Presidents Roosevelt and Xi Would Have Agreed on Developing the Global South

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Kuliang Forum: US-China Unite To Eliminate Poverty In Africa Will Create Enduring Friendship

November 28, 2025

Lawrence Freeman’s keynote presentation:

I thank the Kuliang Forum, Bank of China, and People’s Daily for the opportunity to address you on this important strategic issue. A positive political and economic relationship between China and the United States will help shape the future of our planet.

The world in the last ten years, has undergone significant transformations. We have irrefutably entered a multipolar world and there is no going back. China has massively advanced its economy, lifting over 700 million of its population out of poverty. The BRICS has expanded to ten member nations with ten additional trading partners. The Global South is emerging, creating a new political dynamic in the world. However, the current period that we are living in is fraught with perils. There is a potential of new and more lethal wars, and another financial crisis is on the horizon. How the nations of the world navigate through these troubled times will in large part be determined by the relationship between the two economic super-powers: China and the United States.

Trade Between China and the United States was approximately $600 billion in 2024, which represented almost 2% of world trade, estimated at $33 trillion. The United States is China’s biggest trading partner, and China is the fourth biggest trading partner of the United States, measured in US dollars. China hawks in the United States, who are calling for decoupling between these two economies are clinically insane. The United States could not survive such a separation from the Chinese economy. In this century, China’s manufacturing sector has surged to approximately 30% of world production, while that of the United States has shrunk.

The political institutions of the United States, the Congress, and the White House, both Democrat and Republican, are obsessed with the belief that China will invade Taiwan in 2027. The United States Defense/War Department is preparing for various scenarios in which the United States will militarily intervene to defend Taiwan from China.

We should be clear: there is no objective justification for such a level of hostility by the United States against China. This enmity by the United Sates is driven by the diseased ideology of the political and financial elites of the West; the so called, rules-based international order. Their view of the world is contaminated by the perverted belief that the world is fixed, and that survival depends on remaining on top as the number one hegemon, with all other nations forced to a lower level of existence. Thus, the foreign policy of the followers of this “zero-sum” mentality is to thwart the development of other nations they perceive as threatening their hegemony, through manipulation, containment, brinkmanship, and if necessary, war.

The good news for civilization is that the world is not fixed. The physical universe is continuously evolving, and as a result of the uniquely human power of creative reason, humankind is constantly developing.

Speaking in Russia in 2013, Chinese president, Xi Jinping, articulated a superior conception of the world: a community with a shared future for mankind. All human beings are universally alike because we all possess the power of creativity. The interest of every nation is the same: to promote the material well-being of its society, and to nurture the power of creativity in its citizens. Therefore, there is a natural harmony between nations. It is in the self-interest of each nation to design a foreign policy that benefits the prosperity of other nations. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the devastating religious wars of Europe, stipulated that nations understand: the benefit of the other is a benefit to thyself.

The collaboration of China and the United States in driving economic growth worldwide will have consequential benefits to the future of civilization. With over 700 million people worldwide living in extreme poverty on our planet, the need for the expansion of physical wealth produced is glaring. To improve the living conditions for both developed and underdeveloped nations will require more than a drastic reform of the current financial system. It will necessitate a new financial architecture, anchored to the creation of a new paradigm committed to real physical economic growth, not monetary profits.

The African continent has approximately 500 million people suffering from extreme poverty. It is the largest number of any continent, and it is increasing yearly. By 2050, Africa’s population is projected to increase to 2.4 billion, one-fourth of the projected world population of 9.6 billion. Unless poverty is eliminated, peace and stability on the continent will not be secured. This means that the rest of the world will not be free from instability. To outflank the zero-sum mindset of the United States, I propose that China and the United States initiate a joint mission to assist African nations in eliminating poverty and ending hunger. Such a commitment by the two largest economies would bond them together through a common objective. It would be a gift for the future of humanity; a noble legacy for each nation. This endeavor, which is entirely feasible, would enhance a long term durable collaboration and friendship between China and the United States.

I hope my presentation will stimulate discussion on this topic.

Thank you for listening.

