See, Hear, Touch No Truth—Just Lies, Please

June 18, 2010

The “Wall Street Journal” published China: Not Intentionally Pursing Trade Surplus With US, and I agree. The American thirst for high wages with benefits and cheap products created this mess.  After all, when you balance global exports and imports for China, they are close to even. China has a small trade surplus with the world—nothing compared with the “HUGE” trade surplus with the US, where far too many people use plastic to live beyond their means. 

However, most Americans don’t know that. Politicians who tell American voters the truth lose elections and the media seldom shows the whole picture—only the American slice. It seems that most Americans are not interested in the truth.

Qin Gang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, mentioned the problem was with low US savings rates and high levels of borrowing and unemployment.  He should have mentioned Wall Street risk taking too, which caused the current world economic crises and most of the job losses. Even China lost about 20 million jobs thanks to greed in the US.

People who accuse China of taking jobs from US workers don’t take into account that there are about 12 million illegal aliens in the US working low pay jobs most Americans refuse to do. Even Mexico and Canada, because of NATFA, have taken more jobs than China has.

Gang said, “We hope politician in the U.S. will think seriously about how to resolve the structural problems in their own economy, rather than invariably blaming others.”

Right again. Americans and US politicians spend too much time finding scapegoats while disagreeing on how to fix the problems in America. The US Federal deficit is in the trillions, and the average credit card debt per household is $15,519.  Source: CreditCard.com

The personal savings rate in the US as a percent of personal income is about 3%, while in China that rate is more than 30% and the Chinese government saves too—its cultural.  What’s more embarrassing for grumbling Americans is the fact that the Chinese work longer hours for much lower pay and still manage to save.

See Chinese Work Ethic

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and writes The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, economy, media | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Another Opinion about China’s Trade Surplus

May 14, 2010

China has an estimated 2.4 trillion in foreign reserves and recently, there have been accusations from American politicians and in the Western media, that China has been manipulating the exchange rate and costing Americans their jobs.

In a report on Vox (Research-based policy and commentary from leading economists), Zheng Song, Kjetil Storesletten and Fabrizio Zilibotti claim they can prove that China did not gain this huge trade surplus from manipulation of the exchange rate.

Chinese Currency

Instead, they will offer proof from similar economic growth in South Korea and Taiwan that both resulted in large surpluses from trade.

The three economists wrote that in the second half of the 1980s, South Korea saw booming growth and a series of large current account surpluses. In addition, Taiwan experienced large trade surpluses in the 1980s. Since both South Korea and Taiwan are smaller than China, their trade surpluses did not draw as much attention as China’s trade surplus has.

The authors of the study concluded that the call for trade sanctions against China might be unwarranted as well as dangerous.

Read more about America’s Assault on China’s Currency.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

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2 Comments | China, economy, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse