The White House is craving even more war. Even a higher risk of nuclear annihilation. The Ukraine war is simply not enough to satisfy U.S. bloodlust. Noam Chomsky describes the situation in a way you will never hear it described in corporate media.
In a detailed article at Huffpo, Janet Tavakoli argues that China has an economic problem too, that it is caused by fraud and mismanagement, and that China's bubble will be popping. She also offers a way to determine when China's bubble will be bursting:
If the rate of change of public officials fleeing the country, df/dt > x, where x is yet to be defined, or the acceleration in fleers, d2f/dt2 > y, where y has yet to be defined, or the rate of change of the average amount of loot dl/dt > z, where z is yet to be defined, then conditions of the Chanos Equilibrium have been violated and destabilization will occur. Stated differently, when you see the absolute amount of embezzled wealth fleeing the country suddenly increase, or when you see a sudden increase in the absolute number of Chinese officials leaving the country on "holiday," or when you see an acceleration in the number of officials leaving the country in a stealthier way, you'll know China is sinking.
When someone from another country does something impressive, Americans are well-
trained to be threatened. We are teaming with ressentiment. Here's an example from the July 18, 2011 edition of Time Magazine. Notice the photo on the right. It is an image of a brand new extremely long bridge, the longest sea bridge in the entire world. It is more than 26 miles long. It's extremely impressive. It is something that reminds me that the Chinese people have excelled in many ways.
But notice the text under the photo. Especially notice the line: "The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is yet another Chinese nose thumbing."
Where does this writer get the idea that the Chinese have built the world's longest bridge to make the United States look bad? I hear this attitude all the time, exemplified by statements like this: "America is the world's greatest country." Despite the fact, of course, that there is much room for improvement in modern day United States.
Many of these comments I hear uttered by Americans are aimed at the Chinese; for many Americans, anything impressive done by Chinese people is a threat to America. More disturbing, I fear that this ressentiment of outsiders builds into paranoia about outsiders and fuels the "need" for exhorbitant and irresponsible warmongering by the United States. I remember that in the months prior to 9/11, there was intense building hostility aimed at the Chinese. Then we got distracted by the Middle East. It seems that Americans intensely need an enemy, and that if they don't actually have one, they invent one. That is a destructive technique most of our politicians use to maintain power and obeisance of the governed.
I'd recommend that Americans, especially those involved with the American media industry, work harder to keep their ressentiment in check. Time should have reacted to this amazing bridge by saying something like: "That's amazing engineering and construction! Well done, Chinese people." I'm afraid, though, that this attitude of being happy for the successes of others has become thoroughly un-American.
In the months before September 11, 2001, I was startled to hear many politicians and media outlets drumming up potential military conflict between the United States and China. I remember this well, because my wife and I had recently adopted a Chinese baby, and she was our second Chinese daughter. I feared that this wild lashing out China would make the United States a bad place to raise our babies. Here's a sample of the kind of things that you would see back then, this excerpt from a report issued by the Rand Corporation:
According to a newly released Rand Corp. report, China's military is narrowing its technology gap with the U.S. armed forces using U.S. commercial technology. Beijing is developing advanced systems and its military capabilities may approach or equal the United States in some areas, the study says. . . According to Jack Spencer, a defense analyst and fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the Chinese military is preparing itself for a future war with America.
Consider also this excerptThe Bush administration has made hostility to China one of its foreign policy principles. Bush attacked the Clinton-Gore administration during the 2000 elections, declaring that China was a “strategic competitor,” not a “strategic partner” of the United States. A series of initiatives in the last three months have been directed against Beijing—moves toward a US missile defense focused on China, reversal of US policy for a rapprochement with North Korea, and plans to supply sophisticated naval and air weaponry to Taiwan.
China has issued a detailed report that examines the human rights record of the United States for the year 2009. Plain-spoken. Unvarnished. disturbing.