Read below my earlier posts on this topic:

China’s Amb: “We follow the path of peaceful development”

Rules Based Order in Crisis: Losing Global Domination

Can U.S. Compete With China? Washington Establishment Has Serious Qualms

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

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Rules Based Order in Crisis: Losing Global Domination

 

On April 24, 2025, I gave a lecture to the Rising Tide Foundation, which one viewer called: a geopolitical masterclass. My presentation ends at minute 42, and is followed by 35 minutes of discussion.

May 3, 2025

The world has irreversibly changed. The Anglo-American Establishment, also known as the rules-based international order, which has ruled the world since the end of World War II with brief exceptions, is in its most severe crisis in four score years. The multi-national world of the Global South, led by China and the expanded BRICS, represent a new dynamic. As you can hear from my lecture and read in my two recent articles below, the West is aware of its failings, noting that China is far ahead of the United States in vital categories physical economy. To challenge China’s economic superiority, the U.S. establishment would have to abandon their predatory financial system and revive the centuries’ old American System of Political Economy. Do the American elites and Presidency even understand the American System, and are they willing to reform their monetarist predatory system? Is President Trump capable of steering such a new direction for the U.S.? Their existential challenge is; can they survive and continue to exert global domination without resorting to war?

Read my earlier posts below:

• Can U.S. Compete With China? Washington Establishment Has Serious Qualms
• U.S. Establishment Admits Truth Of China’s Economic Superiority, But They Don’t Understand It

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

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Can U.S. Compete With China? Washington Establishment Has Serious Qualms

April 20, 2025

China’s superiority has to be countered by a new, advanced coalition of the United States with its allies around the world, according to a just published article in Foreign Affairs, by Kurt Campbell, and Rush Doshi. Underestimating China

I will summarize their essential argument, which is grounded in the flawed axioms of the rules based order and its perverted zero-sum mentality. In brief: 1) China’s superiority over the U.S. has to be acknowledged; 2) China can only be effectively thwarted by a new type of alliance led by the U.S.; 3) U.S. cannot lead such an alliance under President Trump’s current diplomacy.

They argue that the U.S. is weaker than China in vital categories of military and economic capacity, and the West needs a new type of collective strategy with its international partners to respond to China’s hegemony.

This paper was published on April 10, after the imprint of President Donald Trump, but before the consequences of his so called tariff “Liberation Day.” It is more than a wake-up call for the rules-based order, which is already suffering from severe political and financial crises. With brutal honesty and a cache of devastating statistics, the authors attempt to break through any delusions about China’s dominance.

China’s Superiority

They write:

China will remain vastly more powerful than any past U.S. competitor on metrics most relevant for competition…China is the first to outmatch the United States in size alone as well as in several strategically relevant areas…Beijing will remain more formidable than any past challenger.

The greatest risk is not declinism: it is complacency, leading to a lack of strategic intention and a failure to catalyze action to rise to the China challenge. If anything, the United States–particularly in the era of President Trump–risks overestimating unilateral power and underestimating China’s ability to counter it.

The authors’ thesis is that in great power competition, scale and capacity matter-quantity has a quality all its own. That the U.S. cannot catch up to China’s advantage in scale by itself…its only viable path lies in coalition with others.

They warn Trump; it would be particularly unwise to go-it alone in a complex global competition. By retreating to its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, the United States would cede the rest of the world to a globally engaged China.

This warning, published in the Anglo-American Establishment’s premier magazine, exposes a challenge for the rules-based order that is unsolvable owing to their ideologically flawed world view. Viewing nations as victors and victims, the mighty and the less mighty, in a zero-sum fixed world, the political-financial elites wrongly perceive China as an enemy whose development must be contained, if not suppressed.

Contrary to the prejudices and false beliefs that dominate the believers of the rules-based order, the universe is not fixed; but actually, growing and expanding. Nations are composed of human beings, who are uniquely endowed with the potential for creative thought. Human-cognitive intervention in the physical universe changes the world in which we live. All nations have a shared interest in providing for the physical and spiritual needs of their citizens, who are universally indistinguishable in their common innate creative power. This understanding of the commonality of human creative thought is overlooked by the overwhelming majority of political leaders and the world’s population but is the secret to all successful foreign and domestic policies.

