China’s mounting confidence in its future is reflected in its ‘concern’ over the US’s plight. In 2006 Wang Yiwei of Fudan University, Shanghai, wrote a provocative essay, “How can we prevent the US from declining too quickly?” The decline came in 2005 with Wall Street’s collapse. China now sees a chance to step into the vacuum created by the downturn in the US economy. Beijing is well aware of its present runners-up position as none of the other powers like Russia, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, India, Brazil, Australia and South Africa come anywhere close to China’s second place.
Hence, Prof Fu Mengzi of a prominent Beijing think-tank can confidently state that “the high point for US power was 2000”. Song Hongbing, in his path-breaking book, Currency Wars 2, predicts that an “obscure international elite bankers and politicians will impose a global currency by 2024 and usher in an era of world government”. According to him, the “US Federal Reserve supports the plan because it recognises that the dollar will be savaged by a bout of hyper inflation”. It is not surprising that China’s federal bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan has called for the eventual replacement of the dollar as the global reserve currency.
