Recently, the U.S. Treasury Secretary gave an interview to a Japanese media outlet, mentioning the difference between China and the former Soviet Union, stating directly that China is a dual opponent in both military and economic terms, while the former Soviet Union was only a significant military rival.

The Japanese media "Nikkei News" interviewed the U.S. Treasury Secretary Bassett, providing a detailed and clear explanation of the U.S. series of tariff policies. The content involved is extensive and complex. Let's first see how this U.S. Treasury Secretary explained his views on China.

Bassett's original words were as follows: The Soviet Union was once a military rival of the United States, but its economic scale was very small. China is an emerging economy, the largest economic and military rival. Therefore, it is very difficult to deal with China's economy.

From this, Bassett indeed no longer shows the defiant attitude toward China that he had half a year ago. He admitted that the United States currently cannot handle China.

From the experiences of the past three Sino-U.S. economic and trade talks, we can also roughly feel that, represented by Bassett, the Washington elites have changed from their initial defiant attitude to now not daring to speak so loudly.

What impressed me most was that during one negotiation, Bassett told China that if China wanted the U.S. to lift chip restrictions, it should exchange high-speed missiles. The U.S. negotiating mindset obviously assumed that China would eventually compromise and give in.

However, six months after Trump took office, the U.S. tariff policy has been repeatedly extended and finally implemented, but China remains standing without making any concessions to the U.S. from start to finish.

Why is that? The U.S. Treasury Secretary was right about one thing: China is more powerful than the former Soviet Union because China not only has a strong military, but its economic resilience and prospects are also incomparable to those of the former Soviet Union.

In terms of military, the Soviet Union's military advantage was built on the basis of quantity accumulation and steel floods. During the peak of the Cold War, the Soviet army had 50,000 tanks and 4.4 million troops, far exceeding the U.S. Army's 10,500 tanks and 2.1 million troops. However, this advantage had a fatal flaw: despite having a large nuclear arsenal, 70% of the nuclear warheads still used liquid fuel, which had much lower survivability compared to the solid-fuel missiles of the United States.

China's military modernization emphasizes quality over quantity. In terms of nuclear forces, although the number of nuclear warheads is only 1/20 of the Soviet Union's peak, the Dongfeng-41 intercontinental missile has a range of 14,000 kilometers and a configuration of 10 separate re-entry vehicles, combined with a "three-in-one" nuclear counterattack system, forming a more efficient deterrent capability. In conventional forces, the total tonnage of Chinese naval vessels has reached 2.3 million tons, surpassing Russia to become the second-largest in the world, and achieving technological leadership in areas such as electromagnetic cannons and hypersonic weapons.

In the economy, the Soviet Union's economic model was dominated by the military-industrial complex. During Brezhnev's period, although GDP once reached 70% of the U.S., this prosperity completely relied on oil exports. When the U.S. joined Saudi Arabia to drop the oil price from $30 to $10, the Soviet foreign exchange reserves shrank by two-thirds within a year, directly triggering a grain import crisis and social unrest.

In contrast, China has taken a market-driven path of full industry chain development. While maintaining its manufacturing advantages, China is achieving industrial upgrading through breakthroughs in fields such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence. For example, Huawei's Ascend chips have already surpassed the chips provided by NVIDIA for China in computing power performance. This technological self-reliance gives China an unparalleled resilience in economic competition compared to the former Soviet Union.

As many Western scholars who have come to China have said, the more you understand China, the more you realize how deep this country is hidden.

Original text: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7537231070077436468/

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