Xinhua's 'de-Americanized world' report worries the US

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-10-19

US president Barack Obama and China's president Xi Jinping shakes hands in
St. Petersburg during the G20 Leaders' Summit in September. (Photo/Xinhua)

Washington is said to have expressed its concerns that China is trying to establish a new world order after the state-run news agency Xinhua published a report on Oct. 14 to discuss a world without American influence, according to the Washington Post.

China is the largest holder of the US government debt with about US$1.3 trillion. In response to the current US government shutdown, the Xinhua reported that China and other nations should be ready for a "de-Americanized world". It added that default from the United States would have an adverse affect on China's assets and currency-issuing and cause exchange-rate fluctuations. "Under what is known as the Pax-Americana, we fail to see a world where the United States is helping to defuse violence and conflict, reduce poor and displaced population, and bring about real, lasting peace," the report said.

"Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power," continued the Xinhua article, "A self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies." Observers said that statements like this are sending a strong message to Washington that China is challenging the United States not only economically, but politically as well.

However, in an article titled Calm down, Washington: China doesn't really want to de-Americanize, written for the blog of Washington Post, foreign affairs blogger Max Fisher stated that Beijing has no true intention of challenging the United States because the Chinese currency is not able to replace its US counterpart yet. Fisher stressed that it is a big mistake for America to think that China has a goal to displace the United States as the global leader.

"China has shown little to no indication that it seriously wants to displace the United States as the global leader anytime soon or even that it believes it could do this, perhaps outside of a few hard-liners in the government," stated Fisher, "The fact that China is so rightly panicked about the possibility of a US default just goes to show that Beijing knows it is, and will long continue to be reliant on a US-dominated global order."

In the blog post, Fisher added that Beijing is more concerned about its internal issues than about its international standing. While indicating that someone at Xinhua may want China to replace the United States as the new global leading power, Fisher said that China's actual leaders want the US to stay at the top of the global order. It is the reason why China is betting huge amounts of the money on the future of the American economy.

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