How Bill Clinton junked America’s supremacySpectator USA, Apr 18, 2020, Freddy Gray
‘This is a good day for America,’ said President Bill Clinton on May 24, the Year of Our Lord 2000. ‘In 10 years from now we will look back on this day and be glad we did this.’ Clinton was talking about the House of Representatives’ vote to award normal trade relations to China. And he was right.
By 2010, despite the crash of 2008, the knowledge class still largely considered the decision to support China’s entry into the World Trade Organization as a great boon. China’s rise had turbocharged globalization and made us all richer — never mind the stupefying sovereign debts. Labour unions had opposed it, but leaders and corporations were still enthralled by the gargantuan consumer markets.
Fast forward another decade, however, and the US-China Relations Act, Clinton’s last significant legislative accomplishment, looks like a monumental mistake: the moment when America, perhaps the greatest superpower of all time, rolled over and invited its demise.
Globalization, it turned out, was not a faultless blessing. It slowly morphed into something quite different — in many circles today, the term is merely a euphemism for letting China win. As we approach the anniversary of that vote next month, perhaps Americans should mark it in a solemn way: a day of national mourning to commemorate their nation’s eclipse.
The COVID-19 crisis has exposed China — the way it fiddles the truth, the extent to which it is willing to cover up its misdeeds, the way it uses financial might to silence dissent. Beijing’s much-vaunted ‘peaceful rise’ has masked an unpleasant reality. That mask has slipped — funny, in a way, given that we apparently now must all wear masks.
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