By Zhong Sheng
Some politicians in the U.S. are really doing all they can to distort facts and attack China. Even the “seven deadly sins” in Christian teaching were recently applied by White House National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro to criticize China.
He said China must “stop stealing our intellectual property, stop forcing technology transfers, stop hacking our computers, stop dumping into our markets and putting our companies out of business, stop state-owned enterprises from heavy subsidies, stop the fentanyl, stop the currency manipulation” before the trade war comes to an end.
A Chinese saying goes that if you want to condemn somebody, you can always trump up a charge. Navarro’s remarks malicious fully exposed his malicious intentions.
Navarro and his like, labeling China with these tags, are indeed attracting “believers” of their manipulated stories about China, in an attempt to coerce the country into making a concession.
They turn a blind eye to objective facts and never find their own problems. Instead, they duck responsibilities and frame other countries. Their tricks have long become a laughingstock of the international community and are scorned by the world.
Calling black white, these ridiculous arguments will never be supported no matter how they are disguised.
China has always adhered to equal consultation, mutual benefit and win-win results in international economic and trade exchanges and has become a source of power for the world economy, which is a fact that it obvious to all.
The country has moved up in the ranking of the Global Innovation Index for years. In 2018, it paid $8.64 billion in licensing fees for intellectual property rights to the U.S. The variety of fentanyl-related substances controlled by China outnumbered that of the U.S, and China also implemented stricter control over the drug than the U.S did.
However, the U.S. has unilaterally allowed the federal and local governments to provide substantial subsidies, bailouts, and concessional loans to relevant industries and enterprises. It has long engaged in large-scale and organized online scams and monitoring activities. These facts have shown clearly the right and wrong.
Navarro, a leading hawk as described by the U.S. media, always makes irresponsible and inflammatory remarks and fabricates extreme viewpoints.
Taking China as an “imaginary enemy”, he sticks to the out-dated Cold War mentality.
His book Death by China “is drowned out by xenophobic hysteria and exaggerations so rampant it becomes impossible to tell light from heat,” and is filled with inflammatory sentences and one-sided views, as U.S. media described.
Navarro’s extreme economic views are widely considered politicized and full of provocative political slogans. He promotes high tariffs on imported products and encourages consumers to change their shopping habits, arguing that this would eliminate the huge U.S. trade deficit.
Economist William Gale from the Brookings Institution said it bluntly that this absurd deduction was unable to become a reality.
In addition, Daniel Ikenson, head of trade policy research at the Cato Institute, pointed out that Navarro’s view of trade is “a dangerous and misleading global zero-sum perspective with no approval of any economist.”
The remarks and practices of Navarro and his like are dangerous. Completely following the political needs, they defamed others wantonly, caused trouble for no reason, created confrontation and instigated hatred.
Yet they hardly realized that while hurting others, they also seriously harmed the U.S. economy and damaged the country’s reputation and credibility.
A report recently issued by Goldman Sachs Group pointed out that the cost of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump last year against Chinese goods has fallen “entirely” on American businesses and households, with a greater impact on consumer prices than previously expected.
According to a recent survey released by British media, economists believe that the possibility of the U.S. economy slipping into a recession in the next two years has increased significantly to 45%.
Stephen Roach, a senior research fellow at Yale University, pointed out that Navarro’s “Death by China” is absurd and might be fatal for America.
More and more people begin to remain vigilant against the remarks and practices of Navarro and his like. Some media even called their extreme anti-globalization thinking a virus.
There is no doubt that the virus, if not eliminated, will cause endless harm. The urgent need now is to recognize the hazards and never let the virus ravage and damage the global economy.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)
