What I think is interesting about this take is that it was published in the Wall Street Journal and then in Japan Focus.
It is good financial journalism. Japan will wonder whether China will do a simplistic deal like Mallaby suggest. I see that he is fluent in French, so I don't know what insight that brings to understanding China, and he is pre-occupied with writing a book about hedge funds, just when disaster is about to overtake them. Yes the scenario of a simplistic deal between China and the USA is the obvious one for the Chinese to employ and carve up the world. The sort that would cross the minds of hedge funds managers. And that is exactly why they won't do it. China is a very strange animal. For better and worse it sprung over the simplistic linear model of "historical materialism" and at Mao's insistence, moved rapidly on from "New Democracy" to commune Communism, with Mao as some sort of philosphical emperor, and a cadre force motivated by residues of confucianism. With the inertia of 3000 years of highly complex history, it has no experience or interest in being an imperial power of the European or US sort. What it fears is disharmony. At best it would prefer to be the middle kingdom. So we can actually see in its actions in the last week, it is trying to make further bilateral relations. Meanwhile what Mallaby overlooks is that Brown and Darling are utterly and publically converted to Keynesianism. To complete the picture of new stability they will be pushing and lobbying for the IMF to embrace on a world scale the deficit financing of Keynes. Why should the Chinese object to that, if there are swap arrangements that raise their contribution to the IMF which in turn replaces the Chinese, and Japanese investment in US treasury bonds. Meanwhile Obama can play a sort of embodiment of global New Deal Rooseveltism. Harmony to some, Keynesianism to others.While Sarkozy can do the negotiating if it allows France to continue a signficant amount of dirigism. A strange world, but that is what is at present also best in the longer term interests of the most massive centralisations of capital most likely to survive the recession. Harmony - at least temporary. Chris Burford ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony D'Costa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Progressive Economics" <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 1:52 PM Subject: [Pen-l] China and Bretton Woods As I witness Liverpool's decline continuing since the 1930s, not that different from Valparaiso in Chile, China cropped up the new orld economy. I recommend Japan Focus as another source on Asian matters. Incidentally, Liverpool feels like an American city with its roads and it reminds me of Pittsburgh, with its hard core working class neighborhoods of former dock workers. It too is trying to reinvent itself like Pittsburgh (bot not with high tech and health care) but with museums, hotels, performance theatres, milking the beatles, and rediscovering other great musicians around the time. Posters of capitalism is dead can be found around the Liverpool campus. http://japanfocus.org/_Sebastian_Mallaby-A_21st_Century_Bretton_Woods__Global_financial_summit_hinges_on_China_playing_a_role_once_taken_by_U_S_ Cheers, Anthony -- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Anthony P. D'Costa Professor of Indian Studies Asia Research Centre Copenhagen Business School Porcelænshaven 24, 3 DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Email:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: +45 3815 2572 Fax: +45 3815 2500 http://uk.cbs.dk/arc www.cbs.dk/india xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
