 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today in the third episode of Signs of Our Time, we're joined again by Professor Ajaz Ahmed, one of the leading Marxist intellectuals in the world. Ajaz, welcome. Thank you. Today I thought we should talk about the United States and China. There's been, of course, an escalation of words between the two countries. Recently, presidential envoy of Donald Trump with the very special name of Marshall Billingsey made a comment where he said that the United States has at one previous time, he meant with the USSR, with the Soviet Union, has previously spent an adversary, and these are his words, previously spent an adversary into oblivion. And he says that the United States is prepared to escalate the arms race with China in order to spend it into oblivion. This is a comment again by US special presidential envoy Marshall Billingsey. Where are we now in this what appears to be escalating war of words between the United States and China? Between the United States and the Soviet Union, there was an immense disparity of material power, which in favor of the United States. The USSR was emerging out of the Second World War, having lost about a third of its population, actually, and all of its industrial base, so to speak. The Soviet Union was actually a very poor country coming out of the Second World War, even before that. So throughout that period, the Soviet Union was in fact materially far, far more so that the expenditure on defense against the United States and NATO and so on and so forth, was an immensely large part of the, it did in fact means, mean that you could not build a consumer society, you could not, it meant an immense amount of hardship for the Soviet people and for the Soviet state, and there's no question about that. Secondly, the Soviet Union also took it upon itself to its great glory to support as many national liberation movements with arms and money and so on, as it could possibly do across continents. So that was a very different kind of situation. Not only that, it also committed itself to helping countries develop their independent economy and military power. Egypt is a classic case of that, a tremendous amount, and when the Egyptians actually wrote off, just refused to pay the debts and so on, the Soviet Union could do nothing. Anyway, what you have now is that the United States is still the largest economy in the world, no question the most powerful, the most deeply structured financial system and so on and so forth, so one should not underestimate the power of the United States, but it is now at a very different point in history where the overall trajectory is that of U.S. decline relative to other powers in the world. It is now a highly indebted economy. Its economic power very largely centers on the power of its currency, which is effectively the, I mean, we live in a dollar standard economy the way the world wants you to live on. So, but yet that is very vulnerable. Whereas the, so that what you have is that in economic terms this is on the whole a declining power. China is on the other hand a rising power economically and most fundamentally it is the world's most productive economy. It's the most productive economy and it is the only truly organized economy so far as the great powers are concerned. So, and its military posture is of a very different kind. Where it has, it is increasingly matching and even in some areas exceeding the United States in technological power. At the same time its entire military structure is actually a defensive nature. So, you cannot outspend China, the United States has been actually undermining its own economy through all these wars that it has been fighting at a time when it's actually economically declining. So that very many of the internal crises of the United States in my view are connected precisely to the kind of disbalance in the United States where it is essentially a military industrial economy devoted very much to military at the expense of internet social development. China on the other hand has been able to create an admirable balance between the development of the economy for its own population as compared to the United States. You know, it is remarkable something like 90% of the Chinese population actually owns its own homes and by and large not a mortgage or anything like that. Whereas home ownership in the working class in the United States and not only the working class, military classes is declining and it has become in fact a source of household indebtedness which means that households cannot spend on other kinds of consumption the way they could if they were homeowners and so on and so forth. So that is one thing that you cannot. The other thing that is very important to understand in this is that, you know, the US through its belligerence has created a situation has forced China and Russia into a very close strategic partnership and between the great development of military technology in Russia and in China itself, the super solid field and so on. China has something like 165 supercomputers to America's 25. You know, so in the technological fields, the disbalances of a different order and thanks to this very great strategic relationship that that the Americans have actually imposed on on that, you have you have an interesting situation. China has a tremendous industrial base. Russia has a tremendous industrial base for military development for weapon systems and so on and so forth. At the same time, it has an enormous amount of oil. Now China does not want to become dependent on Russia for oil and therefore it is looking for all kinds of sources for petroleum and gas and so on including Saudi Arabia, Iran and other and so on. But there is that that the great weakness of China is actually resource scarcity in particularly energy but all other resources and that is the only strength the Americans have. The military strength in the South China Sea. That is a real threat to China and how that will shape up we shall see because that will also develop on the kind of alliances China versus the United States are able to create and how those other countries see their future and so on. The real weakness for China is really the American power in the South China Sea in which now Indians are trying trying to tag on to their industry. Let's just go into that a little bit because I agree with you that the vulnerability is in resources particularly energy resources. It's also clear that the United States strategy seems a little uneven because China continues to be the biggest trading partner of the United States. So you're going to war essentially with your major trading partner. This is quite different than the US USSR entanglement. It's quite different but what was very chilling to me just a few days ago was the defense minister in Japan Tara Kono made a statement saying that Japan is no longer interested in merely having a missile defense shield but Japan might want to produce weaponry or bi weaponry which gives it a first strike option first strike capability. We've seen aggressive moves from the United States. We've seen the Australians make some noises. This is the first that we've seen Japan be so clear about its ambitions for first strike. What's your thought about that? Japan was the great colonial power in the area and Korea, China were part of the empire or part of China's part of the empire. So the Southeast Asia this this was also what the Japanese thought of the co-prosperities here and so on. Behind that was a very powerful tradition of militaristic state militarism of very strong kind going back to their old traditional feudal past but right into the Second World War and so on. So there is that side of the ruling class in Japan which is not still yet for that time it used to be a great power in the area and now since with the rise of China so I'll come to that. The second thing I think one has to remember is that from being a great colonial power it became a it was it lost a war and the modern Japanese state is a result of that American defeat of Japan and occupation of Japan. Some of it still continues which whether or not Japanese call it occupation or not but the so so so there's that so I would say that Japan has always had ambivalent relationship with the with the United States. There throughout the period when the Soviet Union was still there Japan saw itself right next door to the Soviet Union saw itself as really being dependent of the United States for its defense architecture against the Soviet Union. Now you know different things happening on the one hand North Korean nuclear power is directed against the Americans Americans and that means American presence both in South Korea and in Japan Okinawa and all and North Koreans are threatening that if the Americans take any military action against them we shall retaliate against you know their retaliation will come in Japan and also North Korea. So first strike capability against who that is that is one question where does the threat a military threat of that kind come so they on the one hand have to resolve their relationship with the United States. Now the other thing that occurs to me is that there is a kind of a right wing patriotic sentiment in Japan which has been for a long time clamoring to rebuild its own independent military capability to build its own independent nuclear force etc etc in conjunction with the United States but so even now this defense minister and how they and so on what they're saying even now is in conjunction with the United States you know so on the other hand there is left liberal opinion in Japan which is opposed to this dependence in America all together. So I think this latest statement of rejecting that missile defense and wanting to build its own we have to see where it goes because the rejection of the missile defense may come about and the building of that capability may not come about so it actually makes Japan somewhat more independent of the United States because this business of that missile defense is something that is threatening both North Korea and and China and there must be some people in the strategic establishment in Japan who must be saying that why get deeper into this because this is actually what is posing the threat to us you know there must be some realism in some circles in Japan that your real threat is that because of your involvement with the American increasing you're making yourself more more vulnerable to North Korea and so on so we have to wait and see just where it goes in terms of Japan. How interesting that that's that is a very interesting analysis and I hope you'll come back and pick this particular point up. Ejaz Ahmed, thanks a lot.