Currency, conspiracy theories and foreign policy-making

Foreign Policy Blogs ^ | 04/16/10 | Henry Hoyle

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Currency, conspiracy theories and foreign policy-making

By Henry Hoyle

Friday, April 16 12:36 am EST

Black helicopters, U.N. conspiracies and shadowy cabals of all-powerful financiers - this is the stuff that fixates in the feverish imagination of a certain segment of the American populace.

"Currency Wars"

In one of those wonders of globalization (and ideological indoctrination), those same shadowy cabals do double duty as the object of much Chinese paranoia. This is manifest in the tremendous sales of the book series “Currency Wars,” which indulges such delusions and gives them a veneer of academic respectability. The books’ author Song Hongbing lays out in great detail how Western investment bankers, having controlled the course of world history for some two hundred years, are now intent on engineering China’s collapse for their own profit (here’s a post by a China-based U.S. economist on the subject).

The real world consequences of this peculiar vein of thought was on display this past week as China’s plans for RMB revaluation were reportedly delayed by a storm of unfavorable public opinion, according to the New York Times. One Internet rumor that went viral last weekend held that the plan was an American ruse to “to create an economic bubble and financial crisis in China.” Just as the Ministry of Commerce came around to the consensus view that some strengthening of the RMB would be in China’s interest, the government was tripped up by the deep suspicion of the West it has inculcated in its populace.

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I guess they still remember the Opium wars and the opium triangle.