Category Archives: Trump administration

An Imaginary Account of Robert Mueller Before Congress 4 22 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

Mueller: Dangling the possibility of presidential pardons in the media during the trials of people like Flynn and Manafort.  Did that prevent any of them from testifying?

Republicans: You got a bunch of people to roll.  You got Manafort on the tax and fraud stuff from 2014 and earlier.  You got Rick Gates on the same stuff.  What did they say about Trump-Russia contacts?  You got Flynn on the lying to the FBI thing and on some other stuff.  What did he say about Trump-Russia contacts?  You got Cohen on a bunch of stuff.  You got Papadopoulos on lying to the FBI.  He was the first contact reported between the campaign and the Russians.  What did he tell you?  Do you have any evidence that President Trump’s words altered their decisions about co-operation?  Is it your theory that President Trump is incredibly artful?  That his continued public sympathy for Flynn after Flynn abandoned the shared defense agreement with Manafort was just for show?  Do you suspect that each of these people held out some essential secret that would otherwise have revealed the true Trump-Russia conspiracy?

Mueller: Cohen provided false testimony to Congress and the President had to know that this testimony was false.  But we can’t tell if the President got Cohen to give the false testimony.  (p. 316.)

Republicans: So, this would be the first real danger to the President from your investigation?  Yet it is actually unrelated to Russian intervention in the election.  And you “failed to establish” any collusion between Trump and the Russians.  And Cohen is unlikely to have been called to give the testimony without the investigation into that alleged collusion.

Mueller: “Obstruction of justice can be motivated by a desire to protect non-criminal personal interests, to protect against investigations where underlying criminal liability falls into a gray area, or to avoid personal embarrassment.  The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.” (pp. 320-321.)

Republicans: Fair enough.  Most of us have been to law school.  Given your interest is in defending “the integrity of the justice system,” then can you comment on the Randy Weaver and Ted Stevens cases?

Mueller: While the investigation did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference, he may have had other personal motives for his actions.  For example, he may have thought that the 2016 Trump Tower meeting or advance knowledge of the Wikileaks would be construed as crimes that delegitimized his election.  These could fall under the definition of obstruction of justice.  (p. 321.)

Republicans: And Justice is?

Mueller: Much of this was done “in public,” but he’s the President and he has the power to pardon.

Republicans: And so you yourself and your subordinates felt intimidated?

Mueller: The President ordered subordinates to do many things that might have obstructed justice, but mostly those subordinates didn’t do them.  (p. 322.)

Republicans: Is there a federal statute that bars “wanting to obstruct justice” as differentiated from actual obstruction of justice”?

An Imaginary Account of Robert Mueller Before Congress 3 22 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

Mueller: Although the team did not establish that the President and his campaign had conspired with the Russians, he might have wanted the investigation to end because of things that it might have (and did) reveal about the campaign.  It’s possible that the President would have feared that these were crimes: the public misstatements about Trump Organization’s pursuit of Russian business deals into Summer 2016, and Trump tried to get information about future Wikileaks.

Republicans: And these were crimes under which laws?

Mueller: “More broadly, multiple witnesses described the President’s preoccupation with the press coverage of the Russia investigation and his persistent concern that it raised questions about the legitimacy of his election.” (p. 256.)

Mueller: Finally, he didn’t tell the truth at first about why he had fired Comey. (pp. 256-257.)

Republicans:  And you discovered the real reason how?  He went on national television a few days later and told a journalist.

The Post-Comey Phase.

Mueller: The team immediately added an investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice to its mandate.  President Trump reacted strongly against the appointment of a special prosecutor.  (p. 257.)

An example.

Mueller: On 9 June 2016, Manafort, Kushner, and Trump, Jr. met with some Russians in hopes of hearing about Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.  That turned out to be false advertising on the part of the Russians.  Receiving such information might have been a violation of campaign finance laws, but they got skint.  When news of this meeting first became public, President Trump repeatedly tried to mischaracterize the intended purpose of the meeting.

Mueller: It would have been obstruction of justice to prevent either Congress or the Special Prosecutor from receiving relevant documents when demanded.  The President did not do that.  (p. 280.)

