The Chinese Birdcage: How China's Rise Almost Toppled the West

ISBN-13: 9781137588883 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 197 str.

Heleen Mees

Opis

Since the 1980s China has been on a path of economic reform delivering better results in terms of economic growth than the policies of the IMF. With China's accession to the WTO almost a billion workers were added to the global economy. Within no time, China became the world's factory thanks to the virtually unlimited supply of cheap labor, driving down the real wage of blue- and white-collar workers in the U.S. and Europe. Although the U.S. government supported the economy by the low-interest policy, it resulted in the housing bubble and the destabilization of the financial sector. The economic growth in China has a significant influence on the economy in the U.S. and Europe. This book tries to figure out the influence by focusing on the link between the labour market and the monetary policy in the U.S. This proposal offers an original contribution to the field because the author elucidates not only the Chinese or the U.S. economy but also the influence channel.

Spis treści

1. The Chinese Birdcage

2. Western Triumphalism

3. China as the World's Factory

4. Housing Bubbles across the Western Hemisphere

5. The Global Financial Crisis

6. The Economic Fallout

7. Unlimited Supplies of Labor

8. China's Economic Development

9. Global Imbalances and Corporate Cash Piles

10. The Capitalist Surplus and the Shortfall in Demand

11. Piketty Reconsidered

12. What Lies Ahead?

O autorze

Heleen Mees was Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Policy. She is a columnist for the Dutch daily De Volkskrant and she writes opinion articles for various international publications including Foreign Policy, The Financial Times, Project Syndicate, and NRC Handelsblad.

Blurb

This book vividly describes how China’s rise in the early 2000s led to rising profits and declining labor income everywhere, ultimately resulting in the global financial crisis. Under Deng Xiaoping’s policy of ‘reform and opening up’ in the 1980s, China quickly became the world’s factory floor...but powerful political leaders envisioned a world in which the market economy would be trapped within the confines of a planned economy. With China’s admission into the World Trade Organization in 2001, almost a billion people joined the global workforce, driving down the real wages of blue- and white-collar workers in the US and Europe while also lowering interest rates, which fueled housing bubbles and destabilized the financial sector. This book explores China’s significant influence on western economies by focusing on the links between the labor market, corporate profits, and interest rates, using Arthur Lewis's framework for economic growth with unlimited supplies of labor to argue that by 2010 the world economy – and political situations – had been set back almost one hundred years.