The authors insist that if Washington and its allies are going to triumph over China, they must not risk:

underestimating both the latent and actual power of the only competitor in a century whose GDP has surpassed 70% of that of the United States. On critical metrics, China has already outmatched the United States. Economically, it boasts twice the manufacturing capacity of the United States. Technologically, it dominates everything from electric vehicles to fourth-generation nuclear reactors and now produces more active patents and top-cited scientific publications annually. Militarily, it features the world’s largest Navy, bolstered by shipbuilding capacity 200 times as large as that of the United States; vastly greater missile stocks; and the world’s most advanced hypersonic capabilities

Washington is filled with seminars and papers by numerous think tanks, that believe inherent weaknesses in China will undermine their future dominance. However, Campbell and Doshi warn: Emphasizing China’s weaknesses risk understating its scale and capacity on the metrics and time frame most relevant for great power competition.

In their attempt to make sure this reality is not overlooked, they write, Accounting for purchasing power and local prices using the world bank’s methodology, although imperfect, reveals that China’s economy surpassed the US economy about a decade ago and is 25 percent larger today: roughly $30 trillion to the United States’ $24 trillion.

China’s Advantage in Physical Economy

China’s phenomenal economic growth that includes lifting almost one billion Chinese out of poverty over the last two generations is the result of their commitment to expanding their manufacturing sector, and large investments infrastructure. Washington chose the opposite policy of deindustrialization, and transformed the U.S. into a service economy, over the same period of time.

The authors provide an astonishing comparison between the physical economy of China and the U.S.

…if one looks narrowly at goods rather than services, China’s productive capacity is three times as large as that of the United States–a decisive advantage in military and technological competition–and exceeds that of the next nine countries combined. In the last two decades after China joined the World Trade Organization, its share of global manufacturing quintupled to 30 percent while the US share halved to roughly 15 percent; the United Nations has estimated that by 2030 the imbalance will grow to 45 percent and 11 percent. China leads in many traditional industries–producing 20 times as much cement, 13 times as much steel, three times as many cars, and twice as much power as the United States…China is also a decade ahead of anyone else in commercializing fourth-generation nuclear technology with plans to build over 100 reactors in 20 years. The last great power to so thoroughly dominate global production was the United States, from the 1870s to the 1940s.

The authors calculate that the combined economies of Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the U.S., and the European Union are two to three times the size of China and produce almost half of all global manufactured products. They emphasize that unlocking the potential of this coalition should be the central task of American statecraft in this century.

Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Atomic Energy Agency

Trump An Immediate Problem

The authors contend that Trump threatens the international alliances, which must be strengthened and upgraded to effectively counter China’s economic and military dominance. They write:

Trump has presented the United States’ partners with hard choices and outright threats. Many may understandably be loath to further tie themselves to Washington anytime soon… key U.S. allies are already considering declaring ‘independence’ from Washington–pursuing nuclear weapons, building new regional groupings, challenging the dollar’s role. Some, spurred by domestic reaction to U.S. pressure are contemplating moving closer to China, even at an enormous peril to their industries or security. The United States risks fracturing the free world and closing its path to scale.

Expressing the concerns of the Washington Establishment, they fear that under Trump:

If the United States fails to pursue scale with others, or retreats to the Western Hemisphere while undoing its alliances, the contest for the next century will be China’s to lose… The result will be a United States that is weaker, poorer, and less influential–and a world in which China sets the rules…Success requires going much further with greater ambition than the alliance-friendly policies of the previous Biden ministration and rejecting the outright the alienating go-it-alone ‘America First’ approach taking shape under Trump.

There is no question that President Trump has up-ended many aspects of the existing rules-based order structure. This is exemplified by pursuing peace in the three-year old Russian-Ukrainian war, freeing Russian President Putin from pariah status, and distancing the U.S. from NATO. This is of immediate concern for those advocating a U.S. led Western mobilization to scale-up  economic and military capacity to prevent China from becoming the hegemon of the world.

President Trump may succeed in disrupting the accepted norms of the Western alliance, threatening the goals of the rules-based order. However, thus far he has not displayed the leadership qualities necessary to guide the world to a new paradigm of political-economic relationships among nations.

