The Duran Podcast - Bad cop Blinken to deliver ultimatum to China

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Bad cop Blinken to deliver ultimatum to China The Duran: Episode 1890

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Blinken's trip to China, which I believe is going to take place this week. I believe Wednesday, Thursday. He is going to China. So we've had Yellen in China. We've had Ola Schultz in China. And now Blinken is on his way to China. And the Financial Times is telling us that Blinken is going to go to China with the main purpose of the trip to be to tell China to stop supporting Russia. and if they don't stop supporting Russia, then sanctions are going to follow.

Punishment from the U.S. will follow. So how do you think China is going to receive Blinken and to take these ultimatums, threats? I don't know, what do you want to call it, that Blinkin is going to deliver to China? I think what the Chinese are going to be saying to them. and of course they're reading the Financial Times and they're in contact with the US officials. I think what the Chinese are saying to themselves is that sanctions are coming

and that the Americans have now found the excuse to impose sanctions on China which is China's trade with Russia. Now the Americans are making some very specific allegations. They're saying that the Russians are buying chips from China. That is in, disputable. No one denies it. It's an open trade. There's no evidence that the Chinese have been providing chips that, you know, the very, very top-end chips, you know, the ones that Taiwan makes,

which the Chinese have now started to make. There's no evidence that the Chinese have been providing anything like that. They've been providing the standard chips and the ones that are a bit more advanced than that. The Russians, of course, do make chips themselves. I've said this many times. People have been unwilling to accept this. I've actually recently read a long study about, you know, the state of Russian chip reduction coming from within Russia itself. It's very insightful and very interesting.

But anyway, the Russians do buy chips from China. And they buy chips from China for all kinds of reasons for that car industry, their consumer goods industries, for all sorts of things. They do buy machine tools from China. Again, no doubt about that. They do not buy rocket engines from China, which is one of the most incendiary allegations of all, or engines for cruise missiles. There's no evidence that the Chinese have provided the Russians with anything of that nature.

So what the United States is asking China to do is to stop its normal trade with Russia. And of course, the Chinese know perfectly well that if they were to do that, the Americans would simply come back all the time and say, well, you've got to stop trading not just with Russia, but also with other countries as well, with Iran too, with Brazil. If we ever get into trouble with Brazil, with whatever country in the world, the United States is unhappy with. and if the Chinese were to scale down exports of some things like machine tools, processors, for example, the Americans would come back and say, well, you know, you've got to start scaling down sales of other things also. So the Chinese are definitely going to say no to this. But I think the Chinese, as I said, have already decided that sanctions are coming.

we discussed, I think it was about a year ago, how the United States has got onto the escalatory escalator with sanctions, and we're going to get financial sanctions. And the Chinese have been taking steps to safeguard against that. There's been reports recently that somebody who's been stockpiling gold on a massive scale. I think most people who've been following the story, believe it's China. It's the reason why the gold price has been rising. They've been stockpiling all kinds of other materials and things.

And again, I think almost certainly the Chinese have been doing that because they know that sanctions are on the way. Dangerous move from the Biden White House to place sanctions on China. It seems very reckless. I mean, I imagine that the Chinese, they're going to actually be even more incentivized or motivated to work with Russia. If Lincoln does deliver these terms, it's going to have the opposite effect of what he's hoping is going to happen. And then you get into the question of China's trade relationship with the United States and China's. ownership of a lot of the U.S. treasury bonds and the debt. I mean, this is, seems like a crazy

maneuver by the Biden White House. I'm having trouble trying to make sense of it. It is a crazy maneuver, but it now begins to explain various things. So first, we have Biden calling Xi Jinping, a very difficult call. You only have to look at the Chinese readout. to see that. Then Biden persuades Xi Xi Jinping to let first Yellen and then blink and come. Yellen

goes as the soft cop. We're going to have good relations with China. We don't want to decouple from China. We want you to continue to work well with us. But of course we are worried about the fact that you're doing all this trade with the Russians and also about the fact that you have this enormous capacity and our threatening to flood the world with goods, but overall, we still want to be on good terms with you.

And I've gone to tremendous lengths to learn how to use chopsticks properly. So that's Yellen. And then a few weeks later, the so-called hard cop, I mean, any idea that anybody would treat Blinken as the hard cop seriously is laughable. But the hard cop turns up and says, look, what Yellen said applies. We do want to be on good terms with you. But unless you do what we tell you, we're going to impose sanctions on you. And I think this is really what,

so this is where all this is leading. We are moving towards sanctions. And the reason the United States is moving towards sanctions is not because of China's trade with Russia. This is an overblown story. in terms of what the Americans are saying. As I said, the Russians, the Chinese do provide Russia with machine tools and chips. But it's not what is changing the war.

It's a pretext because the United States is worried about the moves the Chinese are taking. And it is mainly the Chinese to set up these alternative financial systems. so they want to sanction China's finance industry, its banks, its insurance companies, all of those things, in order to slow down or stop or reverse the creation of the new financial system that the Chinese and the Russians and others are working to create around the bricks. This is what this is all about ultimately. And you're absolutely correct. It's an incredibly dangerous game.

because, of course, the Chinese are going to be incentivised to press forward even further with developing this new global and financial system. Because since they're going to be targeted by the United States with sanctions, which the Europeans are going to be strong-armed into supporting, the Chinese know that setting up this alternative system is now a priority for the development of their own economy. And over the last two years, they've been working very, very hard with external partners to make sure that it's done. So it's creating further the accelerating division. between the two great global trading blocks.

But in the process, it's going to weaken ultimately the American one, strengthen the Chinese one, because the Chinese have the capacity. If Chinese banks aren't able to operate the trade between the United States and China, that will ultimately need fewer Chinese goods to the United States. we've seen that the US is already struggling with inflationary problems. That's going to exacerbate those inflationary problems. We've seen that the United States has not been able to substitute for Chinese production through domestic production, you know, all that that Biden was talking about.

