Index of Power Update, 2018-19: China #2

[Note added 14 September 2021: An update to the Index of Power, with some improvements to data, especially that of using total foreign investment assets, not just FDI, is published here.]

 

This is an update of the statistics for my Index of Power, using data for 2018-19 and discussing what a country’s ranking reflects. The major change is that China’s rank has shifted up and it has now taken the UK’s place at number 2 in the world. The US still remains in a commanding position, well ahead of the other major countries, but its lead has shrunk in the latest reading, especially versus China. Countries in positions four to ten, when the Index was last updated in early 2018, remain in the same rank positions with the new data.

The Index highlights the dramatic inequality of power in the world. In the top group, only China, the UK, Japan, France and Germany have an index value that is more than 20% of that for the US. Only 30 countries have a total index value that is more than 2% of the US number; the world’s remaining 170 or so countries count for even less.

Index of Power

Index evolution

I first constructed this Index in early 2012 and named it an ‘Index of Imperialism’. My objective was to use readily available data to gauge different dimensions of the international status of countries. Since then, I have changed the title of the Index and also some of the components, but the underlying logic is the same.

The title was changed to the ‘Index of Power’ because this seemed a better description of what it was measuring. It didn’t make much sense to call the lower ranking countries ‘imperialist’, but only little ones, or having an implicit assumption that the higher a country’s ranking, the more imperialist it was.

I had always pointed out that any description of a country as imperialist would have to depend upon first assessing its role in the world economy. Taking Luxembourg as an example, it is only a small cog in the world system (number 24 in the new Index), but it is an integral part of the European-based imperial machine and plays a particular role within it. The Index number, nevertheless, is meant to reflect relative positions of power in the world economy.

Which brings me to which aspects of political and economic power are covered. Largely they are based on economic data, and they are also biased in favour of those measures that reflect a country’s international reach. These do not directly measure political power, but it is evident, for example, that a bigger economy will tend to have more weight in its dealings with the rest of the world than a smaller one. I would have been happy to include some more directly political components, but could think of none that seemed relevant and easily measurable for a wide range of countries. That the top fifteen countries ranked by the Index include all the permanent voting members of the UN Security Council, and also the G10 members, confirms that there is a broad correlation of the components used with real-world political power.

The five original components of my Index in 2012 were: GDP, foreign direct investment assets, military spending, the importance of a country’s currency in central bank FX reserves and a country’s ownership of the major international banks. The first three – GDP, FDI and military spending – have stayed in all the later versions. But I found much better and more representative measures for the final two components during my later investigations, including data for more countries. For these latter two, I now use the global volume of trading in particular currencies and the value of international bank loans and deposits centred in different countries.

These revised Index components were fully discussed in my 2016 book, The City, Chapter 5, ‘The World Hierarchy’, including the rationale for the particular data items used and the limitations they had. Yet, people being what they are, some writers have still managed to misinterpret what I said, so I will again review the key points below. I will also note the small amendments to how I have dealt with data for China in the latest Index values (which, however, is not the reason for China’s rise to #2), and discuss how to interpret China’s position in the world economy.

Index construction

The five components of my Index of Power are:

GDP: GDP measured in nominal US dollars, using IMF data for 2018.

FDI: The stock of foreign direct investment assets, using UNCTAD data for end-2018.

FX: The volume of global transactions in a currency, with April 2019 as the base period, using the latest BIS survey of September 2019 (euro transactions are allocated among the 19 euro members).

Banks: The outstanding international loan assets and deposit liabilities of banks in a particular country, using data from the BIS for end-2018.

Military: the military spending of countries, measured in nominal US dollars, using data from SIPRI for 2018.

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Three data components – GDP, FDI and Military – are available for most countries in the world, although the data may be a little old or not available in some cases. The two other components are available only for a smaller group of countries – 57 for FX (including all euro members) and 47 for Banks – although it is very likely that the countries left out will have minimal readings.

Each of the components is weighted equally in the Index. The country with the largest component reading gets a score of 100 for that item, and other countries get a scaled down number. So, for example, if Country A has the biggest GDP, then it is 100, and country B, with a quarter of that GDP is 25. To complete the Index, components are added up for each country then divided by 5.

If a country is the biggest in all components, its final Index number will be 100. That is almost true for the US, which has a value of 92.4, with the biggest GDP, FDI, FX and Military, but coming second to the UK as a location for Banks (rather, international banking).

Below I discuss the limitations of the available data used for the index components.

GDP

One can always doubt whether an economic statistic really does measure what it claims to measure. Nevertheless, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has the big advantage of being an easily available item of data for almost all countries. For my current purpose, one problem with GDP is that it overstates the value of output that accrues to a particular country when it has net payments of income to foreign investors, and understates that value when the country has net income from foreign investment. For example, Ireland’s GDP is overstated in this respect, because it has to make big payments to foreign investors – more is produced in the country than ends up staying there. By contrast, Norway’s GDP underestimates how much revenue Norway receives because it gets big net payments from its foreign investments. An alternative measure, GNP, includes that difference, but is much less easily or widely available.

In any case, it is worth pointing out that GNP and GDP do not allow for the way economic data count value produced. As John Smith pointed out, these measures are better understood as measuring value appropriated by a country, rather than value created in that country.

GDP does not measure a country’s international influence directly. But a country’s ‘weight’ in the world economy is an important factor in its potential influence, and GDP is one measure of that weight. It is also better to look at nominal GDP, not on a Purchasing Power Parity basis, as a truer measure of this global weight. You cannot buy anything on the world market with PPP dollars, which do not exist.

GDP’s value as a component of a power index can be seen in another way: one can look at GDP as measuring population multiplied by GDP per head of population. This allows for the fact that in the world economy people count only insofar as they also have incomes, and how much income!

In the case of China’s GDP, the number I have used is the GDP of China itself, plus that for Hong Kong and Macau, which are counted separately in official data. Macau is a new addition compared to the last Index calculation, but this increases China’s total index number by less than 0.1.

FDI

Foreign direct investment is one measure of a country’s foreign ownership of assets, and its ability to exploit others in the world economy. However, especially given the registration of FDI in tax havens, a problem is that not all of the ultimate country owners of these assets are identified. In the case of the Republic of Ireland and the British Virgin Islands, and also for some other countries, they would score relatively highly on this index measure, but little of the FDI recorded as coming from these locations is owned by their residents.[1] Also, FDI is distinguished from portfolio investment in official data. To count as FDI, the investment has to account for more than 10% of a foreign company’s assets; otherwise it is counted as ‘portfolio’ investment.

Portfolio investment in equities and bonds is huge, but data covering it is much more patchy than for FDI, and is even less likely to identify the ultimate country-based owners. A very high proportion of portfolio investment is done through global investment funds that also make use of tax havens.

