Fear Power US/China similar and different Moderately well-acquainted reader

Made in China 2025 … and by GOP 2025

A brief note on choice of dates … and choice of policies. I don’t think CCP and GOP are directly coordinating policy, but they have constructed curiously sympatico … and apparently similarly timed … programs for major world restructuring. One economic and technological, one political and radically reactionary.

 

CCP uber alles

 

Made in China 2025 is a national strategic plan and industrial policy. The key objective of the Made in China 2025 program is to identify key technologies, grow companies that can be national champions, secure market share domestically within China, and ultimately capture foreign markets globally. It is the Chinese world economic domination strategy. Progress in the last ten years has been impressive. Policies and funding are directed toward 1) New advanced information technology; 2) Automated machine tools & robotics; 3) Aerospace and aeronautical equipment; 4) Maritime equipment and high-tech shipping; 5) Modern rail transport equipment; 6) New-energy vehicles and equipment; 7) Power equipment; 8) Agricultural equipment; 9) New materials; and 10) Biopharma and advanced medical products.

One can certainly quibble about whether this plan is feasible or fundable in its totality. But there is no doubt CCP is making big plans.

The plans are clearly international in scope. Just one example – from Scott Kennedy at the  Center for Strategic and International Studies on using Made in China 2025 to strengthen China’s role in Latin America -

Strengthening relations with Latin America has been a priority for China's leadership. In early 2014 Beijing announced the creation of the China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Forum, which met for the first time this January. Xi Jinping has made two trips to the region, and Li Keqiang just completed a 9-day tour of Brazil, Columbia, Peru, and Chile. Li signed dozens of agreements promoting economic cooperation, worth over $100 billion.

Although Premier Li didn't specifically tout "Made in China 2025," he emphasized that China's renewed focus on advanced manufacturing would be beneficial to Latin America's economy, moving the commercial relationship's focus away from natural resources toward basic infrastructure, industry, and information technology. Li stressed that expanded Chinese investment in everything from high-speed rail to telecom should also help Latin America upgrade its manufacturing capacity and industrial structure as well. We can expect that the Chinese leadership will continue to carry a similar message wherever their travels take them.

 

Completely apart from Made in China 2025 is the CCP nomenklatura, the secretive list of politically approved names for high government positions. The list is developed and maintained by the Organization Department or Zǔzhībù. The Organization Department controls the top 5000 or so positions in the party-state. There is no necessary relationship of leadership positions to Made in China 2025, but it is fun to note that the GOP is developing its own nomenklatura for use after the 2024 election.

 

GOP uber alles

 

The GOP is making big plans of its own with its Project 2025.  It intends a fundamental remake of the federal government unlike anything seen in our history. From the Heritage Foundation materials -

Organized by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 has brought together (more than 65) right-of-center organizations that are ready to get into the business of restoring this country through the combination of the right policies and well-trained people.

“In 2016, the conservative movement was not prepared to flood the zone with conservative personnel" .... “On Jan. 20, 2025, things will be very different. This database will prepare an army of vetted, trained staff to begin dismantling the administrative state from Day 1.

 

The GOP nomenklatura – list of politically approved names for government positions -  in this case comes from the Heritage Foundation. From the NYT -

Heritage Foundation Makes Plans to Staff Next G.O.P. Administration They have already identified several thousand potential recruits and have set a goal of having up to 20,000 potential administration officials in their database by the end of 2024, according to Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage. Heritage has contracted the technology company Oracle to build a secure personnel database ….

Also from the NYT -

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025 - Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

 

The GOP plan is to have an approved list of 4000 names. The program is intended to bring every federal agency, including the Justice Department and the Federal Reserve, under the direct authority and control of the President, not unlike what exists in CCP now under Xi Jinping. In other words, rule by a super-ordinate single authoritarian chieftan. This is referred to as the "unitary executive" interpretation of the executive branch of government.

It is unlikely that much of the 2025 Project would get implemented. But to the extent it would be implemented, it would transfer power from Congress and independent agencies to supreme power vested only in the President. American liberal democracy as we know it - with checks and balances and political give and take - would vanish. CCP would be proud of its ability to influence GOP political theorizing. Perhaps they should be proud already.

 

Media attention

 

In 2018, the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think tank, stated that Made in China 2025, with its government-sponsored subsidies, is a "threat to U.S. technological leadership". From the CFR report - For the United States and other major industrialized democracies, however, these tactics not only undermine Beijing’s stated adherence to international trade rules but also pose a security risk….In the economic realm, critics say that China is distorting global markets by prioritizing political considerations over economic incentives.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has its own analysis along the same lines.

Major American media other than the NYT does not seem to have picked up on Project 2025. 

For a few years we thought that Trump was beholden to Putin and Russia. May still be true. But over the last few years, it has become apparent that the GOP and its leaders are far more interested in copying policy from CCP - book banning, threats to academic freedom, threats to non-believers, watchdogs for teachers, extreme nationalism and the cruelty is the point. For reference in some of my own writing –

 

http://chinareflections.com/index.php/104-comments-on-the-news/524-being-red-in-the-red-states

 

http://chinareflections.com/index.php/104-comments-on-the-news/516-more-on-monkey-see-monkey-do

 

and the series http://chinareflections.com/index.php/105-comments-on-policies-and-programs/362-xi-ccp-djt-gop

 

http://chinareflections.com/index.php/105-comments-on-policies-and-programs/365-xi-ccp-djt-gop-part-4-harmony-and-trust

 

Who is on board with the program?

 

For Made in China 2025, we can count on –

Some companies that have been named as leaders of the key industries are - 

For the Heritage-GOP 2025 Project, we can count on –

an advisory board of more than 65 conservative organizations, including -

 

The Heritage Foundation

The American Conservative

Alabama Policy Institute

Alliance Defending Freedom

ALEC

American Family Association

Claremont Institute

Family Research Council

Hillsdale College

Moms for Liberty

Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Public Interest Legal Foundation

Tea Party Patriots

Texas Public Policy Foundation

 

Made in China 2025 is not working in tandem with the GOP 2025 Project. But GOP success on this front would certainly sink American industry, democratic processes and international standing at far lower upfront costs than the Chinese program. No one usually thinks of American politics as efficient, but GOP implementation of the 2025 Project would bring on American decline much faster and more completely than any Chinese program. True, CCP is working on the economic front and has to change technologies and industries and GOP has only to steal some elections and bamboozle voters. But GOP success would do far more damage to America than Chinese dominance in technologies. The GOP would quantitatively reduce freedom and equality. At base, CCP and GOP seem to have similar fundamental goals and maybe CCP is simply paraphrasing that old GOP stalwart Barry Goldwater – Extremism in the defeat of liberty is no vice.

 

 

 

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