That's failed to happen and it's never going to happen while Biden and his team run things in the White House because they don't know how to do that kind of thing. So it's bad for the US. And of course, in terms of the war, the Chinese will probably say to themselves, the war in Ukraine, the Chinese will probably say to themselves, well, very simple that the Americans are going to sanction us for doing something which we are not doing, which is assisting the Russian war effort. Well, we might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. we might as well assist the Russian war effort. And then, of course, that's game over.

Because when I say game over, I mean, game over very fast. Because, as I said, I mean, China would not have difficulty producing 100 million shells in any one year. We're not talking about a million shells or 2 million shells or anything like that. I mean, they could produce 100 million without any trouble. I find it so arrogant, arrogant for Blinken to go to China and, and make these demands and present these ultimatums right after the House voted for 10 billion to be given to Taiwan? Isn't that odd?

What? He's not really showing much self. I don't even know. Would the word be self-awareness or any awareness at all as to what's going on? Because you just approve 10 billion to Taiwan, you're calling for some sort of, or you're promoting some sort of conflict there. and now you're going to go to China and deliver these terms? Yeah, because, of course, I mean, they probably see in Blinken's minds,

these all complement each other. I mean, he will say to himself, this shows resolve and strength. You know, we're supporting our allied Taiwan, and we're now, you know, threatening the Chinese with sanctions. I mean, but you're absolutely correct. I mean, it's a real objective of the United States. The United States actually had the objective of reducing Chinese assistance to Russia.

They would not be taking these steps with Taiwan, which tell the Chinese that the Americans are straightforwardly hostile to them. And are anyway intent on building up Taiwan, which, as Xi Jinping recently told Biden, is for, for China the first red line, which must not be crossed. With China not being prepared to sit on its hands, if it is. Trying to stop these alternative systems that China, Russia, bricks are creating, it's too late for that, isn't it?

Absolutely. Maybe five years ago, maybe 10 years ago, this could have been done, but it's too late for that. And at the end of the day, Is it the United States? Isn't the Biden White House at fault for this anyway? Because they're the ones. And every administration, to be fair, every administration before Biden, they weaponized

the dollar. So, I mean, this was going to happen. Once you weaponize the reserve currency, this is bound to happen. And you're very late to the game if you're thinking that you're going to stop the development of these alternative financial systems, financial architectures. It is far too late in the game. I mean, you're quite right. if they started out on this in, say, 2014, maybe, then, you know, before this really

this really got going, I mean, you know, the bricks at that time was just a club, basically. There wasn't any real talk of setting up alternative financial systems at that time. But if you sort of acted in order to block any ideas that the Chinese might have, to go in that direction. And there were already ideas circulating in China around that time. Then you could have done it. But to do it now, far too late in the day, the Chinese make the point.

They are not running a deficit, which requires the United States to borrow a trillion dollars every three months. I mean, they're in a much stronger position today than, they were before, even if their economy has slowed a little, the United States, by contrast, is looking a lot more precarious. If the United States gets Europe to buy into the sanctions, which is very likely once the United States starts sanctioning China, no doubt the UK will follow, and they'll start sanctioning China, that's definite.

And most likely the European Union will also start to place sanctions on China. How will this affect the UK? How will this affect Europe? Oh, it would be another massive blow. I mean, Schultz has just gone to Beijing, to China, leading a actually rather diminished delegation of German industrial groups, trying to keep the trade between Germany and China going. Trade with China was absolutely vital to Germany's economic well-being,

just as the trade with Russia was. And this is another pillar behind, beneath the German economic miracle, which is being knocked away. So it'd been an absolute disaster for Germany. Same for the other European countries. Italy, a major exporter to China. The Chinese have loved Italian brands. If they face sanctions and they have to pull out of China,

it would be a disaster for many important family-run businesses in Italy. France, all of them, they'll all be affected by this. Again, the United States will be affected just as it was more affected by the cut off of Russian oil and gas than it expected it would be. But it will be affected even more, obviously, if the trade with China is interrupted. But with Europe, they will go to a catastrophic tailspin, and that is the reality of it. It'll be really bad for Europe. Catastrophic for Europe. And I wonder if there would be any pockets of resistance in Europe that this time would be able to put the brakes on something like this.

I wonder if this would be just going too far for some EU member states. Well, you would have thought so. I mean, you would think that, for example, Italy would say, we can't go there. We can't go here. But, you know, Maloney, for example, has taken a very very... strong anti-China position. She took Italy out of the, was it the Belt and Road? Yeah, the Belt and Road, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you know, I wouldn't bank on it. Some of the smaller EU states will oppose it. I think in Germany, they will go along with it,

despite everything. If they went along with the interruption of Russian oil and gas, they will go, ultimately they will go with the Americans on this too. Some German business people will be very unhappy. They're already speaking out against it. But we saw with the sanctions against Russia how little political influence it turns out in the end they have. So there will be massive problems in Europe, but I still think European governments will do it in the end, the big ones at least, and the EU structures will support them in the process. Crazy stuff. All right.

But it's coming. It's coming. And as I said, there's been some articles, actually, about who this big buyer of gold is. And there's been a lot of rumors that it was China. And that increasingly looks like, you know, the signal. about what is coming, what is over the horizon now. I've read reports saying that China is stockpiling on everything. Absolutely.

Not just gold. Absolutely. You name it. They're stockpiling it. You name it. They're stockpiling it. Exactly. All right.

So something big is coming. Yeah. All right. The durand. Dot locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitchuttelegram, Rockfin, Twitter, X. and go to the Duran shop, pick up some limited edition merch. Link is in the description box down below. Take care.