Editor's Note: Ken Moak, who taught economic theory, public policy and globalization at the university level for 33 years, co-authored a book titled "China's Economic Rise and Its Global Impact" in 2015. The article reflects the author's opinion and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Policies based on manufactured facts seldom, if at all, turn out according to the perpetrators' expectations. U.S. foreign policies concerning China are a classic example, accusing the country of being “aggressive” in the South China Sea to garner public support to stifle or contain its rise. However, the attempts failed miserably.

For example, former U.S. President Barack Obama declared the “pivot” to Asia policy under the questionable accusation that China was “aggressively” claiming the South China Sea in 2012. The fact of the matter is China only claims the territory within the “Nine Dash Line,” which was drawn by the previous Nationalist government in 1947.

Fast forward to 2019, Trump's trade war against China is based on questionable information.

His accusation that Huawei equipment poses a national security threat was made under debatable assumptions about the company's founder being a former People's Liberation Army officer and the Chinese government issuing a law that asks technology firms to surrender their data to the government.

Like Obama's “pivot” to Asia policy, Trump's policies backfired, instead of winning the trade war. The U.S. economy is slowing down, farmers are in a financial bind, investment is falling – just to name a few negative impacts of the conflict. Trump's threats and warnings to allies about Huawei equipment also fell on deaf ears. Except for Australia and Japan, no other countries are excluding the Chinese company's products from their 5G rollout.

The major reason why the U.S. foreign policies failed is that they were made to justify problems that America created in the first place. For example, the loss of manufacturing jobs and factory closures were corporate America's decision to relocate manufacturing and automation overseas.

The U.S. was able to blame others for their mistakes because of an effective propaganda machine comprising of interest groups, the media, think tanks and politicians. Interest groups such as the military-industrial complex have made huge political donations to politicians. Once elected, those politicians pass laws in favor of the interest groups. The corporate-owned media then “spin” the polices to make them sound legitimate and lawful.

U.S. politicians create issues and blame victims

The U.S. has a history of creating an issue to provoke a response, then blame the “victim” for the loss of human lives and properties. For example, at its infant stage, European colonists and their descendants routinely killed Native Americans and stole their land. When the victims fought back, the media and politicians labeled them as “savages” to justify why the government committed genocide and banned survivors to properties that the European descendants didn't want.

Nothing seems to have changed since then. Many U.S. farmers, the very people whom Trump hurts with his misguided trade war, are supporting his policy. Trent Loos, an American pig and cattle farmer and official of an agricultural organization told Yahoo Finance in a May 20 report that China is to blame for American farmers' financial plight because the country cheated and did not live by World Trade Organization rules. He also parroted Trump's rhetoric that China's tit-for-tat tariffs on U.S. farm products were illegal, urging his fellow farmers to unite behind Trump against the “evil communist” Chinese.  

The U.S. propaganda machine skillfully and successfully used manufactured facts about the Asian giant's misdeeds as shown by Loos' less than truthful remarks. He clearly bought into the false rhetoric that China is to blame for all of America's economic ills.

Against this backdrop, China is right in developing policies that heighten its economic, technological and military prowess. For example, instituting the Made in China 2025 policy to make China a technology hub could deflect U.S. threats of not selling technology to China.

How China deals with hostile U.S. policies

It should be clear by now that there is nothing China can do to stop the U.S. government from passing laws and policies to stifle its rise, no matter how unfair these policies might be. Indeed, the only way China could weather U.S. hostilities is to continue to do what it is doing now.

For example, China put an enormous amount of capital and other resources to build a space program after the U.S. Congress barred it from participating in the International Space Station (ISS) project. Today, China is closing the gap with the U.S. on space technology, sending astronauts into space and building a space station.

The “U.S. threat” might be responsible for China's growing military prowess. Former President Bill Clinton's decision to send two aircraft carrier battle groups to the Taiwan Strait in 1996, the NATO's bombing campaign that hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and Obama's “pivot” to Asia in 2012 made Chinese leaders realize China's vulnerability and defense weaknesses, prompting the Chinese government to substantially increase spending on weapons development and production.

Today, China's weapons might be nearing parity with those of the U.S. in terms of advancement and lethality, forcing the U.S. to “think twice or many times” before launching an attack against it.

The same approach seems to be employed to defuse the adverse impact of Trump banning U.S. technology firms from doing business with Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese companies. The enterprises, together with the Chinese government, are accelerating research and development on making chips and other essential parts.

This way, not only would China be self-sufficient but could also pose a threat to the U.S. With over 6 million STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates each year, there are bound to be some outstanding ones that can design and develop new technology.

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