People living in the tide of the times never know what kind of big events they are going through, just like Serbian youth Princip in 1914 did not realize that one bullet changed the world situation, and just like Chinese farmers who went south in 1979 did not know that their decisions would completely change their destiny.

Predicting history is already a very difficult task, but there are always some clues that allow us to glimpse the basic laws of the world’s operation.

Today we will talk about the two possible outcomes of the China US game.

Firstly, it is necessary to clarify the core contradictions between China and the United States. Only by understanding this issue can we comprehend the current and future actions of the United States.

As we all know, the United States has been fighting a trade war with us since 2018. In recent days, Donald Trump has made a high-profile announcement that once he takes office, he will impose a 10% tariff on us. Even many American politicians often threaten us with full decoupling.

When many people view the China US trade war, they actually do not deeply consider the motives behind the United States’ actions, thinking that it is purely due to economic interests being damaged. In fact, the reason why the United States erected trade barriers is due to deep-seated reasons.

When I studied the history of the United States, I found that the United States has pursued trade protectionism for more than 240 years since its founding, and at least 160 years. Famous presidents in the history of the United States, such as Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, advocated trade protectionism. The British often complained for some time that they could control the world through free trade, but only they could not control the Americans, because Americans paid great attention to the protection of local industries, and foreign goods had to be peeled off to enter the United States.

Even in 1930, before the outbreak of World War II, the Americans also specially introduced the Smodholi Tariff Act, raising tariffs to 60%, which triggered collective retaliation in Europe. That is to say, before World War II, countries around the world were actually fighting a trade war.

Then why did Americans, who always advocate trade protectionism, suddenly turn around after World War II, not only actively reducing tariffs, but also vigorously promoting globalization? The answer was that in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Americans wanted to support their allies to fight against the Soviet Union. The Americans wanted to use their industrial cluster advantages and those of their European allies to suppress the Soviet camp, so they took the initiative to let British and German goods enter the American market with low tariffs. In addition, the Americans wanted to use the advantages of the whole European and American industrial chain+economic integration to drag down the Soviets.

If you still can’t understand, let me explain it more thoroughly. At that time, the industrial transfer led by the United States was an attempt to achieve global division of labor, allowing resource rich countries to provide resources (in the Middle East and Africa), producing countries to produce goods (in Japan and Latin America), and consuming countries to digest production capacity (in Europe and America). Through resource allocation, efficiency was maximized with minimal losses, and maximum production capacity was provided. With the advantage of systematization, the Soviets were able to survive.

In addition, at that time, Americans had the world’s first navy, and they were able to protect their own routes, so this kind of global play could continue.

This is the fundamental reason why Americans abandon trade protectionism and pursue globalization.

So why are Americans starting to pick up the hammer of trade protectionism again?

The answer is that Americans are surprised to find that under the system he has established, an uncontrollable monster has been born. If they do not deal with it quickly, their living standards may be greatly degraded.

The reason is also very easy to understand. In the past, the global division of labor model designed by Americans was that developed countries in Europe and the United States only produced 10% of the goods, but had to consume 90% of the goods, in order to maintain their high-quality life.

The most typical case is that the Americans produce a Boeing aircraft, the Dutch produce a lithography machine, and we Chinese will produce 100 million shirts to replace. This unequal payment mode makes the Europeans and Americans have a high income for leisure life, while we have a low income for hard work and hard work. The reason for this is that the Americans initially positioned us as hard workers.

We certainly do not want to accept such an identity, so we propose to carry out industrial upgrading. What is industrial upgrading? Simply put, we don’t want to just produce shirts now. We also want to produce airplanes, lithography machines, mobile phones, cars, and more. We also want to make a lot of money and live a leisurely and high income life like in Europe and America.

But the problem is that the order of the world is well planned by the Americans at the beginning. Resource countries sell resources, production countries with more people do low-end products, and consumer countries like the United States are responsible for producing high-end products and waiting to enjoy them.

In the global order designed by the United States, the overall supply and demand are roughly balanced. For example, producing 200 large aircraft a year can meet global demand, and producing 300 lithography machines a year can be used by various countries. However, now that we also need to produce large aircraft and lithography machines, we will inevitably compete with developed countries that used to produce these goods.

In addition, we have the advantages of human resources and industrial chain, which means that we produce the same product at a lower price than developed countries. They sell it for 100, and we sell it for 50. Gradually, the market will be completely occupied by us.

The most typical case is the shield tunneling machine, which used to be extremely expensive, but once we mastered the technology, the price dropped to 1/10, and the Western industry chain that used to do this disappeared in place.

Similar to shield tunneling machines, there are also industries such as photovoltaics, mobile phones, and automobiles. If we go up, it means that there will inevitably be a country in the West where these industries will begin to disappear on a large scale.

