Walden Bello to launch ‘Paper Dragons: China and the Next Crash’ on November 15

This is a press release from Focus on the Global South- Philippine Office. 

Will China trigger the next financial crisis?

This is the central question underpinning the book Paper Dragons: China and the Next Crash (Zed), the latest from Filipino author, activist and former Party-list representative Walden Bello, which will be launched in the Philippines on November 15 at Novotel in Quezon City.

In trying to address this question, Bello traces the recent history of financial crises – from the bursting of Japan’s ‘bubble economy’ in 1990 to Wall Street in 2008 – taking in their political and human ramifications such as rising inequality and environmental degradation. 

Bello points to 3 troubling signs why China is a prime candidate to be the site of the next financial crisis – the overheating in its real-estate sector, a roller-coaster stock market, and a rapidly growing shadow banking sector.

“(Bello) not only argues that China is a prime candidate to be the trigger of the next crash, but that under neoliberalism this will simply keep happening,” the publishers note. 

Bello argues a way out of this cycle will be “through a fundamental change in the ways that we organize: a shift to cooperative enterprise, respectful of the environment, and which fractures the twin legacies of imperialism and capitalism.”

The author and activist Naomi Klein described the book as “a stark warning about the vulnerable state of global financial markets from one of our most acute and prescient thinkers.” 

The book launch will also feature reactions from a distinguished panel representing the academe, progressive groups, government, and the business community, among whom are China specialist Prof Aileen Baviera of the University of the Philippines, Senator Leila de Lima, economist Dr. Joseph Lim, and development expert Dr. Ed Tadem.  Also invited to join the panel is former Supreme Court Acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio, and former Ambassador Victoria Bataclan.

Focus on the Global South, one of the organizers of the book launch will also be releasing its latest report on China authored by Bello. China and Imperial Power in the Image of the West? is also coming out as a seven part series of articles on Rappler. 

The book launch was jointly organized by Focus on the Global South, Action for Economic Reforms (AER), the International Peace Bureau, Laban ng Masa, the Program on Alternative Development of the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP-CIDS), Rappler, and the Offices of Senators Leila de Lima and Risa Hontiveros. 

For inquiries about the books please get in touch with Focus on the Global South (josephp@focusweb.org) – Rappler.com