What stood out in his presentation is that Beijing does not interpret globalization in a Western, turbo-neoliberal sense.
There are indeed benefits. They also do mask the plunder of the developing world's resources via stealth "international laws" and (now dead in the water) trade agreements such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), mostly for the benefit of the West's 0.01%, who then become alarmed by "inequality."
Xi instead is promoting the notion of serial win-win deals; and that's why his positioning is essentially the ultimate glorious pitch for the New Silk Road, a.k.a. One Belt, One Road (Obor) project, largely featured in the last part of his speech.
Everyone knows about Obor as an essential tool to tweak the Chinese model; develop the Chinese Far West; open an array of Eurasian markets; promote the internationalization of the yuan; and of course consolidate a major geopolitical shift, not least by neutralizing most of the Obama/Clinton "pivot to Asia."
So when we get the concerted firepower of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); the Silk Road Fund; and the New Development Bank (NDB) under Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), we have enough capital to generate generous financing for an infrastructure bonanza from China, across Central Asia, and all the way to Western Europe and Eastern Africa.
Only in Kazakhstan, for instance, there are more than 50 deals valued at over US$20 billion in effect. The new peace in Syria negotiations -- Russia, Iran and Turkey -- will take place in Astana, not Geneva. Kazakhstan represents the intersection of the New Silk Roads and the Eurasia Economic Union (EEU). Russia and China are luring Iran -- and later on Turkey -- into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) fold. Syria, pacified and rebuilt, will be a key plank of Obor. It's all interlinked.
So what China is proposing has nothing to do with deglobalization. It's rather about "localization."
But trade deals never die. With the death of TPP, Xi had to extol the merits of the pan-Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which excludes the US but crucially merges all of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations members with everyone ASEAN has trade deals with; China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
RCEP will be a boon for manufacturing within the vastly complex and broader supply chain across Asia, smashing tariffs across the board. That will include China-India trade. Yet it remains to be seen how Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make in India campaign will cope with opening up its markets to Chinese imports.
And, of course, Xi had to refer to the yuan question. The yuan is currently overvalued. The People's Bank of China does not want it to slide down even further; its priority is a stable exchange rate -- to stabilize trade. Still, Danske Bank strategist Allen von Mehren, who's usually spot on, predicts the yuan falling to 7.26 to the US dollar by the end of September.
Somebody's got to explain all this to Trump, implications included. It won't be Scaramucci. Not to mention Peter Navarro, Wilbur Ross, "Mad Dog" Mattis or Michael Flynn. It has to be global helmsman Xi in person.
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