Mueller: “The evidence does not establish that the President intended to prevent the Special Counsel’s Office or Congress from obtaining the emails setting up the June 9 meeting or other information about that meeting.” (p. 281.)  The only evidence we have is that the President told people to hand over emails and other information to whomever needed to have them. (p. 280.)

Republicans: This phrase you keep using—“did not establish”—what does that mean exactly?  Because in this particular case, what you have is evidence of a media strategy directed against the Democratic media combined with a demonstrated willingness to provide requested information to Congress and the Special Prosecutor.  So, does “did not establish” mean the same thing everywhere else in the Report?  As in, “did not establish” collusion/co-ordination/conspiracy with the Russians.  Does that really mean “we didn’t find any evidence of this at all”?

An Imaginary Account of Robert Mueller Before Congress 2 22 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

Mueller: The team came to think of the investigation as covering two periods.

There was the period up to the firing of James Comey.  During this period, people repeatedly told the president that he himself was not under investigation.

There was the period after the firing of James Comey, when the President found that firing Comey had put him in danger of an obstruction charge.  Thereafter the President did many things directed against the team’s investigation.

Republicans: So, you could not establish an underlying crime by the President; officials told him that he wasn’t personally under investigation, but Democrats and their share of the media kept up making accusations, and Comey would not make a public statement that the President wasn’t under investigation.  Did that lead you to inquire into Comey’s behavior during this period?

The Comey Phase.

Mueller: The team decided that none of the statutory or constitutional objections by the President’s lawyers justified NOT investigating the facts. (p. 202.)

Mueller: During the campaign, candidate Trump said a bunch of pro-Russian things; denied to the media all sorts of reports; after election, he doubted reports that the Russians had tried to help him win the election; and expressed concern that the reports would de-legitimize his victory. (p. 212.)

Republicans: So what?  He’s got a right to his own opinion on Russia, even if it differs from President Obama’s opinion; lying to the media isn’t a crime; and the Democrats have been using the Russia investigation to de-legitimize the Trump administration for better than two years now.

Mueller: Michael Flynn, the National Security Adviser, lied to the FBI about a couple of phone calls to the Russian ambassador.  Trump fired him, but asked Comey to “let Flynn go.”  (pp. 217-218.)

Mueller: President Trump fired Comey after Comey refused to discuss the scope of the Russia investigation in testimony before Congress and did not state that President Trump himself was not being investigated.  Three times previously, Comey had told Trump in private that he was not being investigated.  (p. 244.)

Republicans: Did you try to evaluate the state of mind and intent of James Comey?  The IG Report on his handling of the Clinton investigation indicated some curious behaviors.  Comey’s press appearances on his book tour and afterward also might cast some light backward on his time at the FBI.

Mueller: The President believed that the Russia investigation was hurting his ability to govern.  (pp. 245, 256 and fn. 500.)

Mueller: Firing Comey could have a chilling effect on the investigation.  On the other hand, it wouldn’t stop the investigation.  (p. 253.)

An Imaginary Account of Robert Mueller Before Congress 1 22 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

Robert Mueller has said that the report is his testimony.   The following imagines what Republicans might ask or say during Mr. Mueller’s testimony.   They probably wont.

Mueller: One, the Special Prosecutor’s team chose not to make a traditional charge/decline-to-charge decision.  The DoJ’s Office of Legal Council has ruled that a sitting president cannot be charged and the team accepted the reasoning behind this ruling. (p. 194.)

Republicans: However, you didn’t have to charge President Trump.  You could just have found that he did commit obstruction of justice, then leave it to Congress to follow through.  Impeachment is a constitutional process.  Why didn’t you find this conclusion?

Mueller: Two, the team investigated the facts in order to document occasions where other people had committed obstruction of justice[1] and to document cases where the President may have obstructed justice in order for him to be prosecuted after he leaves office.  (pp. 194-195.)

Mueller: Three, the team chose NOT to apply the common legal standard to the evidence that might have led to a decision that the President had committed a crime.  (p. 195.)

Republicans:

1) Why not?  Such a finding would lead to impeachment by the House.  See above.