Take the mobile phone industry for example, why do Americans use chips to block our necks? It’s because around 2015, the production of smartphones in China was already unbeatable globally, and by 2018-2019, Huawei directly challenged Apple’s position as the world’s number one smartphone market. If no restrictions are imposed, not only will Samsung disappear from the Chinese market, but in a few years, Apple phones may become history.

The mobile phone is just one of the medium and high-end industries that we want to tackle, as well as large aircraft, cars, lithography machines, etc. We are all tackling technical problems. Seeing this scenario, Americans immediately feel unacceptable.

This kind of unacceptability has nothing to do with ideology and color culture. In the final analysis, it is because our size is too large. They can divide some industries to Japan and South Korea, because Japan and South Korea together only have more than 100 million people. But our size is ten times the sum of Japan and South Korea, and more than the total population of the entire western developed countries. Once we complete the industrial upgrading, we will collectively package the entire industrial chain. Any high-end industry will become our bag. If it really becomes like this, then Americans may gradually become low-end producers or resource traffickers from a developed consumer country.

That is to say, the larger Mexico or the larger Saudi Arabia.

It is precisely because they understand this truth that American talents want to give up globalization and pick up trade protectionism again, or more precisely, Americans want to squeeze us out of the system and draw a circle separately.

Having understood the basic logic of America’s current strategy, let’s see what will happen in the world in the future against this backdrop?

For the United States, the best outcome he pursues is to use the Cold War to isolate us and exclude us from the cycle of the world by pulling allies. At the same time, they hold us back in key areas, such as the high-end chip field. Then they take advantage of the advantages of high-end chips to vigorously develop AI technology, turning the AI boom into a vigorous productivity revolution. This way, they can continue to maintain their technological advantage over us. In addition, he and his allies control most of the world’s resources. Once they fall into a pattern like the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, they are likely to win in the end.

But the only problem now is that the allies of the United States are not willing to stand on the same side as the United States, such as the European Union, because no matter who is in charge between China and the United States, there is no direct conflict of interest with Europe, which is determined by geography. Therefore, the attitude of the European Union has been fluctuating in recent years.

The Americans wanted to break this swing, so they heated the Russia-Ukraine conflict and forced the EU to choose one from the other. However, we did not explicitly support Russia, so the relationship between the EU and us still has room for change.

Seeing this situation, the Americans want to ignite the situation in the southeast. Why did Pelosi come to visit the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022 and Pelosi in August? Its essence is to urge us to take action quickly, so that the United States can pull the entire West to blockade and sanction us, thereby achieving their goal of squeezing us out of the system.

We must be clear that the purpose of the Americans is not to fight us directly, but to squeeze us out of the system. Then they draw a circle and use their resource advantages and technological advantages to drag us down. This is the outcome they want most, and it is also a case they have already succeeded in.

After watching the ending that Americans want, let’s look at the ending that we want.

Due to its sensitivity, I will try to explain it in a simpler way.

We now have at least two sets of response plans:

One is the bottom line thinking. Once Americans want to do something, we will directly focus on the main goal, and meet Americans directly, even if it is fully carried out, because as the world’s largest industrial country, we are most afraid of doing it comprehensively, which is also the situation that Americans are most worried about, because once it is achieved, Americans will inevitably fall off the altar regardless of whether they win or lose. So from 2016 to now, it has always been Americans who really avoid war.

Of course, in addition to the bottom line thinking, what we really push is the second plan, which is to use Taiji to relieve the pressure of the United States. If you and the Americans stop me here, we will go to the other side to explore new relations. For example, cooperation with Iran and Saudi Arabia, the core idea is to make more friends and let the Americans block us more and more expensive.

At the same time, when the United States erected trade barriers, we did the opposite. We actively expanded the degree of opening to the outside world, whether it was currency exchanges with other countries, or expanding the scope of visa free countries, etc., which is our specific practice. In this way, every time the United States closes a door, we will open a window, and we will use openness to fight against the decoupling of the United States, buffering off the pressure from the United States.

You can totally understand that Americans want to kick us out of the group now, so we try to make good relations with other people in the group. If we are kicked one day, we can start a new group and build a separate group.

Of course, just adding friends is not enough. In the final analysis, the game between China and the United States is the competition of national strength. So before the United States is completely decoupled from us, we must complete the industrial upgrading and master the core technology in our own hands. So we must work hard to overcome core technologies such as lithography machine and artificial intelligence, so that we can not lag behind the Americans in the possible future scientific and technological revolution.

Once we achieve breakthroughs in key technological fields, with the industrial scale of our entire industry chain, we can at least stand invincible. Therefore, the key to everything still lies in technology. Science and technology are the primary productive forces, which is indeed a wise saying.