How pathetically they assert the old Christian moral superiority. The Bretton Woods institutions are made to seem legitimate next to the supposed Chinese barbarism. Of course that barbarism was inherited from the IMFs own neoliberal playbook. The Chinese have their own humanitarian, but they are better able to see it objectively for the ideological manipulation that it is. They understand that their developmental liberalism is propaganda which no one needs to ever take seriously. It is just polite to say that stuff when you are robbing someone economically. Its a matter of discretion that you should have a picture with some ethnics. Chinese financial gifts are more consciously weaponized, whereas the Europeans get bogged-up in convoluted moral causistry. And I suspect that the western financial institutions probably want China to step up in this role, because it expands the system. They need to keep it expanding, and China is their golden goose of liquidity. These articles make it seem like China is a threat, as though there was a competition between civilizations. But I think really Chinese finance is just the logical programmatic solution everyone has agreed on in order to keep the machine rolling. Capital has to cycle around the world, and getting China integrated is the main pillar of crises aversion. And its easy to see that this story is popular because it follows a decolonization narrative while increasing investor confidence in market liquidity. But from what I understand, their financial markets are actually fairly shallow, and can be negligible next to the much deeper markets for Yen, Euro and Dollar. The Chinese certainly are financing a lot of heavy industry in developing countries, and it is noteworthy how they are going into concrete industry where western institutions tend to be so speculative. Their bolder approach to development makes the western banks seem like flakes who just invent new derivatives and trading algorithms. And then there is the issue of how the repayment and refinancing of these loans will play out in the future. This is a new arrangement, just like IMF loans were a new arrangement in the 1970s. Will the Chinese banks be running their own structural adjustment programs someday? Or will they just absorb defaulting countries into their empire as vassal states? I suspect they will end up continuing the program of global development administered by the IMF and WB for the last forty years, with a few tweaks and sinosizations here and there no doubt. It will probably amount to a more efficient version of neoliberal globalization.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:35:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015