules-based order is essentially it's their attempt to
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replace international law because they can't control international law international law is created through
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truly International institutions like the United Nations which despite its very many flaws and despite the fact
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that Western governments do have too much influence and despite the fact that there is a lot of bias against the
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global South countries in the United Nations still the United States for many
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decades has been waging a constant war against the UN withdrawing from
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different U.N bodies attacking U.N General Assembly rulings constantly using its veto power in the U.N security
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Council to prevent other countries from taking action so by trying to replace
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international law which is clearly defined written in law the United States
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has been popularizing this idea of the rules-based order and there are so many
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ways in which the U.S violates these so-called Rules by organizing coups
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around the world by organizing regime change operations by meddling in other
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countries elections by invading other countries by imposing illegal sanctions
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on other countries the list goes on but today I'm going to be talking about the
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ways in which the United States violates the economic rules in its so-called
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rules-based order and how Washington has actually been one of the world's leading
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violators of the World Trade Organization the WTO which is ironically
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a completely right-wing neoliberal organization that Washington helped to
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promote and help to create and encourage countries all around the world to join the WTO and yet now that the rules no
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longer suit Washington the United States is trying to change the rules and is
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actually violating the very basic principles of the very same organization
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that it helped to create this August China's Commerce Ministry released a
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comprehensive 60-page report looking at the ways in which the United States has
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not been compliant with the rules in the World Trade Organization which is at the
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heart of the western so-called rules-based order now this is a very interesting document because it shows
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how Chinese foreign policy has been shifting over the past decade for many
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years China pursued an IP strategy that it referred to as maintaining a low
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profile in terms of its diplomacy in the international stage it was very neutral it was hands off it did not criticize
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other countries even when the United States was very aggressive against it or other countries were aggressive against
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it and again it was trying to maintain a low profile and focus on developing its
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economy growing bringing its people out of poverty however things have been changing China has developed at an
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incredible Pace faster than any other country in human history the since the Chinese Revolution the government has
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helped lift 800 million people out of poverty in fact China has solved the
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problem of absolute poverty and since 2017 China has overtaken the United
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States to be the world's largest economy when you measure its GDP at purchasing
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power parity which is the best way to measure the size of an economy so under the new president Xi Jinping who came to
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power a decade ago he has been trying to maintain a more nationalist foreign
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policy defending China's sovereignty against the constant attacks and
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aggression by the United States and other Western Powers including sanctions military threats meddling in their
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Internal Affairs and countless other examples so so this most recent report
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criticizing Washington's violations of WTO rules is one example of an
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increasingly assertive foreign policy another example came in February when China's foreign Ministry published a
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lengthy report titled U.S hegemony and its perils and in that report Beijing
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documented the war crimes and crimes of aggression and invasions and coups and
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genocide and other atrocities that the United States has carried out around the world inside its own borders I actually
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did a separate video about that I'll link to that in the description below what these different reports show is
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that China is no longer simply maintaining a low profile it's no longer simply turning the other cheek when
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Washington constantly punches it in the face China is responding and this latest
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report really is devastating it just shows how when it comes to economic
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policy trade policy the United States is completely hypocritical and is one of
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the leading violators of the actual rules in the actual rules-based order
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that exists out there and not the imaginary one that the United States just makes up in its head and says if
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you don't do what they say then you're violating those supposed rules that are Unwritten and constantly changing now
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this report from the Chinese Commerce Ministry points out that since 2017 in
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order to divert attention from its domestic challenges in the United States like Rising inequality Rising
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homelessness increasing police brutality and racism and all these other internal
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issues and political dysfunction in the United States has pursued this
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America First policy in which the United States has been flouting the WTO rules
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and the expectations of other members and resorting to unilateralism
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protectionism and bullying hegeminism now this is an incredible statement
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because it shows that everything that the United States claims about China violating the so-called rules-based
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order and trying to replace the rules-based order is actually the opposite because the WTO as I stressed
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earlier it was partially created by the United States that Washington has always
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promoted the World Trade Organization around the world in order to impose right-wing neoliberal economic policies
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and so-called free trade the dogmatic doctrines of the WTO are the idea of
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free trade that countries can lift themselves out of poverty by freeing their markets by lift all restrictions
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for trade lifting tariffs removing any subsidies for local infant Industries
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ending industrial policy all of those are the actual policies that rich countries use to get rich I'll talk
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about that later but what China is doing here is pointing out that the United States violates its own alleged
