Government Propaganda Cannot Hide Sinking Chinese Economy

1 December 2011

Despite China’s reported weathering of the storm throughout global financial stagnation, Larry Lang reveals what many of China’s censored academics and intellectuals are saying behind closed doors regarding the vitality of their economy.

Lang’s assessment that the regime is bankrupt was based on five conjectures. Firstly, that the regime’s debt sits at about 36 trillion yuan (US$5.68 trillion). This calculation is arrived at by adding up Chinese local government debt (between 16 trillion and 19.5 trillion yuan, or US$2.5 trillion and US$3 trillion), and the debt owed by state-owned enterprises (another 16 trillion, he said). But with interest of two trillion per year, he thinks things will unravel quickly. Secondly, that the regime’s officially published inflation rate of 6.2 percent is fabricated. The real inflation rate is 16 percent, according to Lang. Click for full article

The implications are twofold for America. Beyond the obvious impact of a faltering Chinese economy on the U.S. government’s ability to continue its record-level borrowing, the presence of government censorship and media manipulation are also a concern. Mr. Lang stated, “Don’t think that we are living in a peaceful time now. Actually the media cannot report anything at all. Those of us who do TV shows are so miserable and frustrated, because we cannot do any programs. As long as something is related to the government, we cannot report about it.” If the Chinese can do it, so can other governments.

Regarding this, America is no longer the isolated bastion of free press and responsible government (indeed, it never has been). The term “free press,” is actually an oxymoron and is quickly being exposed as a misnomer. According to John Stauber of PR Watch, western industrialized nations are actually more susceptible to complex forms of propaganda. Its system of free-press, specifically its evolution into a corporatocracy, is uniquely positioned to distort facts or simply omit those stories and truths undesirable to the status quo. Why is that you say? After all, America is a democracy and democracies do not foster propaganda. The truth is that all governments exhibit a certain degree of control over what information is furnished to the public. In truth, America is no different in kind from China regarding collusion between giant media conglomerates and its elite establishment. In many circumstances, they are one in the same. Any substantive differences would likely be in the degree by which governments control information.