President Trump, like all of the U.S. presidents since John F Kennedy, has no knowledge of the scientific economic principles that built the U.S. into an industrial nation. He knows the word tariff but has no understanding how tariffs were actually utilized to create an indigenous manufacturing sector from thirteen agrarian based colonies.* President Trump has built hotels, gambling casinos and was known during the time I lived in New Your City, as a real estate mogul. He, like many in his cabinet and the majority of American, believes making money is synonymous with economic growth. In fact, President Trump, like his predecessors, has no concept of the importance of creating a robust manufacturing sector, or the vital necessity of replacing the dilapidated infrastructure of the U.S., to drive real economic growth.

U.S. Self-Destruction

Any politician or American, who blames China for the economic failings of the U.S., is either grossly misinformed or simply lying.

The decision by President Nixon, in August 1971, to remove the dollar from its established mooring to gold, ended the fixed exchange rate system created at Bretton Woods. This ushered in an orgy of monetary speculation over the succeeding years,  creating a monetary bubble divorced from the physical economy. This ill-fated decision was the beginning of the transformation of the Western financial system into a gigantic gambling casino.

In less than a decade later, the U.S. launched the contraction of its all-important manufacturing sector. Beginning in 1979, about the time China commenced its “opening-up” strategy, the U.S. financial-political establishment adopted the insane concept of transforming America’s industrial economy into a “post-industrial society.” Opposite to China, the U.S. intentionally reduced its manufacturing-industrial component. The U.S. became a consumer society with the service sector becoming the primary employer, living off of commodities produced by cheap labor from poorer nations; otherwise known as globalization. Although some services are necessary for the functioning of society, services do not produce physical wealth. Hence, the very notion of “service industries” is a misnomer.

Examine the decline of the last forty-five years of employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector. The facts speak for themselves.

Manufacturing jobs peaked in June 1979, at 19.6 million out of 90.1 million total non-farm jobs-(22%). Two generations later, in June 2019, manufacturing employment dropped to 12.8 million out of a total 150.7 million non-farm employment (8.5%). A decline of 6.7 million jobs or 35 perce­nt from forty years earlier. A direct result of the post-industrial utopian fantasy. From 1979 to 2019, not only did the level of manufacturing jobs decrease by over one third, but of great consequence for the economy, the percentage of manufacturing jobs to total non-farm employment decreased by over 60 percent. In analyzing the physical economy, this means that a shrinking number of manufacturing operatives were supporting an increasing number of total employed workers and within an expanding population. A recipe for disaster, which continues today. After the huge decline during the Covid-19 period, manufacturing employment recovered to only 12.9 million in December 2024, barely above the 2019 level and still 35 percent below manufacturing employment in 1979.

From 1979-2019, employment in all categories of the service sector increased. This includes employment in trade, transportation, information, utilities, professional business, and financial services.

If one adds up the federal debt, consumer debt, school debt, state debt, mortgage debt-all public and private debt-the total approaches $100 trillion in U.S. indebtedness. Presently the U.S. economy is built on a house of cards. A whopping 70% of the U.S. GDP consists of consumer spending. Without credit cards the U.S. economy would cease to exist.

This essay is a call to arms to mobilize the rules-based order to maintain their supremacy. However, to challenge China on the global stage in the years ahead requires reversing decades of self-destruction by the U.S. Do the so called wise men of the Anglo-American Establishment have the intelligence and resolve to reach back into America’s history to discover the scientific-economic principles that actually built the United States into an industrial power.** However, should the goal merely be to neutralize China, or should the U.S. endeavor to achieve a more noble mission? To wit: collaborate with China to finally end poverty and hunger in every nation on this planet, thus ensuring durable peace and security throughout the world. Through cooperation, the two economic superpowers could change the future of our civilization for generations to come. This would require an end to the rules-based order and the creation of a new financial architecture committed to global growth of the physical economy. Now is the time to begin preparing for this new paradigm.

