The Twilight of “Chimerica”? China and the collapse of the American model

“Chimerica” illustrates the interactions between a Chinese model of high savings, overinvestment and export-led growth and the American model of leverage investment, credit consumption and finance-led growth. The collapse of the U.S model, linked with the unregulated derivatives market, drives China to redirect its growth toward domestic consumption, despite the strengthening of regionalisation in East Asia. The new stimulus plan, based on investment, is limited by both income disparities and the under-development of social protection. Land reform, or the collective redistribution of the remaining state assets, could stimulate domestic consumption. But the first solution deprives the local state of financial resources, and the second solution collides with the interests of the state-party system. However, stronger social movements could lead to a better income distribution. Like two faces of the same coin, credit consumption or high savings rate reflect the crisis of a global accumulation regime, tailored for a financial oligarchy in the U.S, or for a party-state oligarchy in China.