The U.S. implemented the Xinjiang Products Act today, and at the same time will strengthen its investment review mechanism in China. It plans to form an inter-departmental committee involving the Departments of Trade, Commerce, and the Treasury Department, as well as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
According to the BBC report: “The areas under review by the committee cover a wide range – energy, medical, telecommunications, defense, transportation, aerospace, robotics, AI, chips, shipbuilding, water, etc.” As long as there are US companies investing in the above fields Overseas, the government needs to step in to examine whether the overseas place has the potential to threaten the U.S. supply chain. For example, if an American semiconductor company wants to invest in China to set up a factory for the packaging process, it means that the American factory in China has become part of the American supply chain, and China is a country of “concern” – in short In other words, it is unreliable and untrustworthy—in which case, the committee, after review, can make recommendations to the president to implement decrees to suspend or prohibit investment to ensure the security of the U.S. supply chain.
The BBC said: “Research institutions say that as many as 43% of US investment in China may be subject to scrutiny. Such high investment barriers have revived worries about decoupling between China and the United States.” If the world’s two largest economies are decoupled, globalization will No matter how difficult it is to operate properly, there are two systems in one world, and other countries need to choose between China or the United States in terms of trade, industrial cooperation, and technical standards, which increases costs and reduces efficiency in vain.
However, the United States does not seem to have much concern. Legislation and measures to curb China have been introduced one after another. Some projects are fundamentally harmful to the interests of the United States and are not in line with commercial logic. For example, the United States plans to invest heavily in electric vehicle manufacturing, but the United States has repeatedly used Xinjiang. Sanctions on local production are proposed on the grounds of human rights, but I never thought that materials in Xinjiang are indispensable for electric vehicles. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security publicly stated last year: “Importing goods (from Xinjiang) using forced labor is an affront to our national values and human rights.”
In addition to cotton, Xinjiang’s main commodity also includes polysilicon for solar panels. At present, almost all of the main electric vehicle batteries and batteries for storing renewable energy come from China, of which Xinjiang accounts for the largest. Western media reported that China’s electric vehicle batteries play a key role in the global supply chain. On the one hand, the United States proposed to solve the gas problem, but on the one hand, it should abandon the main supply. This is completely contradictory, and it also damages the growth of the American industry. Because they can’t get the convenient, easy-to-use and cheap “made in Xinjiang”.
US Trade Representative Dai Qi recently pointed out that about 85% of the solar panels in the United States are imported from China. However, because of the human rights issue of forced labor in Xinjiang, where solar panels are produced, the United States has not decided whether to suspend tariffs on solar panels imported from China. The New York Times, citing trade experts, reported that thousands of global companies rely on Xinjiang for their supply chains. If the U.S. wants to fully implement the censorship, it will also impose third-party sanctions, that is, other countries that want to use Xinjiang to manufacture products If sanctions may be imposed, there is no guarantee that the world market will not be in chaos.
Putin attended the International Economic Forum held in St. Petersburg recently. AP picture
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the International Economic Forum held in St. Petersburg a few days ago that despite facing economic sanctions from Europe and the United States, Russia’s economy is still solid. “The European and American attempts to disintegrate the Russian economy have failed,” Putin warned that the sanctions imposed by Europe and the United States were “double-edged swords”, saying that the Russian economy “is gradually returning to normal”. In his speech, Putin told the United States and the West that “the era of the unipolar world is over”. The U.S. sanctions have not disrupted the Russian economy, nor have they effectively curbed China’s development. However, the U.S. has successfully undermined globalization, which is worth thinking about.
You might as well use your imagination to interpret Putin’s speech: the world has been destroyed by the United States, and the United States is about to decouple from China and Russia; then China and Russia will form a new “semi-globalization” system. It is estimated that the world is really not possible without the United States? If you think the whole world has to choose one of the two, which side will be more?
