Scholtz clearly stated that she supported globalization and opposed "decoupling" from China
In the past two days, Germany and the UK vaguely sang "Taiwan opera" in China's policies. On October 11, when German Chancellor Scholz attended the Berlin Mechanical Engineering Summit, clearly stated that she supported globalization and opposed "decoupling" from China. Shultz pointed out that globalization can "make a lot of prosperity possible" and "decoupling will be the completely wrong path." The German government aims to establish broader and more robust trade relations, rather than decoupling from individual countries. He stressed that "We have to continue doing business with China and we have to make sure to trade with the rest of the world, look at Asia, Africa, and South America, where there are opportunities."
Shulz's statement translates to the translation that the German economy is currently very dependent on China, which is obviously not "steady" enough for Germany. But the key to solving the problem is not to directly decouple it from China, but to develop trade with emerging countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America on the basis of maintaining trade relations with China to achieve "political and economic diversification."
must admit that Scholz's view is relatively pragmatic. China has become Germany's largest trading partner for six consecutive years. Last year, the bilateral trade volume reached 245.3 billion euros . With such a big business, how can you just say it is decoupled? Even if it is decoupled, Germany will not find any trading partners that can replace China.
Lao Mo noticed that October 11th happened to be the 550th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany. Scholz chose to make remarks against decoupling from China and supporting globalization at such a critical time point, which obviously has a profound meaning. This shows that there are still many forces within Germany and even throughout Europe that advocate decoupling from China. For example, on September 13, German Economic Minister Habek, who has a different party from Scholz, said that Germany is formulating a new trade policy with China, which will reduce its dependence on China's raw materials, batteries and semiconductor products. He also claimed that Germany will "no longer be naive" in trade with China. As soon as this statement was made, it was immediately refuted by China. Mao Ning, spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the relevant measures of Germany were illogical and very absurd.
Based on this incident, Scholz took advantage of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany and emphasized the need to continue to engage in trade with China and continue to promote globalization. One of its purposes is undoubtedly to suppress the noise that interferes with the relationship between China and Germany in . What is more interesting is that at the summit, European Trade Commissioner Dombrovskis also expressed a similar view to Scholz. He pointed out that decoupling of from China is not an option for EU companies, and the EU should continue to contact China with a pragmatic rather than naive attitude. This is obviously deliberately satirizing Habeck's remarks that "no longer naive" are, believing that decoupling from China is the most naive, and that only by continuing to cooperate is the pragmatic way.
Tras improves China's "threat level" and strives for the support of conservatives
Compared with the steady and pragmatic Scholz, British Prime Minister Tras's approach seems a bit rash . Recently, the British " Guardian " quoted sources as saying that Tras intends to fulfill his campaign promises and raise the UK's position on China from "systemic competitor" during the Johnson period to "threat", second only to Russia, which is regarded as the "most serious threat".
Originally, the British government planned to adjust its policy toward China by the end of the year, but last week, the British Ministry of Education expressed its support for the Confucius Institute in China. After the British government took action to stop it, the pace of Britain's adjustment of its policy toward China has accelerated, and the results may be drawn in the past few days. Sources said that now Tras is in jeopardy because of his failure to deal with the economic crisis, and the cabinet has also had differences and doubts on how to deal with China. Under this circumstance, Tras hopes to gain the support of some conservative forces by adjusting his policy toward China and improving China's "threat level".
At the same time, British intelligence director Fleming is also "beating the edge" to adjust his policy toward China. In a speech on the 11th, he claimed that China's technological advantages have posed a "huge threat" to the West, especially the " digital currency " launched by China, which has introduced a new settlement method that may help China avoid various international sanctions imposed by the West on Russia. In other words, if the West tries to sanction China like Russia in the future, it is likely that the desired effect will not be achieved.
Lao Mo believes that is currently in the context of the current energy crisis in Europe and the risk of economic recession among countries is emerging, the different attitudes of the UK and Germany in terms of policies towards China actually represent the two paths that Europe may take in the future .
