DRIVE TO TOPPLE DOLLAR AS WORLD’S N01 CURRENCY

KEY TO the CCP’s ambitious strategy for global economic domination is the push for China’s currency, the renminbi or RMB, to become the foremost world currency, replacing the U.S. dollar.

But financial markets know that China’s financial system is not robust, and that the government manipulates it, which creates distrust.

So rather than liberalise its markets, Beijing has embarked on a campaign to influence key decision-makers abroad in favour of the RMB.

A leading figure here is Labour peer Lord Davidson of Glen Clova. He has been Beijing’s most effective advocate for the internationalisation of the RMB, speaking in the House of Lords and writing opinion pieces urging the Treasury to open itself up to the RMB.

In 2014, he berated the Treasury for its timidity in failing to include the RMB in the UK’s foreign currency reserves; he wanted to make London the major offshore centre for China’s foreign currency.

His wish came true in 2018 when London accounted for 37 per cent of all RMB transactions outside China, the largest of any overseas financial centre.

Davidson is a well-known friend of China. When in 2013 he participated in a human rights forum in Beijing, a leading German human rights lawyer described him as the ‘most vocal human rights relativist at the forum’.

In 2014 Davidson travelled to Lhasa for a ‘Development Forum’, where, breaking with Labour Party policy, he condemned the Dalai Lama and praised the CCP government for bringing social harmony and happiness to Tibet.

In 2018, he suggested in the House of Lords that it was more important for the British government to strike a postBrexit free trade deal with China than to indulge in ‘bellicosity’ by sending a Royal Navy ship to the South China Sea.

Predictably, Davidson is a fellow of the 48 Group Club. He’s also well connected in the United States. When he travelled to Beijing in 2018, his expenses were paid by the Berggruen Institute, a California-based think tank.

Leica, spooked by patriotic netizens, immediately distanced itself from its own advertisement referencing the ‘ Tank Man’ of Tiananmen Square fame.

Hotel group Marriott International fired a junior employee who ‘liked’ a Twitter post supporting Tibetan autonomy, and it changed the name of Taiwan to ‘ Taiwan, China’ when Beijing expressed annoyance.

In Stockholm, the Sheraton Hotel, a Marriott subsidiary, banned the local Taiwan office from celebrating Taiwan’s national day at the hotel.

Perhaps the most prominent spot in the corporate hall of shame belongs to Apple. After challenging the U.S. government in court when the FBI wanted access to Apple users’ data, the corporation moved their Chinese iCloud storage operation for Chinese users to a Chinese state-run company.

Apple, whose iPhones are assembled in China, also came under fire for deleting an app that allowed Hong Kong people to avoid street clashes with the police. It acted a day after China’s state media accused it of protecting ‘rioters’.

Soon after, Apple CEO Tim Cook was appointed to chair a business school advisory board at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

To ingratiate themselves, German car manufacturers self-censor their comments on China. In an interview with the BBC, the chairman of Volkswagen denied any knowledge of the concentration camps in Xinjiang, where a million Uyghurs, China’s Muslim minority, are detained for so- called ‘re- education’. He said he was ‘extremely proud’ of the company’s activities in the region.

Mercedes-Benz was quick to apologise after using an innocuous quote from the Dalai Lama in one of its Instagram ads (which was blocked in China anyway).

Audi promptly and ‘sincerely’ apologised for using an ‘incorrect’ map of China (one that did not include Taiwan as part of China) during one of its press conferences in Germany.

The German industrial conglomerate Siemens has also tried hard to curry favour with Beijing, signing agreements with ten Chinese partners. Asked to comment on the Hong Kong protests, its CEO Joe Kaeser argued that Germany should ‘balance’ its values and its interest: ‘When jobs in Germany depend on how we deal with sensitive topics, one should not add to the general outrage but carefully consider all positions and measures in all their aspects.’

In other words, the government should stop criticising China’s human rights violations and focus solely on business interests.

ADAPTED from Hidden Hand: Exposing How The Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping The World by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, to be published by Oneworld on July 16 at £20. Copyright © 2020 Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg.