When U.S. President Donald Trump descended upon Asia in a twelve-day tour spanning five countries, it marked a turning point for the ascendance of China, the relative decline of the U.S., and their sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry. While Trump declared that “America is back” (The Guardian, 11/17), it was more wishful thinking than reality.
Trump’s attempts to appease his alienated working-class base with a hard line on trade and North Korea ring hollow. China’s growing economic, military, and political might are propelling it forward, while the U.S. desperately tries to hold on to its once-dominant position. As history has taught us, most recently in World Wars I and II, the top dog imperialist will never relinquish its power willingly. The tension between China and the U.S. will continue to intensify amid rising fascism in both nations. The inevitable outcome will be world war.
Workers everywhere must reject all forms of racism and nationalism used by Trump and other capitalist rulers to divide our class and mobilize us to fight and die in the bosses’ wars for control of resources and markets. Workers have just one international class interest: to smash the profit system everywhere. Exploitation on the job, decaying infrastructure, capitalist death care and miseducation, and the rotten culture that oppresses us all stem from this system. Only communism will abolish nations, wages, money, and profits.
U.S. Grows Pathetic, Rising China Forebodes War
The China/U.S. power struggle was on full display during Trump’s trip. While the U.S.-led Asian Pacific Economic Summit was unfolding in Vietnam, the Chinese were countering at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Jakarta. The Filipino press praised Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who “got things done [at ASEAN] in areas that matter: trade and security above all. He strengthened economic ties with the region while practically silencing protests over China’s militarization of the South China Sea” (The Rappler, 11/16).
The Los Angeles Times (11/9) bemoaned the fact that “[n]owhere in Trump’s tour, however, have any of those leaders entered into serious negotiations or made significant concessions.” Some of China’s minor trade concessions, for which Trump was quick to claim credit, were already in the pipeline. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, an important ruling class figure, admitted that the concessions “achieved thus far are pretty small.” Of the roughly 15 “deals” announced by Trump, most are nonbinding memoranda of understanding that may never materialize (The Japan Times, 11/10).
TPP Failure a Sign of U.S. Decline
As the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations went forward without Trump, his absence had little real effect. Shortly after Trump left Japan, the country’s finance minister made clear that there would be no trade deal with the U.S. (Reuters 11/6/17). With Japan at the helm, the trade ministers forming the TPP-11, the trade pact’s remaining signatories, announced that the agreement would be revised to proceed without the U.S. (L.A. Times, 11/9). This will force Trump to play a weak hand when trying to negotiate trade concessions that could have been obtained through the TPP (Huffington Post, 11/7).
The main wing of the U.S. ruling class is furious with Trump’s “disengagement” from trade deals like the TPP, which had the full support of Barack Obama, a more reliable bosses’ agent. In the British Daily Mail (11/14), Nicholas Lardy, a Peterson Institute expert on the Chinese economy, blasted Trump’s pull-back:
[The Chinese] are gaining strategic importance and geopolitical influence in the region ... [Trump] can talk about Indo-Pacific blah, blah, blah, but we’re not engaged in trade, we’re not negotiating any new trade agreement with any country in the region.
A weakening and volatile U.S. equates to a slippery slope to war with China.
China’s Bosses: Unity & Fascism
Compare ruling class sniping at Trump to this assessment of the Chinese bosses’ unity coming out of the so-called Chinese Communist Party Congress one month ago:
The supersizing of Xi’s power comes as Beijing steps up efforts to go global ... Xi doesn’t tweet, boast about his IQ or make geopolitical threats he’s not prepared to back up. What he does do is beat economic growth expectations year after year, steadily increase China’s market share and play the long game ... (Japan Times, 10/31).
Xi Jinping, who easily won a second term as general secretary of the Chinese “Communist Party”, pledged that he would make China a great power by 2050 (South China Morning Post, 11/16). In fact, it may happen sooner, with China already “the second largest economy by official exchange rate, the largest manufacturing country and the largest trading nation in the world.” It also has one-third of the world’s billionaires (BBC, 10/19 and Center for American Progress, 4/27).
Speaking at a “China Power Conference” organized by the ruling class think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the senior Republican Senator John Cornyn worried that China will “pose the greatest threat to the U.S.,” sooner rather than later. His two main concerns are China’s state capitalist economy outpacing the U.S., and the aggressive Chinese military buildup in the South and East China Seas (Epoch Times 11/14).
Tumultous U.S. Ruling Class
Meanwhile, the U.S. ruling class is splintering by the day. Republicans could not garner enough votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and are struggling with passage of their shortsighted tax reform bill, which favors selfish interests of the wealthy at the expense of a growing deficit and widening inequality (NY Times, 11/16). Steve Bannon, the white supremacist loose cannon and former White House advisor, faced off against Vice President Mike Pence, with each backing different candidates in a much-publicized Republican Senate primary race in Alabama (CNN, 9/25).
The Trump- and Koch-led factions of the ruling class continue to vacillate over their relationship. Conservative billionaires are fighting Trump over infrastructure programs, border taxes, jobs programs, and the ban on refugees and immigrants from mainly Muslim countries (Independent, 2/3). The Koch brothers at first backed the Trump tax plan, only to later withdraw their support (Vanity Fair, 11/3).
Conversely, the first term of Xi’s rule was defined by a harsh disciplining of China’s ruling class, with power threats to Xi drummed out of leadership or imprisoned. This approach seems to be paying both financial and political dividends.
Turn World War Into Revolution
At the end, Trump’s Asia trip served only to highlight the growing challenge of Chinese imperialism to U.S. imperialist power. All the signs suggest that the current battle between the U.S. and China is leading to a catastrophic conflict. We can be certain that regardless of who emerges as top dog, the working class will continue to be exploited.
Historically, communist-led revolutions have followed world wars and the mass slaughter of our class amid the bosses’ fight for profits and dominance. Today, once again, only international working class unity and communist revolution can stop imperialist war.
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World’s Bosses Can Offer Nothing for Workers
From the point of view of the international working class, Trump’s Asia trip was a disaster:
The biggest humanitarian crisis in Asia today is the mass murder and forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of starving Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Buddhist rulers have persecuted the mostly Muslim Rohingya people for centuries. Since the military takeover in 1962, the government has excluded the Rohingyas from citizenship. They need official permission to marry and have limited access to education, jobs, and residency. Of course, China’s One Belt One Road initiative has exacerbated this crisis. Not a peep was uttered about these atrocities by racist Trump, Xi, or any other capitalist bosses.
Trump praised Phillipines President Rodrigo Duterte’s “unbelievable job on the drug problem.” This is the same Duterte who said, “Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts (in the Phillipines). I’d be happy to slaughter them.” The U.S. bosses’ relationship with the Phillipines is rocky, as the historical U.S. ally aligns more closely with China.
The Asia trip was trumpeted as a U.S. diplomatic offensive to hem in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. However, neither Russia nor China agreed to any measures against North Korea beyond those already agreed upon (Politico, 11/14). And the chairwoman of the ruling party in South Korea, Choo Mi-ae, told a Washington think tank that the U.S. should “under no circumstances” take any military action against North Korea without the express consent of the South Korean government.
The failure to make any new significant trade deals or forge new alliances to constrain China are both clear signs of the decline of U.S. power in Asia.
