The war that is coming

For Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), the scenario that the coronavirus is leaving in the European economies is one of an unusual war: buildings remain standing, no bombs are falling, nor are armies waging an internal struggle, although there are hundreds of thousands of deaths and a harmful paralysis of production. Lagarde calls it a new great recession "unprecedented" in geopolitics and geoeconomics touched since the last two years as a consequence of the raging confrontations between the United States and China.

From the trade scenario, with an escalation of tariffs raising the tone towards an old protectionism, the hegemonic fair between Washington and Beijing has touched other spheres: the Chinese annoyance over the military maneuvers of the American army in the South China Sea and what they diplomatically call "external interference" from Washington for its open support to Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The spirit of the arms race has been resurrected with China walking by leaps and bounds in its arms supremacy with 16 DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles with an approximate range of 15,000 kilometers; with full capacity to reach the heart of Washington and an arsenal of DF-17 hypersonic missiles, WZ-8 supersonic spies, underwater drones like the HSU-001 and JL-2 underwater ballistic missiles. From missiles, to drones, to touching the sphere of technology and multinationals with the American president, Donald Trump, sanctioning companies like Huawei.

Even at the height of the pandemic, tension between the two nations has not diminished: Recently, the government of Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that they will place Apple and Boeing on a "black list" in response to Trump's intention to ban the sale of chips to Huawei. There are literally no bombs, but in light of the facts there are decisions that explode like ever more intense flash-bangs, because even the attention against the global public health emergency does not hide the fundamental issue: the hegemonic dispute between the United States and China that opens a gap for a Cold War 2.0.

In that sense, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved an initiative to prohibit "Chinese companies from being listed on the stock markets and accessing capital markets" in the U.S. if they do not conform to the country's "regulatory standards" and " audits".

If the new criteria, which must be approved by the House of Representatives, are not fulfilled, any Chinese multinational will not be able to be listed on the Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the NYSE American, which would affect 165 companies from the Asian giant that are listed on the US stock markets with an approximate capitalization of 1.2 trillion dollars. The investment bank Reinassance Capital reports that from 2017 to 2019 a total of "65 Chinese companies have gone public in the United States", raising up to $10.4 billion in capitalization.

According to its promoter, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, the companies will need to certify "that they are not owned or controlled by a foreign government". "The Chinese Communist Party is cheating and the Foreign Companies Accountability Act would prevent them from cheating on the U.S. stock exchanges," the lawmaker said. In addition, the intention is to subject Chinese companies to an inspection by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which audits all U.S. companies "seeking to raise capital in the country's public markets. The approved initiative states that if "for any reason" the Board does not have access to the audits of a "foreign company for three years" they cannot be listed on any stock market in the United States.

In the last twenty-four months of struggles, controversies, tensions and threats between the United States and China, various American intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency, the CIA and the FBI have repeatedly maintained that the Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE are spying for their country's government and discouraging it from using all its mobile devices. This is, of course, ammunition used in the current hegemonic confrontation between two giants willing to drag the world into a new Cold War 2.0.