America criticizes the Chinese way.
America criticizes the Chinese way.
Last week, 40-year-old Liang Wenfeng from China unveiled an artificial intelligence app called DeepSick, which, with a cost of $5 million, was able to challenge all American AI software companies and hit Wall Street with the equivalent of a trillion dollars within 24 hours.
Enough has been written in the media about DeepSick, its application, and its production process, but let’s look at the impact of DeepSick from another angle.
About two weeks before the unveiling of DeepSick, Donald Trump spoke about the threat of China, not from a military threat, but from an economic threat. Of course, Donald Trump is not the only one talking about the economic threat of China.
Before him, Joe Biden had spoken about this economic threat or risk from China, and had imposed high tariffs on some Chinese goods such as steel, aluminum, and electric cars made in China. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State in George W. Bush’s administration, also spoke about the strong dependence of the U.S. economy on the Chinese economy in a podcast interview with Foreign Affairs.
When TikTok was able to deal a blow of one trillion dollars to American companies, the impact of the blow on the Chinese economy became tangible on the American economy. Until then, only political and economic analysts knew to what extent the US economy’s dependence on China was vital. But ordinary people, the man on the street, and small American shareholders did not perceive the threat of the Chinese economy until TikTok was unveiled, as the value of the shares they held in companies producing AI and computer processors plummeted sharply.
The point I want to make here is the function of slogans. What is the difference between the slogan ‘Death to America’ against Iran, which is declared, and ‘Death to American-Chinese’, which is acted upon? The difference between these two slogans can be seen in the level of sanctions on the Iranian economy and tariffs on the Chinese economy.
Iran has been under US sanctions for over 40 years, and in the past decade, these sanctions have intensified to the point where the damage inflicted on the Iranian economy from these sanctions in the past decade, according to the former secretary of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, has exceeded $1.2 trillion.
The losses incurred by China’s economy, as indicated by analyses and studies, have not only had a negative impact on China’s economy but have also affected the US economy itself. Perhaps that is why Donald Trump has currently imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods, while imposing a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico.
In essence, it is better to ask what China has done to combat the US. Although the country currently does not claim to be in a fight, according to its Marxist ideology, America is not only a major capitalist but also an imperialist.
So much so that Chinese statesmen did not have a balanced political relationship with America from the victory of the communist revolution in their country in 1949 until 30 years later.
However, what was gained from this naked and adversarial struggle was a poor nation and a weak economy, to the point where not even the Union of Soviet Republics could help. But Chinese statesmen, since 1979, have pursued their fight against America according to their own ideology in a different way. They tried to leverage the workings of the Americans for their benefit.
Deng Xiaoping, a modern architect of China, based on the famous Chinese proverb that it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice, adopted fresh approaches in China’s foreign policy.
In the past 40 years, with the change in lifestyle and interaction with the world, China has become the world’s second-largest economy. It ranks among the top three in terms of military power and arms production, and has reached a level of interdependence in the global economy where no country, not even the United States, can revolve its economy without trade interaction with China.
Unlike Iran, China does not claim nor engage in a direct fight against America, but its economic and political behaviors have been so impactful that if in the past China claimed to fight and confront America, and resisted cultural capitalist infiltrations, it was Mao’s cultural revolution that actually accomplished this. Now, it is America that claims to fight economically and even culturally against China, as China is emptying America’s foothold without incurring significant costs.
The unveiling of Dipecik should not only be viewed from the perspective of innovative technology; it is better to also see it from a political lens.
As Liang Wengen, the founder of Dipsic, said, China is no longer a follower of American innovations from now on; instead, it has become an innovator and creator itself. ‘Death to America’ in Chinese could be a model for Iranian policymakers as well.