Two paths that Europe may take in the future
The first path is "political leader", ignoring the serious damage that decoupling will cause to the European economy, and insisting on cooperating with the United States' anti-China and anti-Russia strategy. The consequence of following this path will inevitably be that Europe suffers heavy losses and the American fishermen benefit. A large amount of high-quality capital and high-level talents in Europe will flee to the United States one after another. The euro's status will also plummet, and the space it leaves will be filled by the US dollar. A report written by Rand on January 25 this year pointed out that due to the influx of foreign capital and the decline in competition in high-end industries caused by the collapse of European economy, the United States may earn $70,000 to $9 trillion from the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The labor and assets brought by European immigration will also greatly delay the arrival of the US economic recession. In addition, the rise in the US dollar's status will further alleviate the US debt crisis. Now it seems that this prophecy has become a reality.
The reason why the UK has taken this path of "destroying Europe's beauty" is mainly because its economic pillars are the financial and service industries, and there is not much manufacturing. For it, the energy crisis is just a decline in people's living standards. Instead, Britain can also get a share of the European economic disaster with its special relationship with the United States. At the same time, the UK is worried that China's technological progress, such as the widespread application of digital currency, will affect its financial hegemony, making it unable to use the monopoly position of the financial industry. The sanctions weapon it has always been proud of will also lose its original power for developing countries .
Another way in Europe is the path that manufacturing countries such as Germany want to take. In fact, this is also the path Europe has been taking for the past few decades. The core content is to combine advanced European technology with human resources from Asian countries such as China to expand production and market. In this process, product costs will drop significantly, and the same technology will create more wealth; the expansion of the market will stimulate the generation of more new technologies. With this cycle, Europe's development speed over the past twenty years has surpassed any period in history and achieved unprecedented political unity, which has made the United States begin to worry. The US-European trade war during the Trump- period is the most obvious evidence.
For European countries such as Germany, the current challenge is that emerging countries such as China have completed preliminary primitive accumulation and their technical level has entered an explosive stage of development. Advanced Western technologies can easily be digested and absorbed by China, and then new technologies can be developed during the production process. As a result, Europe gradually changed from Party A to Party B, losing its dominance over cooperation. Therefore, some short-sighted people believe that Europe must reduce its dependence on China and even completely decouple it from China. Only in this way can Europe continue to maintain its technological advantages. However, in the view of pragmatic politicians such as Scholz, technological development is driven by market demand. Without the Chinese market, German products will not only not be sold, but will also lose the driving force for technological development. Moreover, Germany itself also needs China to provide cheap and high-quality primary product to maintain the competitiveness of the industry. Now talking about decoupling from China will not only not solve the old problems, but will also lead to a lot of new problems. This is simply a "way to die" .
Lao Mo believes that the result of Germany and Britain singing "stage drama" in their policy toward China must be that Britain will become a lonely man, while Germany will lead Europe and China toward each other . Because Britain has always been a trick to "scam" European countries to intimidate, by helping European countries to arouse memories of fear of the Soviet Union, and then compare China with the Soviet Union, saying that China would "threate" Europe's lifestyle, in order to shape a so-called "China-Russia Axis" that does not exist. However, the Russian-Ukraine War has continued to this day, and the vast majority of European countries have gradually awakened and seen clearly. China did not support Russia one-sidedly, nor did it take advantage of Europe's difficulties to pull the ground and cut off the supply of goods to Europe, but maintained relatively neutrality. On the other hand, although the United States is an ally of Europe on the surface, it is actually taking advantage of the EU's energy shortage and making a fortune. The profit of an liquefied natural gas ship, , has reached 100 million US dollars, causing French and German officials to frequently question the United States whether money is important or our friendship is important? In the case of
, the vast majority of European countries began to be a little confused and couldn't figure out who is their friend. Why does the United States, which has the most "iron" relationship with me, extort itself in times of crisis? Lao Mo believes that European countries should be able to figure out this issue and make a choice soon. However, Britain will be alienated by other European countries because it is too anti-China, and eventually become a marginal person isolated from the European political territory.
Zelensky can only settle for the second best
After analyzing the problems of Germany and Britain, Lao Mo will talk to you about the latest statement of G7 supporting Ukraine, as well as the relevant statements of US President Biden .