Another weakness of FDI data is that it does not include the economic privileges in economic relationships that major companies in the rich countries have with their suppliers in poor countries, or others in their ‘supply chains’, privileges backed by their states in international trade and investment deals. This omission is difficult to rectify, but the FDI numbers are one measure of a country’s international reach, and so will likely be correlated also with such privileges. I use FDI data as a rough guide to a country’s ability to exploit labour and resources in other countries. Though it has obvious flaws, I have not found any better data with a wide international scope for this purpose.

Data for China raise a problem under this heading. Some of China’s FDI is into Hong Kong, and some of Hong Kong’s is into China, so just adding up the two figures would exaggerate the international reach (outside China/HK) of the FDI for all of China. Previously, I included only China’s FDI number and left out that for Hong Kong, thinking this would give a decent estimate of the number for China as a whole. After recently finding a report on the source and destination of the FDI stock, it turns out that it did. Using figures in that report for the FDI stock at end-2018, I am confident that the latest FDI index component for China as a whole is reasonably accurate.

FX

Every three years, the Bank for International Settlements conducts a survey of the trading in foreign exchange. It is the most comprehensive account of how far a country’s currency is used in international markets, something that I think is one important reflection of that country’s international influence. As discussed in The City, Chapter 7, ‘The Imperial Web’, there are certain market privileges that accrue to a country’s companies and governments if their currency is used widely in the world.

This updated Index of Power uses the latest BIS survey published on 16 September 2019, with a base month of April 2019 for counting the volume of trading. As in previous Index calculations, the US dollar is by far the dominant currency used worldwide, being involved in 88% of all transactions in 2019. By comparison, the euro, consisting of 19 countries, is involved in just 32% of all transactions. (Note that two currencies are involved in an FX deal, so the total shares add to 200% when counting all of them) The Index weight for the euro’s FX component is allocated among all euro members according to their relative GDPs.

In the latest 2019 survey, the market share of the Chinese renminbi (CNY) has remained at 4%, the same as in 2016. It remains the 8th most traded currency, up from 17th in 2010. Given that part of China’s territory is Hong Kong, which has its own currency the Hong Kong dollar (HKD), I have had to judge how to use data on its trading. For simplicity, I have just added up the two numbers for the CNY and HKD. This boosts the China ranking, since the HKD’s share of currency trading rose from 2% in 2016 to 4% in 2019. But this does little to exaggerate the figure for China as a whole. Not all CNY or HKD currency trading is in the CNY versus the HKD, and the FX component has only a small impact on China’s overall index number when divided by five.

Banks

International bank lending and borrowing based in a particular country is another measure of a country’s importance in the financial sphere. It does not include other bank activities, or the operations of other financial institutions, but the scale of such borrowing and lending is a reasonable proxy for a country’s international financial status. That conclusion would have to be questioned when a country is the base for large-scale international banking activity that is operated almost exclusively by foreign banks, since, usually for tax reasons, the country is favoured as a financial dealing hub.[2]

As noted before, this is the only index component in which the US falls short of the top position, coming in second behind the UK. That may well change in future with the impact of Brexit, if/when it goes ahead, on reducing the operations of banks based in the UK, especially with regard to the rest of Europe, an important part of their business. But it was true at the end of 2018. While banking activity in the US is much bigger than elsewhere, a large portion of it is oriented towards the domestic US economy, so does not count in this index calculation.

The China-Hong Kong relationship emerges again in how to deal with the data for international banking. Hong Kong has a slightly bigger international banking sector than China, having initially been developed as a regional commercial and finance hub for British imperialism well before the growth of mainland China’s banking business. I do not have enough information to judge how much of their ‘international’ dealing is between each other and how much is with external countries, and have taken the simple approach of using an average of the index score for China and Hong Kong as an estimate of the external number for China as a whole.[3]

Military

Big spending on the military does not necessarily mean that a country has military clout and an ability to intimidate other countries, but it usually does. Despite the record of exorbitant cost overruns in military projects, ships crashing into each other and missiles or missile defence systems that don’t work, the scale of such spending is a measure of military power, the most explicit political component of my Index of Power.

As before, the US is by far the biggest spender. China comes second, but with less than 40% of the US number. The only other countries with even around 10% of the US number are France, Russia, Saudi Arabia and India. On the latest SIPRI numbers, the UK was at 7.7%.

One might well argue that China can buy more firepower with $1bn than the US, given cheaper costs and probably less scope for armaments producers to milk the taxpayer. Also, while China is likely to be behind the US in overall technological capability, this may not be true in all areas. Many of the US advances could prove to be unworkable, or be as effective as the Boeing software ‘upgrade’ to its 737 Max jets.

US military power is also boosted beyond its own huge spending by how it encourages other capitalist countries to join in and follow its strategic aims, in particular with NATO. This acquiescence adds to the influence it can project by the large number of military bases it has all over the world,

China: Duck theory versus historical materialism

With China at number 2 in my global power ranking, the question arises as to whether it should be considered an imperialist country. My view is that it should not. Nevertheless, this is a big topic that I will deal with only summarily here, noting what should be taken into account when deciding how to characterise China.

Firstly, it is not so much the actions of a country that should define it as the dynamic of the economy and society that produces such actions. In turn, this will also depend upon the international situation and a country’s position in it as much as on the internal political system. The term ‘imperialist’ should apply only to those capitalist countries with a dominant position in the world that are, directly or indirectly, part of the system of oppression, control and violence that acts to keep that system in place.

China is not a fully-fledged capitalist country with politicians and companies joining in the carve up of the world. Its newly minted billionaires do not have free rein to do more or less what they like within China, and even its privileged bureaucrats could find themselves jailed, or dead, if they step too far out of line with what the ruling party thinks is best for the country.

Critics of China would seem to be able to point to many things to justify calling it imperialist. For example, there is China’s political oppression of the 11 million population of the Uighur ethnic group in its Xinjiang region; China’s many deals for raw material supplies from Latin America and Africa; big loans to corrupt politicians for infrastructure projects that might later be paid off by being switched into Chinese ownership of ports, etc; its attempt to control territorial waters in the South China Sea, including creating a number of islands, and its growing volume of foreign investment.

But this is only a ‘duck theory’, pointing to similar things that the classic imperialist countries have done, or are still doing, to conclude that China is the same as them. In some respects, China may ‘look like a duck’, ‘swim like a duck’, etc, but that does not mean it has duck DNA. In other words, the dynamic of China’s economic and political system is not that of an imperialist power.

Above all, the imperialist dynamic is based upon a country trying to boost capitalist profitability and being in a position to do so, especially through the control of foreign markets and areas of investment. By contrast, China’s policy since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 has been largely defensive, trying to develop without being dismembered by the major powers, as it had been throughout the previous century. Its objective is to find a means of surviving in a hostile world economy run by the major capitalist countries.

