China rises and USA falls

The key is state investment in industrial production

     On January 28, 2022, the International Manifesto Group held a Webinar on “USA vs China: Whose Economy is Winning?” The Webinar was moderated by Radhika Desai, Convener of the International Manifesto Group and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group of the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.  It consisted of four panelists: Michael Hudson, Alan Freeman, Mick Dunford, and Michael Roberts.  In essence, they documented the economic growth of China and the decline of the USA, and they showed that the key factor is state investment in industrial production.

      In introducing the panel, Radhika Desai noted that Marx had anticipated that capitalism would reach maturity in the early twentieth century.  When capitalism attained the advanced stage of monopoly capital, inter-imperialist competition emerged, which led to the two world wars of the twentieth century, which some characterize as a continuous thirty years of war and crisis.  The post-World War II “golden age” o…