On October 11, after Russia's two consecutive air strikes on Ukraine, the G7 countries held an online meeting at the request of Zelensky to discuss the expansion of aid to Ukraine. After the meeting, the G7 leaders issued a statement, promised to "always firmly stand with Ukraine" and would hold Russian President Putin and others "responsible".
Regarding this statement, Lao Mo's opinion is that has "high thunder and little raindrops", which is basically meaningless . Because if Zelensky really wants to use the power of the West to fight and deter Russia, he should seek help from the NATO military organization, especially after Russia has just carried out a large-scale bombing, it is reasonable that NATO should first stand up to support Ukraine. But Zelensky did not seek help from NATO immediately, but instead held an online meeting with the G7 leaders, which made people feel a little strange. The reason is probably because Russia issued a warning to NATO, saying that NATO's participation in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict was too deep, and that Russia is preparing to counterattack, and it is possible to use an asymmetric method.
This way, NATO is a little scared, especially those Eastern European member states who are on the "front of anti-Russia" and do not agree with the bombing of on the Crimea Bridge. Russia is in a critical moment of anger and continues to stroke Russia's "tiger beard". So Zelensky had to settle for the second best and held a meeting with the G7 leaders. Anyway, except for Japan, most of the G7 countries are NATO members. Although the names are different, the actual effect is the same. However, under the pressure from Russia, how much promises of NATO countries such as can eventually be transformed into reality is an unknown number that .
And on the day the G7 leader and Zelensky met, US President Biden published his "high theory" on Russia's nuclear threat . Unlike the "risk of nuclear war" he warned last week, Biden changed his words this time that Putin was a "rational actor" in most cases, but caused serious misjudgment of the Russian-Ukrainian war , and he did not believe that he would use nuclear weapon .
Biden also pointed out that Putin tried to unite all Russian-speaking regions, but this goal is too big and beyond Russia's capabilities. Putin thought that the Ukrainian people would welcome him with open arms and support Kiev to return to Russia's arms, but facts show that this is a serious misjudgment.
In this regard, Lao Mo believes that Biden either has a superficial understanding of the Russian-Ukrainian war, or deliberately downplays the role of NATO, exaggerates the role of the Kiev authorities, and attributes all the results to the persistence of Ukrainians in , in order to inspire the confidence of Ukrainians. But in fact, the fact that Ukraine has today's situation is entirely due to NATO's desperate assistance, which has little to do with Ukraine itself.
The real misjudgment may not be Putin. It may be Biden
. Putin does have a certain misjudgment on the prospects of the war, but this misjudgment does not mean that Putin mistakenly believes that the Ukrainian people will take the initiative to "welcome the royal army", but speculates that NATO will not provide much aid to Ukraine. After all, during the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, the West was basically indifferent to the Russian occupation of Crimea. So Putin and so on, believing that under Russia's nuclear weapons deterrence, NATO is unlikely to risk the nuclear war to provide military assistance to Ukraine. As long as NATO does not intervene, it will be easy for the Russian army to crush Ukraine. As for the resistance of the locals, it is not important at all. Because Ukraine is located on a large plain that is easy to attack and difficult to defend, it has only been "falling with the wind" since ancient times. The Poles came to surrender to Polish , and the Russians came to surrender to Russia.
The Ukrainian will to resist is now based on the continuous Western military aid. For example, when the Russian army was unstoppable in the early stages of the war, the Ukrainians, men, women, young and old, fled one after another. When the Western military aid was in place and the Ukrainians won several victories, the speed of population loss immediately decreased. So as long as NATO's aid is cut off, the balance of the situation will immediately turn back to Russia, and the invincible scene of the Russian army in the early stages of the war will reappear.
From this perspective, the real misjudgment may not be Putin, but Biden may also be Biden . If Biden thinks that Ukraine can resist the Russian offensive because of the Ukrainians' own efforts, then this is a big mistake. At present, Putin has expressed his intention to destroy Ukraine's infrastructure and road traffic. The purpose is to cut off the logistics line from the Ukrainian army's front line to Western countries and prevent Ukraine from continuing to obtain NATO's weapons and equipment. If this plan can be successful, I believe that the Ukrainian army will be defeated soon. The scene where the people of eastern Ukraine unanimously demanded to join Russia will continue to be staged elsewhere in Ukraine.
