2023-07-10 23:05:15
Vietnam has banned the movie “Barbie”, which is due to be released in less than two weeks, from showing in cinemas, due to scenes that include a map showing areas over which China asserts its sovereignty in the South China Sea, and depriving Hanoi of important parts of the waterway, which contains large stocks of chemicals. Oil, gas and fisheries. Soon after, the Philippines joined Vietnam, by threatening to ban the film from being shown in the country’s cinemas as well.
And while previous films were exposed to such protests and actions from China’s skeptical neighbors of its expansionist ambitions, what was new was that American lawmakers joined the campaign to denounce the movie “Barbie”, in reference to the amount of tension afflicting Chinese-American relations, which required clarifications from the American company “Warner Bros.” Producer of work, accused by US lawmakers of caving in to Beijing’s political propaganda.
This incident indicates an excess of sensitivity between America and China, and summarizes the ease of leakage of geopolitical tensions into cultural products such as films and others, after leaking into the economic field, which is witnessing a major change in the dynamics of the relationship between the American and Chinese giants. The narrative most present today in describing the relationship between the two largest economies in the world revolves around disengagement and divorce between them, driven by the strategy of diversifying import sources, in addition to the growing tendency to give national and national meanings even to technology, resources, economy, trade and innovation, in an unprecedented manner in half a century.
In exchange for the US government imposing strict restrictions on the export of electronic chips to China, which has huge and attractive markets for US private sector companies, under the pretext of US national security requirements and denying its competitor the purposes of dual use of technology, especially in developing Chinese military capabilities, China seems ready to respond in kind by legalizing Supplying key metals to the tech industry. Beijing controls the refining of global mineral resources, which, according to US reports, include two-thirds of the world’s lithium and cobalt, 60 percent of aluminum, 80 percent of the polysilicon used in solar panels, and 90 percent of rare earth minerals, which gives China a striking force capable of Threatening the safety of supply chains from China to America and the West in general, and making developed Western industries hostage to Beijing.
And yet, despite the fanfare surrounding US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent four-day visit to Beijing, the results were modest, at best. If the main “achievement” of the visit is to celebrate the return of routine, high-level diplomacy between the United States and China, this is nothing but confirmation of the size of the gap between the two countries and the risks it entails for the rest of the universe. Between him and the Chinese president, immediately followed by a statement from President Joe Biden describing his Chinese counterpart as a dictator, which necessitated a response from Beijing, in a clear indication of the level of toxicity in relations between the two countries. Biden further complicated the climate between the two countries when he returned and raised the issue of the Chinese spy balloon after his foreign minister announced that he would turn the page on this file and called for its withdrawal from political and media circulation.
And if such contradictions are explained in America by the necessities of political competition between the two parties and the game of bidding between them with the start of the presidential election race, and that they do not indicate the lack of seriousness of Washington’s decision to reduce tension with its Chinese rival, then from Beijing’s point of view it is an incentive to enhance distrust of America and a motive to escalate the confrontation. With her through non-traditional messages and means, outside the theaters of the Middle East, Europe or Asia.
In this context, according to US officials, China seems intent on establishing an electronic eavesdropping station and a military training facility in Cuba, with the aim of penetrating sensitive US military information and providing the possibility of spying on American citizens, which is reminiscent of the missile crisis in the sixties of the last century between America and the Soviet Union, which Cuba was also its scene. Regardless of the validity or accuracy of these American allegations, Chinese companies are already involved in building deep-water ports in Latin American and Caribbean countries, which allows them, from an American point of view, to employ these facilities in monitoring commercial or naval ships.
In addition, China signed the fourth free trade agreement in Latin America, this time with Ecuador, which is one of Washington’s most prominent allies, but it did not succeed in winning a similar agreement with America. A study by the American Wilson Institute monitors the growth of China’s economic influence in Latin America and the Caribbean significantly over the past two decades, which led to a shift in the economic dependence of these countries from the United States to China, which changed the voting trends of these countries in organizations. International, and clearly influenced the leadership of the United States in the region. Beijing has gone from being a negligible trading partner to becoming the number one trading partner for South America and the second largest for the rest of Latin America.
The result of the inability to imagine a world that accommodates both America and China is to accelerate the policies of containing China led by America, to strengthen Chinese suspicion in return, and to push Beijing to more aggressive policies in its neighborhood as well as on the world stage, which will either lead to the perpetuation of the Cold War and polarization efforts. The costs associated with it, or to roll towards uncalculated confrontations that explode the foundations of international security and stability.
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