Preliminary
The US Congress on September 18 by MuellerThrow a "bad idea": don't give it Rare earthNot to let Chinese flights land in the United States, a row of tough stance to "disconnect".
Before the voice landed, the U.S. Treasury Department released data-China reduced its holdings $257 billion in debtThe warehouse dropped. 73.7 billion dollars, hitting a 16-year low. This "sap" caught Washington off guard.
Why the US. flightlyAs a bargaining chip? How ruthless is this Chinese move?
U.S. Parliamentary Assembly: Rare land
President of the U.S. House Special Committee on China. by MuellerA letter to the White House.
The letter cites three "loss tricks": banning Chinese civil aviation landing in the United States and its allies, reviewing commercial aircraft sales to China, and allied allies restricting Chinese aviation investment. Rare land without land.。
Speaking of which, the United States Rare earthAnxiety is not a day or two.This thing is not rare, but the technical threshold of pure processing is extremely high, and the environmental cost is an astronomical figure.
Although the United States also has rare earth mines underground, it has long outsourced mining and refining to China.Now high-end military industry, electronic equipment, new energy vehicles, are not separate from rare earth.
The numbers are more frightening: American military workers 90% of magnetic materialsimported from China.
For the F-35, every fighter aircraft needs to be used. 400 kilograms of rare soil。 If China really cuts off supply, the entire military-industrial system of the United States will have to "lie down".
More to the Pentagon’s headache is that China is in control of the world. 92% of rare earth refining capacity。 Even if the United States can find mineral resources in Australia and Canada, it will eventually have to send them to China for processing.
This is embarrassing. Want to get rid of dependency? Foreign media evaluation has to at least wait 5 years。
What if I can't wait? American politicians are anxious, so they come up with this kind of flightlyAs a blackmail.
But this trick seems fierce, but it is actually a typical "harming others but not benefiting oneself". Unilaterally banning international flights is a serious violation of the Chicago Convention and makes the United States lose moral face.
More importantly, this practice has a far greater impact on the United States itself than it has on China, with a hundred flights per week, carrying a large number of businessmen, international students and high-value goods.
Once cut off, U.S. hotel, catering, and tourism revenues will suffer. The Boeing Company.The first is not to promise, China is the world’s largest aircraft market.
$25.7 billion debt evaporated instantly, and Washington panicked.
The U.S. threat has just been issued, and the Chinese response has come, not a verbal protest, not a diplomatic letter.
It is direct action— Net debt reduction of $25.7 billion。
That’s the equivalent of a mid-developed country’s year-round GDP that disappears from the U.S. government bond market.
Moreover, Washington can’t sit down, the total amount of Chinese U.S. debt holdings fell to 73.7 billion dollars, hitting its lowest level since 2009.
This isn't the first time. Starting from 2022, China's holdings of U.S. debt will not exceed US $1 trillion, and the cumulative reduction in three years has exceeded Thirty billion。
This trend clearly tells Washington that China is actively adjusting its foreign exchange reserve structure and reducing its balance sheet. US dollar assetsDependence on.
U.S. dollar hegemony is largely dependent on the "trade deficit - U.S. debt flow back" closed loop.China earns dollars through trade and then sends dollars back to the United States by buying U.S. debt.
Now this cycle is broken.China reduces U.S. debt while increasing Gold reservesFor 15 consecutive months, gold holdings increased by more than 3,400 tons.
At the same time, Internationalization of RMBMore and more countries along the "Belt and Road" line are willing to settle with RMB.
This is the same as slowly drawing the cornerstone of the dollar hegemony.When important buyers begin to continue leaving the pitch, the domino effect is enough to make any American president night out.
Even more interestingly, China has chosen the timing of this delay extremely accurately, just a month after the U.S. threat proposal was exposed, and this "silent counterattack" is more convincing than any diplomatic statement.
Wall Street traders quickly smelled a dangerous signal: if major creditors such as China and Japan began to reduce holdings, the cost of issuing U.S. bonds would be forced to rise.
Coupled with high domestic deficits and uncertainty in interest rate policies, the "sense of security" of the U.S. bond market is undergoing unprecedented tests.
92% of rare earth life gates are in China's hands
Reducing U.S. debt is just an appetizer, and the real killer is in. Industrial chain。
Speaking of rare earths, many people think it is as simple as mining. In fact, from mining to separation, from purification to application, every link has extremely high technical barriers.