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commitments to these principles and violates the World Trade Organization principles well rules they're not even
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just principles they're rules written in stone and yet Washington constantly criticizes other countries like China for
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maintaining socialist economic policies or nationalist economic policies that violate the free trade dogma of the WTO
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so once again we see an example of how the West tells other countries to do
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something and then it does whatever it wants and then if those countries around the world in the global South they try
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to copy the policies of the global North then the global North tells them you're authoritarian you're violating the
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rules-based international order you need to free all your markets you need to lift all tariffs you need to end industrial policy you need to cut all
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subsidies for infant Industries and so here this report just methodologically
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lays out the dozens and hundreds of examples of U.S hypocrisy vis-a-vis
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trade now this report details concerns about U.S trade and economic policies in 11
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key areas including tariffs and non-tariff barriers industrial subsidies
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agricultural subsidies trade remedies standards and Technical regulations trade and services intellectual property
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rights export controls and economic sanctions another huge part of this
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considering that today one quarter of the global population lives in countries
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that are sanctioned by the United States representing nearly one-third of the global economy of global GDP now I'm not
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going to go through this entire report because it's long it's 60 pages but I want to look at some of the highlights of how once again China is calling out
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the United States for violating the own the rules that the United States made and tried to impose on the economies of
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the rest of the world in this report Beijing acknowledged this very clearly noting that the U.S is a
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principal beneficiary of the multilateral trading system its Financial internet and high-tech Giants
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multinational corporations and the farmers and Ranchers have all benefited
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greatly from trade liberalization however the absence of a sound benefit
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distribution system has led to the failure of the U.S to properly deal with
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its domestic income and job opportunity inequality among different classes so
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this is China saying very diplomatically that the U.S has benefited at least big corporations and financial oligarchs and
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capitalists have benefited from these neoliberal economic policies of free trade and neoliberal globalization and
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yet average poor working people have not benefited and the United States has not
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taken policies to ensure redistribution of wealth and to reduce inequality
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now China also points out that the United States is a country with low savings High consumption and high debt
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and the U.S has has long had a savings shortage and has had to rely on current
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account deficits and trade deficits for economic growth now the reason that the
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U.S can even do that is largely because of the power of the US dollar whereas most countries around the world that
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have current account deficits and trade deficits with the rest of the world their currencies depreciate against the
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currency they use to pay for imports but because the dollar is used for the US to
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buy imports and because the dollar is imposed on countries all around the world it is it allows the United States
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to suck in the wealth of these countries around the world but China points out that the U.S attributes its domestic
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social problems to the so-called unfair trade that caused the trade deficit and
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unemployment so once again we see the United States is blaming its own
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policies for creating the problems in its countries and yet in reality instead
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of recognizing that these are the policies that the United States has imposed it's blaming other countries like China for so-called unfair trade
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but in reality the US is a victim of its own neoliberal economic policies so
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Beijing is just pointing this out very clearly and it points out again that since 2017 with the rise of Donald Trump
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the U.S has been blatantly violating these supposed rules of the free market
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and fair trade and globalization and of course by the way Joe Biden has also
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continued these policies it's not just Trump this is bipartisan and by the way it didn't begin one of my criticism of
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this report is it didn't begin in 2017. they're focusing on how it started under Trump and Trump started the trade war
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with China I mean of course obviously Beijing is largely focusing on the ways in which the United States violates
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these principles the so-called free trade with its trade war against China which started under Trump so it makes
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sense why they want to focus on that but again the United States has been violating these principles of so-called
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free trade for decades for centuries so it this is not how rich capitalist
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countries actually got rich this hypocrisy was brilliantly exposed by the
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South Korean development Economist hajun Chung in his book kicking away the
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latter and in the first chapter of the book which is called how did the rich countries really become rich he notes
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that Western governments have a neoliberal agenda which insists that so-called good policies and scare quotes
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are broadly those prescribed by the so-called Washington Consensus These
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include restrictive macroeconomic policy liberalization of international trade and investment privatization and
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deregulation so those are the right-wing economic policies that are part of the
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neoliberal ideology when people talk about neoliberalism that's what they mean and he points out that countries
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like France in fact they became wealthy through deep intervention in the economy not
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through these free trade policies and he said quote the developed countries did
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not get where they are now through the policies and the institutions that they recommend to developing countries today
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most of them actively used so-called bad trade and industrial policies such as
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infant industry protection and Export subsidies practices that these days are
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frowned upon if not actively banned by the WTO the World Trade Organization
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Chung quoted the famous German Economist Friedrich list who advocated for a much
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more State support for developing infant industry and developing the economy and Friedrich list famously wrote quote it