2.) Or was that because he had not committed a crime?

Mueller: The Federal Government is a sieve, so news of a secret finding would leak.  This would cast a shadow over the President’s ability to lead.  (p. 195.)

Republicans: So has the Mueller Report cast a shadow over the President’s ability to lead?

Mueller: Four, the team can’t tell if President Trump obstructed justice or did not obstruct justice. (p. 195.)

Republicans (incautiously): Why is that?

 

Overarching factual issues.  (pp. 201-202.)

Mueller: It could not be a typical obstruction case because it concerned the President.

Mueller: First, some of his actions were “facially lawful,” but he also had official powers that could influence other people’s conduct. (p. 201.)

Mueller: Second, obstruction usually is intended to cover-up another crime, but the team did not establish that the President had committed any crime.  So the team had consider whether other motives inspired his actions.

Republicans: like punching back against what he believed to be an un-fair investigation?

Mueller: Third, the President often acted in full public view, rather than in secret.  Still, this might have been meant to influence witnesses.

[1] Such people can be prosecuted immediately.

The Asian Century 7 19 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

What are the ambitions of contemporary China?  To what extent does Xi Jinping speak for those ambitions?  How do actions reveal ambitions?  How likely is China to attain those ambitions?  That is, how great are Chinese resources and to what extent will China’s actions create counter-vailing pressure?   These are important questions with no crystal-clear answers.[1]  Still, take them in reverse order.

First, China’s tremendous economic transformation in the years since the death of Mao and his system have raised China up into the second largest economy in the world.   On the one hand,[2] this has given China abundant financial resources to deploy.  The “Belt and Road Initiative” is a gigantic infrastructure program.  It is building highways, railroads, pipelines, and ports in that link China with “the Stans,”[3] with South and Southeast Asia, and with the Indian Ocean.  It is building dams and roads in places like Cambodia.  On the other hand, it has given the Chinese an immense, justified pride in themselves and their country.  The 19th Century “of humiliation” is at an end, but the psychological legacy remains powerful.

Second, there are forces that may disrupt the assertion of Chinese power.  On the one hand, the very uneven distribution of the fruits of prosperity, environmental degradation, and pervasive corruption have piled up fuel for a potential fire.  “Never throw a match when it’s dry, son.”[4]  Hoping to avert such a catastrophe, the Communist Party has engaged in “techno-authoritarianism” and old-fashioned prison camps.  Keeping a lid on a boiling pot isn’t the same thing as turning down the heat.  On the other hand, China’s growing presence in East Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia sets off many alarms.  The “Belt and Road Initiative” has expanded China’s influence in the “Stans.” If someone needs to be concerned about China’s expanding influence, it is Russia.  Around the South China Sea, China has aroused concern in other countries like Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan.  Then, there is the Chinese impact on common people.  As one Burmese told a Western journalist: “[The Chinese] smile with their faces, but are crooked in their hearts.”

Third, under Zi Jinping, “China is determined to take its place as a modern world power.”  What does “world power” mean to the Chinese and their leaders?  It is useful to recall the work on American Cold War foreign policy by the historian John Lewis Gaddis.[5]  Gaddis traced the debates between a low-cost “point defense” of vital American interests and a “symmetrical” global opposition to Communism.  The Chinese appear to aim at dominating their peripheral areas, rather than at mounting a global challenge to America.  Can the United States untangle itself from its global commitments—some of them mere legacies of earlier times—in order to defend its economic and security interests in wat is shaping up to be the decisive arena of the new century?

[1] Tom Miller, China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building along the New Silk Road (2017).

[2] President Truman once exclaimed that “What I want is a one-armed economist so that I don’t have to listen to some son-of-a-bitch go ‘on the one hand,…’.”   Unfortunately, reality has forced the habit upon me.

[3] “Stan” is a Persian suffix that means “the land of.”  Commonly, “the Stans” refer to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.  All used to be part of Tsarist Russia, and then of the Soviet Union.

[4] Corb Lund: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8YyDyap7wI

[5] John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Strategy During the Cold War (rev. ed. 2005).

