China’s economy expanded by 4.9% in the third quarter compared to the previous year, showing the rest of the world what’s possible when Covid-19 is brought under control.
China’s economy has now recovered from its historically bad first quarter, when the coronavirus forced the country to shut down. GDP grew a cumulative 0.7% through the first nine months of 2020, the data show.
The International Monetary Fund expects China’s economy to expand by 1.9% in 2020. That compares to contractions of 5.8% in the United States.
The way Beijing handled the initial outbreak of coronavirus late last year has been criticized by some Western politicians.
But China’s stringent lockdown and population tracking policies helped bring the virus under control within its borders. The country also set aside hundreds of billions of dollars for major infrastructure projects to fuel economic growth.
Europe and the United States are now facing another surge of coronavirus cases. The US is averaging more than 55,000 new cases a day — up more than 60% since a mid-September dip.
The United States’s economy will remain hamstrung until there’s a dramatic reduction in the number of coronavirus cases.
China, meanwhile, will continue to power ahead.
Economic data for the month of September indicated the country’s recovery is gaining even more strength. Industrial production and retail sales figures were particularly robust.
U.S. GDP: Blue line. China GDP: Red line
The International Monetary Fund predicts that China’s economy will grow by 8.2% in 2021, a much faster pace than the United States.
Most recent figures show China’s GDP at about $14 Trillion, while the U.S. GDP is about $20 Trillion, and since 2008, the gap has been closing.
In the United States our leadership began, and continues to this day, with denial of facts, based only on reelection efforts and not on reality.
The bluster of “Make America Great, Again” was not backed by actual lawmaking.
A leader does not make a nation great by:
Widening the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
Giving the rich huge tax breaks, while doing little for the rest.
Demeaning, threatening, and diminish the influence of, a free press.
Hiring criminals and incompetents to dismantle consumer-protection agencies.
Pardoning criminals who are friends of the government leader.
Reduce healthcare and healthcare insurance for the poor and middle-income.
Establishing nepotism as an approved government function.
Demanding that the President’s personal businesses be rewarded by the government
Continually disseminating and encouraging false information
Gutting laws that protect consumers from criminal banks and business owners.
Denying climate change and discouraging efforts to fight it.
Arbitrarily ending treaties with allies and enemies, fomenting distrust of Ameria.
Denying the dangers of COVID and discouraging the use of masks and other COVID-fighting efforts.
Encouraging the use of polluting and global-warming carbon-based fuels.
Discouraging anti-pollution efforts.
Discouraging efforts to expand renewable energy availability.
Discouraging the immigration of consumers and workers who would help grow the economy.
Failing to encourage or acknowledge science, technological advancement, and education.
Failing to encourage the arts.
Failing to encourage small business.
Failing to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure.
Encouraging bigotry and such bigoted movements as QAnon, white supremacists, and Nazis.
Idolizing ruthless dictators, while condemning leaders of free nations and former allies.
Never taking responsibility for problems while always taking unwarranted credit for good news.
Repeatedly committing acts of personal immorality.
Punishing whistleblowers who reveal the truth about illegal acts.
Punishing those who do not exhibit greater loyalty to the leader than to the nation.
The fact is, our once-great country is a mess. Our once-respected and admired nation, now is condemned, mocked, and denounced worldwide, even by former allies.
We have no national policy for anything other than what is best personally for the President. We have drifted inexorably toward fascism. One political party, the Republicans, has lost all sense of its history, its identity or its direction:
Stuart Stevens: “In a long-forgotten era — say, four years ago — such a question would have elicited a very different answer. Though there was disagreement over specific issues, most Republicans would have said the party stood for some basic principles: fiscal sanity, free trade, strong on Russia, and that character and personal responsibility count.
Today it’s not that the Republican Party has forgotten these issues and values; instead, it actively opposes all of them.”
“Republicans are now officially the character doesn’t count party, the personal responsibility just proves you have failed to blame the other guy party, the deficit doesn’t matter party, the Russia is our ally party, and the I’m-right-and-you-are-human-scum party.
Yes, it’s President Trump’s party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted.”
You, who always have been Republicans, no longer have a political party. The party you love has gone.
You are like baseball fans, still pledging allegiance to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Neither your Dodgers nor your Republican party still exists. You can stop yearning for your lovely, childhood sweetheart. She married another man, moved somewhere far away, and looks and acts like the Wicked Witch of the West.
Meanwhile, China, despite its despicable, dictatorial leadership, at least has leadership. Its focus is not solely on what will enrich the leader. Despite many horrifying failings regarding personal freedoms, China’s focus is on (ironically) making China great again.
Unless America takes a dramatic reversal of the twenty-nine points listed above, China will become the world’s dominant nation, democracy will be a lost experiment, and it will happen within your lifetime.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 