Ten years ago, the world America made collapsed when Lehman Brothers bank imploded, the US-led global financial system went into meltdown, stock markets plummeted and everybody freaked out.
Stock markets always bounce back. Indeed, Wall Street is now thriving again, as President Donald Trump never stops reminding us. But America’s confidence has never fully recovered from the great crash of 2008. Its belief in liberal capitalism as the engine of human progress has been undermined.
Also lost was its sense of itself as the pre-eminent nation. Americans have had to accept, grudgingly, that now China rules the world.
Do the math, as they say. Even before the crash, China had overtaken America as the world’s leading manufacturer. But after 2008, China’s emergence as the biggest economic superpower accelerated as America reeled.
Wall Street is now thriving again, as President Donald Trump never stops reminding us. But America’s confidence has never fully recovered from the great crash of 2008
Even by 2010 it was doing more global trade than America, and the gap has grown. Last year its trade with the rest of the world was US$390 billion (£298 billion) more than the US. It was China, not America, that effectively saved the West in the post-crash years by investing eye-watering sums into the world’s economy. The China Investment Corporation, its sovereign wealth fund, now owns some $941 billion in assets, many of them in the US.
A major symbolic moment came in 2014, when the International Monetary Fund announced that, measured by purchasing power, China was the world’s biggest economy: China is the world’s biggest consumer of cars, telephones, and oil. It doesn’t just make iPhones, it buys more of them than anyone else; two million more, in fact, than North America.
And don’t forget that India, the world’s second-most populous country after China, has continued its own messy ascent. It is now the world’s third economy, according to purchasing power.
This process of ‘Easternisation’ – of power shifting towards Asia – has accelerated in the past decade. It’s not all economic power, either: China now spends more on its military than most European countries put together.
Also lost was its sense of itself as the pre-eminent nation. Americans have had to accept, grudgingly, that now China rules the world
A lot has been written about how the economic misery of the late 2000s has fuelled resentment towards the elites and the rise of political populism of the 2010s. That’s all true. Certainly, without the crash, we never would have had Donald Trump. What’s less noted is how obsessed Trump is with China and how crucial that was to his political success.
One of the funnier comedy Trump videos on YouTube is a montage, made before he became president, of all the times Trump said China. It’s about three minutes long and is mesmerisingly hilarious. As a candidate, he talked about China ‘raping’ America. Funnily enough, that was exactly what Americans wanted to hear.
For millions of them, whose jobs had been outsourced to Asia in the past two decades and who had had to go through the economic crisis, that’s exactly how they felt. America is going to the dogs. China is top dog. Trump’s slogan – Make America Great Again – spoke directly to that anxiety.
As president, Trump has been tougher on China than his predecessors. Obama tried to tackle the rise of China with his so-called ‘Asian pivot’. This involved shifting America’s strategic focus away from the Atlantic, Europe and the Middle East, and towards the Pacific – South East Asia, Japan and, of course, China. Trump has the same approach – as seen on his long tour of Asia last year – only he’s much more aggressive. Hence the looming trade war between West and East.
Trump rejects what he calls (in capital letters) STUPID TRADE with China. On Friday, he rebuked the Wall Street Journal for an article saying that his administration was caving in to China on trade: ‘We are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us. Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing. We will soon be taking in Billions in Tariffs & making products at home.’ Of course, lots of experts say this is economic suicide: ‘Trumponomics’ is protectionism and will destroy America’s ability to innovate and create endless wealth. Trump doesn’t care. The point is, in his head, America has been losing and China has been winning.
He’s not wrong. China, for its part, has been keen to emphasise its ‘peaceful rise’.
But the relative peace that we’ve all enjoyed has been predicated on America’s unquestioned supremacy, and that is now under threat.
China is tactful in its dealing with the West, but its ambitions are vast and overpowering.
