RE: [A-List] Has China Become an Ally?

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 28/10/02 21:17 +0000, Mark wrote:
> John Gulick's post raises some interesting issues but I have 3 caveats. (1)
> I don't think the US will attack Iraq (yeah, I know, contrarian), (2) the
> PRC and the US are locked together like 2 sumo wrestlers in an economic
> death-grip; it is the relationship between these 2 economies which is
> largely fuelling the huge and dangerous deflationary process in the world
> system, and this economic competition seems to me more dangerous than
> current rivalry with the EU or earlier rivalries with either Japan or the
> USSR. (3) The EU in its present fragmented state is only a danger to the US
> insofar as and to the degree that the US is failing in its economic
> competition with China (primarily, but also with Asia as a whole, because
> Asia is the source of deflationary pressures; deflation being stealth-war
> against US hegemony).


Very interesting and important debate. I would love to see US hegemony in
terminal decline but how to choose between seeing Europe or China as a
greater threat? Over a thirty year period China may be the greater threat,
but over the next ten years Europe, for all its sluggishness, has a
considerable ability to centralise masses of advanced capital, and might
decide to become more competitive at the expense of its working class. Are
there any figures that help us to decide between these two main scenarios?

Chris Burford