FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
The Old Paradigmers Just Can’t Let It Go: Hysteria and Lunacy on China
Nov. 14, 2018 (EIRNS)—In yet another display of hysteria over China’s extraordinary global development perspective—which is leaving the old paradigm in the dust—the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a bipartisan Congressional entity responsible for monitoring security implications of U.S.-China trade, presented its 2018 annual report today to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).
The 525-page “scholarly” report, which includes pages and pages of detailed footnotes, reflects the desperation of Western geopoliticians whose lies and distortions about “authoritarian” China, and President Xi Jinping, have failed miserably to dissuade countries from associating with it and with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Revealingly, the report was compiled on the basis of classified and unclassified hearings, with witnesses from government, academia, and the private sector, as well as research trips to Taiwan and Japan—but Commission members were not granted visas to visit China to conduct in-country research, the South China Morning Post reported today.
Instructive is the report’s 45-page chapter on the Belt and Road Initiative, which warns that it
“could pose a significant challenge for U.S. interests and values because it may enable China to export its model of authoritarian governance and encourages and validates authoritarian actors abroad.” I
t rails against “Chinese state-owned enterprises” and warns that the BRI’s offers to develop infrastructure are suspect, because China might plunge nations into debt, “while providing Beijing with economic leverage to promote Chinese interests, in some cases threatening the sovereignty of host countries.”
The report intones that the BRI facilitates and justifies the People’s Liberation Army’s overseas expansion, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region by accessing port facilities, and other bases to refuel and resupply its Nay.
As to how Congress might counter the BRI, the report makes several recommendations, among which is a proposal to create a fund to provide additional bilateral assistance for countries targetted or “vulnerable to Chinese economic or diplomatic pressure,” especially in the Indo-Pacific region. Such a fund could be used to promote “sustainable development, combat corruption, promote transparency, improve the rule of law,” etc.
In addition, Congress should require the State Department to prepare a report to Congress on actions taken to provide “an alternative, fact-based narrative to counter Chinese messaging on the Belt and Road Initiative.”
