I know china doesn’t need them (and probably doesn’t necessarily want them either) but I was reading on western imperialism in china (not that I was ignorant of the concept before) and I dont think I ever conceptualized how much wealth the west got from china without ever paying a cent back. The forced loans in “war reparations” alone is probably in the millions
This is more a thought experiment than a genuine like, policy proposal or anything
I guess it depends whether you’re just looking at the damage caused by western imperialism or if you also include the Japanese occupation. China was never completely colonized like India but it’s still going to be an astronomically large amount of wealth that they were deprived of by the imperialists. I mean just look at the relative wealth between China and Europe in the pre-colonial era, and then compare that with where China and the West were at in 1948. There was clearly an enormous transfer of wealth that took place in those few centuries, not just from China but from the entire global south to the imperial core. A big chunk of that stolen wealth came just from India and China.
That’s what I meant with China’s gold. China itself is comparable to the entirety of Europe in terms of size and population. Europeans then came in and stole a bunch of shit. Like imagine if the Vatican, Louvre, Amsterdam, and more had all of their valuables stolen. The amount of wealth would have to be in the hundreds of billions.
But that’s exactly what happened to China and hundreds of other places.
(We’re saying the same thing)