Why the World Needs China: Development, Environmentalism, Conflict Resolution & Common Prosperity

by Kyle Ferrana

Overview

While the US portrays itself as a noble example of freedom and democracy, it has in fact led the world to greater inequality than ever before. But now, for the first time in decades, nations facing the brunt of its domination and exploitation have alternative, more tenable options in pursuit of development. Chinese finance is building badly-needed infrastructure where the West would not, Chinese commerce is providing a lifeline to countries the US has targeted for destruction, and Chinese industry is producing new sources of renewable and transition energy at an unparalleled rate. This book addresses:

* China's development and political economy based on independent studies, statistical data, and comparative analysis
* Current geopolitical conflicts and major developments and their relation to China
* Chinese finance and its effect on the rest of the world, particularly Africa.
* China's profound emphasis on environmentalism, renewable energy, and plan for the future

Though it has yet to fully step into this role, the People’s Republic of China has become the de facto leader of a future multipolar world.

Why does the world need China? Inter alia:

China is now one of the largest investors in peripheral countries, yet Chinese loans are distinguished from Western loans by having substantially lower interest, being focused on infrastructure construction rather than the extraction of rents, and never being used as political leverage to make its partners adopt harmful "structural adjustment" policies as Western loans are.

From 2000 to 2020, the PRC has helped African countries build 13,000 kilometers of railways and 100,000 kilometers of highways. Chinese-financed development is so ubiquitous on the African continent that any large building or road longer than 3 kilometers are most likely built and engineered by Chinese firms. Most of these have been constructed as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, which began in 2013 and is still making increasing investments throughout the world. Yet according to trade statistics tracked by the World Bank, the value of exports from the Sub-Saharan Africa region to China as a share of the total have not risen since then; instead, the region of the world that has seen the largest increase in export share from SSA has been SSA itself. This means that greater regional connectivity, commerce, and intermediate manufacturing being done in Africa is having the long-term effect of industrializing the continent

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781949762877
Publisher:	Clarity Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/01/2024
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Kyle Ferrana is a writer, software engineer, and tenant organizer. He is a contributor to The International Magazine.

Read an Excerpt

That Africa is presently the least wealthy continent on Earth is undisputed, and foreign banks encounter few obstacles and plentiful opportunities to take unfair advantage of most countries within it. An actual debt trap is profoundly easy both to set and to spring, and nearly impossible to escape; for example, according to financial records released recently, Sudan received loans totaling scarcely more than a few hundred million pounds from the United Kingdom during the twentieth century, which by 2021 had ballooned to nearly a billion pounds through the accrual of interest alone. In order to obtain relief from the IMF, the Sudanese government was compelled to end fuel subsidies, devalue its currency, and normalize relations with Israel. When dealing with Western lenders, even the forgiveness of debt is conditional upon enacting harsh austerity measures, as the IMF and the World Bank made clear in their initiative to cancel loans to countries it classified as “Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries” (HIPC), who must show willingness to “manage public finances and monetary policy” before being considered. Chinese lenders, however, are not loan sharks; they do not take opportunities to exploit a foreign debtor’s inability to pay, require no structural adjustments, and instead of exploiting decades-old debt, they are often likely to forgive it unconditionally. Though Chinese lending to foreign countries was relatively marginal before the twenty-first century, and consisted mainly of interest-free aid loans, scarcely any of that debt still exists. Brautigam writes:

At first, when many of its aid loans started to come due in the early 1980s, China rescheduled them, sometimes just for a year or two. Repayments for the Tan-Zam railway were put off for ten years. Payments in Ghana and Niger were stretched out over twenty years instead of fifteen. Other countries simply did not pay...

Later, in parallel with the HIPC initiative, the PRC began forgiving debt as well—but unconditionally:

Most of China’s public pledges were consciously couched as debt relief for “highly indebted” and “least developed” countries. This does not mean, however, that China followed all the rules of the HIPC debt relief regime negotiated in Washington and Paris. Chinese debt cancellation was non-conditional. They did not require governments to prove their ability to manage their economies or to develop strategies to use the canceled debt for poverty reduction.