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is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness he kicks away the latter by
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which he has climbed up in order to deprive others of the means of climbing
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up after him and this lies the secret of the cosmopolitical doctrine of Adam
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Smith and of course this is you know all of the economists who follow who often by the way misread Adam Smith and they
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preach the doctrine of how great free trade is in the free market although Chung points out that actually free
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trade is beneficial among countries at similar levels of Industrial Development but not between countries at different
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levels of development so free trade benefits the wealthy imperious countries like Britain and the U.S but not a lot
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the less developed economies it keeps them in a state of underdevelopment the economy is in the global South so the
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reason I wanted to look at that book is because it shows that this is not a new policy for oh well over a century for
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centuries the Western imperialist Powers have told other countries around the
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world largely in the global South to implement a certain set of capitalist economic policies that they did not use
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to develop their own economies that's not how the wealthy rich countries got rich of course one thing that hajanchang
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leaves out of his book which I think is very important is they also got rich through colonialism and imperialism
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through slavery through stealing countries natural resources through imposing unelected Colonial regimes on
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them like on India and many other countries around the world and extracting the wealth from India tens of
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trillions of dollars of wealth were extracted from India by the British
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Empire and that's true for many other countries in Africa and Latin America and other parts of Asia so that's how
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the imperialist countries got rich through colonialism and through economic protectionism not through free trade and
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yet they impose free trade on the rest of the world and the United States has been the world's leading purveyor of
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free trade Dogma as part of the neoliberal era of globalization and now
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China is pointing out the U.S hypocrisy that Washington constantly talks about the importance of these free trade rules
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and yet violates the basic rules of the World Trade Organization this report
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from China's Commerce Ministry refers to Washington as a destroyer of the
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multilateral trading system pointing out the U.S puts domestic laws over and above International rules disregards the
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multilateral trading rules and the concerns of other members defies and challenges the basic principles of the
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WTO and cripples the normal functioning of the WTO one of the ways it does that
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is by undermining the dispute settlement mechanism and since 2017 as the terms of
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the Appellate body members expired and vacancies arose the U.S has blocked the
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appointments of new appellate body members on the grounds of institutional issues which has led to a paralysis of
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the Appellate body the U.S has 60 consecutive times rejected proposals
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from other members to launch the selection of appellate body members the
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overwhelming majority of WTO members support the early launch of this process
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and the U.S refuses to join the consensus so here we see Washington violating the rules of its beloved
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rules-based International order if the WTO is not part of the rules-based international order nothing is this this
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is an organization the U.S helped to create and there's so many examples in this
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report I'm not going to go through all of them China also talks about how the U.S has selectively implemented the
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recommendations and rulings of this dispute board the dispute settlement board especially when it comes to
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tariffs that the United States imposed on steel and aluminum and note what's
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fascinating about this report is it notes that these complaints that were
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brought in the WTO were not only brought by China even Norway a western Ally has
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complained about these U.S terrorists Switzerland Another Western Ally turkey
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now known as turkey has complained turkey is a member of NATO so it's not
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just China that is complaining about the U.S violation of these WTO rules that
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the United States helped to create in the first place in this report China's Commerce Ministry also refers to the
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United States as a unilateralist and bullying hegeminist pointing out that
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the WTO prohibits its members from taking unilateral measures against other members but the U.S has a long history
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of taking unilateral measures against other members under the disguise of so-called National Security human rights
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Force technology transfer Etc the U.S has coerced other countries Regional
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groups and entities into abiding by its diplomatic policies and illegitimate demands now the biggest example of this
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once again is sanctions one quarter of the global population nearly one-third of world GDP is from countries that are
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sanctioned unilaterally illegally by the United States that is a blatant violation of the rules of the so-called
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rules-based International order but because Washington does it well I guess it's okay now China points out that in order to
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justify these policies the U.S uses the idea of National Security and that's why
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that's how the United States Justified imposing tariffs on steel aluminum and other products the U.S put tariffs on
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steel Imports they increased it from 25 to 50 to punish turkey for its position
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on political issues and turkey is ostensibly a western Ally Then under the
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exclusive National Security the U.S banned the use of telecommunications equipment from Chinese companies like
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Huawei it revoked their licenses from Chinese carriers in the U.S and blocked
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related investment from China since then the US has been imposing more and more sanctions on other Chinese technological
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firms the U.S and European some European countries are Banning the export of
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certain Technologies like semiconductor technology or Quantum Computing parts or
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our AI artificial intelligence technology and China of course points
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out the US engages in economic coercion imposing sanctions the U.S abuses export
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control and sanctions measures and ironically the US also has a double standard on Industrial policy now
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industrial policy which is government support for developing industry violates the very basic neoliberal principles of
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the free market that the U.S constantly tries to impose in other countries telling them that that they have to lift