Initially, this had disastrous results, as with the ‘Great Leap Forward’ in 1958-62 and millions of deaths by famine. By the 1970s, however, China began a cautious engagement with the world economy. It aimed to limit the impact of market forces in special economic zones, restricted the influence and property rights of foreign businesses, held back the formation of a domestic capitalist class and tried to build the foundations of an industrial economy through state spending and investment plans. Despite many negatives, including lots of pollution and wasted resources, this proved to be successful. It brought hundreds of millions of people out of grinding poverty and ended up with China as a major producer, one that has even begun to be successful in areas of modern technology, such as 5G mobile communications – much to the alarm of the US!

This striking record does not endorse China’s often repressive, and sometimes politically stupid, government policies. But it should serve at least as a counter-weight to the critiques of rich country, liberal democracy enthusiasts who are so eager to find fault with China, but who pay little or no attention to the depredations of their own governments, and all too often act to echo the anxiety of their own ruling elites that China has out-competed them.

Conclusion

The Index of Power is a summary way of representing each country’s importance in the world economy and can be used to track changes in status over time. For the top 20 countries there had previously been minor changes in ranking. This time around, the major changes concern the advance of China and the slipping back of the UK. Such a development counts for more than it might at first appear to do, because it reflects the diminished influence of the Anglo-American system.

Both changes in status were fairly predictable, with economic growth and investment boosting China’s, while Brexit turmoil has helped lower the UK’s rank. That has not made it any easier for the US. While the US index value remains way ahead of all the others, it has shrunk in absolute terms, and particularly in relative terms with respect to China.

This move, under way for a number of years, has been reflected in an increasingly aggressive policy of the US government towards China. The US does not only have multiple military bases surrounding China, in Okinawa, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere (China has none around the US), it has also stepped up its more specifically economic offensive. A key US target here is China’s flagship telecoms and electronics company, Huawei, and its 5G technology, the latter an area in which US companies are well behind the competition. The US uses its influence over allies and other subordinates to encourage them to boycott Huawei on laughable security grounds.

China is also a problem for the US in other respects. For example, it has recently offered Iran, a longstanding bête noire of American imperialism, huge investments worth several hundred billions of dollars, in contradiction to US edicts. By incorporating Iran into its mega development project, the Belt and Road Initiative, China is not only ignoring US sanctions, it will also be dealing with Iran in non-US dollar currencies. This puts a further squeeze on US global influence and is another threat to its formerly unrivalled hegemony.

Tony Norfield, 17 September 2019

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[1] For this reason, Ireland is excluded from the graph shown of the top index countries. It would have come in at number 17. Among others, a number of US corporations have done ‘tax inversions’ to incorporate in Ireland and so reduce their tax bills.

[2] The Cayman Islands stand out here, and this territory has also been excluded from the Index of Power graph shown above.

[3] What to do with Macao, a special administrative region of China, is another conundrum, although a small one. I have excluded its data from the bank index calculation for China, although these are part of the BIS country report on banks’ foreign assets and liabilities. Were Macao properly included this would boost China’s total index number a little.

Financial Claims on the World Economy

François Chesnais, Finance Capital Today: Corporations and Banks in the Lasting Global Slump, Brill, Leiden, 2016

This book is well worth reading. It is written in a clear and accessible style and discusses key points about the limitations of capitalism and the role of contemporary finance. Perhaps its most important point is how the financial system has accumulated vast claims on the current and future output of the world economy – in the form of interest payments on loans and bonds, dividend payments on equities, etc. These claims have outgrown the ability of the capitalist system to meet them, but government policy has so far managed to prevent a collapse of financial markets with zero interest rate policies, quantitative easing, huge deficits in government spending over taxation, and so forth. The result is an unresolved crisis, a ‘lasting global slump’, in which economic growth remains very weak and vast debts remain in place.

There are two related points in his approach to the world economy and finance that distinguish Chesnais from many other writers, and for which he deserves to be commended. Firstly, he states clearly that we are in a crisis of capitalism tout court (pp1-2), not a crisis of ‘financialised’ capitalism – the latter being one that could presumably be fixed if only the evil financiers were dealt with by a (capitalist) reforming government. Secondly, he takes ‘the world economy as the point of departure’ for his analysis, although that is ‘easier said than done’ (p11). While he shows the central role of the US, he avoids the wholly US-centred analysis common to radical critics of contemporary capitalism, and instead highlights how the other powers also play a key part in the imperial machine.

Finance Capital Today helps the reader’s understanding of the realities of contemporary global capitalism by providing a wealth of material evidence. It also helps one to clarify views about what is going on by discussing the theoretical context. In this review I will highlight the key points raised in the book and also discuss where I have a number of differences with Chesnais. These differences are sometimes merely of emphasis, or what may look like simply an alternative definition of a commonly used term. However, poor formulation of an argument can also lead to theoretical problems.

Chesnais begins by outlining the origins of the 2008 crisis, arguing that this had been postponed since 1998 by the growth of debt in the US and elsewhere, and by the surge of growth in China. In 2008, ‘the brutality of financial crisis was accounted for by the amount of fictitious capital accumulated and the degree of vulnerability of the credit system following securitisation’. The backdrop to the latest phase of crisis was also one that has made this crisis a global one to a degree unknown to previous crises (p25). It involved a far more integrated world economy, following the break up of the USSR and the incorporation of many more countries into the world trade and financial system. The crisis is one characterised by ‘over-accumulation of capital in the double form of productive capacity leading to overproduction and of a “plethora of capital” in the form of aspiring interest-bearing and fictitious capital’. But major governments tried to prevent the crisis from running its course in the way that occurred in the 1930s (p35).

Within the global set up, Chesnais has an interesting view of China, which he characterises as not suffering national domination by the major powers (p43). He notes its subordinate position in the world division of labour, having offered its cheap labour workforce up to the world market, but includes this as part of the development of the world market rather than being a sign of its oppression in the Leninist sense. This reflects the mixed dimensions of China’s economic and political status, and one that I would also characterise as being in transition to the premier league of major powers (China is actually number three in my ranking of countries by global power).[1]

Chapter 3 is titled ‘The Notion of Interest-Bearing Capital in the Setting of the Present Centralisation and Concentration of Capital’. This is an important topic, but one in which Chesnais’s commendable approach is let down by his exposition. He starts by arguing that ‘the channelling of surplus value in contemporary capitalism, through both the holding of government loans and the possession of stock, by a single small group of highly concentrated financial and non-financial corporations and private high-income-bracket asset holders, requires that several features of interest-bearing capital that were treated partly separately by Marx now be approached in toto’ (p67). I would certainly agree with this, especially since the relevant section in Capital, Volume 3, is a complete mess, one that Engels found extremely difficult to edit and to try and salvage. However, Chesnais does little to develop the argument at this point, and he tends to keep it focused on banks. Only later in the book does he explain better how interest-bearing capital is a more universal phenomenon for modern capitalism. Even then, I would argue that the forms it takes, especially in proprietary trading, are not fully or well explained by taking interest to be the source of revenue, or, as he notes from Hilferding, by taking one speculator’s gain as a loss to another speculator.[2]

