Friday, August 14, 2009

Cracking China's Banking System

Entering and ultimately controlling China's banking and finance sector has long been the dream of Western finance capital. As part of their admittance into the WTO, China agreed to fully open up their markets to foreign enterprises. Of particular interest to Wall Street were the mammoth 'Big Four' of Chinese banking.

This process has been stalled for many years, and was delayed further by the financial crisis of 2008. Yet it is an underlying dynamic to the geopolitical relationship between the two countries. The United States has become finance capital based economy over the last generation. To an extent, it doesn't matter how much industry is given up to East Asia, as long as U.S. finance capital interests feel they will ultimately control the levers of that region.

With China now experiencing 'The Biggest Bubble of Them All', Andy Xie recently warned that "Property prices could drop like Japan has experienced in the past two decades, which would destroy the banking system."

A destroyed Chinese banking system could very well be forced into concessions with the West. Whose largest banks, while having tremendous problems with debt and leverage of their own, have been propped back to profitability through government bailout. Alternatively, it could force Beijing to break or alter their relationship with the WTO and the international capitalist system.

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