After decades of technological accumulation and industrial layout, China has formed a complete industrial chain from "mine to magnet". "Moat."。
The statistics of the International Energy Agency show that China's rare-earth mineral production accounts for the world's largest. More than 60%But in the higher technology threshold refining link, China occupies the world's highest level. 92% of production capacity。
What does that mean? Even if the United States can find other rare earth sources around the world, it can hardly bypass China's processing system.
The United States wants to do it itself? The cost is frighteningly high. Industry estimates that building a complete rare earth industry chain requires at least Hundreds of billions of dollarsInvestments also have to face environmental protection, technology, time and other constraints.
What's even worse is that even if the United States grits its teeth and invests in building an industrial chain, it will be difficult to compete with China in terms of cost competition.
Meanwhile, China’s trade diversification strategy has proved fruitful.Customs data showed that China’s exports to the United States declined in August this year. 33.1%But overall exports have increased. 4.4%。
Behind this seemingly contradictory figure lies the successful transformation of China’s export market. The ASEANExports grew by 22.7 percent, and exports to Africa surged by a third.
The share of the United States in China's exports has dropped from 15% to 10%. In the past three months, China's exports to Nigeria have increased by nearly half, and to Thailand and Vietnam by a quarter.
This pattern of "the east is not bright but the west is bright" makes China full of confidence in Sino-US trade friction. It's not that it can't be separated from the US market, but that there are more choices.
On the other hand, in the United States, the pressure of agricultural states is increasing. At this time in previous years, China had already placed a lot of soybean orders, and a quarter of the soybeans in the United States had to be digested by China.
This year, China Not a single orderThe president of the American Soybean Association hurried to shout out the situation “very severe.”
The reason is simple. After the U.S. imposed tariffs on Chinese soybeans, the cost immediately increased by $2 / puff, and the price advantage was completely lost. Brazilian soybeans were subsidized, $21 cheaper per ton of US soybeans, and shipping time was 10 days faster.
Dollar hegemony encounters biggest challenge
Behind the differences in the industrial chain, there is a greater change in order.
The real significance of this game lies not in the specific win or loss, but in the fact that it marks the structural restructuring of the global economic order.
In recent decades, the international economic system has basically operated according to the "center-outside" model. The dollar hegemonyAnd technological advantages occupy central positions, and other countries operate around this center.
But now, this unipolar system is being replaced by a multipolar pattern. China is no longer satisfied with being the "factory of the world", but wants to become a participant in rule-making.
From a financial point of view, De-dollarizationThe process has accelerated significantly. In addition to China's reduction of U.S. debt holdings, Russia, Iran and other countries are also reducing U.S. dollar reserves and increasing asset allocation such as gold and euro.
More importantly, new technologies such as digital currency and blockchain provide new possibilities for bypassing the US dollar system. The research and development of digital currencies by central banks is accelerating, and the future international payment system may no longer rely entirely on the US dollar.
From the perspective of trade, the trend of regional economic integration is obvious. RCEPCooperation mechanisms such as the Belt and Road offer more options for countries.
The United States wants to maintain hegemony through traditional means such as threats and sanctions, but the effect is becoming more and more limited.
This time, the threat of rare-earth aviation rights is a typical example.The U.S. side thought that it could be "disconnected" to force China to make concessions on rare-earth issues, and the result was counterproductive, prompting China to accelerate the pace of financial disconnection.
From a longer-term historical perspective, this change conforms to the objective laws of international relations. No hegemony can last forever, and multipolarization is an inevitable trend of history.
The key is whether this transformation process can be peacefully carried out and whether it can be achieved through cooperation rather than confrontation.
China has repeatedly stressed that "co-operation and win-win" is not an empty diplomatic dictum, but a real judgment on the future international order.In today's deep development of globalization, any attempt to engage in "breaking chains" is against the historical trend.
Some U.S. politicians, if they still do not see this trend, will continue to go a path to the black, and eventually only let the U.S. itself eat more bitter heads.
conclusion
The real significance of this comparison is not in who's voice is larger, but in who can take the initiative in the change and conform to the trend of the times.
The global economic order is re-blasting, the era of unilateral threats is passing, and the era of multilateral cooperation is coming.
Faced with such a historical turning point, we are all witnesses.How do you think the future will develop?