The day China consumes more, relies less on exports, and accumulates far fewer dollars as a result can't come soon enough. There's a certain mutually-assured-destruction quality to our current relationship--Larry Summers calls it the "balance of financial terror"--in which one false move by either side could bring down both economies, and probably the entire global financial system, too. This makes dialogue a necessity. But what it really does is make you pine for a way back from the edge.
As The Atlantic's James Fallows has pointed out, even if both sides behave responsibly, there's the persistent risk of miscalculation--or maybe a rumor that triggers a bond market sell-off China didn't intend. During the cold war, the hotline Kennedy and Khrushchev established was genuinely stabilizing, but it would have been far more stabilizing had the United States and Soviet Union stopped training thousands of nuclear warheads at one another. If, to stick with the analogy, the U.S.-China relationship is only in the early 1960s, then it's going to be a long couple of decades indeed.
Noam Scheiber is a senior editor of The New Republic.
*Editor's note: This paragraph has been updated to reflect developments since the original print publication.
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COMMENTS (1)
Henry Kissinger, Richard Holbrooke and Timothy Geither. Descending generations in our beloved Bilderberg world.
"Realists" in other words. Each has in turn taken up the task of filtering political repression in China through the sieve of global capitalism. What the folks in China lack in the way a Bill of Rights is more than made up to them by their right to participate freely in international trade. Just like all the millions of blue collar folks in America who embraced "free trade" by sacrificing their own jobs some years ago. Ironically, mostly to the Chinese!
No way unions here can compete against prison labor and brutally exploitative sweatshops there, right? Remember when China was just ... view full comment
Henry Kissinger, Richard Holbrooke and Timothy Geither. Descending generations in our beloved Bilderberg world.
"Realists" in other words. Each has in turn taken up the task of filtering political repression in China through the sieve of global capitalism. What the folks in China lack in the way a Bill of Rights is more than made up to them by their right to participate freely in international trade. Just like all the millions of blue collar folks in America who embraced "free trade" by sacrificing their own jobs some years ago. Ironically, mostly to the Chinese!
No way unions here can compete against prison labor and brutally exploitative sweatshops there, right? Remember when China was just another run of the mill dictatorship of the proletariat. Now its just another run of the mill dictatorship over the proletariate. No pesky unions there, right?
Ain't freedom grand when only your class gets to say what it is?!
From the Harvard School of Public Health web site:
In China today [2008], health care costs are spiraling out of reach for the average citizen, and the system is mired in waste and inefficiency, Hsiao said. These problems began in the 1980s, when government-funded health care, with its strong emphasis on public health, was dismantled in favor of a blended system that is more profit-driven.
george:
But now China is aiming to go back to the old, uh, Commie ways?
From the Healthcare Economist web site:
The Wall Street Journal reports that China is aiming for Universal Health Care. The Chinese hope to cover 90% of the population within 2 years, and provide health coverage for all Chinese by 2020.
“This all stands in contrast to China’s current system, which provides little government funding to government hospitals and requires patients to pay heavy out-of-pocket expenses. The WSJ notes that out-of-pocket payments made up more than 60% of health spending in China at the end of the 1990s…The plan doesn’t address how the government would pay for its nationalization program if hospitals are restrained from earning more and tax collection mechanisms remain weak.”
george:
It looks like Geithner and his Chinese counterparts have a lot of shared ground to cover. Maybe Tim can learn few tricks about how the government in Beijing keeps the Chinese citizens out of the loop when policy is decided. No pesky democracy there, right?
And Tim can teach them a thing or two about how to set up the revolving doors should they ever have to install their own fig leaf rendition of "democracy".
Crony capitalists of the world unite!
george walton
d/a