Chiumerica is aneologism andportmanteau coined byNiall Ferguson andMoritz Schularick describing thesymbiotic relationship betweenChina and theUnited States, with incidental reference to the legendarychimera.[1][2][3][4][5] Although the term is largely in reference toeconomics, there is also apolitical element.[6]
Historian Niall Ferguson and economist Moritz Schularick first coined the term in late 2006, arguing thatsaving by the Chinese and overspending by Americans led to an incredible period of wealth creation that contributed to the2008 financial crisis.[7] For years, China accumulated largecurrency reserves and channeled them into USgovernment securities, which kept nominal and real long-terminterest rates artificially low in the United States. Ferguson describes Chimerica as one economy which "accounts for around 13 percent of the world'sland surface, a quarter of itspopulation, about a third of itsgross domestic product, and somewhere over half of the globaleconomic growth of the past six years."[8] He suggests Chimerica could end if China were to decouple from the United States bringing with it a shift inglobal power and allowing China "to explore other spheres of global influence, from theShanghai Cooperation Organisation, of which Russia is also a member, to its own informal nascent empire in commodity-rich Africa."[8]
The accumulation of American debt, which has been estimated at over $800 billion, suggests the two nations are intrinsically linked; the economic symbiosis prevalent between the two suggests that separation would harm both countries and be disastrous for the global economy.[citation needed] Another way to measure this integration is the trade deficit. The US trade deficit with China was $295 billion in 2011, meaning the US imported that much more goods and services from China than it exported to China. TheEconomic Policy Institute estimated that from 2001 to 2011, 2.7 million US jobs were lost to China.[9] The concept of Chimerica supplements and/or supplantsNichibei, or the similarly constructed Japan-U.S. economic model and relationship that had been prominent in years before the development of Chimerica. The idea of Chimerica features prominently in Ferguson's 2008 book and adapted television documentaryThe Ascent of Money, which reviews the history of money, credit, and banking.[10]
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