In recent years, the United States has withdrawn from numerous international agreements, opting to establish its own economic sphere of influence.
In this anti-globalization move, the most evident action has been to exert pressure and restrictions on China, which has significantly impacted China's economic stability and development.
However, China's recent series of actions have illustrated that the United States has inadvertently harmed itself.
01. Cancellation of New Flights
Since the end of last year, our country has adjusted its pandemic prevention and control policies, presenting a newly reopened China with a fresh demeanor to the world.
Coinciding with this period, due to inflation in European and American countries, followed by continuous interest rate hikes, the economies of Western nations have become increasingly sluggish.
As a result, China has emerged as a much-needed economic driving force for the global community.
Especially after February of this year, China resumed overseas tourism in two batches, allowing many countries to witness the spending power brought by Chinese tourists.
However, at this crucial moment, the three major Chinese airlines have retracted their previous plans, canceling the expansion of direct flights between China and the United States, delivering a blow to the United States, which was eagerly awaiting Chinese tourists.
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Among these changes, Southern Airlines has seen the most significant alteration, currently operating only two flights per week to Los Angeles and one flight per week to New York.China Eastern Airlines' direct flights have also been reduced from the original plan of two flights per week to the current one flight per week.
Xiamen Airlines, on the other hand, only operates two direct flights per week and has explicitly refused to add new flights.
Due to the inflation in the United States, prices are continuously rising. For the average American family, they have to bear the increase in the prices of daily consumer goods while also facing the increasing pressure of mortgage repayments. This leads to a decreasing consumption capacity in the United States. In this situation, there is naturally a desire for China to increase flights to the U.S., bringing more tourists and stronger purchasing power.
Now, the three major airlines have simultaneously withdrawn their plans to increase flights, which could be considered one of the countermeasures.
02, Selling U.S. Treasury Bonds
Of course, for China, the most explicit countermeasure is to de-dollarize, which means continuously selling U.S. Treasury bonds.
Once, due to China's huge trade surplus with the United States, our foreign exchange assets were mainly in U.S. dollars, so in the past, we exchanged our U.S. dollars for U.S. Treasury bonds issued by the U.S.
In 2013, it was the year when our country's total foreign exchange reserves were the highest, and also the year when we held the most U.S. Treasury bonds, with holdings exceeding 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars.
But after that, our country began to consciously sell U.S. Treasury bonds, and by the end of 2021, the remaining amount was 1.08 trillion U.S. dollars, with a reduction of more than 200 billion U.S. dollars during this period.
However, the reduction over the past eight years is only equivalent to the amount of reduction in the past year since 2022. Currently, the balance of U.S. Treasury bonds held by our country is less than 860 billion U.S. dollars. It is clear that China is accelerating the clearance of U.S. Treasury bonds.Now, de-dollarization has become a global consensus, only in this way can we avoid the United States taking advantage of such opportunities to continuously harvest wealth.
Whether it is China's countermeasures or other countries' countermeasures against the United States, the root cause lies in the United States.
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