In fact, the “China overcapacity” narrative was already manufactured during the Biden administration by Washington think tanks and the White House. I still remember it was Janet Yellen who even traveled to China to pressure Beijing to reduce exports and control industrial capacity.
So MOFCOM’s public counterattack today is actually very late. It allowed this narrative to travel so widely and so long.
But this is often how the Chinese government works. It leaves room first. It avoids escalating too early. It waits until the other side has fully exposed its intention. Only when the West begins to use the overcapacity accusation at scale to justify unfair trade measures does Beijing formally respond.
That is why this position paper and press conference matter. They are not just explanations. They are a signal.
The next stage is no longer defense. It is counterattack.
The EU is particularly fanatical about green malthusian ideology, if the politicization of air conditionion during their recent heat waves, or the restrictions placed on farmers (which caused huge farmers’ protests in 2023) are anything to go by.
I think this complaint about industrial “overcapacity”, while it has an overt geopolitical intention to try to get China to stymy its own productivity, and induce a recession to weaken China and the BRI schema, more importantly has a more deeply rooted malthusian intention to prevent China from having the industrial, technical, and scientific capacity to develop the Global South, and perpetuate, or accelerate the immiseration of the global majority, even to the point of inducing a genocide, because the industrial, agricultural, technological, and scientific inputs that allow the current level of human population would be destroyed if China were compelled to deindustrialize like the West.
Furthermore the underlying purpose of that false narrative is not economic. In fact I believe it came out after the Rand Corp analysis that pointed out that the US and its vassals did not actually have a sufficient industrial base to succesfully prosecute a war against China.
So it is "overcapacity" as in China actually can make things to defend and supply itself with necessary basics in a crisis - the western colonial alliance lacks it and needs to build it up.
It's the same story with so-called critical minerals, which although first claimed to be about transitioning to a net zero economy, turned out to be a US energy department list of minerals needed for "national security" aka warmaking. These critical minerals include even coal, just to underline how little this has to do with clean energy. But more than that they are war minerals really.
The media is very shallow and they analyse nothing. The NGOs and the US govt says "critical minerals", implies it is for sustainability, and the media just parrot it endlessly without even showing the full list, let alone assessing what it is and what it is actually for.
China no need to be so courteous with them now that they mismanaged and misgoverned their own countries, caught up in a stupid war, got their own lifeline Nordstream gas pipeline of cheap gas destroyed by themselves. And now they blame China? With their current situation, not just they have nothing to sell that China wants; in fact it is the entire world that can do without their products.
Chinese institutions could also weigh in on these issues and not leave it to the IMF, OECD, Petersen Institute etc to have the last word on this matter.
It's the standard American attack line...come up with something wild to confuse coherent response, flood the zone with stupidities, force a response in line with the stupidities instead of reality. China didn't take the bait.
In fact, the “China overcapacity” narrative was already manufactured during the Biden administration by Washington think tanks and the White House. I still remember it was Janet Yellen who even traveled to China to pressure Beijing to reduce exports and control industrial capacity.
So MOFCOM’s public counterattack today is actually very late. It allowed this narrative to travel so widely and so long.
But this is often how the Chinese government works. It leaves room first. It avoids escalating too early. It waits until the other side has fully exposed its intention. Only when the West begins to use the overcapacity accusation at scale to justify unfair trade measures does Beijing formally respond.
That is why this position paper and press conference matter. They are not just explanations. They are a signal.
The next stage is no longer defense. It is counterattack.
it is, just it has recently been used again in EU
The EU is particularly fanatical about green malthusian ideology, if the politicization of air conditionion during their recent heat waves, or the restrictions placed on farmers (which caused huge farmers’ protests in 2023) are anything to go by.
I think this complaint about industrial “overcapacity”, while it has an overt geopolitical intention to try to get China to stymy its own productivity, and induce a recession to weaken China and the BRI schema, more importantly has a more deeply rooted malthusian intention to prevent China from having the industrial, technical, and scientific capacity to develop the Global South, and perpetuate, or accelerate the immiseration of the global majority, even to the point of inducing a genocide, because the industrial, agricultural, technological, and scientific inputs that allow the current level of human population would be destroyed if China were compelled to deindustrialize like the West.
Furthermore the underlying purpose of that false narrative is not economic. In fact I believe it came out after the Rand Corp analysis that pointed out that the US and its vassals did not actually have a sufficient industrial base to succesfully prosecute a war against China.
So it is "overcapacity" as in China actually can make things to defend and supply itself with necessary basics in a crisis - the western colonial alliance lacks it and needs to build it up.
It's the same story with so-called critical minerals, which although first claimed to be about transitioning to a net zero economy, turned out to be a US energy department list of minerals needed for "national security" aka warmaking. These critical minerals include even coal, just to underline how little this has to do with clean energy. But more than that they are war minerals really.
https://theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com/2025/08/28/critical-minerals-the-silent-tell-of-a-war-economy/
The media is very shallow and they analyse nothing. The NGOs and the US govt says "critical minerals", implies it is for sustainability, and the media just parrot it endlessly without even showing the full list, let alone assessing what it is and what it is actually for.
China no need to be so courteous with them now that they mismanaged and misgoverned their own countries, caught up in a stupid war, got their own lifeline Nordstream gas pipeline of cheap gas destroyed by themselves. And now they blame China? With their current situation, not just they have nothing to sell that China wants; in fact it is the entire world that can do without their products.
Chinese institutions could also weigh in on these issues and not leave it to the IMF, OECD, Petersen Institute etc to have the last word on this matter.
It's the standard American attack line...come up with something wild to confuse coherent response, flood the zone with stupidities, force a response in line with the stupidities instead of reality. China didn't take the bait.