This chapter also contains a discussion of two issues of Marxist theory on finance. One is the difference of opinion between myself (and others) and Costas Lapavitsas on the question of banks ‘exploiting’ workers through the charging of interest on loans, etc (pp76-77). He correctly notes that this interest is, in any event, only a small portion of bank profits, not the big event claimed by the ‘exploiting’ school. However, citing Rosa Luxemburg, he comes down on the side of the view that these deductions are a reduction of the value of labour-power. I disagree, and not only because Luxemburg’s judgements in matters of economic theory, let alone political strategy, leave very much to be desired. My argument, which Chesnais cites, is that the charging of interest does not by itself suggest a lowering of the value of labour-power. If this interest deduction became a significant part of workers’ incomes, then wages would tend to rise to offset this, making it effectively a deduction from corporate profits. This is not to exclude that the value of labour-power can be forced down, but it is in the febrile imagination of the anti-finance populists that this process results from banks charging workers interest on loans.

A second issue of theory raised in Chapter 3 is on the question of bank lending. In contrast to many other Marxists, Chesnais recognises that banks can themselves create new deposit assets. However, he confusingly calls these ‘fictitious capital’ (p84). This is a relatively common perspective, as seen also in David Harvey’s The Limits to Capital, but it is not consistent with Marx’s definition. A bank loan can be created out of thin air by a bank, and is not dependent upon a ‘real’ deposit of cash, so in that sense it is indeed fictitious. But it should then simply be called a ‘fictitious’ deposit or asset of the bank. Fictitious capital, by contrast, can most easily be described as a financial security that is traded in the market and which has a price that is a function of interest rates and future expectations of returns to the buyer of that security.[3] That is not true of bank deposit or loan assets, which remain on the bank’s books. Only if the loan assets later became securitised – that is, when the loans are the basis for payments made to owners of a tradeable security – would they become fictitious capital This was the gist of Marx’s definition of fictitious capital, although one that was not clearly spelled out in Capital (and neither was his view of bank loans/deposits). To call bank loans or deposits ‘fictitious capital’ can only lead to confusion when analysing developments in contemporary financial markets.

Chapter 4 is my favourite of the whole book. Titled ‘The Organisational Embodiments of Finance Capital and the Intra-Corporate Division of Surplus Value’, it does not bend to media demands for a snappy one-liner, but it does provide the reader with valuable information and analysis. Chesnais discusses the different forms of the evolution of capitalism in today’s major powers, focusing on Germany, the US, the UK and France. He examines the relations between the state, private corporations, banks and imperial power. While noting the importance of pension funds from the 1990s as major equity owners of big corporations, he argues that ‘rather than bankers, it is industrialists with financial connections that form the core of the European corporate community’ (p108). Despite some views that there is an ‘international’ capitalist class, his view, with which I agree, is that the main groups of ‘finance capitalists’ are domiciled within single countries.

One important point he makes, and one that he could have developed more, is how in contemporary capitalism, by contrast to the views of Marx and Hilferding, merchant capital (essentially commercial capital and finance) is not subordinate to industry, although it is dependent upon industrial profit, (p113). However, he does discuss the role of large commodity traders and retailers. In my view, this reflects the way in which the major powers have used the financial/commercial system to consolidate their economic privileges, something that was true for the UK even from the mid-late nineteenth century. Today, as most people should be aware, it is the poorer, subordinated countries that do most of the producing, at least in the non-monopolised fields of production.

In Chapters 5 and 6, Chesnais covers global oligopolies and the operations of international companies. He reviews theories of monopolisation and how the development of the European single market was favourable both for European and for US corporations. There is some overlap in this material with that covered by John Smith’s book, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review, 2016), with a predatory appropriation of value by the ‘buyer-driven global commodity chains’ of the major corporations (p161). However, Chesnais disagrees with Smith’s earlier work on a number of points, and argues that China, India and Brazil are not in the classical position of being oppressed countries, having a different, and higher, status in the world market. On a separate, important point regarding data on the global economy, Chesnais notes UNCTAD’s estimate that about 80% of global trade is linked to the international production networks of international companies, and that it would be wrong to focus on foreign direct investment data as giving a complete picture of international investment. This is due both to the blurring of lines between FDI and portfolio investment and to the importance of offshore centres as the apparent location of the headquarters of many companies.

Chapter 7 discusses the globalisation of financial markets and new forms of fictitious capital. This is a useful review of the growth of financial markets, although it relies very much on secondary sources, so the data is already several years out of date, and his coverage of financial derivatives misleadingly characterises them as being ‘claims on claims’, when derivatives are better described as difference contracts based on the price of the underlying security to which they refer. The fundamental point he makes is nevertheless that the apparent diversion of investment to financial markets has been prompted by the decline in profitable investment opportunities (p174). The chapter concludes with a review of financial and (foreign) debt developments in Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa, including the role of ‘vulture funds’ dealing in Argentina’s defaulted debt.

Chapters 8 and 9 discuss contemporary developments in financial markets, focusing on banking and credit. This is well-covered ground, but is useful for those who are less familiar with recent history, and especially so in explaining the development of mortgage-backed securities, ‘universal banks’ in Europe, the monopolisation of banking, shadow banking, etc. There is also a discussion of how ‘leverage’ – ie borrowing to fund the growth of assets – rose to extreme levels due to the decline in profitability among financial companies (pp221-). I would note, however, the publisher’s poor proofreading: ‘over-the-counter’ (OTC) securities dealing is described as ‘off the counter’ in Chapter 7 and here has the designation ‘ODT’.[4]

Chapter 10 highlights ‘global endemic financial instability’ and points out that there is a ‘plethora of capital in the form of money capital centralised in mutual funds and hedge funds, bent on valorisation through the holding and trading of fictitious capital in the form of assets more and more distant from the processes of surplus value production. Financial profits are harder and harder to earn’ (p245). I would go further and also note how asset managers, pension funds and insurance companies – far more important investors in financial markets than hedge funds or mutual funds – are now finding their mountain of assets unable to generate the returns they have, implicitly or explicitly, promised, although Chesnais does mention this later in the chapter.

The ‘plethora of capital in the form of money capital’ is related to the declining profitability of capitalist investment. Chesnais notes how official reports, from the Bank for International Settlements, for example, allude to this problem, but also how they also mix in a description of low productivity growth and low economic growth in general. He correctly makes the point that the fall in interest rates long preceded the ‘quantitative easing’ policies that occurred after 2008.[5]

It is difficult to spell out these relationships empirically, given the available data, and Chesnais does not try to do this. It is also important to distinguish the rate of interest from the rate of profit on capital investment, which are two different things. However, I would suggest a measurement of how much global financial assets have accumulated – meaning principally equities, bonds and bank loans – against some measure of absolute global profitability over time. This would measure how far the financial claims on social resources have grown, in the form of interest and dividend payments, compared to the surplus revenues available to pay off these claims. My initial work on this suggests a decline in the rate of return from 2007 to 2014, whatever the more distorted profitability figures available for the US alone might say, data that are often used by people wanting a ready calculation of the ‘rate of profit’. The rate of return I suggest is not a ‘Marxist rate of profit’, as traditionally understood, but it would better reflect the malaise of the global capitalist system, especially from the perspective of the major claimants upon its resources, the ones based in the rich powers!

