Asain spector pro4/16/2023 In 1978, Deng Xiaoping became China’s new paramount leader, after outmanoeuvring Mao’s chosen successor, Hua Guofeng. But life was chaotic and often violent, with grand schemes such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution failing to live up to their promise, while also inflicting unnecessary and often brutal suffering on China’s rapidly growing population. Under Mao’s leadership, the country did experience moderate economic expansion, with real GDP per capita growing at an average of 4% between 1952 to 1978. The occasion marked the victory of Mao Zedong’s forces over the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China, securing the Communist Party of China’s control over the world’s most populous nation. Last year the People's Republic of China celebrated its 70th anniversary. Now, the acrimony over the coronavirus pandemic has added fuel to the fire.Īt the root of these rising tensions lies a common cause: the emergence of an economic model that has the potential to rival the productive power of Western liberal capitalism – and ultimately threaten the technological supremacy that has long underpinned US hegemony. Neither is the adoption of a more assertive stance towards China in Washington – it was Barack Obama, not Donald Trump, that initiated the pivot in American strategy towards China in 2011.īut under Trump’s leadership, tensions between the two global powers have escalated, as have Washington’s efforts to contain China’s rise. Signs of diminishing US soft power are not new. This week, President Trump announced that the US was halting payments to the World Health Organization (WHO) over its handling of the pandemic, a move that has attracted condemnation from leaders around the world. The government of Barbados has also accused the United States of “seizing” ventilators that were bound for the country and paid for by singer Rihanna. At the beginning of April, 200,000 masks that were produced in Singapore by US firm 3M and bound for Germany were confiscated in Bangkok and diverted to the US, an incident that a senior German official described as “modern piracy”. In March it was reported that Trump had offered international medical companies large sums of money to produce vaccines “only for the United States”. In stark contrast to China’s international charm offensive, President Trump has stayed true to his ‘America First’ philosophy. Meanwhile, the President’s allies on both sides of the Atlantic have demanded that China pay reparations for allegedly causing the outbreak.ĭespite launching a massive $2 trillion stimulus package to cushion the economic blow from the pandemic, many believe that the US is sleepwalking into a public health catastrophe – one that will be beamed onto TV screens all over the world. After initially denying the gravity of the pandemic, President Trump quickly turned his fire on Beijing, referring to the disease as the ‘Chinese virus’. President Trump’s mishandling of the crisis has put the US on track to experience the most deadly outbreak of any major country. Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. The Jack Ma Foundation, a charitable organisation led by China’s wealthiest individual, has pledged to provide each African nation with 20,000 testing kits, 100,000 masks and 1,000 protective suits. Europe is not alone: after successfully bringing the spread of the virus under control domestically (for the time being at least) China has embarked on a high-profile campaign of health diplomacy, winning applause around the world for providing support to countries in need.Ĭhinese civil society is playing its part too. Last month the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, thanked Beijing for delivering more than 2 million masks and 50,000 coronavirus testing kits to European countries including France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. In an ironic twist, the country where the pandemic originated has become an unlikely safe haven for investors – a shift that one prominent trader has described as “the single largest change in capital markets in anybody’s lifetime.”īut it is not only investors that are looking to China. These purchases have increased the total foreign ownership of Beijing’s bonds to record highs, even as much of the country is still emerging from lockdown after the viral outbreak. Investors, seeking shelter from the coronavirus-linked sell-off, have piled into Chinese government bonds on an unprecedented scale. Amidst the turmoil in global financial markets in recent weeks, something unusual has happened.
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