What Is Really Going On: "We Can't Run The World Without China' To A Massive US National Debt China Helped Cover, Will China Hang By The Rope It Gave To The USA?

Nextrush Free ^ | 2/18/2023-2/23/2023 | Nextrush/Self

[Nextrush]

"the biggest contribution that the U.S. can make to the debt issues outside the country is to act on responsible monetary policies,

cope with its own debt problem,

and stop sabotaging other countries' active efforts to solve their own debt issues"

The Chinese Embassy In Zambia Reacts To US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's Criticism Of China's Debt Terms For African Nations 1/24/2023

"We can't run the world without China"

President Richard Nixon Speaks To Political Journalist Theodore White As Quoted In "The Making Of The President 1968"

"The capitalist will sell us the rope with which to hang them"

Soviet Communism's Founder Vladimir Lenin

It was President Nixon who started the process that would open up China economically in the end.

What was behind the meaning of those words about not being able to 'run the world without China"?

The late 1960's saw inflation in the US driven by massive government spending to provide the 'guns and butter' for the Vietnam War and the Great Society authored by President Lyndon Johnson.

The debt load of the USA was about to take off.

When China accumulated great wealth and built itself up economically it ended up with large reserves of cash to help cover the massive US debt required to fund America's welfare state.

China also spent many billions investing in the US, UK and other countries.

Now the tune on China is changing after all these years of bringing China into the world economy there are clear moves towards restricting or containing China including the demonization of Chinese business like clothing maker Schein and social media giant TikTok.

Chinese investment may end up being confiscated by the US and nations aligned with the US. Russian assets already headed that way in the not-too-distant future it seems only a matter of...

[Jonty30]

The US debt is more China’s problem than the US problem. If the US decided to be Iceland and default, the US could rebuild from that to become the reserve currency of the world again, but could China survive without the interest payments on money that China has borrowed itself and is paying interest on as well?

[calljack]

If you owe the bank a million dollars, they have you buy the short hairs. If you owe the bank 100 billion, it’s kind-of a different beast altogether.

[Nextrush]

The BBC has put out the stories about China spending too much money but it almost seems like deflection or projection how wastefully the West has spent money on its welfare programs and so on is ignored.

[nathanbedford]

Here we see an article raising the debt as a means to influence policy vis-à-vis China ("IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THIS IS A DRIVING FORCE BEHIND THE INCREASINGLY HOSTILE ATTITUDE TOWARDS CHINA?")

We need not dig deeply among articles posted on this forum to encounter articles raising the debt and the cost of maintaining the war in Ukraine as reasons to end that war. For the purposes of this reply, I am agnostic about whether or not we should end or pursue the war in Ukraine.

So what we see now is the debt marshaled in arguments to control public policy akin to arguments that raise the covert pandemic, climate change, and alleged inequities in our national commonweal advanced to the same ends.

Nimble politicians invoke their own fiscal profligacy to justify whatever position they advocate today. As you have pointed out, seldom do we see our leaders on either side of the aisle raising the debt as a reason to curb wasteful spending. When the crunch comes, the cleverest and most nimble politicians will promise the most and take the most.

The greatest threat to America is not the war in Ukraine, surprisingly it is not even the existential threat posed to us by China it is, rather, our own national debt which threatens to bring down the very institutions which glue our divided government of checks and balances together.

Make no mistake, reform does not come in the wake of economic disintegration. In the wake of economic disintegration the man on horseback, who will prove the tyrant, comes promising salvation to the cheers of desperate multitudes.

Let's stop using the debt to distort national policies and and acknowledge the debt itself as reason enough to come to fiscal sanity. If we do not control the debt now it's very size will soon control every bit of our destiny.

[Alberta's Child]

China has an annual GDP of about $18 trillion, and owns about a trillion dollars worth of U.S. government debt.

The U.S. had an annual GDP of about $23 trillion, and is currently facing a $31.5 trillion debt limit.

You really think our debt is CHINA’s problem? LOL.

[Skwor]

It is both countries problem. Also China economy and resources are very much not as reported, they are way worse of, but then again so is the US.

[NorseViking]

You won’t rebuild into a reserve currency after default. Just like you won’t rebuild into a safe heaven after seizing other people’s assets.

[NorseViking]

The author of the article is not stupid, but he thinks the readers are.

[NorseViking]

What is the point of wishful thinking? If you want to check out who is going to fail in the event of a spat, then consider thst the US is less than 20% of the Chinese exports nowadays. Now go tobtue store and find a thing not made in China. Now imagine all things gone.

[Alberta's Child]

How does the U.S. regain its position as a global reserve currency after default? That’s like getting an insurance company to insure your home again after you burned it to the ground.

[Jonty30]

It might be something that has to be sacrificed, unfortunately. It’s going to be lost any way, better now at $31 trillion than $100 trillion.

[Alberta's Child]

Apparently so. LOL.

[Skwor]

Definitely defending the US ability to manage our debt and finances, but if you think everything is preachy for China you are fooling yourself. They are not much better, if at all, than the US.

[jimwatx]

These are the sort of economic imbalances that lead to world wars. The problem this time is that 2 of the countries we seek to screw over are nuclear armed states. Russia in particular has a very low debt to GDP and is not going to be interested in any global economic reset that leads to a devaluation of the ruble, and the Western economies with their unpayable debt won’t be able to inflate that debt away easily without clamping down on the rubles rise because it would enrich Russia and give them enormous economic power which would translate into increased military power. There’s no easy way out of this predicament which is why WW3 appears inevitable at some point.

[chopperk]

Biden and the Dems were paid by China to allow them to run the World.

[Alberta's Child]

What you are describing there is the collapse of an empire, so if it’s inevitable it doesn’t really matter when and how it happens, does it?

[Theophilus 7]

How Nikita Khrushchev-esque

[pierrem15]

China has already liquidated most of its US T-bills in order to reflate the Chinese economy. The Federal Reserve is by far the largest holder of US debt.

[NorseViking]

China is a manufacturing powerhouse, with half of population still in poverty. It can sustain growth by simply pulling the poor out of poverty. Then China has Africa to bring to the middle class and maie tons of money off it. Now with Russia broke with the West it has full priority access to Russian resources. What not to like?