Chesnais finishes his book with two themes. One is a lament on the lack of Marxist study in universities and the lack of journals in which Marxist studies of capitalism can be published. This is true enough, and I am glad not to have been an undergraduate university student in the past few decades! Even apparently radical journals such as the UK’s Cambridge Journal of Economics are basically rather conservative in outlook, and are dominated by a facile Keynesian approach that dismisses a Marxist perspective out of hand if it upsets their advocacy of ‘progressive’ policies for the capitalist state to consider. Repeating radical consensus nonsense will get a pass; revealing the imperial mechanism of power has to jump a hundred hurdles to be an acceptable journal article. Such is the almost universal climate in academia today, despite the evidently destructive outcomes from the system they claim to be analysing.[6] Ironically, this is why the most trenchant and incisive critiques of capitalism today – at least from a descriptive point of view – often come from analysts working in the financial markets. They have to tell their clients what is really going on!

Friends have suggested to me that the situation for critical academics is even worse in the US, something I find easy to believe. I have some knowledge of, and better hope for, the development of a more critical intellectual climate coming from outside the Anglosphere. This should not be too difficult to achieve.

The second concluding remark by Chesnais is the question of how a new phase of capital accumulation might emerge. There is the plethora of (fictitious) capital with its claims on social revenue that cannot be met, but which, on the other hand, has not been devalued in a crisis collapse, because the major governments have done their best to prevent it, fearing the consequences. Chesnais discusses technical innovation to some extent, but sees this as being overshadowed by capital’s degradation of the environment. One is left with the ‘notion of barbarism, associated with the two World Wars and the Holocaust’ (p267). That is a downbeat but telling point about the progress of opposition to imperialism today. In the main imperial countries, the answer to the question of ‘Socialism or Barbarism’ is biased in favour of the latter.

Finishing on a more general comment, my own preference is to avoid the term ‘finance capital’ completely, whereas the book is titled Finance Capital Today. The term is associated with Hilferding and used by Lenin, but the definition is too bound up with Hilferding’s notion that banks control industry. This was not a good description of the situation in the early 20th century, and is far less true today. Chesnais would accept this and instead defines ‘finance capital’ as the ‘simultaneous and intertwined concentration and centralisation of money capital, industrial capital and merchant or commercial capital as an outcome of domestic and transnational concentration through mergers and acquisitions’ (p5). He explains how the different forms of finance capital evolved in different countries, making an important distinction between the privileges of the major powers and the subordinate position of others. I would go along with this definition, but I would argue for putting fictitious capital at the centre of attention, not ‘finance capital’. This would show more clearly that what Marx called the ‘law of value’ is today mainly expressed, or at least expressed more directly, via the markets for financial securities, rather than in the markets for commodities, although the latter are of course important. A company’s ability to access funds and at what cost, via the equity market or bond market, or a government’s ability to borrow and spend, is each signalled by the markets for their securities. These markets show what is good, bad and acceptable in the imperialist world economy today.

Tony Norfield, 24 November 2016

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[1] See my book, The City: London and the Global Power of Finance, Verso, 2016, p111.

[2] The City, pp144-147.

[3] For an explanation, see The City, pp83-92.

[4] The book is expensively priced, so order it for your library! The book will be cheaper when later published in paperback, however.

[5] See the note on this blog from a Bank of England report here.

[6] It works like this. Academic journals are graded according to their supposed value, and getting an article published in a highly ranked journal is the objective of all academics. Think what you like about the journal’s real worth, these grades are important for the scores achieved by contributors in the assessment they get from their universities, and, most importantly, in the assessment of their universities for government funding purposes. Over recent decades, this has led to a small group of mainstream, conservative, uncritical journals becoming the favoured destination for research articles, which in turn means that academics orient their work to what these journals will accept. It is a machine for generating very little worth reading, and also a system for maintaining a conservative status quo. That system is further maintained by a journal editorial board and a group of ‘peer reviewers’ with the same general outlook. A similar mechanism also leads academics to have absurdly long bibliographies and excessive citations in their articles, since citing their friends will encourage the return favour, and citations are another means by which academic value is assessed.

UK Foreign Direct Investment Profits

The table below is an update of some figures shown in the first article on this blog, 'The Economics of British Imperialism' in May 2011. That article covered the broad mechanism in play, something I am still researching, particularly its financial aspects. This table only refers to one dimension of the total picture, but an interesting one nevertheless. It shows the profit rates of outward UK direct investment, in total and by geographical region, including some key countries.

Profit rates are calculated by measuring company earnings divided by the average value of share capital and reserves owned by UK companies in that year and the previous one. The same pattern of profit rates applies for these numbers that go up to end-2011 as the for the ones to end-2009 in the 2011 article: the bulk of FDI assets are located in the richer countries, but a much higher profit rate is gained from the poorer countries. There are exceptions, especially for UK investment (largely in mining operations) in Australia. However, the overall divergence is clear. Africa, Asia (including the Middle East in these data) and Brazil stand out as sources of huge premium investment returns compared to other locations. The India numbers probably explain UK Prime Minister Cameron's visit last month to India, together with representatives of more than 100 British companies.

It seems odd that there would be such a divergence in profit rates. After all, if a higher profit rate is available elsewhere, then why does not more capital migrate to that country, rather than stay in one of the richer countries? This raises bigger issues about the monopolistic structure of the world market, whether there is much of a process of equalising rates of profit in the world economy, and whether having a presence in major, rich markets is necessary from the perspective of maintaining commercial control of major consumer markets, even if it turns out not to be directly profitable. Or, alternatively the data may just be rubbish, hiding the real locations of company operations and/or giving the wrong view of the returns on investment! One obvious problem here is that companies can relatively easily relocate the location of their profits to countries with lower tax rates, whether by charging 'licence fees' to a pretend headquarters in a tax haven, or by some other means of transfer pricing.

John Smith, cited elsewhere on this blog, has argued correctly that one should distinguish FDI by its type: where is the productive FDI capital located, as opposed to the commercial or financial capital, or other unproductive operations? In addition, what may appear to be productive capital might be getting most of its 'value added' from cheap supplies from poor countries. UK FDI data suggest that most productive UK FDI is located in rich countries, but these are regional figures with little country breakdown, something that is omitted to secure individual company information, but which only adds to scepticism about what the data actually reflect. In any case, such data cannot take into account the benefits to major companies of their links with foreign suppliers that they dominate in so-called value-chains.

