Briefly Noted: China Still Not Talking; Wisconsin Politics

We’ve mentioned several times that Xi Jinping is not responding to Zhou’s phone calls. The bad blood between China and the Zhou regime goes back all the way to the beginning, at an initial meeting in Alaska between Tony Blinken and top Chinese diplomats. Blinken at that time accused China of violating the “rules based order” and the Chinese, in turn, exploded on Blinken, accusing him of “condescending” to China. The Global Times—a semi-official English language Chinese outlet—wrote of the exchange:

the era in which the US can pretend it has enough power and morality to talk down to China is over. It must treat Beijing in an equal and respectful manner."

Since then the US has accused China of using balloons to spy, has had senior generals state that they expected war with China withing two years, sent senior legislators to Taiwan, and unleashed a torrent of accusations and abuse at China.

Predictably, China has ignored US warnings against aligning with Russia and has, instead, strengthened its ties with Russia. Further, China has engaged in high profile diplomacy around the world that culminated with brokering a reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Maintaining mutual hostility between those two countries has been a linchpin of US Middle East policy, as well as a key to continued dollar hegemony.

Today Politico presents the current state of affairs, in a manner that is predictably defensive of the Zhou regime’s performance:

China is ghosting the United States

Beijing has effectively frozen high level bilateral diplomatic contact in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon incident in February

Politico presents US officials complaining of China’s “thin skinned diplomacy.” A bit of reading between the lines reveals a Zhou regime that has badly mishandled relations with China and is increasingly desperate for a reset. While the US officials offer assurances that the US isn’t about to “break off diplomatic relations” with China, the Chinese seem unconcerned with any such eventuality—and are instead issuing demands for better behavior on the part of the US. They are in no hurry to offer Zhou a stage from which to pretend to be “presidential:

The snubs have been accumulating. As tensions spiked in early February over the U.S. shootdown of the spy balloon, Chinese officials declined a U.S. request to have Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speak with his counterpart.

And bilateral military crisis communications remain hamstrung due to what senior administration officials say is Beijing’s refusal to engage with the U.S. on the development of reliable systems that could help prevent an incident in the South China Sea from spiraling into a military crisis.

…

Getting the Chinese to stay in regular, meaningful communication has been a challenge for the administration since Biden took office. And even when there are communications, they have often produced little substance, leading U.S. officials to crave higher-level contacts, especially with Xi.

…

China also is pressing back particularly hard on the proposals for a Xi-Biden call.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters last month that the White House was hoping to nail down a call following the March 13 closure of the annual meeting of China’s parliament. China’s Foreign Ministry responded by making clear that Beijing was in no hurry to reconnect the two leaders. “Communication should not be carried out for the sake of communication,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters. The White House needed to “show sincerity … to help bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track,” Wang said.

My guess is that the increasing alarm on the US side is spurred by the leading role China is taking in the de-dollarization movement, which seems to gain momentum from one day to the next. Just the other day we featured a brief video of a near hysterical Little Marco Rubio commenting on the China - Brazil agreement to to bypass use of the dollar in trade—which is massive between the two countries—and to instead conduct payments with the yuan and the real. The point is that de-dollarization will have a very direct impact on US military spending in coming years for the reason that the US will find it increasingly difficult to finance deficit spending and even to service its existing debt:

De-Dollarization Has Begun

Owing to the role that dollar pervasiveness plays in the international appetite for US Treasuries, a side effect of the long-term attempt to establish alternative reserve currencies may be decreasing interest in tradable US debt. Over shorter time frames, that would likely result in higher yields and higher levels of debt service on securities issued by the US Treasury. Over generational time frames, that shift could force a reduction in US government spending. Should that scenario play out, the long-term effect of using access to dollars as a bludgeon of American foreign policy could well be higher average inflation and/or higher taxes on American citizens. 

The dollar, in some shape or form, will likely be around for a long time. Perhaps very long. But by weaponizing dollar dominance and permitting expanding mandates to disorient US monetary policy, the dollar’s fate as the lingua franca of world commerce over the long haul may already be sealed. So long as the political will to moor US fiscal and monetary policies to those consistent with the constitution of sound money remain an inconversable matter, de-dollarization will proceed. And slower or more quickly, the dollar will lose ground abroad.

This is turning out to be a tricky juncture for the US to find itself seeking a conversation with China, and finding that China is simply not interested. Or is only interested if its increasing demands are met. The Zhou regime will find itself caught between China on the one hand and American anti-China politics at home.

I’ll close with a brief reference to Wisconsin politics. I claim no expertise, but one thing has been clear since 2016, and that’s that the Wisconsin GOP is divided, especially in the House. Losing control of the state Supreme Ct. was bad but, again, intra party feuding appears to be involved. Here’s a bit of good news:

Paul Hookem 🇺🇸 @PaulHook_em

All Was Not Lost: Wisconsin Republicans did lose the Supreme Court to a Soros backed loon but they gained a Senate supermajority that allows them to impeach said judge. Now the Wisconsin GOP must fight!

theguardian.comWisconsin senate supermajority win gives Republicans impeachment powerRepublicans control 22 of 33 senate seats, giving them necessary votes to impeach officials including Democratic governor

Well, given the bad news from my own neck of the woods …