US banks led by Goldman Sachs have borrowed a record Rmb47.5 billion in offshore renminbi debt so far in 2026, with Goldman accounting for the majority of self-led issuance, the Financial Times reported this morning.
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I just hope I’m not as right about the upcoming red scare as we both were about Trump destroying US hegemony. If Americans end up being that predictably stupid, it’ll be really sad.
Being in Europe, I don’t see the red scare as a major problem, and I find it hard to understand what this red scare in USA is really about.
I absolutely understand the fear of the insanity of the McCarthyism, but I don’t see that as a likely problem today, where MAGA embraces Russia as a partner more than an opponent.
I don’t think most Americans even understand what red scare is supposed to mean anymore.
China is beating USA as the better capitalist than USA, and capitalism is a seen as a greater virtue than democracy among the MAGA crowd, that is ready to embrace an authoritarian regime to get rid of annoying liberals and their inconvenient facts.
So I’m not quite sure what kind of red scare it is you are afraid of?
Red scare from liberals. Anti communism in America is as old as communism, with the unions and the majority of the worker class hostile to even a whiff of it. The entrepreneurial dogma runs deep, and anything that questions it is seen as unamerican. This is so baked into the American ethos that the impulse still exists for people who grew up after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The “common sense” I heard growing up is that communism is just as bad as fascism, and that liberal capitalism is the reasonable center. Even if socialism has become destigmatized, the attitude still lies dormant.
With the fall of liberal democracy to fascism, liberals’ faith in their system has been shaken to the core. Many liberals still think that they live in a “free” country, even as a fascist dictator tightens his grip on the government. They are increasingly scared and desperate for answers, and the oligarchs of this country know this. If they can get even half of the liberals to side with the fascists on nationalism against “communist” China, they will have a solid majority. It doesn’t matter to those people that China is a capitalist state, they wave the flag and they are national competition.
The real watershed moment will come when China takes Taiwan. Everything Trump has done makes their takeover even easier, and I thought it was likely even before his second term. Whether Taiwan gets invaded or surrenders, China will instantly become the world’s lead chip manufacturer. If there is any US or Taiwanese resistance, it will burst the AI bubble and send the US economy into a tailspin. If everything happens totally peacefully, then the US will fall behind technological in the long run. Either way, anticommunism will be pushed on the public by our entire media ecosystem and many Americans will fall for it.
I agree that the sentiment has been a lot like you describe, just putting some personal observations in there. I know the below statements do not reflect your own opinion, but the national trend in USA.
OK that’s maybe overstating it, but both are authoritarian.
It’s better, but Social democracy is the actual center of balance between the two IMO. Today some people include Social democracy as a form of socialism, but originally socialism and communism are near identical. With Social democracy being very different because it work with free market economy and democracy, but with regulation that protect workers and ordinary people much more than for instance American capitalism, that is extreme by European standards.
I also agree that in USA oligarchs are a major danger, the infamous Koch family has done enormous damage to democracy in USA, and Musk definitely helped Trump win a state in the presidential election.
But I think the red scare stigma will be harder for the right to use against the American people, because politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC are very popular, together with many Social Democratic policies. They will probably try, but for now, their “weapons” are fear of immigrants and to lose religious “freedoms”. Like to discriminate minorities. This is packaged with extreme propaganda about how Liberals will take your money when they increase taxes.
Unfortunately the Trump election has showed us that the American population is incapable of seeing through these lies, so your fear is valid, I just don’t think they will go for the old fashioned “red scare”.
As it is, I don’t think China will take Taiwan, they want Taiwan to reunite with China, but seeing how bad it went for Russia in Ukraine, and now for USA in Iran, I think China will pursue a peaceful joining like they have always claimed for decades is their policy, even if it wasn’t always entirely true.
I think Taiwan will surrender after being pressured to buy Trump. If they get invaded and the US needs to back them up, either America will lose or America will be seen as weak by not helping their ally. If Taiwan surrenders, Trump saves the most face. It all depends on how stupid Trump is and how distracted he is by other matters. At the end of the day, allies don’t matter to him, and he’s a bully who only wants easy results against weak enemies. I don’t think he sees China as weak like he saw Iran.
As far as the red scare goes, I don’t think it’ll be as successful as past efforts, especially in the long run. It will be messy and horrible to live through, but the very same sins of capitalism that allowed fascism to rise will prevent the right from squashing socialism like they did before. Socialism was crushed in the past because of the goodwill liberalism earned through social democracy. By trying to crush the left without offering anything in return, liberalism will lose even more luster than it already has. The fascists could capitalize on this, but so could feudalists, so could regionalists, so could socialists. Regardless of who comes out ahead, the red scare will do more to harm liberalism than anything else.