This is a complex topic that is hard to resolve with official statistics. However, insofar as the data represent anything, the following table is what they show:

In 2011, the UK gained £102 billion of profits in total from its foreign direct investment, £58 billion more than was accrued by foreign direct investment in the UK, and the highest net earnings figure since 2008. Nice work if, as an imperial power, you can get it ...


Tony Norfield, 22 March 2013

Imperialism by Numbers - Amendment

This is an update to the chart on the ‘Index of Imperialism’ published on this blog six months ago, on 1 May. The change made here is that I use another set of data to account for the international banks in major countries; otherwise the five factors in the ‘Imperialism index’ remain the same. To recap, these were made up from: nominal GDP, military spending, the stock of foreign direct investment, the size of international banks based in a particular country and the global use of that country’s currency in international foreign exchange reserves.

As noted previously, any set of data has its limitations. However, the earlier data I used for banks were based on a country’s ownership of the top 50 international banks and this only covered 14 countries. The new numbers are based on BIS data for the relative size of international assets and liabilities of banks operating in particular countries. They are not limited by the number of banks and cover 19 of the 20 countries in the chart. The BIS also gives figures for bank assets and liabilities by the nationality of the bank. However, these data are for only nine countries, so I did not use them (in any case, they show a similarly ranked pattern to the bank-location data that is used here).

With these new data for international banking, the rank and index value of some countries changes significantly, but in a way that I think better reflects power relations in the world economy. The US is no longer top in all categories; it falls into second place as a centre for international banking, behind the UK . But this still leaves the US as top power, with the UK a distant second. Germany moves up to position 3, China jumps to position 4, now ahead of Japan, and France falls to position 6 from position 3 that it had before. Italy, Switzerland and Canada fall back in their ranking; Netherlands moves up to position 7.

(The chart has now been changed from when first published, with corrected ISO codes for Canada, CA, and Belgium, BE)

Chart: The Imperial Pecking Order

Notes: The height of each bar is given by the country’s total index value, which is then broken down into the respective components. Countries are identified by their two-letter ISO code. Take care, because CH is Switzerland, not China (which is CN), and SA is Saudi Arabia, not South Africa (not shown, as it was ranked number 26).

I would reiterate that the position of an individual country can only properly be understood by looking at its relationship to the imperialist system as a whole, not simply by examining whether its index value is higher or lower than another’s. It would be foolish to say that a particular index number means a country is imperialist, while one that is a certain amount smaller shows that it is not. The index components summarise only particular dimensions of the system. Different measures would produce different results, and any index measure would have a problem grasping the dynamics of the system. However, the chart I use clearly indicates that a very small number of countries are head and shoulders, and elbows too, ahead of all the others in the world. Most other measures of international power would show similar results.

Tony Norfield, 1 November 2012

Imperial Balances

This article reviews the balance of payments data for the main imperialist countries to highlight their economic relationships with the rest of the world. Such data will not cover everything about these relationships, for example, the way in which the UK acts as a bolt-hole for criminal money.[1] However, a close examination of the data does reveal some important aspects of the imperialist world economy today. I begin by examining the US balance of payments, and then look at two of the other powers, the UK and Germany.

1. The US: a boatload of goods for a book entry in dollars

The US may be concerned about the challenge of China as a major power in the world, but a closer look at the economic relationships between the two countries shows who is really in charge. At first sight, the huge trade surplus that China has with the US might seem to put China on top: it reached $295bn in 2011, or 40% of the total US deficit. However, when US importers buy Chinese commodities, they pay for these goods in US dollars, not in renminbi, because most international trade is priced in dollars. The Chinese exporters receiving dollars then exchange these for renminbi at China’s central bank, given China’s exchange controls. Then the central bank uses these dollars to pay for imports, and, until recent years, any surplus of dollars was added to China’s foreign exchange reserve holdings.[2] Hence the US deficit with China found its expression in a rising level of US indebtedness, though the debt is denominated in dollars - the currency over which the US has control.[3] The dollar-based pricing regime, based on US economic power, is complemented by a dollar financial regime, another consequence of this power. This enables the US to import trillions of dollars worth of goods in exchange for low yielding financial securities!

The US balance of payments is characterised by deficits in traded goods and (usually) a net outflow of funds on the foreign direct investment account. These potentially negative flows for the US dollar are offset by a surplus on services trade and investment income, and by a large volume of foreign purchases of US securities. In 2011, for example, the goods deficit was nearly $740bn, but the services surplus was nearly $180bn and the investment income surplus was another $235bn. The latter item has grown dramatically in recent years as the collapse of US interest rates reduced its payments to foreign creditors. The remaining gap in US payments was largely filled by around $250bn of net foreign purchases of US securities and short-term money flows.

The US current account deficit has now shrunk to some 3% of GDP, down from 6% in 2006, helped by stagnant growth in US demand and a decline of the US dollar. Alongside the reduction of the deficit, there has also been a reduction of the funding that came from central bank purchases of dollars for their foreign exchange reserves. This volume of dollar securities buying fell from $488bn in 2006 to ‘only’ $212bn in 2011. While the volume of US foreign debt continues to climb, the US government has benefited immensely from the near-zero level of yields. It is now paying less in total interest to foreign creditors than it did six years ago, when the volume of debt was much lower.

Such data reveal the huge financial power that the US exerts in the world economy, a power reflected in its privilege of being able to draw on global resources cheaply, essentially by selling securities that it issues on its own terms in exchange for goods and services produced by other countries. This happens on a persistent basis, and is not a function of the past few years. If anything, US economic power has increased in the more recent years of crisis as US banks have easier access to the dollar funding that is critical for international trade.[4]

2 The UK: broker and rentier

There are some similarities between the US and UK balance of payments. Each country has a large trading deficit and regular outflows of foreign direct investment that are funded by other inflows. The UK also has a surplus in services trade and investment income despite being, like the US, a large net debtor country. However, whereas the US has benefited from the role of the US dollar in the global monetary system and funding from central bank dollar purchases, the UK has a different means of using the financial system to gain economic advantage. As explained in detail elsewhere,[5] the UK has specialised in financial services. This enables it to take a cut of global financial deals, based on its role as home to the world’s biggest international money market.

In 2011, while the UK visible trade deficit was £100.3bn (6.6% of GDP), the services surplus amounted to £76.4bn, which helped lower the current account deficit to 1.9% of GDP. By far the largest component of the services figure was a £38.7bn surplus due to financial services. These items, together with a surplus on investment income – a net £17.3bn in 2011, which was more than accounted for by the £48.9bn net earnings on foreign direct investment – are stable elements of the UK balance of payments that fund the other deficits. Other items, such as portfolio investment and banking flows tend to be more erratic, but there are many and varied sources through which the UK can obtain the funds to finance its persistent trade deficit and regular purchases of foreign companies without bringing about the collapse of the sterling exchange rate.

