America’s Far East Debt

Chinese and American fortunes are being bound ever more closely together, not always in a positive way.

Communist China is the leading creditor of the 36 nations (121 if each subsidiary group or nation is included) that have loaned money to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury Federal Reserve Board, our debt to China as of June is almost $843 billion, and that does not include Hong Kong at $141 billion. Japan is our second largest creditor with over $803 billion. Other Far East nations to whom we owe include Taiwan ($128 billion), Singapore ($50 billion), Thailand ($43 billion), and South Korea ($38 billion). And these figures are exploding upward as America borrows more to cover wild stimulus spending programs. Vice President Joe Biden’s description of “spending our way out of deficits” is the weird order of the day.

Estimates are that by 2012 America’s national debt will be about 101% of our GNP. Aside from the fact that we are either presently bankrupt or soon will be, our foreign debt may soon be used against us politically. Our ally Taiwan, a republic form of government in contrast to communist China, is constantly threatened by China, and that is more so currently as America has agreed to sell $6.4 billion worth of fighter jets to Taiwan.

In addition to government loans from these many foreign countries, of which China is the foremost, the manufacturing trade imbalance is additionally troubling. A few weeks ago, my family went to IKEA, the popular international home products store. While the women shopped, my son-in-law and I occupied ourselves by checking the labels of dozens of items. As imagined, “Made in China” appeared on more products than any of the other 24 import countries we identified. Amazingly, the only American-made products we identified that evening were some garbage cans and U.S. postage stamps in a vending machine. The U.S. is a pathetic debtor nation.

Latest reports reveal that China became the world’s fastest growing economy in the last quarter, and some predict it will be the world’s largest economy in the near future. America bought all of China’s toys, and now they are loaning our money back to us at painfully high interest. We have spent and then borrowed ourselves into potential oblivion, perhaps the means of America’s lack of prominence in end-time events.

The Bible says, “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). The U.S. is placing itself into international servitude, a slavery from which there may be no escape and a foreign domination that will herd us toward “globalism” at its worst. A communist country may want to use their influence against our Christian standards.

Our debt to China may pale in comparison with the military threat of China’s development of an anti-ship ballistic missile. It would be capable of traversing up to 1,000 miles over water to disable aircraft carriers, America’s chief instrument of maritime dominance in the area.

About two millennia ago, God gave John the Revelation, which included a unique insight into all this Far Eastern upsurge. “Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared” (Rev. 16:12).

The size of this military mob is found in Rev. 9:13-16. “Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them.”

A footnote for Rev. 9:16 in The Living Bible, which is copyrighted in the early ’70s, says, “If this is a literal figure, it is no longer incredible…. In China alone in 1961, there were an ‘estimated 200,000,000 armed and organized militiamen.’ (Associated Press Release, April 24, 1964).” Obviously, China’s population and that of other Far East nations has increased dramatically in the last 50 years, and that number is even less far-fetched.

The Greek word translated “east” in “kings of the east” in Rev. 16:12 means “of the sunrising,” literally “the rising light of the sun.” Japan already has that symbol on its flag. With China and Japan as the economic giants of the East vying for supremacy, the storming across the Middle East likely toward the Armageddon encounter (Rev. 16:16) seems a fast-approaching reality.

Our world is hopelessly enmeshed is godless, secular pursuits, and it is operating without God’s wisdom. As such, it is doomed, but those who have trusted Christ as Savior have a destiny above all this chaos.

Dave Virkler