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all subsidies all government support and tax breaks for certain industries
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they're targeting for development only the US is allowed to do that if other countries do it it's socialism and it's
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authoritarianism and it violates free trade and fair trade so
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China points out for a long time the U.S has applied different standards with regard to Industrial policies between
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other members and itself the U.S implements exclusive and discriminatory
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industrial policies providing large-scale subsidies the U.S practices lead to over capacity of relevant
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products and Distortion of the global market the U.S points fingers at other members especially developing members
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legitimate policies aiming to support their domestic Industrial Development so China also has a lot of industrial
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policy and uses it to Target certain sectors to develop renewable energy technology electrical Vehicles its steel
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industry transportation you know bullet trains China has a socialist government
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they don't they don't pretend to be against industrial policy but they're pointing out the hypocrisy once again of
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the United States telling countries around the world they can't use industrial policy they can't have
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government support for their industry they have to free the market and that United States does the opposite because this is not how you get rich you don't
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get rich through the free market you don't get rich through laissez-faire capitalism libertarianism you get rich
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through protectionist policies and this is why ironically like I'm not even against some of these policies obviously
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the sanctions are illegal and criminal and murderous but for instance this
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report also talks about U.S subsidies for renewable energy technology and solar panels and transition to for
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instance electric vehicles I mean I think you know those are some of the very few policies you can maybe say are
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good although even then a lot of these policies are actually just US Government handout handouts to Big corporations
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like Tesla for instance so and and you know owned by billionaire oligarchs so I
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mean they're still allowed to criticize about these policies but I'm not I'm obviously not against the idea of protectionism protectionism can be good
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if a country actually wants to develop its economy and not just enrich a small a handful of billionaire oligarch you
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know Financial speculators I mean so it's the problem is not the protectionist policies the problem is
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not the tariffs the problem is not the industrial policy and subsidies China does all these policies as well the
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problem is that China doesn't lecture the rest of the world about the so-called rules-based International order China doesn't tell other countries
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they have to impose the neoliberal Washington consensus named after Washington China doesn't tell other
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countries that in order to get loans from it it needs they need to impose neoliberal structural adjustment like
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the U.S controlled international monetary fund the IMF and the World Bank which do impose these neoliberal
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so-called free trade policies so China is simply in this report is pointing out the incredible hypocrisy of the United
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States and again it just never ends I mean there are so many examples of this industrial protection
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high-tech industrial policies support for renewable energy technology crit
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criticizing other countries legitimate industrial policies now of course China says it's gonna every country is going
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to say that its own industrial policy is illegitimate but I mean I think every
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country has a right to pursue industrial policy and if countries are finally going to move away from this neoliberal
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Orthodoxy of the free market dogma and this nonsense good every country should
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so I mean whatever I mean calling it legitimate or whatever the point is again the hypocrisy not whether or not
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it's legitimate or illegitimate now China also points out that the
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United States is driven by hegemonism and a cold war mentality so here we see
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that Beijing is the one opposing the the call for a new Cold War we constantly
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hear in Western media propaganda that China is the aggressor but if the United States that is the aggressor and is
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constantly escalating its aggression with weapons sales to separatists in
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Taiwan with sanctions on China with constantly sending U.S ships through the Taiwan Strait to threaten China the U.S
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is constantly upping the ante forcing countries around the world to break their ties with China to join the
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Western military Alliance the U.S led military Alliance to contain China and yet China constantly says we don't want
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a new Cold War if you read government documents they say would they oppose the Cold War mentality of the United States
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in here they talk about once again how the U.S is adopting these protectionist policies but not to support working
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people not to support good unionized jobs like the kinds of jobs that were
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sent abroad in the neoliberal era as part of the policy of de-industrialization as part of the
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policy of Outsourcing no no no no that would be that would be good for the people the Working Class People the
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United States the U.S doesn't do protectionism to actually help poor people and working-class people have
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good jobs instead the us only engages in protectionism to challenge to weaken
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other competitors like China like Russia like Iran like many other countries that
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the US is targeting for regime change so it's again it's not even protectionism to help people to help working people
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the only time that protectionism does help people in the United States is when it helping helps billionaire oligarchs
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and the people who fund the U.S politicians who make these policies these economic policies and of course
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polls show that the vast vast majority of candidates running for the House of
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Representatives and the senate in the United States who have more funding win elections over 90 percent so this is not
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a democracy you cannot call as a democracy this is an oligarchy it's the best so-called democracy that
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capitalists can buy going on in this report China also points out that after spending decades
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criticizing other countries for using tariffs to support the development of infant Industries so they can have you
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know their own Industries and not rely simply on U.S corporations Washington is constantly criticized countries that use
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tariffs and yet now the U.S is imposing more and more tariffs increasing tariffs on products like clothing textiles fish