*Nancy Spannaus, Hamilton versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics 

** Anton Chaitkin, Who We Are: America’s Fight for Universal Progress, from Franklin to Kennedy: Volume I -1750s to 1850s 

Read below my earlier post:

U.S. Establishment Admits Truth Of China’s Economic Superiority, But They Don’t Understand It

China & BRICS Choose Progress Over West’s Deindustrialization

Will Trump Bash China & BRICS in Africa or Promote Joint Economic Growth?

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

Can U.S. Compete With China? Washington Establishment Has Serious Qualms

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U.S. Establishment Admits Truth Of China’s Economic Superiority, But They Don’t Understand It

April 7, 2025

Unintentionally, the rules-based international order not only reveals its weakness in regard to China, but also the failure of the U.S. economy due to its intrinsic flaws. If one knows the true history of the United States, as I do, Michael Froman’s Foreign Affairs article, China Has Already Remade the International System, exposes the strategic challenge-paradox the U.S. faces today. To compete with China, the U.S. would have to reindustrialize its economy, but that would run counter to the free-trade financial predatory nature of the rules-based order. The author discloses the complete absence of knowledge by the present day financial-political elites, of the scientific principles responsible for the creation of the formerly industrialized United States

We should not lose sight of the fact that Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations, the century old British American policy institute that represents the thinking of the Anglo-American Establishment in the U.S.

The American System

President Trump, like his predecessors for the last sixty years, has no understanding of how the United States was created from thirteen colonies into a powerful industrial nation. It was accomplished under the guidance of Alexander Hamilton’s principles for economic growth, which later became known as the American System of Political Economy. While tariffs were one aspect of Hamilton’s policy, they are misunderstood and misapplied today. Hamilton and his followers; Fredrich List, Henry Carey, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and Franklin Roosevelt, rejected the free trade mentality that dominates conventional economic thought today. Read my article: Nations Must Study Alexander Hamilton’s Principles of Political Economy.

Froman’s argument is: China was let into the Western world order, but then violated the rules to emerge from an undeveloped peasant based economy to a robust manufacturing industrialized economic power. China’s crimes, in the eyes of the rules-based order are: not allowing the so called markets to determine the future growth of its economy. As Hamilton and other more thoughtful founding fathers knew, Adam Smith’s theories, and the so called freedom of the marketplace, were always a fraud. The marketplace was never “free,” and it never resulted in the development of an economically sovereign nation. The United States, like every other modern nation that emerged in the last four hundred years, always entailed the intervention of the state, and the practice of dirigisme (state directed credit)  policies.

Historian Nancy Spannaus summarizes the core principles of the American System: That principle is the use of government-regulated credit to promote continuous scientific and technological progress through the constant upgrading of the productive powers (mental as well as physical) of the labor force. These principles conflict sharply with the laissez-faire ideas which most Americans have been told built our economic prosperity. americansystemnow.com

It is not mysterious to understand how China has transformed its economy in less than fifty years. Practitioners of the American System of Political Economy have done the same, when in charge of crafting U.S. economic policy. Tariffs or protectionism have not been historically applied simply to make money or as a political weapon against other nations, as many foolishly think today. The profitability of the American System that includes tariffs flows from a full throated commitment to industrialize the nation. This would include:

• Increasing the productivity of the economy and workforce
• Expanding the manufacturing sector
• Modernizing the agricultural sector
• Issuing low-interest public credit for investments in infrastructure
• Promoting advances in science and technology
• Upgrading educational standards
• Providing quality healthcare
• Formulating a vision for great infrastructure projects

The objective of such commitments is not to make money per se. It is to raise the standard of living of the nation’s citizens, eliminate poverty and increase the longevity of life. All of which China has accomplished in approximately two generations.

U.S. Chooses Deindustrialization

In 1971, several years before China’s Deng Xiaoping launched the modernization of China, President Nixon removed the dollar from being a gold based currency. This began the process of transforming the financial system into a gigantic gambling casino, disconnected from the physical economy. Not only is the Western financial system bloated with trillions of dollars of debt, but it also contains almost two quadrillion dollars of derivatives, which are gambling bets. The truth, which Froman does not know or will not tell, is that the rules-based order is grounded on a predatory monetarist system, which exists to exploit its financial supremacy. Their objective is to obtain and maintain political power, not create wealth for the material improvement of people’s lives.