ChiMerica 3 14 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

In the late 1500s, Richard Hakluyt collected the stories and reports of the English mariners who had explored the Atlantic world.[1]  He wanted to celebrate these doughty adventurers, but also he hoped to encourage others to emulate them.[2]  Hakluyt’s basic approach became a staple of the reference shelves.

Now we have the equivalent for the entrepreneurs who have raised up China into the “second economy in the West.”[3]  Sort of.  A bunch of American business school professors interviewed Chinese executives to supplement their library research.

Deng Xiaoping’s reforms started everything, but Chinese entrepreneurs had to muscle through hordes of bureaucrats who failed to adjust their old thinking to new realities.  Thus, “If it were not from Deng Xiaoping’s reform and open door policy, none of us would be able to achieve much, regardless of how capable we are.”  At the same time, owing to deeply-ingrained anti-capitalist prejudice, “the lowest thing you could do in the early ‘80s, as a scientist, was to go into business.”  So, early Chinese entrepreneurs had to make it up as they went along.  Much like the industrialists of the American “Gilded Age.”  The Chinese adapted to prevailing conditions.

Some of them fell into error along the way, which is easy to do in China.  They over-promised and under-performed.  They aligned with the wrong factions and fell victim to Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drives.  They just made bad decisions.

Chinese entrepreneurs take a long-term view.  Quarterly profits and share prices don’t mean much to them.  The pursue what some call a “lean architecture” that gives the companies nimbleness in responding to new situations.  American companies, in contrast, haven’t entirely reduced the massive bureaucratization of the 50s-70s.  However, Chinese government support for Chinese businesses in competition with American businesses plays an important role.  For example, Didi Chuxing Technologies, the Chinese Uber, spent like a drunken sailor in order to defeat the American Uber.  By 2016, Didi was drawing four times as many customers in China as was Uber.  This suggests that a.) Didi didn’t worry much about banks breathing down its neck, and b.) that the Trump administration may have to negotiate limits on non-tariff Chinese government support for industries.  Then, China’s systematized, even industrialized, theft of Western intellectual property play a large role in the success of Chinese industry.

One issue here is that systems reinforce what has worked in the past, rather than seeing each successive situation as new.  (That’s called a heuristic device.)  Will China’s previous success with state-sponsored business development lead the country to double-down in the future?  If so, then the potential for conflict between the United States and China will grow.

It is a little bit like many people didn’t want to “come out of the closet” about China’s abuse of its international trade relationships.  Now, that “that man in the White House” has done so, will more and more people fall into line?  Or will there be a counter-vailing swing in the next election cycle to return to the policies of yore?

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hakluyt

[2] Extremely well educated, Hakluyt doubtless took as his model Plutarch’s Lives.

[3] Michael Useem, Harbir Singh, Liang Neng, and Peter Cappelli, Fortune Makers: The Leaders Creating China’s Great Global Companies (2017).

The Asian Century 2 12 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

In the 1960s, Charles de Gaulle believed that the bi-polar international system of the Cold War would eventually give way to a multi-polar system.  This—correct—belief led him to imagine that the future world already had come into existence.  He pursued policies that put up the hackles on Americans, without advancing the interests of France.

Fifty years later, de Gaulle’s vision has come true—kinda-sorta.  It’s fair to say that America has been living through a prolonged dark hour.  The Soviet Union has collapsed into something more than a “regional power” but less than a superpower.  Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East count for little in the councils of the world.  The European Economic Community of his day has grown stronger and larger, and then has begun to go into retreat for the moment.  The Peoples Republic of China has emerged as an economic and military powerhouse.  Today, many smart people are uncertain of what the future holds.

Early in the Trump Administration, the highly-intelligent and highly-experienced journalist Gideon Rachman[1] took a stab at prognostication.[2]  The new multi-polar world is, Rachman thinks, “unstable and dangerous.”  The Chinese American relationship stands at the center of the new world order.  The competition between these two states is likely to spread into every corner of the globe.  The core area, however, will be the Western Pacific.  Since 1945, these waters have been an American lake.  Many of the countries surrounding that “lake” are American allies or under American protection: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.  Now Chinas economic growth is enabling it to increase its own military power.

