Richard Wolff (clip): China Introduced a Rival Development Model

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]I I am persuaded at this point given what I've experienced and what I'm looking at with as you are looking at it. I think the Chinese have demonstrated this hybrid state-private uh enterprise governed by a socialistically self-defined governmental and political party apparatus is a very unique construction.

[00:00:30]Uh but it has delivered the goods. You know, and that is going to be very is already very persuasive around the world as well it should be. We are all groping in the end uh how to do things, how to fix problems, how to move into the future. And the Chinese are saying with all the confidence now that goes with it, we figured it out. Maybe there's a better way, but if so, nobody's offering it. What alternative to our development is there out there that can boast what we have achieved?

[00:01:09]The president of the United States goes home and in his crazy way writes in his uh uh his little you know account there uh social that he wants a ballroom as big in the White House as the lovely room in which he was entertained by Xi Jinping. I mean, it's like a script written by a not so good playwright to have that. It it's I would like to have what he has, okay?

[00:01:41]The whole world would like to have the economic growth that China has shown in the last 30 years.

[00:01:48]Not a single other country can do that.

[00:01:51]Even India which wants to be that again has to show that.

[00:01:58]It hasn't done that yet. It's made some progress, but it's China that sits there and they can be very comfortable. I want to hammer home also that China achieved this under the umbrella of the American empire. One of the reasons it is in no rush does not want to provoke the United States to do anything catastrophic is because what's the hurry? We We Chinese are doing spectacularly in a world in which the US dollar is the universal currency, in which the United States has 700 military bases around the world. Uh and we have one in Djibouti.

[00:02:46]You know, it's silly. They They have no reason to agitate the global situation because they are doing very well within it.

[00:03:01]You know, if BRICS doesn't develop its own currency, and I I don't mean to be critical of China, but it's because there's no great pressure from China who dominates the BRICS economically speaking. What's the rush?

[00:03:17]We're all doing pretty well.

[00:03:19]And if the United States were to decide to opt out and not be an empire, it's not so clear we would have the same smooth sailing.

[00:03:32]My guess is in the in the decision-making halls of the Chinese, they are very aware that I have certainly spoken to enough Chinese intellectuals in my life to know that they understand what I just said. I got it from them. I had to be shaken into an awareness that it's precisely their experience that teaches them take it easy. Oh, let's work out so we don't get caught in the Thucydides trap here.

[00:04:04]Let's not replicate that story. You know, Britain had to fight two wars. I know I've mentioned this to you before, Glenn. Britain had to define the war of independence and then the war of 1812 trying to squash the independence of the United States.

[00:04:21]They failed to their own surprise. They had a big British army and navy. The United States didn't have anything or hardly anything.

[00:04:31]And they lost, the British. After two wars they no more. For the next century and plus, no war. They escaped the Thucydides trap.

[00:04:42]Took them two defeats in two wars.

[00:04:45]And the Chinese, what is their hope? To be able to achieve the same thing minus the two wars, because we can't afford the wars now.

[00:04:54]And the in the United States, war against China is an assumption of our political leaders here.

[00:05:02]They simply assume it. It is sort of automatic.

[00:05:07]Otherwise, they would have to admit that the time and the history and the economics are meaning that the American empire is now over. And that may be the real issue that we as Americans should engage.

[00:05:25]Is the discussion is the next phase of human history another empire, in this case the Chinese, or will we finally be able to have the multinational, multilateral global regime that you saw foreshadowed in the League of Nations after the horror of World War I or the United Nations after the horror of World War II.

[00:05:57]Will those horrors help us this time go in a new direction? I notice the Chinese have discussions about that.

[00:06:08]We don't have any discussions about that here because the notion that those are our options is is so difficult for Americans that they still want to hold on to denial, to imagining that the American empire is still alive and kicking.

[00:06:28]So that if you wanted to know why does the leader of this country act the way he acts?

[00:06:35]I know it's popular to ascribe to him narcissism and mental deficiencies of one kind or another.

[00:06:44]I I don't believe any of that. I mean, maybe it's true. I don't think it matters.

[00:06:49]He is playing a role that we are at.

[00:06:52]If it weren't him doing it, the other one would have done it. And by the other one, by the way, could be Mr. Biden, could be Kamala Harris, or any of the others.

[00:07:03]The we're going to take Greenland. We're going to take Panama. We're going to make Canada uh a 51st state. We're going to This is the be the gestural dynamic of someone whose ship is sinking and who has to flail around with imaginary uh conquests and expansions because the real ones are not available.

[00:07:29]The best he can do is snatch Mr. Maduro and his wife out of their bed at night and put them in a jail here in New New City. I mean, it is it is a pathetic effort of desperation.

[00:07:48]That's an interesting way of framing it.

[00:07:50]Uh But well, given that the two sides have these different interests, that is China sees that you know, time is on its side. The long uh the US holds on to this uh you know, exorbitant privilege status uh to to to rule the international system, the you know, the more it will weaken on its own. So the So China sees you know, all it has to do is manage essentially the to see this trap, that is you have the US as this declining at least relative declining hegemon, while China's rising as the challenger. You know, mother time will essentially take care of this, that the world will shift into multipolarity. So their main objective should be let's not uh rock the boat. Let's not uh make sure make sure this doesn't result in any warfare. Uh again, it's a delicate time in history to manage.

