Shanghai Scrap » Firing you best bullet, and other thoughts on rare earth mania.
Quite often, and understandably, my friends in the China-focused media and academic class tend to lose themselves in the same story and theme. For years, for example, the China-focused media has been tightly focused on the Chinese export story, while giving short shrift to the still considerable volume of exports – especially the commodities that power the Chinese export machine – that the United States and other developed countries send to China. To be sure, the trade deficit between China and the United States grows, but US to China trade also grows, and it’s worth remembering – if the stories about American job losses often don’t – that China is the third largest US export market. And it’s also worth remembering that commodities – agricultural and recyclable – are the two leading US exports to China, by volume.
