US attempts to break apart China

The “loss” of China in 1949 was perhaps the heaviest blow to strike American hegemony in the post-World War II era, and it is felt increasingly to this day. During the past 7 decades, Washington's strategy towards China has been to destabilise and break apart one of the world's oldest and biggest nations. US governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars in an attempt to re-establish their authority over China. These actions have, however, failed to attain their goals.

US plans to destroy communism in China include attempts to separate the country from its largest provinces, like Tibet and Xinjiang, both within China's internationally recognised borders. Xinjiang, an ethnically diverse region of north-western China, is well over twice the size of France. Xinjiang is sparsely populated, much of it consists of desert, it is criss-crossed by towering, snow-filled peaks and lies far from any coastline. Xinjiang is rich in mineral resources; 25% of China's oil and gas reserves are located there, while it contains 38% of the nation's coal deposits. (2)

Xinjiang is of major strategic and economic importance to China. It stands as the Chinese government's bridgehead into Central Asia, through which the old Silk Road passed along centuries before, connecting China to as far away as the Mediterranean. Beijing has ambitions to link Kashgar, in western Xinjiang, 1,200 miles southwards to the Pakistani port city of Gwadar. Lying on Pakistan's southern coastline, Gwadar is of significance by itself and is a core component of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – an infrastructural project instigated by China in 2013, and which is being gradually implemented.

Gwadar will be part of China's “string of pearls” bases being built elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, mainly for commercial reasons (3). Beijing wishes to project its strength deep into the lucrative Persian Gulf for the first time in modern history. This would undercut US power, which has weakened from its high point in the mid-1940s, when Washington owned about half of the world's wealth. Nearby Iran, for years China's largest trading partner, wants to establish a connection between Gwadar and its own port at Chabahar, in southern Iran, close to Gwadar. Pakistan and Iran share a lengthy frontier and, historically, these neighbours have a collaborative understanding.

China's strengthening relationship with Pakistan and Iran is an important occurrence in international affairs – and it is causing some alarm in Washington. Pakistan, a nuclear power like China, is a member of the Beijing-led alliances, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), while in 2015 Iran joined the AIIB. The construction of pipelines linking Gwadar to both China and Iran, would greatly reduce the time and distance that raw materials have to travel; especially for the Chinese, whose oil shipments cross the high seas over thousands of miles, taking between two and three months to arrive.

Moniz Bandeira observed, “A pipeline from Xinjiang to Gwadar would reduce this distance to 1,600 miles. These initiatives point to the formation of a geopolitical axis, a valuable card for China to play in the Great Game in Central Asia and the Middle East, associating itself economically with Pakistan and Iran, a country which China offered 60 million euros to rebuild the port of Chabahar, 43 miles from Gwadar”. (4)

The Middle East and Central Asia are among the most lucrative regions on earth, containing much of the world's oil and gas reserves. Central Asia, a sprawling, remote landmass bordering China and Russia, holds an abundance of other sought-after natural resources like copper and iron ore. If Beijing can increase its influence in the Central Asia/Middle East domains – by continuing to pursue infrastructural investments – there is no doubt this will place China in a strong global position, and lead to further US decline.

America is using its financial power in an effort to shift Pakistan away from China. US-friendly lobby groups in Islamabad are attempting to undermine the CPEC, by labelling it as a Chinese “debt trap”; but the majority of Pakistan's people favour good relations with Beijing. After all, China is a country they have a border with to the north-east. Washington's drone assassination campaign in Pakistan has been unpopular, to put it mildly. Another of Beijing's goals, in linking Gwadar to China, would allow the Chinese government to import oil shipments from the Arabian Sea – therefore avoiding altogether the Strait of Malacca, off Malaysia's coast, which is patrolled by US Navy warships.

