Surviving Capitalism (Not) : China and the Return of the ‘Yellow Peril’: The muddled economics of scapegoating

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, September 6, 2015

China and the Return of the ‘Yellow Peril’: The muddled economics of scapegoating

Click here to access article by Justin Raimondo from AntiWar.

I'm offering this with the caveat that I don't necessarily endorse everything he writes about--particularly with regard to China. I simply don't know enough about China to hold firm opinions. That is precisely why I am occasionally posting reasonable articles from different points of view. At least Raimondo in his comments about China does offer supporting links unlike others such as Charles Hugh Smith who pretends that he is an expert on China by omitting any supporting links. I definitely agree with this view he expressed at the beginning of his essay:

As the US stock market was dropping 1,000 points on Monday morning, US commentators were pinning the blame on China. The Chinese economy, they said, was slowing down: what had been the “engine” of worldwide economic expansion was running out of fuel. The clear implication was that China’s rulers were somehow responsible for the sudden evaporation of over $2 trillion in assets over three days of the market plunge.

This focus on China as the foreign culprit behind America’s economic woes is being broadcast far and wide by Donald Trump, the mercurial demagogue who has put foreigner-bashing at the center of the political discourse.