The United States and the West has been going in the wrong direction for decades, and now they are faced with the reality of what China has accomplished in becoming an industrialized and manufacturing powerhouse. The immediate conundrum for the United States is: 1) not understanding how China achieved their level of economic success; 2) not knowing how to apply or even knowledge of the principles of the American System; and 3) not having any intention of giving up their financial-predatory mindset.

The insanity of the U.S. elites, reflecting their opposition to expanding the industrial economy of the U.S., is best exemplified by their commitment to “deindustrialization” in the 1980s. Much of this was accomplished by Paul Volker, then head of the Federal Reserve, who raised interest rates to 20% in June of 1981, suffocating the economy in his pursuit of “controlled disintegration.” Volcker’s policy shut down industry, pauperized the American consumer, only helping banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, and money managers to make higher profits.

The political-financial elites, who actually determine U.S. economic policy intended to transform the U.S. into a “post-industrial society.” Their fantasy ridden belief was that America no longer needed a strong manufacturing sector. They intended the U.S. to become a service economy and the center of the Western financial system, surviving by purchasing cheap products from around the world. They succeeded. Tourism replaced production. The U.S. has never recovered. We witnessed the effects of this dangerous policy during the Covid 19 crisis, when the US could not produce the essential products required for the health care of its citizens.

Compare China’s policy from the 1980s forward, to expand and industrialize their economy, to that of the U.S., to contract its industrial manufacturing base.

One example that typifies the drastic difference in orientation between China and the U.S. over the last two generations, is their transportation systems. China’s high-speed rail trains travel smoothly at 215 miles an hour, compared to the antiquated U.S. Amtrak trains which plod along at an average speed of 48 miles per hour. Think about the effect of that order of magnitude difference in speed has on the productivity of an economy?

China Rejected West’s Rue-Based Order

Froman believes falsely that President Trump’s policies will succeed in rebuilding the U.S. economy. He bemoans the fact that Washington failed miserably to induce China into becoming a member of the rules-based order, refusing to submit to their free trade ideology diktats. He whines that China ignored Washington’s demands that the Chinese government stop subsidizing the production and exports of goods, which distorted the global marketplace.

He writes:

The U.S. strategy of engagement with China based on the premise that, if the United States incorporated China into the global rules-based system, China would become more like the United States…Instead of China coming to resemble the United States, the United States is behaving more like China (sic). Washington may have forged the open, liberal rules based order, but China has defined its next phase: protectionism, subsidization, restrictions on foreign investment, and industrial policy. To argue the United States must reassert its leadership to preserve the rules-based system it established is to miss the point. China’s nationalist state capitalism now dominates the international economic order.

Although Froman is acutely aware of China’s growth as an economic power in the 21^st century, he has no idea how it happened. He appears clueless as to the effective policies that China employed to raise almost one billion people out of poverty, erroneously attributing the cause to globalization. China rejected the Western dictated norms of behavior, crushing the fantasies of the rules-based order that they would control China’s future.

China The New Model?

Froman continues:

The country’s [China’s] GDP grew from $34.77 billion in 1989, to $1.66 trillion by 2003, to $17.79 trillion in 2023. Hopes were high that integrating China into the rules based trading system would lead to a more peaceful and prosperous world… In 2004, China made-up 9% of the world’s manufacturing value added, leapfrogging to a massive 29% in 2023.

Over a period of 34 years, China’s GDP grew a whopping 500 times,  according to the World Bank.

Froman makes the laughable analysis that President Trump is now chosen the option of becoming like China. The problem is, that neither President Trump nor any of his advisors comprehend the strategy that China adopted to build its economy. Their difficulty is compounded by their failure to comprehend or have any knowledge, of the American System of Political Economy, as practiced over centuries in the United States.

Froman points out that the proportion of the U.S. labor force employed in manufacturing has been declining for decades. However, it will not be reversed simply through President Trump’s misguided tariff policy. Froman, displaying his ignorance of American history, asserts that China has pioneered a new economic model, characterized by protectionism, constraints on foreign investment, subsidies, and industrial policy–essentially nationalist state capitalism. These policies by the government of China parallel the measures enacted by the United States when it was employing the principles embedded in the American System of Political Economy.