Moniz Bandeira writes, “Beijing's plan to link the port of Gwadar to Xinjiang, advancing on the Arabian Sea and thus overcoming the strategic dependence on the Strait of Malacca, was probably the fact that led the NGOs – led by the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA, the Turkish MIT, the Mossad and MI6 – to promote instability in the region, inciting separatist threats and revolts like those in Urumqi [northern Xinjiang] (2009), so as to contain China's expansion towards the Arabian Sea and the oil resources that fueled the industrial powers of the West”.

Pious Western concerns for human rights in Xinjiang acts as a smokescreen. Similar disquiet is not expressed about the incomparably worse human rights violations committed by Washington post-1945. Regarding Central Asia, this region's largest and wealthiest country is Kazakhstan. It shares a broad frontier with Xinjiang to the east. Kazakhstan contains considerable quantities of oil, gas and uranium. It was perhaps no coincidence that in September 2013 China's new president, Xi Jinping, announced whilst visiting Kazakhstan that a “new Silk Road” was about to be built through Central Asia.

Early this century, Beijing began assembling the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline, which has reached 1,400 miles in length. It provides China with around 20 million tons of oil per year, flowing across the frontier into Xinjiang, rendering US interference impossible. The erection of this pipeline has helped to strengthen ties between China and Kazakhstan.

In addition there is the Central Asia-China gas pipeline, a brainchild of Beijing's. Construction began in August 2007, and it now runs across hundreds of miles of remote land, from Turkmenistan through to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and on to Xinjiang. The Central Asia-China gas pipeline is Beijing's largest source of gas imports, and these projects have enabled China to spread its influence in Central Asia. The Central Asian states, with the exception of Turkmenistan, are members of the SCO and the AIIB, which are headquartered in Beijing.

Long before the 9/11 atrocities against America, the CIA and Pentagon were supporting operations by extremist Islamic networks with links to Osama bin Laden, in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans (5). The US was for example using Turkish, Pakistani and Saudi operatives to promote instability in Central Asia, which had been part of the USSR for over half a century until its collapse. The CIA was involved in drug trafficking (mainly heroin), illegal arms sales and money laundering in Central Asia, Turkey and the Balkans. By the end of the Cold War, Washington was stepping up its backing for secessionist groups in Xinjiang. The US has for decades recognised the critical nature of Xinjiang. 

Although China has internal demographic issues, one advantage it holds over the West is that it has largely avoided the neoliberal onslaught. There are almost 400 billionaires in China, but the government retains much of its control over big business. Unlike in North America and Europe, the majority of corporations in China are state-owned, including the 12 largest which consist mainly of banks and oil companies. (8)

The continued unrest in Hong Kong, a diminutive area in south-eastern China, can be traced to the British takeover of that territory in the early 1840s. Hong Kong was transformed into a British military outpost, and colonised for more than 150 years. For most of that period, London directly ruled Hong Kong by dispatching governors and expatriate civil servants. These policies had a westernising influence on Hong Kong's inhabitants, an imprint which lasts until today. Hong Kong, which is densely populated and has ample wealth, is culturally and economically different from mainland China.

US governments have sought to exploit this friction. Since 2014 the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has funnelled at least $30 million into Hong Kong so as “to identify new avenues for democracy and political reform” (9). Many hundreds of “pro-democracy protesters” in Hong Kong have been photographed waving American flags and donning other US paraphernalia. (10)

The NED was established in 1983 under the Reagan administration, and receives most of its funding from the US Congress. It has a long history of meddling in independent nations. In March 2018 Stephen Kinzer, an American journalist, described the NED as “the National Endowment for Attacking Democracy”. The then NED president, Carl Gershman, said 4 years ago that China is “the most serious threat our country faces today” and “We have to not give up on the possibility for democratic change in China and keep finding ways to support them” (11). As a consequence, much of the NED's focus is centred on China, and sitting in the NED boardroom are neo-conservatives like Elliott Abrams and Victoria Nuland.