3. Germany: Vorsprung durch Technik?

Germany’s balance of payments show a country with a more ‘productivist’ bias, compared to the financial inflows that loom large in the Anglo-American data. Germany usually registers a large visible trade surplus (€158bn in 2011), with a small deficit on services trade. With the country’s large net foreign asset position, there is a sizeable net inflow of investment income (€47bn in 2011) and these figures finance the steady outflow of funds for direct investment and bank lending. Thus Germany’s international financial strength is based much more on its productive capabilities than is the case for the US and the UK.[6]

The crisis has brought some acute problems for German imperialism, however. It is widely known that Germany has been the main paymaster for the European Union and later for the euro currency area, contributing by far the most to ‘structural funds’ and the like. These arrangements have been to its advantage, creating for it a profitable trading and economic zone. But in the recent years of crisis the bills to ‘save the euro’ have grown immensely. Apart from Germany’s large commitments to fund various rescue packages, there is also a far less widely recognised huge effective loan to the euro banking system. In 2006 the figure was minimal, but by the end of 2011 the Bundesbank reported that its outstanding claims on the European Central Bank’s TARGET2 payments system had risen to an astonishing €463bn.[7] By mid-2012, this figure had grown to more than €700bn!

This rise in claims is a function of the way the euro payments system works, reflecting net monetary flows between member countries that occur as a result of transactions in goods, services and financial assets. It comes about automatically, rather than being a deliberate loan from Germany’s central bank, and with the collapse of private interbank payments in Europe, central banks have become much more prominent. Effectively what is happening now is that the central banks in euro countries crushed by debt are the only supports for their national banking systems. They can just about provide credits to local banks (and then on to companies and individuals) because they are part of the euro payments system that operates with the ECB as the go-between. These countries still have big trading deficits, but the national central banks are continuing to finance these deficits by running up official debts with the ECB. The ECB’s accounts then record huge assets owed to it by the debtor countries - and most of its liabilities are with the Bundesbank on the other side of the balance.

Another way of expressing this point is that Germany has seen its current account surplus with many other euro countries paid for by credits at the ECB in the TARGET2 payments system. Well, it looks like something is not quite right with the populist view that Germany is to blame for having exported the goods to the debtor countries, especially when there is little sign that the country is even getting paid!

Regarding the debts now owed to Germany by other euro countries, one report has suggested that these ‘may be the largest threat keeping Germany within the Eurozone and prompting it to accept generous rescue operations such as those agreed on in October 2011’.[8] This is because Germany would bear more than 25% of the costs of a default impacting the ECB, based on its share of the ECB’s equity, quite apart from the broader economic damage that would be done to Germany’s economy and finances.

Germany, in the opposite mode to the US and the UK, has lent to export rather than borrowed to import. Its creditor position gives the country important influence and power, but it is having difficulty in deciding how to use that power because the scale of the economic trouble in Europe (and elsewhere) is so big. Yet all the indications are that Germany will come down on the side of sustaining the euro system. This is not simply because it is a political and economic project on which Germany’s (and France’s) long-term strategy of building a counter-weight to the US has been based.[9] It is also because now the more immediate financial costs of any attempt to get out have risen so dramatically.

Tony Norfield, 12 September 2012

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[1] See, for example, ‘London’s Dirty Laundry’, a Special Report in Private Eye, 10-23 August 2012. The Tax Justice Network and other groups have also done some useful work on this question with their coverage of tax havens and the links these have to major countries.

[2] China’s trade surplus has shrunk in recent years, and so has its accumulation of FX reserves, which nevertheless amount to some $3 trillion (around 60% of which is believed to be held in terms of US dollars). Surplus dollars not used for reserves include hundreds of billions to buy other currencies instead, to recapitalise Chinese banks, to finance the purchase of foreign assets and to provide finance for overseas projects. These latter items boost China’s influence and are the main factors worrying the US government.

[3] The Chinese authorities accumulated holdings of dollar-denominated assets (principally government securities) as a means of preventing, or limiting, the appreciation of their currency. To this extent China’s build up of US dollar holdings was its own policy decision, not one forced on it by the US. However, it was a policy enacted in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis that led countries to accumulate FX reserves rather risk being subjected (again) to the dictates of the IMF and imperialist capital.

[4] See for example: ‘Citigroup sails into European bank waters’, Financial Times, 5 September 2012.

[5] See ‘The Economics of British Imperialism’ on this blog, 22 May 2011.

[6] I don’t want to go too far here! As Guglielmo Carchedi points out in his book, For Another Europe: A Class Analysis of European Economic Integration (London 2001, especially Chapter 4 on Economic and Monetary Union), Germany has used the EU and EMU to secure the position of its monopolistic companies.

[7] Deutsche Bundesbank, Monthly Report, ‘Germany’s balance of payments in 2011’, March 2012, p33.

[8] H-W Sinn and T Wollmershaeuser, ‘Target Loans, Current Account Balances and Capital Flows: The ECB’s Rescue Facility’, NBER Working Paper No. 17626, November 2011, p6. On page 25 of this valuable report, the authors note that in the three years from 2008 to 2010, 91% of Greece’s current account deficit and 94% of Portugal’s was financed with credits from the TARGET system.

[9] See ‘Cameron, Merkozy and Europe’ on this blog 12 December 2011,for a fuller discussion of this issue.

Imperialism by Numbers

There are close to 7 billion people in the world, in some 200 countries. However, a very small minority of rich, powerful countries - or rather, the rich and powerful in these countries - run the world economy. The way in which this happens is the focus of my research and the subject of many articles on this blog. In this article, I present some statistics to highlight the stratification of the world economy between the small number of imperialist powers and the rest. I welcome any comments on this analysis.

Five features *

Lenin outlined five features of imperialism, from the decisive role of capitalist monopolies, to the development of ‘finance capital’ and the export of capital, to the territorial division of the world between the biggest capitalist powers.[1] Although the form of territorial division has changed, with the end of colonial empires, these features continue to describe the world economy. Here I set out five complementary statistics for examining imperialism today from data for 180 different countries.

The first is nominal GDP. This measure of economic output is the most widely used in official statistics, though it has a number of drawbacks, not least that it is a measure of value appropriated rather than value created.[2] However, it is an easy number to obtain for the size of economic output in a particular country. The degree to which it is exaggerated by value appropriated from elsewhere will also be an advantage if we are to use it as a measure of global economic power.[3] Of course, countries with a large GDP are not necessarily rich – they might have a large population with a very low average income. Nevertheless, a high GDP ranking indicates that the country has weight, and presumably some influence, in the world economy.

The second measure is the size of military spending by each country. This spending might be for internal repression rather than for external power projection, but it is notable that the five biggest spenders in the world are also permanent members of the UN Security Council, each with a veto power on UN decisions. In general, it looks like a good measure to use as an indicator of imperial status.

