Kenneth Rapoza - How Free Trade and Soft Power are Making China the #1 World Power

Journalist and 'China smartypants' Kenneth Rapoza joins Hearts of Oak to discuss China's impact on Western manufacturing post its WTO entry and the free trade's negative effects on job losses and economic disparities.
We look at the challenges in competing with China's low-cost labour and its aggressive trade practices on other nations.
Kenneth walks us through evolving views on globalization, power shifts between the US and China, and China's strategic expansion in key industries. We address concerns about social control in China and democracy preservation, emphasizing the need to understand changing power dynamics in today's interconnected world amidst China's global rise

Kenneth Rapoza is a seasoned business and foreign affairs reporter with more than 20 years experience. He was stationed abroad as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Sao Paulo and was a former senior contributor for Forbes from 2011 to 2023 writing about China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and other developing countries.
After leaving Brazil in 2011, Ken started covering the BRIC countries for Forbes as a senior contributor. He has traveled throughout all of the countries he covered and has seen first-hand China’s impressive growth and its ghost towns as recent as 2017 and 2018.
His editorial work has appeared in diverse publications like The Boston Globe and USA Today — where he was given the unflattering task of taking an opposing view in support of China tariffs at the start of the trade war — and more recently can be found in Newsweek and The Daily Caller. He has either written for, or has been written about, in The Nation and Salon in the dot-com years, and almost broke the Argentine internet after publishing a story in Forbes about the return of the International Monetary Fund before the government opened up about it.
Today, Ken does the radio and podcast circuit talking about CPA issues.
Having grown up near the depressed mill towns of Massachusetts, manufacturing as a bulwark of household income and sustainability is not merely an intellectual pursuit, but a personal one, too. He experienced the life-altering impact government policy has on manufacturing labor in his own family back in the 1990s. He considers himself an American “lao baixing.” He graduated from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH.
Ken lives and works from a small farm and beach town in Southern Massachusetts with his family.

Connect with Ken...
X x.com/BRICbreaker
SUBSTACK doubleplus.substack.com
WEBSITE prosperousamerica.org

Interview recorded 15.4.24

Connect with Hearts of Oak...
WEBSITE heartsofoak.org/
PODCASTS heartsofoak.podbean.com/
SOCIAL MEDIA heartsofoak.org/connect/
SHOP heartsofoak.org/shop/