For over a decade the NED has funded exile Xinjiang groups, like the Uyghur American Association (UAA) headquartered in Washington, and the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) based in Munich. They call for Xinjiang's total separation from China, to be replaced by an independent state called East Turkestan. This of course is looked upon by Beijing with grave misgivings. The World Uyghur Congress chief advisor, Xinjiang-born Erkin Alptekin, has past affiliation with the CIA. From 1971 until 1995, Alptekin worked for the US government-run broadcaster, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Returning to Hong Kong, one of its most recognisable figures has been the 25-year-old activist Joshua Wong. Wong's separatist aims have had widespread support from Western politicians and the mainstream press. It can be noted that Wong has been playing nicely into Beijing's hands, by publicly aligning himself with the American government; adding credence to Beijing's belief that Wong is a proxy tool for the US in its rivalry with China.

These ill-advised moves have inevitably damaged Wong's reputation, while undermining his claims for Hong Kong's independence. Wong, in a co-authored article published in May 2020 with the Washington Post, claims that China “has revealed its true colours as a rogue state” with its policies towards Hong Kong (13). Wong again urged “the U.S. government to execute the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” and he called on Washington to “impose sanctions on China”.

Hong Kong remains a mostly free and open society. Hong Kong native Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo, a 59-year-old political scientist and professor, wrote that Hong Kong's elections are for the large part “quite competitive and run according to democratic procedures. There are also important non-party democratic elements in Hong Kong”. Professor Lo, who emigrated to Canada as a youngster before returning to work at Hong Kong University, could hardly be described as pro-Beijing. Yet he writes that a “strong civil society” still exists in Hong Kong “representing a wide variety of political views” which “are active and influential”. (14)

Professor Lo notes that the work force in Hong Kong is “particularly well organised” and represented by two rival trade unions. He reveals that “Hong Kong has also maintained its long tradition of a lively, independent press” and “many newspapers and other media sources... often voice strong criticisms of both the HKSAR [Hong Kong government] and the PRC [People's Republic of China]”. 

Over the past decade, Washington has shifted much of its military might to east Asia in a bid to hem China in and negate its development. Part of American policy in east Asia is to keep out of Beijing's hands the island of Taiwan, an affluent territory located less than 150 miles from China's south-eastern shoreline. Taiwan is a pawn in the US encirclement strategy of China. Since 2009, US governments have sold tens of billions worth of military equipment to the US-backed Taiwanese government, from fighter aircraft and tanks to missiles.

Some of this high-tech US weaponry is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, though there is no evidence to suggest there are weapons of mass destruction on the island. Dozens of US nuclear bombs were stationed secretly in Taiwan from 1957 until 1975, including nuclear-armed Matador missiles placed there by the Pentagon from January 1958. China did not develop nuclear weapons until 1964. 

Notes:

1 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA, (Springer 1st ed., 23 June 2017) p. 68

2 William A. Joseph, Politics in China: An Introduction, Second Edition (Oxford University Press; 2 edition, 11 April 2014) p. 430

3 Noam Chomsky, Who Rules The World? (Metropolitan Books, Penguin Books Ltd, Hamish Hamilton, 5 May 2016) p. 245

4 Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 73

7 Thierry Meyssan, “The CIA is using Turkey to pressure China”, Voltaire Network, 19 February 2019

8 Scott Cendrowski, “China's global 500 companies are bigger than ever – and mostly state-owned”, Fortune Magazine, 22 July 2015

9 Mary Beaudoin, “The Nature of the Hong Kong Protests”, Consortium News, 26 November 2019

10 Ella Torres, Guy Davies and Karson Yiu, “Why exuberant Hong Kong protesters are waving American flags”, ABC News, 28 November 2019

11 Edward Hunt, “NED Pursues Regime Change By Playing The Long Game”, Counterpunch, 6 July 2018

12 Mnar Adley, “The NED strikes again: How Neocon Money is Funding The Hong Kong Protests”, Mintpress News, 9 September 2019

13 Joshua Wong, Glacier Kwong, “This is the final nail in the coffin for Hong Kong's autonomy”, Washington Post, 24 May 2020

14 William A. Joseph, Politics in China: An Introduction, Third Edition (Oxford University Press; 3rd edition, 6 June 2019) p. 534