Have we all been suckered in by China?

While the US and Europe have been screwing the poorer countries by using agricultural incentives and other techniques to ensure others can’t compete in this, so called, free trade world of globalisation, China has been quietly taking us all for a ride.

Over the last few years China has welcomed overseas factories into their country and rigidly controlled its exchange rate to make its exports simply irresistible to the West. So where does that tactic leave China now? Well, let’s see.

• First they have state of the art, modern factories designed and funded by the West – but which are still 50% or more owned by the Chinese government.
• Second they have learnt from the manufacturing expertise that Western companies have introduced and then copied and duplicated many of their products.
• Third, they have taken the West’s cash in return for goods and then lent the money back to the West, effectively giving them the ability to bankrupt many Western economies, thus discouraging Western countries getting too heavy handed with them.
• Fourth, they are now in a position that, if they worked together with the governments of the Middle East – where, remember, all the oil is and who also have vast foreign reserves - they could potentially control the global economy.
• Fifth they can use their foreign reserves to manipulate smaller countries currencies and make even more money.
• And now, “China is stockpiling commodities such as copper and iron ore” according to the Royal Bank of Canada.

Damned cunning these Chinese. They have taken the West’s insane consumption fetish and drive for globalisation, linked it with corporate greed and the short term thinking of Western capitalism and quietly put themselves in a position to potentially dominate world trade and finance.

Is it me, or is it time for a bit of old fashioned protectionism in ‘our land of nature’s gifts’?