Category Archives: China

China’s Military and Growing Political Power

China has the potential to challenge the US on a military basis at a lower relative cost than many defense analysts assume.

The Coming China Crisis

A high private debt to GDP ratio is a strong indicator of a coming financial crisis. China is well into the danger zone.

Michael Hudson: Europe Tilts East Towards China

The sudden rush of countries joining China’s infrastructure bank, including supposed US allies like the UK, Germany, and France, demonstrates the desire of not just emerging but also advanced economies to have access to international institutions that are not dominated by the US. Whether the infrastructure bank actually winds up being better, as opposed to simply different than existing institutions remains to be seen. But as Hudson describes, the World Bank sets a low bar.

Major American Allies Ignore U.S. Pleas and Join China’s Development Bank

China’s development bank is a salvo at America’s dollar-driven financial hegemony. The US has good reason to worry about its apparent appeal.

Impotent Western Sanctions Fail To Disrupt Russian Energy Exports

Who has won and lost from the Western sanctions against Russia?

Pepe Escobar: New Silk Roads and the Chinese Vision of a Brave New (Trade) World

As much as sightings from on the ground are critical to countering perceptions of China from afar, my experience with Japan leads me to take them with a grain of salt. Japan was seen as similarly insurmountable in the 1980s and it looked as impressive close up as it did from a distance.

Is All Growth Good? The Case of China

Growth versus “groaf” had become a favorite topic of the NC commentariat. This article sets forth some of the ways for differentiating between them, using China as an example.

How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (IV)

The last piece in our series on Virgin Gold Mining Corporation, for the moment

Bracing for Another Storm in Emerging Markets

This post dovetails with the Michael Pettis article today. Hot money is the bane of emerging markets, but the opposition to regulating capital flows remains fierce.

How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (II)

More shenanigans from Virgin Gold Mining Corporation and its little helpers.

How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (I)

First in a series of posts exploring Virgin Gold, an immense ($2Bn?) pyramid scheme with a messy aftermath

Is Power8, Sponsor of Everton FC, Fulham FC and RCD Espanyol, a Giant Ponzi?

Yves here. Richard Smith is on the trail of what looks to be his biggest international scam find ever, orders of magnitude larger than the usual below the radar single to low double digit million dollar/pound/euro operation that he has ferreted out in the past. And mind you, even though he focuses on the dubious looking inter-corporate relationships and the often evident lack of normal investors protections and business substance, these companies sell hope and glamour to typically credulous retail investors who lose their money and have no recourse.

Michael Pettis: Is China Really Turning Away from the Dollar?

Yves here. This important post by Michael Pettis addresses whether the efforts of the Chinese to diversify their foreign investments away from the dollar will be a negative for the US. Pettis is skeptical of that thesis, and some of his reasons are intriguing. Like quite a few experts, he doubts that China’s role in sponsoring an infrastructure bank will be a game changer, and he also points out, as we have regularly, that the Chinese cannot deploy their foreign exchange reserves domestically without driving the renminbi to the moon (via selling foreign currencies to buy RMB), which is the last thing they want to have happen. A more surprising, but well argued thesis is that reduced Chinese purchases of US bonds would be a net plus for the US.

Get a cup of coffee. This is a meaty, important article.

Pepe Escobar: How China’s Eurasia Maneuvers Beat Obama’s Pivot to Asia

Yves here. We’ve commented occasionally on Obama’s failed pivot to Asia, which is clearly an effort to contain China. The centerpiece, the TransPacific Partnership, appears to be going nowhere. A meeting between Communist party chief Xi and Japan’s Abe trumped America’s presence at the ASEAN conference; our Japanese press-watcher Clive says that Putin garnered as much media coverage as did the US president. But you’d get perilous little sense of how China is outmaneuvering the US in Asia, despite considerable worries among its neighbors about its aggressive territorial claims.

This article by Pepe Escobar gives a fine overview of the measures China is taking to create greater economic integration with its Eurasian and European trade partners, to the detriment of US influence. And Washington appears to have been caught flat-footed.

Yanis Varoufakis: How the United States Rolls (Post-Global Minotaur) – by Slavov Žižek

By Yanis Varoufakis, a professor of economics at the University of Athens. Originally published at his website. In this article, aptly subtitled It’s lonely being the global policeman, Slavoj evokes a parallelism between the age of extremes that began as the British Empire was losing its grip with the present moment in history. Now that the […]