Profile picture
Matt Stoller @matthewstoller
, 18 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
I guess I should explain why my fear of the Chinese Communist Party is not rooted in nationalism, and is actually a critique of US and Western policy for the last 20 years. Take this remarkable story. wsj.com/articles/how-c…
The CCP has improved the lives of the country, bringing hundreds of millions of out poverty. It did this by accepting the deal that Clinton and Bush cut, which was to move our industrial and tech base to China. Clinton and Bush were influenced by libertarians like Larry Summers.
This has been great for Wall Street but bad for the American middle class: lower wages, devastated rural communities, and an opioid epidemic. These are especially heightened problems in areas subjected to 'the China shock'. There used to be a lot of manufacturing in rural areas.
There is never free trade. Trade is always managed. The pre-1995 globalization model was about low tariffs, but also kept some balance and redundancy for supply and to protect against predatory pricing (aka dumping). Post-1995 allowed global cartels to take over.
While the Western world was partying with the 'end of history' and offshoring its real wealth to low wage countries so their paper wealth would increase, China was intelligently organizing to establish important economic activity. That's good. It then built cartels. That's bad.
Then, as the US and the Western world so cavalierly tossed away the rule of law starting in the Asian crisis of the late 1990s but continuing through Iraq and the 2008 crisis, the Chinese got more aggressive. They took what we offered because we were greedy and stupid.
Now, Western foreign policy thinking is mostly oriented around which countries to blow up, which is both cruel and stupid. The Chinese foreign policy is oriented around how to take economic power from the West by continuing to use the bad form of globalization we've imposed.
Which brings me to the steel story. For awhile I thought the Chinese were over-producing steel bc they were placating domestic workers. But they aren't. They are buying steel plants abroad and overproducing to get around tariffs. It's a global strategy. It's smart monopolization.
There's a lot more here, but basically, the Chinese are not our friends. And because of their increasingly totalitarian leadership, which we aided, they are dangerous to the rest of the world. For example...
Now I often get 'aren't the Chinese just doing what we did to industrialize?' Yes. China should be a wealthy high tech country. That's good. In fact the US enriched a lot of countries in the post-war era (and blew up others). But we never did what we are doing with China.
The Chinese are an aggressive and dangerous power, and they are trying to turn us into a dependent vassal that produces low value agricultural goods. The CCP is also hostile to anyone, domestically or internationally, who threatens their rule. Tibet. Uyghur. Taiwan.
But the CCP is only doing this because of the rules that we stupidly set up. (Thank you Larry Summers.) We allowed monopolization and stopped caring about global cartels. Now the nightmare is here. Not just monopolies everywhere, but a hegemon exploiting our own corruption.
Trump is one result of this Wall Street mismanagement combined with China's exploitation of it. His votes came from China shock areas. His policy framework is the right tune, but the lyrics are all wrong. He's a nationalist who is easy to bribe. And the CCP is happy to bribe him.
At this point it's all conjoined. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are happily selling us out to the CCP. Large swaths of the economy, and plenty of Republicans and Democrats, are actually on the payroll of the Chinese government. The bribery isn't just Trump. politico.com/story/2016/01/…
The only way to address the CCP with a strong anti-corruption campaign domestically, the restoration of the rule of law, and an attack on our own monopolists. But we must also recognize the threat. And this is where I part ways with the left.
Much of the left sees the U.S. as a villain and inherently corrupt. It is not. We are an imperfect nation, and I believe that we should strive as best we can to build a more perfect union. I believe we did some very good things during the Cold War, and bad things. We can choose.
I also think that seeing the CCP in China as a clear national security threat is important. Much of the left, and Wall Street, confuses this for racism, because to them, China represents a sort of 'noble savage' vision of peace and/or a triumph of globalization. It isn't.
The CCP's power is a function of the rules we set up in the 1990s. But now we don't have much control. We have some. And we should use it to rid ourselves of our corruption, before it is too late. Because as bad as this moment seems, a world of CCP dominance will be much worse.
Missing some Tweet in this thread?
You can try to force a refresh.

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to Matt Stoller
Profile picture

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

This content may be removed anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member and get exclusive features!

Premium member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year)

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!