En these days of Donald Trump’s indictment, the planet is alarmed by an America that is increasingly torn apart, on the verge of civil war. Let us also worry about those moments of sacred union that tipped the United States into McCarthyism, named after the witch hunt against the Communists led in the 1950s by Senator Joseph McCarthy ( 1908-1957). The United States experienced the madness of the war in Iraq in 2003, the motives of which everyone except Americans knew – weapons of mass destruction and complicity with Al-Qaeda – were spurious. They are on the verge of a relapse with Beijing: the hearing of the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, by the United States Congress on March 23, reveals how the relationship with China is going into a spin.
The congressional session was more of an impeachment than a hearing. TikTok is accused of corrupting youth – but is it worse than Facebook-Instagram? – and to send the personal data of Americans to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Its CEO was ordered to answer yes or no and was prevented from reacting on several occasions, in particular after the broadcast of a video on the application calling for violence against the president of the commission who was hearing it. The CCP would be well advised to broadcast this hearing in its entirety to all homes in the Middle Kingdom: such a beautiful object of pro-Chinese propaganda is exceptional.
At the origin of these outbursts, a real trauma each time – Soviet atomic threat, Islamist attacks of September 11, 2001, hegemonic conflict with China – and an excessive response each time.
The war against TikTok, which has the defect of appealing more to American youth than Facebook-Instagram, is only the most visible part of the Sino-American confrontation which is becoming more radical every day. America now massively subsidizes its strategic industries in the name of national independence, ranging from the production of rare earths to those of microprocessors. On paper, nothing to say: who could accept that the chips essential to national defense are manufactured on the island of Taiwan, so vulnerable? The case is accompanied by a workerist discourse, to have everything manufactured in the United States by American workers, in a country that persists in blocking labor immigration.
“The cart before the horse”
This defensive component is supplemented by an offensive attitude against Beijing, with Joe Biden maintaining the anti-Chinese customs duties imposed by Donald Trump and banning the export of the most efficient microprocessors. “America first”: what Trump had proclaimed, Joe Biden realizes it. Admittedly, some companies have an interest in a lull, such as Apple, which (still) manufactures its iPhones in China, or Tesla, which assembles vehicles in Shanghai and whose boss, Elon Musk, wants to meet Li Qiang, the Prime Minister, in April. Chinese. But, overall, the sacred union dominates, and even if the Chinese threats are real, it is dangerous by the excesses it conceals.
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