Froman and others, writing on behalf of the Washington Establishment, would better spend their time studying Alexander Hamilton, and his students, who understood the role of the state in nurturing industrial capitalism. They might also come to comprehend that the development of U.S. and China is not antithetical, rather both nations can expand their economies in a global system committed to economic progress.

U.S. Establishment Admits Truth Of China’s Economic Superiority, But They Don’t Understand It

Read my earlier posts below:

China & BRICS Choose Progress Over West’s Deindustrialization

China Not An Enemy of the US, Could Be A Partner For Global Economic Development

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World,” and on X @lkfreemansafrica

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President Trump’s Harmful Huawei Sanctions Against China, the US, and the World

June 16, 2019

President Trump’s foolish sanctions against Huawei display a poor understanding of the history of human development on this planet, as we know it. As William Jones points in his article below, it is the US economy and American citizens, more than China, that could suffer from these ill thought out sanctions. The beauty of human beings is our continued ability over millions of years to make discoveries of new physical principles of the universes, due to our inherent capacity for creative thought. Although this quality of human thought is less valued in American culture these days, this is not so in China. China will continue to make scientific advances, as should all nations. We should all rejoice when new discoveries are made, resulting in new advances in applied technologies, which benefits all of mankind. Who will create the next technological platform with “6G?” This is the essence of human progress and it should be celebrated. As I have repeated many times on this website, if The Trump administration and US Congress had any brains, they would enthusiastically join China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and collaborate with China in industrializing the Moon as a stepping stone to colonizing Mars. These joint endeavors would produce a new platform of economic growth across the globe that would benefit humanity for decades to come.

Africa should not be bullied into rejecting Huawei’s 5G technology

HOME>Editor’s picks

The U.S. Could Be Shooting Itself in the Foot with Huawei Sanctions

2019-06-12 China Today

Author：WILLIAM JONES

The near-hysteria in Washington over the expansion of Huawei worldwide and its development of 5G technology has provided some much sought ammunition for politicians here in Washington with a dearth of ideas for resolving America’s economic woes, and may have some short-sighted benefit for them among a populace fearful that the direction of American society is on a downward spiral. Finding a scapegoat for the country’s dilemma apart from the powers in Washington that actually determine the fate of the nation, is always a welcome relief for those power-brokers who hold themselves above scrutiny. And preventing a competing nation from becoming an integral contributor to the vital communications networks on which the world increasingly depends is an added boon. And yet the attempt to undermine Huawei from becoming a bigger player in the world’s communications systems may in fact sabotage the growth of U.S. companies engaged in the same field

Read US Sanctions Against Huawei

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China and US Should Jointly Partner with Africa to Transform the Continent

Jul 12, 2018

It has been my firm belief for several years that, if China and the US jointly partnered with African nations, we can eliminate poverty and hunger across the continent. Development of Africa is not a “zero sum game.” Africa’s infrastructure deficit is estimated in the trillions of dollars for energy, rail, ports, roads, new waterways, and much more. There is no part of Africa that could not be developed, if the two largest economies worked with African nations. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is an excellent vehicle for such collaboration between Presidents Xi, and Trump. Below is a useful article reporting on US and Chines companies working together in Africa

AFRICA IN FOCUS

“American companies and Chinese Belt and Road in Africa”

Yun Sun Wednesday, July 11, 2018

“When it comes to Africa, it is no secret that the United States and China have very different philosophies. China adopts a more state-led approach, with state-owned enterprises and policy banks spearheading Africa’s infrastructure development. The U.S. is more willing to let private companies and the market take the lead on commercial development, while the U.S. government itself puts more emphasis on the continent’s capacity building and governance challenges…

“As China expands its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Africa, government-level U.S.-China cooperation in Africa continues to be scarce. However, this trend contrasts sharply with the growing collaboration between Chinese and American companies in infrastructure projects on the continent. Indeed, although the Chinese projects and financing have the tradition of favoring Chinese contractors and providers, the technical advantages of some American companies have made them the beneficiary of the Chinese BRI campaign…”

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