this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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Sino
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The US's global hegemony isn't based on financial domination, it's the other way around: the US's financial domination is based on its global hegemony. That global hegemony was established through military dominance and even more importantly through economic dominance, through having the world's biggest industrial base. Once that productive industrial base is hollowed out and disappears, it is only a matter of time until the global military and economic dominance cannot be maintained. And after that is gone, their finance primacy won't last long.
This same thing happened to the British empire. The finance-imperialism model only works as long as there is something real underpinning it.
The simple reality is this: in a relationship where one side has all the goods and the other side all the money, the side with the goods will always ultimately have the upper hand. Because you can live without money. You cannot live without goods. We have seen this demonstrated very clearly in the context of the economic war waged against Russia: why did the sanctions fail to bring Russia to its knees? Because Russia has the resources that everyone needs. That is where the real power lies, not in numbers in some bank account.
We saw this same dynamic play out again in the context of the US defeat in the trade war against China. China as the only seller of rare earths in sufficient quantities was always going to have more power than the US as the buyer. China is indispensable. The US is not. There are always other buyers. That gives China immense power and it would have to be utterly stupid to give that up, to make itself dependent, as the West has done, on imports from other countries.
It is this self-sufficiency that makes China truly sovereign and independent, which very few countries are.
It is very clear to me that China has no intention of deviating away from this strategy, and that it has no intention of becoming like the US.
And also, Trump's strategy is never going to work. The US cannot reindustrialize, not because of China but because it is stuck in this neoliberal financialized paradigm.
The British empire was a global creditor. The post-Bretton Woods US empire is a global debtor. Huge difference here.
The British empire needed gold. The US empire simply has to type in a number into the computers. Huge difference here.
The idea of a trillion dollar surplus is just insanity. It means, in a very simplistic sense, Chinese workers breaking their backs producing 1 trillion dollar of surplus values while getting no real goods and services in return. How is that not exploitation?
If your idea of socialism is workers from Global South countries working hard to send cheap goods and services for wealthy Global North countries to enjoy while receiving no real benefits in return but a mere number in bank account, which in turn perpetuate neo-colonial exploitation and surplus value extraction, then so be it, but understand that this is just Western left wing crypto-imperialism.
The US empire is not sustainable. It will collapse and it is already collapsing.
I'm not saying Chinese labor isn't being exploited but also I would say that a 500% increase in average real wages over the last few decades plus the general year over year increases in standards of living and quality of infrastructure isn't "getting nothing to show for it"
I'm sitting in america getting paid less every year in real terms due to inflation watching everything around me literally crumble
You can have well paid workers with 500% increase in real wages without having to rely on running an export-led growth strategy. That’s my point.
It is neoliberal ideology that made countries do that.