Editorial Reviews

"Ferrana treats China’s place in the world within a sweeping exploration of the shifting contours of global imperialism from which the 20 th century super-imperialism of United States springs. Further, Ferrana debunks simple narratives of China’s ruling class as capitalist. Notwithstanding really existing wealth disparities within China, the role of the state and the policy directions supported by the Communist Party continue to demonstrate ties of the latter to the socialist project of working class power, Ferrana argues. Indeed, it is precisely China’s distinguishing itself from US super-imperialism in terms of its approaches to ecosustainability, international multipolarity, opposition to settler colonialism and so forth, concludes Ferrana, that has seen it become the object of relentless Western propaganda and misinformation."
RICHARD WESTRA, co-editor, Journal of Contemporary Asia

"Mllons of people n the Gloal North are worred aout war, austerty, envronmental destructon, and clmate change, ut see nothng ut more of the same comng from Western leaders. Most progressve wrters of the Gloal North reman trapped n an updated verson 'Yellow Perl' Snophoa, thnkng of Chna as some knd of 'techno-dystopa', an mperal power n ts own rght, or an adjunct of US power. Kyle Ferrana's ook s a methodcal analyss of the unequal gloal economy led y the US, and of Chna's post-colonal struggle aganst ths system and for soveregn economc development. Because only economc plannng on a soveregn ass can save our planet, understandng recent Chnese hstory through Why the World Needs Chna s an antdote to oth Snophoa and to despar."
JUSTIN PUDOR, host of the Ant-Empre Project, Assocate Professor, York Unversty, co-author of Extraordnary Threat: The US Empre, the Meda, and 20 Years of Coup Attempts n Venezuela

"Kyle Ferrana has done important work in this brilliant book. The scope of the work is ambitious; it analyzes the history of the evolution of imperialism, while convincingly showing how China is creating the conditions for a new world-system, one in which the Global South can finally reverse centuries of underdevelopment. Through careful and thorough research, Ferrana provides a useful corrective to the myth that China abandoned socialism. This book offers a much-needed update to historical-materialist theory of imperialism for the 21st century."—BENJAMIN NORTON, founder and editor-in-chief of Geopolitical Economy Report

"Kyle has written a beautiful book. In a time when we are bombarded with lies and propaganda, he offers us an exploration into China. Our efforts at China Is Not Our Enemy are for all of us to see each other in ways that lead to cooperation, appreciation and working together for a vibrant future for all. I felt at the core of Kyle’s book is this offering; a pathway to peace." JODIE EVANS, co-founder CODEPINK and China Is Not Our Enemy

“With Why the World Needs China, Kyle Ferrana providers readers in the West with a hugely informative, readable and thought-provoking account of China’s political economy and its relationship to the global process of ending imperialism and transitioning to a multipolar world order. Weaving together threads of history, economics and geopolitics, Ferrana creates a compelling and inspiring narrative about Chinese socialism and China’s place in the world, and in so doing, demolishes a range of popular myths: that China has “gone capitalist”, that it is an imperialist power, that it is a serial human rights abuser. Everyone will benefit from reading this book.” CARLOS MARTINEZ, co-editor of Friends of Socialist China and author of The East is Still Red – Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century

"Emulating noted French sociologist Emmanuel Todd's rigor in relying on core data rather than ideology, Kyle Ferrana's Why the World Needs China thoroughly debunks Washington's trope that China is likely to initiate a conflict as unsubstantiated, as such leaving one to wonder whether US elites aren't simply projecting onto Beijing their own proclivities to engage in warfare." ARNAUD DEVELAY, International Attorney at Law

“As the drumbeat for war with China is growing, Ferrana has written an incredible book showing why it is China that is the indispensable nation in the world. As Ferrana demonstrates, far from being an inevitable enemy, China is a country which should be courted as a friend and partner in building a better and more equitable world in which sustainable development is offered for all countries, and especially those of the Global South that the West has exploited for so long and is now intent on keeping down. Surely, this book is a much-welcome and much-needed antidote to the endless anti-China rhetoric being pumped out by the White House and regurgitated by the compliant mainstream press.”
—DANIEL KOVALIK is a lawyer, educator, author and peace activist

From the Publisher