The Belt and Road Initiative, China’s enormous development project, is a jaw-droppingly audacious plan to expand Beijing’s influence and reach by recreating the Silk Road trade route for the 21st Century. In what is said to be the biggest infrastructure project in human history, Beijing is underwriting vast construction projects in more than 60 countries across Asia and Africa and into Europe.
It’ll cost about $8 trillion and include roads in Kazakhstan, ports in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, an industrial park for high-tech business in Belarus, energy projects and pipelines through Central Asia and railways in Iran and East Africa and much, much more.
Beijing has even announced plans for a Polar Silk Road, which aims to build infrastructure for shipping routes across the Arctic.
The extraordinary China- Pakistan Friendship Tunnels are just one example. They are about much more than warm feeling.
Punching huge holes through the mountain ranges that separate the two states, the tunnels and the China-backed renovation of the Karakoram Highway, will allow juggernaut-loads of Chinese goods to rumble straight down to Karachi in the south of Pakistan, then on by sea to the rich markets of the Gulf.
This expansion may be a soft kind of imperialism, but it is imperialism. Just look at what China has done in Africa. In 2014, the US pledged to invest $14 billion in Africa over the next decade; China promised $175 billion, dwarfing America’s interests. The ambition is to turn 21st Century Africa into what Asia was for the 20th Century – the factory of the world.
America can console itself – as the British Government does – that China’s overseas investments will make poor countries richer and transform global trade for the good of all.
But there’s no denying the sheer scale of China’s reach is alarming.
Can the world avoid what American scholars call the ‘Thucydides Trap’ – the rule that one superpower cannot replace another without war?
China presents a gentle face to the world, but it is also highly secretive – and ruthless.
It has started to militarise parts of the Belt and Road Project, in Pakistan for instance.
In addition, China now specialises in ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, whereby it makes a country economically dependent on its vast investments, and then starts to demand control. Last year, Sri Lanka was forced to give its largest port, Hambantota, to China after its debts to Chinese companies spiralled out of control.
In the Congo, China has provided billions in aid, but has now taken control of the country’s cobalt mines, crucial for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles.
In Zambia, Beijing has seized control of the country’s largest energy provider. China has also bailed out the company that supplies 90 per cent of South Africa’s electricity to the tune of $2.5 billion, leading to fears about who’ll run it in future.
But that would not be good news for anyone, least of all because China could begin to use its new-found might to ensure that others felt the pain.
President Xi Jinping, who has made himself ruler for life, is growing his military at great speed.
China’s defence spending is reportedly doubling, up from $123 billion in 2010 to $233 billion to 2020. The American military spends more than twice that, and its armed forces are still vastly superior to China’s. But for how long?
Maybe Trump isn’t as stupid as he seems – and maybe his supporters aren’t as stupid as smug liberals assume.
Forty per cent of Americans never leave their country, but they can see how it is being eclipsed by China. And US voters know that China doesn’t play by the rules on free trade: it fiercely protects its own economy through tariffs and massive subsidies.
Trump says that trade wars are ‘good, and easy to win’ – but even he, deep down, must know that is not quite true, which is why he is careful to always mix his tough talk about trade with China with warm words about President Xi.
China holds some $1 trillion in American debt, and it could, in theory, hold the global economy to ransom with the threat of selling its US treasury holdings.
Superpowers are always worried about losing their status. We Brits were obsessed with it in the 19th Century and Americans have been preoccupied with their own decline since at least the 1950s. It’s the paranoia that comes with great power.
The trouble is, ten years on from the crash, there is much to fear.
Link hienalouca.comhttps://hienalouca.com/2018/09/16/ten-years-after-the-crash-the-us-economy-has-bounced-back-but-its-self-confidence-hasnt/
Main photo article Ten years ago, the world America made collapsed when Lehman Brothers bank imploded, the US-led global financial system went into meltdown, stock markets plummeted and everybody freaked out.
Stock markets always bounce back. Indeed, Wall Street is now thriving again, as President Donald Trump...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/09/16/00/5038DF0F00000578-6172347-image-a-53_1537053417466.jpg
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