China’s post-2008 investment surge filled the global slack of Western austerity

Evidence

As mentioned at the start of the chapter, when the bottom fell out of Wall Street, China stabilised global capitalism by cranking up domestic investment to more than half of China’s national income. It worked, in that Chinese investment took up much of the global slack caused by Western commitment to austerity. China’s international stature rose, and its accumulating dollar surpluses allowed Beijing, in addition to feeding Wall Street, to become a major investor in Africa, Asia, even in Europe through its famed Belt and Road Initiative. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 572

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete fact grounding the surplus-recycling mechanism this chapter revisits from earlier chapters. — connects to: The June 2010 G20 marked the global policy shift from Keynesian stimulus to austerity — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 13
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 572