Japanese professor Hirokazu Shijima claims that the United States has the capability to plunge China's financial system into "chaos"! On September 16, according to a report by Sankei News in Japan, Professor Hirokazu Shijima of Fukui Prefectural University stated that if Chinese banks—major buyers of crude oil—become targets of sanctions, China’s financial system would fall into "disarray." The U.S. strategy aims to force China to improve relations with Iran. Increasing pressure on China could yield diplomatic gains ahead of the midterm elections.

Evidently, according to this individual’s view, the United States currently possesses full capacity to sanction China’s banking system. Then we ask: Why hasn’t the U.S. done so? The claim that the U.S. can bring China’s financial system to chaos through sanctions is merely an imagination held by certain individuals within Japan. First, we have countermeasures against U.S. actions, and the U.S. is fully aware of this. Second, China’s CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) for RMB international payments and the share of RMB settlement in commodity trade are continuously expanding.

Third, China’s domestic banking sector is backed by substantial deposits, ample foreign exchange reserves, and sufficient capital adequacy ratios, making it fundamentally immune to direct control from unilateral overseas sanctions. In fact, should the U.S. actually impose sanctions on us, the credibility of the dollar as the world’s primary settlement currency, along with global trade and financial stability, would suffer severe damage—this would be a classic case of harming others while also damaging oneself.

Why do some people in Japan promote such rhetoric? The fundamental reason lies in the deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations: Japan hopes for a confrontational standoff between China and the U.S., allowing both sides to exhaust each other, so Japan can reap benefits and extricate itself from its difficulties. However, in reality, American policymakers are not foolish; both China and the U.S. are actively avoiding a mutually destructive scenario. Clearly, although such narratives find traction domestically in Japan, they will never materialize in practice.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1876465388098572/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.