For the third measure, I use figures for the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) owned by each country. These figures will not fully reflect a country’s external economic power. For example, they exclude privileges and benefits that may come from commercial and trading relationships that may have little to do with owning companies and property in other countries. Neither will the FDI numbers reflect the power, influence and revenues that come from owning foreign portfolio assets (equities and bonds). However, the FDI data can be used as one guide to how far a country is able to exploit workers in other countries.

The final measures are used to reflect the financial power of different countries. One is a country’s ownership of the top 50 international banks; the other is the importance of a country’s currency in central bank foreign exchange reserves. These measures are far from comprehensive, but they should give an indication of how far a country’s banks are important on the world stage and how far its currency is accepted internationally.[4] Probably the main dimension missing from these particular measures is how far a country is able to utilise the financial sector to appropriate value from the world economy when this does not necessarily come via its own banks, or from the use of its own currency.[5]

Each of the statistical measures I use for the index has problems, but they offer a simple way in which to sum up key features of a country’s economic and political position in the world. In order to standardise the data for comparison purposes, I have set the highest value under each heading at 100. This means that if, for example, one country has the highest GDP, then its value will be shown as 100. Other countries with smaller GDPs will be shown as a proportion of that number, as 30, for example.

The five measures used are given equal weights, and the total index is an average of the individual values. This summary index is a guide to a country’s status. Results for the different countries show dramatically different values, and there is a clear hierarchy between the small number of countries at the top and the remainder with index values far behind.

Table 1: The Imperialism Index

Notes and sources: Calculated from original IMF, SIPRI, UNCTAD data. GDP data were for 2011, military spending data for 2010, FDI stock for 2010, ‘top banks’ for 2009, central bank FX reserves for end-2011. Figures for China include Hong Kong. The total index is an unweighted average of the components.

Table 1 shows the results for the top 20 countries ranked by their total index value. The US stands out at the top of each component measure, with a total (average) score of 100. Next in line is the UK, at a mere 32 points. The UK ranks close to the US only in the significance of its banking sector, and it is a distant second in terms of FDI holdings. France is not far behind the UK, spending slightly more on the military and having a higher GDP, but it scores less on the other measures than the UK. Germany is ranked a bit lower than France. This latter relationship may be surprising, since the French economy is smaller than Germany’s and more central banks hold German securities than French. But France has a higher rank in terms of military spending, FDI and its international banking position. This correlates well with France (like the UK) being a more active promoter of war.

Japan ranks at a significant margin below Germany in these measures of imperial power, with an index value close to 23. While Japan is the second largest world economy in terms of nominal GDP, the prolonged stagnation in Japan’s economy has damaged its banks and reduced the scope for its corporations to invest abroad.

China is a significant member of the top group in this classification, ranking 6^th at just below 20 index points. Its GDP is half the size of that in the US, though ‘purchasing power parity’ measures put it much closer. Its military spending is the second largest in the world, though still less than 20% of that in the US. American strategists are nevertheless concerned because China can mobilise a lot of cheap manpower for the military, and the gap in hardware capability may not be as big as the sub-20% figure would suggest. The FDI figure for China mainly consists of investments from Hong Kong. These may also be invested in China, so this may incorrectly push the overall index value somewhat higher. However, the leverage that Hong Kong gives China in commerce and finance should not be underestimated. Even though China has a position neither in the measure of top banks, nor in that for central bank holdings of its currency, these factors are bound to change in the next few years. China is slowly developing its financial system, the CNY is being used more in international trade relationships and Chinese banks are bound to play a bigger role in international finance.

Below China, it is a significant drop before the next group of countries, each with index values of less than 12. These countries do not count for much individually on these measures, but they can gain some influence by being part of the European Union (or euro) group of countries, or by being a major banker and foreign investor (Switzerland), or by being politically close to the US (Canada and Australia).

Of the so-called BRIC countries, China has already been placed. Russia, Brazil and India each rank much lower, though each has its own particular advantages in the global system (Russia’s being military). Saudi Arabia is perhaps a surprising element in the top 20 countries, but that is how these numbers work out. The close links of the Saudi royal family with US imperialism mean that it is hard to see this country as an independent player. Its position in the table is due to its military spending that reflects the subsidies it offers to defence contractors in imperialist countries, though it has also played an active role undermining protests in the Middle East, especially in Bahrain.

The following chart shows the same data and illustrates clearly the imperial pecking order. The UK, France, Germany and Japan each has an index value of less than one-third that of the US, but they are each several times bigger than countries further down the scale. Remember that this chart only shows the ‘top 20’ countries. The 20^th member, South Korea, has an index value of just 2.1, a fiftieth of the US value and less than a tenth of any of the major European powers or Japan. But further down the list (not shown) are more than 100 countries with an index value of less than 0.1, ones that would be mistaken for the x axis in the chart!

Chart 1: The Imperial Pecking Order

Notes: The height of each bar is given by the country’s total index value, which is then broken down into the respective components. Countries are identified by their two-letter ISO code. Take care, because CH is Switzerland, not China (which is CN), and SA is Saudi Arabia, not South Africa (this country is not shown, as it was ranked number 26). The countries are listed in the same order as in Table 1.

(This chart has been corrected. When originally published, the ISO codes for Canada and Belgium were entered incorrectly)

 

Conclusion

The significance of the US in the world economy is not news to anybody; neither is the fact of inequalities in wealth, power and influence between different countries. However, these statistics highlight the divergence in a striking manner. Although the figures are for recent years, in most cases the leading imperialist countries have been in their positions for decades. This is certainly the case for the US and the UK. They did not win their leading role by winning a popularity contest, but by moulding the world in their own interests, using their economic power and the threat or use of violence.

One final point on the index of imperialism presented here. The position of an individual country can only properly be understood by looking at its relationship to the imperialist system as a whole, not simply by examining whether its index value is higher or lower than another’s. It would be foolish to say that a particular index number means a country is imperialist, while one that is a certain amount smaller shows that it is not. The index components summarise only particular dimensions of the system. Different measures would produce different results, and any index measure would have a problem grasping the dynamics of the system.

Tony Norfield, 1 May 2012

Note on 3 December 2018: I have made some amendments to this index calculation and also updated the results to account for new data. The most recent picture is shown here.

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[1] See Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter 7 ‘Imperialism as a special stage of capitalism’. Available on http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm

[2] See John Smith’s analysis, noted in ‘Imperialism and the Law of Value’, on this blog, 3 December 2011.

[3] GNP would be a better number, since this also includes net property income from abroad. However, GNP data are less readily available.

[4] In the case of the euro, I have divided the latest figures for total central bank reserve holdings of euros into components reflecting the proportions of Deutsche marks, French francs, etc, held in 1998.

[5] I am thinking about Britain here! See ‘The Economics of British Imperialism’, 22 May 2011, on this blog.