China needs to keep growth high enough to maintain social stability, but also must preserve external stability via the renminbi’s exchange rate. How China manages its currency during its economic policy shift could have important global consequences. China is not sovereign in its currency since it pegs to the dollar. Currency sovereignty requires floating the rate whereas as peg sets a fixed rate. This means that China domestic policy is constrained by have to manage the exchange rate...
Read More »Pepe Escobar — MAGA Misses the Eurasia Train
We should know by now that the heart of the 21stCentury Great Game is the myriad layers of the battle between the United States and the partnership of Russia and China. Even the U.S. National Defense Strategy says so: “The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by … revisionist powers.” The recently published assessment on U.S. defense implications of China’s global expansion says so too. The clash will frame the emergence...
Read More »Joseph Thomas — Is China Building a “Police State” or Countering Western-sponsored Terrorism?
Framing.NEOIs China Building a “Police State” or Countering Western-sponsored Terrorism? Joseph Thomas
Read More »The Fracturing of Globalization: Implications of Economic Resentments and Geopolitical Contradictions
The last forty years have witnessed a third wave of globalization which can be termed “neoliberal globalization”. Now, there are indications that the era of neoliberal globalization might be drawing to a close, as evidenced by the trade war between the US and China. This paper argues the fracturing of neoliberal globalization reflects the growing […]
Read More »Alastair Crooke — It’s Not Just A Trade War; And It’s Not Just China…
So, what is going on? Well, the US military complex is ‘for real’ on this. They are gearing-up for the coming military-standoff with China. The constant harking on themes that China is stealing America’s technology, its knowhow and its data – and now the barrage of allegations about China ‘hacking’ and (shades of the Russiagate) interfering in US elections, essentially (but not wholly) is about shaping a casus belli versus China. The rude fact is that the US military were shocked to find...
Read More »Christopher Black — CANADA’S PRIME MINISTER AND FOREIGN MINISTER TAKE CHINA HOSTAGE IN “RULES-BASED ORDER” PLOT
“It is clear the US is pushing the battle line to our door … We can completely regard the US arrest of Meng Wanzhou as a declaration of war against China.” So read an editorial in the Global Times of China on December 6, the day after Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese company Huawei was taken hostage by the Canadian and American governments on December 1. The daughter of the founder of China’s largest telecommunications company was arbitrarily arrested and detained by...
Read More »Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng — China’s Four Traps
An issue with this analysis as I see it is that it is based on a Western approach to economics and finance that is not applicable to China as a socialists country with its own development path. The first point they make is this: The first is the middle-income trap. With a per capitaannual income of around $9,000, China remains significantly below the threshold for high-income status, set at around $12,000-$13,000 by the World Bank. Only a few countries in history have managed this leap...
Read More »Andrew Korybko — China’s “Social Credit” System: Dystopia By Design Or Successful Social Engineering?
The game-changer, however, is that China’s “social credit” system will introduce so-called “algorithmic governance” that sees complex AI programs replacing human decision makers when it comes to enforcing the country’s socio-legal standards. This necessitates that that the government eventually obtains full video and digital control over every aspect of the country and integrates these two systems into a holistic one that also doles out the privileges and penalties associated with citizen...
Read More »Dennis Etler — No, Xi’s China Is Not In Jeopardy! How Western Press Gets It All Wrong
George Magnus, the brunt of the post, is an ideologue. This would not be worth posting if it were not also the Western consensus view that missed the mark on China all along owing to assumptions that are wide of the mark — wrong model. Fort Russ NewsNo, Xi’s China Is Not In Jeopardy! How Western Press Gets It All Wrong Dennis Etler
Read More »Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
Book Review Adam Tooze. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Viking. New York. 2018 The global economic crisis is now more than a decade old, and is far from definitively behind us. Indeed, many fear, with good reason, that the recent, uneven and lethargic global recovery may soon come to an end, and that the next crisis of global capitalism could be even worse than that of 2008. The financial crisis and resulting crisis of the real global economy triggered by the...
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