Joseph Solis-Mullen discusses the claim that America must now turn its attention toward China as the new threat of global hegemony. War hawks will cite China’s growing economic supremacy, many alleged human rights abuses and supposed imperialistic designs on its neighbors. To some extent, this characterization is true: Solis-Mullen grants that China’s government can be extraordinarily abusive to its people, and says that he wouldn’t be surprised if it tried to take over Taiwan. But in general, there are simply way too many problems with the narrative that China is an imperialistic threat to the West. Most importantly, he explains, China’s economy is teetering on a knife’s edge—years of bad debt, bad monetary policy and misallocation of centrally-planned resources, combined with a catastrophically unbalanced population pyramid, make China’s future as an economic superpower anything but certain. Most of this fear mongering, Solis-Mullen concludes, is simply propaganda designed to give the American people another bogeyman to fear, and to help line the pockets of the arms manufacturers.
Discussed on the show:
- “China Won’t Be Taking Over the World” (Mises Institute)
Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist and author. Follow all his work at his website.
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Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from this website. He’s the author of the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. Visit https://scotthorton.org