Railing about the dishonesty and deceptions of the New York Times is a recurring theme of this blog, but today we’re going to celebrate a legacy journalist at the publication whose latest story should be dominating the presidential news coverage. His name is Keith Bradsher, an old white guy who has covered business and economics for more than three decades and has been based in China for many years. My father always insisted that there is no substitute for experience, and Bradsher’s story about China’s successful efforts to steamroll America and become the world’s technology leader is a case in point.
Bradsher’s eye-opening story should give Americans who are still capable of critical thought and deductive reasoning really bad nightmares, leaving them sleep deprived for weeks on end.
First a little background, or “context” as Bradsher’s lesser narrative spewing, politically driven colleagues like to say.
China’s Xi Jinping wants his country to dominate the world by mid-century. That’s not right-wing conspiracy talk but rather straight from the communist leader’s mouth. Read his lips: At the opening of the Communist Party congress in 2022, Xi repeated his goal is to make China a modern socialist power by 2035, boosting per capita income to middle-income levels and modernizing the armed forces. By 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, Xi wants to ensure his nation “leads the world in terms of composite national strength and international influence.”
“It requires a degree of willful ignorance not to ask whether China is in fact seeking (or will inevitably seek) to establish itself as the world’s leading power and how it might go about achieving that goal,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s National Security Advisor, warned in a Foreign Affairs commentary he co-authored two years ago.
It’s heartening that at least one Biden administration official understands China’s global domination ambitions, but neither Biden, Donald Trump, nor Kamala Harris have a clue on how to address it. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz definitely understands China’s capabilities, as he has visited the country at least 30 times, an abnormal connection that has sparked some concerns raised in this Breitbart article by Seamus Bruner, head of research at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI).
“No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again…it was an excellent experience,” Walz said upon his return from the first of dozens of trips there. Walz claims that his Chinese hosts lavished him with “more gifts than I could bring home.”
The corporate media ignores the GAI’s findings and warnings, despite the organization’s Oxford-educated founder, Peter Schweizer, writing six New York Times bestselling books including, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged in court filings this week that Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was involved in influence peddling overseas, confirming Schweizer’s reporting in his 2018 book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.
Why and how China achieved its EV dominance is impressive. In the mid-1990s, China concluded that it could never compete with the major German, Japanese, and even U.S. automakers whose vehicles were more coveted in China than the garbage the country’s domestic automakers were producing. GM once enjoyed a 15 percent market share in China, and made more money selling vehicles in that country than it did in the U.S.
China, one of the world’s biggest polluters and still the undisputed leader in new coal power production, saw an opportunity to corner the market on electric vehicles. China tapped an experienced and accomplished Audi executive to oversee its EV transition and had the foresight to gain control of the materials required to build and power electric vehicles. Among those who abetted China’s EV ambitions was Hunter Biden, which the New York Times reported on and duly noted the convicted felon’s questionable participation.
China knew that its citizens had a negative perception of the country’s domestic gas engine manufacturers, and it demanded that EVs sold in the country were of the highest quality standards. Indeed, Tesla years ago was forced to publicly apologize for selling defective vehicles and disregarding the concerns of Chinese buyers.
China’s EV manufacturers can already build better battery-powered vehicles for considerably less than GM and Ford, which still lose money on the EVs they produce, even when they are manufactured in Mexico. But as Bradsher, the New York Times reporter notes, China’s communist government isn’t resting on its laurels.
China’s spending on research and development has surged, tripling in the past decade and moving China into second place after the United States. Researchers in China lead the world in publishing widely cited papers in 52 of 64 critical technologies, according to calculations Bradsher cited by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The United States still leads China in overall research spending, in terms of dollars spent and in terms of the share of each country’s economy. Research and development represented 3.4 percent of the American economy last year after several years of increases, while China’s is at 2.6 percent and rising. The differential isn’t as significant as it seems because China is a meritocracy and America’s R&D spending is influenced by diversity and other factors that don’t ensure the best and brightest researchers get the financing they require.
Bradsher reports that China’s lead is particularly wide in batteries. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 65.5 percent of widely cited technical papers on battery technology come from researchers in China, compared with 12 percent from the United States. The world’s two largest makers of electric car batteries, CATL and BYD, are Chinese. Ford’s Michigan battery plant under construction will utilize CATL’s technology.
Bradsher reports that China has close to 50 graduate programs that focus on either battery chemistry or the closely related subject of battery metallurgy. By contrast, only a handful of professors in the United States are working on batteries.
China has already cleaned America’s clock on the manufacturing front. Manufacturing comprises 28 percent of China’s economy, compared with 11 percent in the United States. The country’s communist government hopes investments in scientific education and research will translate into efficiency gains that will improve China’s economy.
“If you have a large manufacturing sector,” Liu Qiao, the dean of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, told Bradsher, “it’s easy to improve productivity levels.”
China’s communist government puts the Biden Administration to shame. Any electric vehicle sold in China must be manufactured in China using Chinese suppliers and parts. By comparison, the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act provides lucrative tax rebates for electric vehicles manufactured in Mexico and sold in the U.S.
Not surprisingly, GM builds its EV Blazer and Equinox vehicles in Mexico, where it is that country’s biggest vehicle manufacturer. GM also will build its EV Cadillac Optiq in Mexico. Ford proudly builds its electric Mustang in Mexico, where the company has the biggest engineering and design center in Latin America.
While China’s EV manufacturers and Tesla invest heavily in AI, GM CEO Mary Barra earmarked $16 billion on share buybacks that bolstered the value of GM’s stock, which is a major component of her compensation.
Biden has imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, even if they are made in Mexico. Trump has said he would do the same. The Biden administration hasn’t imposed tariffs on the EVs or gas engine vehicles GM and Ford manufacture in Mexico; Trump hasn’t said if he will also allow the two Michigan-based automakers to continue enjoying their advantages.
Automotive tariffs benefit Barra and Ford CEO Jim Farley, who both received more than $27 million for their mediocre 2023 performances. U.S. consumers will have to pay more for their vehicles, fueling inflation and subsidizing Barra’s and Farley’s obscene compensations.
America has lost its global leadership edge, and while tariffs might prevent Americans from buying China’s better made and lower cost EVs, much of the developing world will likely embrace them. The justification for the tariffs is that China’s EV manufacturers are heavily subsidized, but it’s not clear any more so than GM and Ford, particularly their EV operations.
GM and Ford have received billions in tax subsidies, particularly for their EV investments. As I’ve previously written, Ford received a $9.2 billion below-market government loan to cover the cost of most of its EV investments and GM has long ranked among America’s biggest corporate moochers. The president of BYD Europe said earlier this year the company’s better management, not subsidies, are responsible for its success.
That claim has considerable merit, and yet America’s corporate media prefers to focus its presidential media coverage on sideshow issues such as Harris’s racial identity and Trump’s criminal conviction, which most Americans believe was politically motivated.
The biggest threat to America is China, and neither Trump nor Harris have a clue, let alone a plan, on how to counter it.