Thursday, January 24, 2019

Soros Agrees With Trump: China Is A "Mortal Danger" And US Must "Crack Down"

One year after bashing cryptocurrencies, and lashing out at Facebook and Google at the 2018 Davos conference, warning the two companies are a "Menace" and "Monopolistic" and predicting it's "Only a matter of time before the global dominance of the US IT monopolies is broken," moments ago during his much-anticipated speech at this year's Davos event, Soros took aim at an even greater adversary, one which even Donald Trump might agree with: China.

While Soros' ideological critics may have a chuckle at the irony that the billionaire supporter of Hillary Clinton is the one warning about Orwellian control, we would not be surprised if even president Trump found himself agreeing when Soros said today that he wants "To call attention to the mortal danger facing open societies from the instruments of control that machine learning and artificial intelligence can put in the hands of repressive regimes. I'll focus on China, where Xi Jinping wants a one-party state to reign supreme."

Soros then goes on in great detail to explain why his previous efforts to establish an "Open Society" in China were met with abject failure.

Most importantly, the US government has now identified China as a "Strategic rival." President Trump is notoriously unpredictable, but this decision was the result of a carefully prepared plan.

The policy was outlined in a seminal speech by Vice President Mike Pence on October 4th. Of course, Soros finds Trump's "Brute force" response not sophisticated enough, and adds that "Simply declaring China a strategic rival is too simplistic. China is an important global actor. An effective policy towards China can't be reduced to a slogan."

Soros also notes that China is clearly aware, and Xi Jinping fully understood "The threat that the new US policy posed for his leadership. He gambled on a personal meeting with President Trump at the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires. In the meantime, the danger of global trade war escalated and the stock market embarked on a serious sell-off in December. This created problems for Trump who had concentrated all his efforts on the 2018 midterm elections. When Trump and Xi met, both sides were eager for a deal. No wonder that they reached one, but it's very inconclusive: a ninety-day truce."

Here, something fascinating: instead of praising Trump for being the one leader who has dared to challenge the US-China status quo more than any other president in history, Soros attacks Trump, saying that "Regrettably" the US President "Seems to be following a different course: make concessions to China and declare victory while renewing his attacks on US allies. This is liable to undermine the US policy objective of curbing China's abuses and excesses."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-24/soros-agrees-trump-china-unprecedented-danger-and-us-must-crack-down

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