Is “Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline” unstoppable?  Hardly.  For one thing, China isn’t all of Asia.  Even if Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are not China’s equals, they are prosperous societies which have benefitted greatly from the American-sponsored global economic system.  If Xi Jinping hopes to reverse China’s “century of humiliation,” these other countries won’t want their own humiliation forced on them by China.  For another thing, while China may want to construct its own global system, Westerners know how to work the actually existing system.  Finally, like every other country, China has its own vulnerabilities.  At the heart of these vulnerabilities is the very thing that has made China so strong.  The Communist Party has led a rapid industrialization of the country.  That industrialization has sucked tens of millions of people out of the countryside into urban slums.  It has generated immense wealth, but distributed it very unevenly.  It has degraded the environment.  And the Communist Party is an in-bred elite that protects its own interests ahead of those of the people.

Nothing is written.  It can blow at any seam.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Rachman

[2] Gideon Rachman, Easternization: Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline (2017).

ChiMerica 2 12 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

For decades, the United States built its Far Eastern policy on a deepening engagement with China.  Richard Nixon “played the China card” to shift the terms of the Cold War with Russia.  Jimmy Carter sponsored a full normalization of relations with China.  Aside from the old-fashioned balance-of-power rationale that had driven Nixon, a further rationale for engagement developed.  Ever-deeper economic relationships would build a strong bond between the two Pacific giants.  In time, economic development might nudge China’s leadership toward political liberalization.  This engagement intensified after Deng Xiaoping could use the collapse of the Soviet Union as evidence for important policy changes.

More recently, China seems to have drawn far more benefit from the economic relationship than has the United States.  At the same time, since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China has turned back toward authoritarian government.[1]  Doubts have been growing for some time about the wisdom of the long-standing American policy.

Now President Donald Trump has used tariffs and sanctions on companies like Huawei to bring the Chinese government to negotiate a new economic relationship and continued the pressure during the on-and-off negotiations.  His confrontational stance has alarmed many people.  A group of 150 China experts, both scholars and former officials, recently denounced the approach as “fundamentally counterproductive.”[2]  However, others—including Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer—have begun to see real merits in the new course.

The lingering fear is that President Trump will not sustain the pressure for long enough to force the Chinese into a long-term deal that fundamentally restructures the relationship to better the position of the United States.  With an election barely a year away, some fear that he will settle for less in order to have a bragging point.  However, even if he settles for half a loaf, he appears to be shifting the broad consensus of opinion toward the need to confront China.

[1] Edward Wong,” America’s Gamble: Shatter enduring Strategies on China and North Korea,” NYT, 12 July 2019.

[2] Like the old policy was “productive”?

The Asian Century 1 11 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

Much of our understanding of the contemporary world is essentially historical.  (OK, you wouldn’t know this from watching the news on the devil-box.  Still,…)

“Manifest Destiny” = “An Obvious Fate.”  It’s a term in American history, but it applies to China as well.  Both countries believe themselves to be “bound away” to greatness.  Historically, China was the “middle kingdom,” an axis around which the rest of the world revolved, and where civilization and good government prevailed.[1]  From this point of view, China’s degradation at the hands of the “Southern barbarians” is but a speed-bump in History.

Since the economic reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping, China has become the center of world manufacturing.  Literally hundreds of millions of people have been lifted up out of an abject poverty of a kind most Western progressives cannot imagine.

Industrial power transforms into military power.[2]  China’s potential for a military build-up and its effort to shoulder-aside other claimants to various reefs and islets in the South China Sea have alarmed many observers.  What if China tries to seize Taiwan or test America’s will to back its traditional allies like the Philippines, Japan, or South Korea?

If we did an audit of China’s problems, what would we find?  First, state-owned firms are gigantic and powerful.  They’re also inefficient and deep in debt.  Second, Communist China has not regained the high level of creativity that characterized much of the history of Imperial China.  As a result, it depends on the massive theft of intellectual property from the West.  Third, the income inequality and environmental degradation have begun to arouse resistance.  (There are as many as 180,000 demonstrations each year.)  Fourth, the lack of well-established legal norms is scaring people.[3]  There is a grave danger of an elite “brain drain”: one report says that up to half of the wealthiest citizens want to move abroad within the next five years.  A Gallup poll recently estimated that 120 million Chinese would like to move to America.[4]

Then, “off-shore China” has done best of all.  Places where traditional Chinese values have been combined with Western legal codes—Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan—have done even better than has mainland China.  Yet the current Chinese leadership seems not to take the obvious, if uncomfortable, point.

For a long time, American policy has been to encourage the liberalization of trade and economic management in other countries, China included.  The underlying theory holds that economic liberalization will lead to the growth of a middle-class.  A growing middle-class will demand political liberalization.[5]  This “long game” will then lead to the spread of economically and politically congruent societies.  Wars will end.  Prosperity will flourish.  Well, “Scotch verdict” on that.

[1] Michael Auslin, The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region (2017).

[2] See: Germany, 1865-1945.

[3] It looks very much like the long-running “anti-corruption campaign” is directed chiefly at rivals and opponents of the current leadership.  If you’re a “FOX” (“Friend of Xi”), you’re probably safe.

[4] It seems at least reasonable to think that many of the would-be migrants are people who have already been to the US.  In 2015, there were just over 300,000 Chinese students in American universities and colleges.  See: https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/16/china-us-colleges-education-chinese-students-university/

[5] That’s what happened in 19th-Century Europe.

ChiMerica 1 10 July 2019.

Posted on by
Reply

There are real grounds for alarm over China.[1]  Many economists believe that the continuing growth of the Chinese economy will lead it to supplant that of the United States as the world’s largest by 2030 or 2035.  Moreover, China is a dictatorship with apparent ambitions to push the United States out of its dominating position in the Far East and perhaps to exert Chinese influence more broadly.  China has been imprisoning he numbers of Uighurs (Muslims) in Xinjiang province.  Some people suspect that, under Xi Jinping, China has chosen a new course.   Abandoning a “liberalizing” path, the Chinese want to spread modern authoritarianism to other countries in the same way that the United States has been trying to spread democratic capitalism.

The Obama Administration saw the challenge in China.  However, it became mired in peripheral issues (the Middle East, Ukraine).  It never managed to mount an effective response to the central problem of China.  The “Trans-Pacific [Trade] Partnership” treaty fell victim to the populism of the right and the left.  It would not have been implemented even if Hillary Clinton had won the election.

Since 2017, the Trump Administration has pursued a different course.  In December 2017, the White House issued a “National Security Strategy” paper that claimed that China and Russia “want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests.”  In June 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “China wants to be the dominant economic and military power of the world, spreading its authoritarian vision for society and its corrupt practices worldwide.”  The head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff[2] said “This is a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology, and the United States hasn’t had that before.  The Soviet Union and that competition, in a way, it was a fight within the Western family.”

So far, the struggle has been waged purely on the trade front.  For many years, China has been running a huge trade surplus in trade with the United States.  That is, it sells far more to the United States than it buys from the United States.  However, much of that production is done by American companies who have off-shored factories to cut costs.  If they have to charge higher prices to their American consumers because of the tariffs, then why make the stuff in China?  There’s Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia.  In 2018, President Trump began slamming tariffs (taxes on imports) on Chinese exports to the United States.  Then, Trump tightened the screws with sanctions on the Chinese tech giant Huawei.  It has urged other countries to boycott Huawei and to refuse to participate in China’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure project.  Supply chains are going to start to move.

Because of the huge trade imbalance, China can’t exert much direct pressure on the United States by imposing tariffs of its own.  It can look for substitute suppliers for American exports, like soy.  It has started running lots of old Korean War movies (in black and white) in which China battles American aggression.

At the same time, neither side has pulled out all the stops.  For example, the U.S. has not made much of a deal about China imprisoning many Uighirs

However, we are in the early days of a huge struggle.  It is difficult to see yet how it will shake out.  Weak ending, I know, but true.

[1] Edward Wong, “U.S. vs. China: Why This Power Struggle Is Different,” NYT, 27 June 2019.

[2] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiron_Skinner