https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/09/30/iippe-2021-imperialism-china-and-finance/

from yesterdays thread, we got this paper floating which argues that there isnt an argument for imperialism. we'll take it from there. also I'd love to see more material supporting this stance!

to me, the author of the linked paper doesnt really answer the question.

the text says middle rank economies arent or cant be subimperialist? unclear how they support this claim.

  • they cite a study showing china as in between imperialist and imperialized

  • their own UE index shows a massive decrease of outflow in china in the last 20 years compared to earlier. this dosnt conflict with the argument that china might be imperialist, because its the recent shift to capital export that we look at here.

author then they later say “imperialist economies and the rest is not narrowing – on the contrary. And that includes China, which will not join the imperialist club.” - how does make sense with the above then?

the linked ppt seems to compute imperialism in total trade. noone is arguing china is imperialist against the west, but this calculation masks the argument of a potential “subimperialism”, in China’s global south trade, because this is a small share of China’s total trade. so we’re not left with any conclusion about “sub-imperialism” or whatever you will call these countries that have net outflows to the old west, but exploit the global south in their own right. this could include overseas China economy, turkey?, the gulf, malaysia. etc.

  • cokedupchavez [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    good post!

    The real question is not whether China has become imperialistic, but whether China will advance into the core of the capitalist world system in the foreseeable future. Because of the structural barriers of the capitalist world system, it is unlikely that China will become a member of the core

    is this claim right, though? I'd think china critics see China as trying create its own polarity and a second capitalist system. It's not like they think China is moving to be a junior partner of capitalism like say Japan is.

    foreign capitalists in China are able to make about twice as much profit as Chinese capital can make in the rest of the world on a given amount of investment. [..] China’s net investment income from abroad is negative

    interesting.

    This leaves about $158 billion (8.7 percent of China’s total stock of direct investment abroad or 2.2 percent of China’s total overseas assets) invested in Africa, Latin America, and the rest of Asia. This part of Chinese investment no doubt exploits the peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America of their labor and natural resources. But it is a small fraction of China’s total overseas investment and an almost negligible part of the enormous total wealth that Chinese capitalists have accumulated (China’s domestic capital stock is about five times as large as China’s overseas assets). Some Chinese capitalists may be blamed for their imperialist-like behaviors in developing countries, but, on the whole, Chinese capitalism remains nonimperialist.

    then lets revisit the idea of subimperialism. --> "China has established exploitative relations against nearly one-half of the world population. China can no longer be treated simply as a peripheral country in the capitalist world system."

    China’s advance into the core would require not only the extraction of hundreds of millions of worker-years from the rest of the world, but also massive amounts of energy resources.

    i think this is one of the better ways to go about this. for china to float into the typical imperialist structure we would need like 6 planets at this point.

    Therefore, even if China uses up the entire world’s lithium production, it would only be sufficient to replace about one-half of China’s conventional car production

    this author kicks ass. from dunking on the china is empire crowd to kicking it to the pro-growth dogmatists.

    Maybe we should reorient the conversation entirely. Who and what is imperialist? Well, first order of business, who is imperializing our common carbon budget? Who is doing the most relative to their conditions to tow us under the global warming benchmarks? This is hardly a glowing article, but I like where they go with it. Still, the conversation we're having here is imperialist relations from china downwards the pecking order. Article doesn't help us much here. So I'll absorb the ecological perspective and propose to use the subimperialist category to describe the offshore economy of China, but with the absolutely substantial caveat that there is an anti-imperialist logic to these engagements in the poorest countries, in providing the needed infrastructure and offcompeting the bloodsucking western companies. But this piece isnt the end of this debate.