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By David Harvey and Vince Emanuele. Part 2 of the interview about Harvey's book Rebel Cities.
Emanuele: You talk about the geographical distribution of economic crises. Namely, how crises spread from one part of the globe, to the other. You mention that people shouldn't have been surprised by the economic collapse of 2008. For example, right now we have economic crises in the EU zone and North America, yet you mention exploding GDP growth in Turkey, and various parts of Asia. You also mention a paradox: For instance, with China, while they've been going through a tremendous process of urbanization over the past twenty years, those same industrial projects that yield massive profits have displaced millions of Chinese people and destroyed the natural environment. All the while, many of these projects, and entire cities, sit utterly empty, as only a very small percentage of the Chinese population can afford such luxuries and accommodations. Can you talk about these phenomena and contradictions?
These became the means by which the surplus capital was absorbed. Of course anybody who was supplying China with raw materials did very well, because Chinese demand was very high. China absorbs half the world's steel supplies. So that means if you're producing iron ore or other metals like Australia has been, then of course Australia does very well as they haven't been experiencing much of a crisis over the past few years. The Chinese have in effect taken a leaf out of the book on United States economic history by repeating the post-1945 economic development program of the US.
In short, China figured it could save itself with the same sort of strategy and avoid any economic stagnation or decline. You know, the United States and Europe are both mired in low-low growth, as opposed to the Chinese who have enjoyed very rapid rates of growth. But, again, it's about absorbing the surplus-capital in ways that are productive.