Trump's Beijing Bashing Misses China's Own Rust Belt Upheaval
- Workers struggle to survive in Xingtai and other steel towns
- Those in China's rust belt don't have Western-style safety net
A man looks towards chimney stacks in a field outside a power plant in Xingtai.
Photographer: Ed Jones/AFP via Getty ImagesDonald Trump, who tears into Chinese economic policies with the subtlety of a chainsaw, has accused the nation of "raping" the U.S. with job-destroying currency and trade policies. China is engaging in "the greatest theft in the history of the world," according to the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.
Such blustery rhetoric, often directed at China’s massive steel industry, plays well in America’s struggling industrial heartland. Yet it ignores an equally painful economic reality in China, whose own Rust Belt is also in distress. The industrial Northeast is losing jobs in a decelerating economy-- with the nation’s steel industry set to lose as many as 500,000 more, Yin Weimin, Human Resources and Social Security Minister, said in February.