[00:08:42]While on the US side, you see more the objective being to to restore the empire, that is to uh But I'm not sure if that's I'm wondering if Yeah, no, probably they do think that this can still be achieved. But But the given that you have these these different views about where the world is heading, uh how how how do you see this essentially producing specific uh demands in this uh in this talks? Because so well, if you're looking at this meeting between Xi and Trump, what would each side uh object to like specifically want from the other?

[00:09:19]Well, I think what the My guess is and I see the logic of your question.

[00:09:25]My guess is what the Chinese want is what you just said, no rock the boat.

[00:09:30]Let's try to put a damper. Let's try to resolve our problems. We can if we can agree that it would be better to have the Strait of Hormuz open than closed, let's agree that's what our goals are.

[00:09:46]You work on your side to try to get us closer to that, we work on our side.

[00:09:52]What's out of order and I think the Chinese said that perhaps in relationship to Taiwan, but it covers many more issues. We don't want warfare. We don't want an issue that is explosive in either because you want to reconstitute your empire or on our side that we are going to hasten history in the sense that we're not satisfied with our rate of growth now, we want a bigger one. You know, the kind of logic that lies behind Lebensraum if you're a you know, if you remember the German argument. We need a larger space to live. So, we need or or the Israeli version of Lebensraum. You know, we're taking southern Lebanon and that kind of thing. Uh for the United States, I'm afraid looking at our leadership now and the way they talk, taking them at their word, they cannot hear that message and they cannot hear that appeal from China.

[00:10:55]They do not want to work at that level.

[00:10:59]What they want is the freedom to try to resuscitate the empire and they want the Chinese to help them do that and the Chinese won't. The Chinese will not provoke them, the Chinese will not attack them, but it will not allow them and let me give you as an example Iran.

[00:11:24]What's the issue with Iran? Well, in the fantasy life of the American leadership Iran is a problem because they A, we don't control who they sell their oil to.

[00:11:40]Number two, we don't control who they ally with.

[00:11:46]And so they ally with uh the Houthis and they ally with Hezbollah and they ally with Hamas and that's a problem for our ally Israel. We don't want them to do that. Then we would like them not to be the ally of Russia and China, which they are.

[00:12:06]And so here's what we would like. We would like to get rid of the regime that's doing all these things, replace it with a client of the United States, and subdivide Iran into three or four other countries.

[00:12:24]If you know your history, you'll know that Iran was much bigger than it is even today once upon a time and that there are quite a few countries in that part of the world which, if you look at their history, they were once part of greater Persia.

[00:12:40]So the United States wants to take what it already did with Britain, get rid of parts of Persia and make them the Gulf states and so on, but they want to go further. So they want to do all of that and they thought they could.

[00:12:57]And so they went ahead and they did.

[00:13:01]And the Chinese are looking there saying, "We can't We can't allow this."

[00:13:07]And it's not just because of the oil, that's a mistake. China has oil in reserve ever since 2018. They have the largest reserves, strategic reserves of oil in the world, significantly more than the United States, which has reserves, too, although they're about half used up now or more.

[00:13:27]Uh so Russia I mean China is not in an urgency about the oil uh but they don't want a long-term disruption.

[00:13:36]But they don't want any of what this United States wants in Iran. They want Iran to stay there, run the the Strait of Hormuz the way they did before, uh be a good ally of Russia and China, blah blah. They They just want leave it alone.

[00:13:53]That's what they want. And the United States has its fantasy that I think that's a microcosm of where we're at.

[00:14:01]And so the question becomes where else in the world once this Iran thing is put to bed? And notice we kind of all know what's going to happen even if we can't predict the details.

[00:14:17]The United States cannot move forward on that project. That's over.

[00:14:21]They don't have the military means, they don't have the economic, the political, nothing necessary to win the fantasy that they had. So they're going to have to go find their fantasy somewhere else.

[00:14:34]For example, in Cuba.

[00:14:37]They may make a nice theater of un- erasing the legacy of Fidel Castro and redesigning Cuba so it's the offshore gambling paradise that it was before 1959.

[00:14:56]Okay.

[00:14:58]I don't know what China will do then.

[00:15:00]China has already hinted it might protect Cuba.

[00:15:05]That's the big decision. And it's not just about Cuba, it's wherever else the United States decides to make its effort. But the one it just tried in Iran, that didn't work. That was a mistake. They misunderstood.

[00:15:21]I don't think they'll learn the lesson.

[00:15:23]I don't think I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I see in the United States the awareness of what happened.

[00:15:34]Even with the defeat, which by the way, almost all political perspectives other than Mr. Trump's hard base of support, even the neo-conservatives in the this country, led by Mr. Kagan, for example, have said it's a defeat. I mean, they they get that they blew it.

[00:15:56]They will make a scapegoat out of Israel if they have to. They will make a scapegoat out of Mr. Trump if they have to.

[00:16:05]But have they learned the lesson, the larger lesson I'm trying to draw here, in which China and Iran are important moments? I don't think so. So, I expect there will be more efforts of declining empire to do things that will allow it to believe that it's got a few more years.