https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2021/09/27/the-collapse-of-bidens-world-n1481335
Despite his vow to “build back better,” China is forcing all of Joe Biden’s moves. The Asian giant’s decision to pursue its own climate policy, consisting largely of more industrialization with green trimmings, effectively kills the Paris accords, so long a part of the progressive platform. How could it not? Beijing produces more emissions than the EU and U.S. combined.
“In 2019, China’s emissions not only eclipsed that of the US — the world’s second-largest emitter at 11% of the global total — but also, for the first time, surpassed the emissions of all developed countries combined … When added together, GHG emissions from all members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as well as all 27 EU member states, reached 14,057 MMt CO2e in 2019, about 36 MMt CO2e short of China’s total.”
Not only is climate change DOA, but the post-WW2 alliance structure is in the ICU. China’s naval expansion pushed Washington to undercut the planned Australian purchase of French conventional submarines in favor of U.K.-U.S. nuclear designs. “For Mr. Macron, the [AUKUS] submarine debacle demonstrates that the NATO alliance is debilitated to the point of dysfunction through lack of trust. The glue has gone. Without transparency — and in the submarine deal there was none — alliance, in the French view, becomes an empty word.”
The “glue” that held NATO together was fear of the Soviet bear. But that once formidable bruin is mangy and supplanted by the much more formidable CCP dragon. The decline of European alliances reflects the strategic primacy of Asia. The irony was that up until Kevin Rudd became PM, Australia actually wanted to become part of Asia. But Chinese expansionism changed all that and stirred in the Aussie breast the old but not wholly forgotten memories of alliances with the English-speaking world.
But the ultimate blow to Biden’s Global World has been to its economic underpinnings. China had been going broke gradually, then all of a sudden. “The roots of the crisis date to [Chinese] tax reforms in 1994 which bolstered central government coffers but left local governments reliant on land financing for revenue.” By China’s own reckoning, the country’s vaunted economic growth rested on three huge bubbles that, once exploded, could threaten the Party’s own legitimacy. “This year, Xi has set out to reform the ‘three huge mountains’ of housing, education and healthcare to rein in soaring costs for city dwellers as a way to shore up legitimacy as the ‘people’s leader’, analysts said.”
The Communist Party encouraged the bubbles in order to tax them. But now, with the stream of new business finally exhausted and the entire edifice threatening to collapse like a house of cards, Chairman Xi has suddenly rediscovered Maoism.
