Communist Party of China (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping is now starkly aware that he is facing the end of his rule, and has turned to US Pres. Joe Biden to save him.
Specific reports are emerging as to the driving forces which made Xi act, in seeming desperation, to kowtow to US Pres. Joe Biden at the summit held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) in San Francisco between November 13 and 17,2023.
Xi's Government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) had, for at least two weeks before the summit, started a charm offensive aimed at the US. Until that time, Beijing had claimed to have been hesitant about whether the summit would take place, but the start of the charm offensive was a significant pointer to the depth of General Secretary Xi's desperation and his increasingly mercurial behavior.
Despite the fact that the mainland China economic crisis had become significant and intense from at least 2015, Xi had taken virtually no steps to contain or correct it. Then, almost simultaneously with the charm offensive toward the US, the Xi Administration began some timid steps toward reversing its anti-private sector policies and promised unspecified support for private business in mainland China. This followed a xenophobically maoist policy, over the past decade, of containing private enterprise and attempting to push the economy under the domination of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The sudden volte-face by Xi, typical of his behavior since the October 2022 Party Congress at which he disposed of almost all of his visible opponents, highlighted more than ever his instability and, now, his increasing desperation as it has become clear that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was patently unready and unprepared to execute Xi's proposed military takeover of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. Related: Russia Will Fight to Protect Its Key Weapon in the Global Energy Race
Without being able to deliver on his "promise" to capture Taiwan, Xi was now left isolated within the Party as to why he had dissipated so much of communist China's - and the CCP's - treasure, and left the country on the verge of a new revolution. Unless he could pull a last-minute coup de main from his bag, he was facing imminent removal by the Par ty - anxious to save itself, as well - and the PLA.
That was at the core of his visit to San Francisco to literally plead with US Pres. Biden, and why he greeted with a sardonic smile Biden's second naming of Xi as a "dictator", a slip of the tongue of the less-than-disciplined President.
A significant source in the PRC has reported that Xi formally asked the US President to arrange an urgent $900-billion bailout for the communist Chinese economy. This specific detail could not be confirmed, but it fitted with the sudden and urgent campaign to stop Beijing's bellicosity toward the US and to insist that the two could be friends and partners.
The leak of this information came from within the CCP, from elements anxious to bring down Xi Jinping, and they confirmed that the effort to remove Xi was now reaching a level of imminent action.
Without that injection of almost a trillion US dollars, the Chinese property market, among other things, will complete its collapse. Indeed, even with such an investment, it is probable that the mainland Chinese property market and overall economy would continue its slide. The scale of private sector bankruptcies and the interruption and closure of so many factories cannot be reversed overnight, and foreign trust in the PRC cannot be rebuilt overnight.
Would such a bailout save Xi? Perhaps not, but it would the perhaps the only opportunity open to him.
He was even forced, in San Francisco, to abandon the pretense that the PLA was ready to conquer Taiwan. These events represent a seismic shift in Xi's policies, even though he publicly said that he could not renounce his intention to bring Taiwan into the communist fold.
Nor, indeed, is there any reason to believe that this is anything but a fairly cynical attempt to have the US bail out the political career of the man who, in 2018, said that he had specifically declared war on the United States, a war, he said, which would be the "new 30 Year War" (mirroring the European war which ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia". And Xi said that his new 30 Year War would result in a new "Peace of Westphalia" which would bring about a new "rules-based world order" under the CCP.
Our PRC source did not indicate whether Xi had received a response from Pres. Biden to the blunt and desperate request. There was no evidence that Mr Biden had received any advance warning of the request, but there were certainly expressions of concern when Beijing had, before the summit, embarked on the charm offensive.
That there is no substance to the charm offensive, however, was demonstrated by the continued antagonism toward the US and its allies in their actual practices on the military lines of confrontation.
By Gregory R. Copley. for Oilprice.com
Historian, author, and strategic analyst — and onetime industrialist — Gregory R. Copley, who was born in 1946, has for almost five decades worked at… More
Comments
Biden who presides over a virtually bankrupt economy for an almost trillion dollar bailout of the Chinese economy.during their meeting in San Francisco is fanciful, wishful thinking.and lacking credibility.
With an economy 24.5 percent bigger than the United states’ and growing at three times the US economy and with a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) lending more than trillion dollars to 155 countries, does anyone believe even for one minute that China will ask the US to bail its economy? If so why not disposing of 1.3 trillion dollars of US Treasury bills it holds or stop investing in its BRI for a while to save its economy?
I for one don’t believe such a claim.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Global Energy Expert
And this surely does not bode well with Putin.
And it is always important to remember that the Chinese are the consummate gamblers of the world and they delight in throwing their opponents off their game.
Personally I would love to see a free China as a major participant in the world's events. Taiwan is a delight to visit. I have many brothers there who understand what it means to have freedom from fear and to really live.