One prominent American who thinks Santa is Chinese is Lester Brown, a former president of the World Bank and now head of the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington-based think tank.

In an article titled “Santa Claus is Chinese or, Why China is Rising and the US is declining” published by the EPI on December 18, Brown writes: “I know Santa Claus is Chinese because each Christmas morning after all the gifts are unwrapped and things settle down I systematically go through the presents to see where they are made. The results are almost always the same: roughly 70 per cent are from China. After some research, it seems that my one-family survey is representative of the country as a whole.”

Warming to his theme, Brown says, “Let’s start with toys. Some 80 per cent of the toys sold in the United States - from Barbie dolls to video games - are made in China. Talking toys that speak English learned the language from Chinese workers. Electronic goods - from Apple’s iPod to Microsoft’s Xbox - are made in China. Clothing - from the latest Cashmere sweaters to gym suits - are also likely to have a Made in China label.”

Until as recently as the early 1990s, conventional wisdom had it that no developing country had ever got rich exporting cheap plastic toys to the US. That caveat, it seems, is now passÈ - if commentators like Brown are to be believed.

Continuing with his Christmas thesis, Brown writes: “The Christmas tree itself may come from China. While real Christmas trees are grown in every state in the United States and are marketed locally, many families now gather around artificial Christmas trees. Eight out of every 10 artificial Christmas trees sold in the United States are made in China. Last year Americans spent over $ 130 million on plastic Christmas trees from China.”

I am reminded, in this context, of what an American lady of my acquaintance said one day back in the early 1980s while visiting the home of some friends of mine in New York State’s Westchester County where I happened to be staying. Admiring a flower arrangement in a corner of the living room, the lady remarked, “What lovely flowers! Are they artificial?”

I remember thinking at the time that things had come to a very sorry pass indeed if artificial flowers had become the yardstick by which the beauty of flowers was judged.

To revert to Brown’s article, he writes: “This year Americans will spend over $ 1 billion on Christmas ornaments from China. And in perhaps the greatest irony of all even nativity scenes are made in China.”

According to Brown, last year Americans spent $ 39 million buying nativity scenes shipped in from the East. “China’s success in attracting foreign investment capital and mobilising this huge workforce has made it the workshop of the world,” says Brown.

But China hasn’t only become the workshop of the world; it has become the factory to the world and an export powerhouse. Its trade surplus with the United States exceeded $ 200 billion last year. Its foreign exchange reserves now total over a trillion dollars (the highest in the world). In 2005, China overtook the United State’s as the world’s biggest recipient of foreign direct investment, with inflows totaling $ 59 billion.

Data released by China last year show that the Chinese economy is much bigger and less dependent on exports than previously reported.

China raised its GDP in 2004 to $ 1.93 trillion from $ 1.64 trillion based on the results of the country’s first nationwide economic survey. According to an announcement by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics on the survey’s main findings, China’s rapidly growing tertiary or services sector now constitutes 40.7 per cent of the economy. It was previously believe to constitute 31.9 per cent.

In 2004, China overtook the United States to become the world’s leading exporter of information and communications technology (ICT) goods such as mobile phones, laptop computers and digital cameras, according to data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

China exported $ 180 billion worth of ICT goods in 2005, compared with US exports in the same category worth $ 149 billion. In 2003, the US led with exports of ICT goods worth $ 127 billion, followed by China with $ 123 billion. Thus, China’s exports of ICT goods grew by a staggering $ 57 billion in only one year.

China’s share of total world trade in ICT goods, including both imports and exports, rose to $ 329 billion in 2004, up from $ 35 billion in 1996. Thus, China’s total trade in ICT goods grew nearly ten-fold in eight years - a rate of growth unmatched by any sector of any other economy in history. Could it be, then, that not only Santa Claus but Bill Gates, too, is Chinese?

Reverting again to Lester Brown’s article, he writes: “That the US Christmas is made in China is a metaphor for a far deeper set of economic issues affecting the United States. Today Christmas is celebrated in both the United States and China - but for different reasons and with far different economic consequences. For the Chinese, the manufacturing bonanza means record profits, rising incomes, and, in a society where people save some 40 per cent of their income, a sharp jump in savings. In the United States, Christmas shopping expenditure, headed for another record high this year, contribute to rising credit card debt and a soaring trade deficit.”

Says Brown: “Underneath the American Christmas spirit and good cheer is a debt-laden society that appears to have lost its way, marred in the quicksand of consumerism. As a society, we seem to have forgotten how to save so we can invest in a better future. Instead of leaving our children a promising economic future, we are bequeathing them the highest debt burden of any generation in history.”

Massive military spending by President George W. Bush’s administration on its misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, coupled with tax cuts for rich Americans, has wiped out the federal budget surpluses inherited from the Clinton administration and has increased the fiscal deficit to an all-time high.

US military spending on the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq now totals well over $ 600 billion and is headed for the trillion-dollar mark. The Iraq occupation is costing US taxpayers $ 8 billion a month and the bill could rise even higher if Bush follows through with his plan to increase US troop levels in Iraq.

Reverting to Brown’s article again, he writes: “At the personal level, credit card debt just keeps climbing and at the government level we have the largest deficit in history. At the international level, we have a trade deficit that moves to a new high month after month.”

Says Brown: “It’s not that our Christmas is made in China, but rather the mindset that has led to it that is mot disturbing. We want to consume no matter what. We want to spend now and let our children pay. It is this same mind set that introduces tax cuts while waging a costly war. Economic sacrifice is no longer part of our vocabulary. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, President Roosevelt banned the sale of private cars in order to mobilise the manufacturing capacity and engineering skills of the US automobile industry to build tanks and planes. In contrast, after 9/11 President Bush urged us to go shopping.”

What Brown failed to point out in his article, however, was the fact that the United States has long been the most wasteful society in the world. With less than five per cent of the world’s population, the United States consumes 28 per cent of the world’s annual output of resources.

US economists keep urging developing countries to adopt policies aimed at “sustainable” economic development. But we seldom hear them recommending the same prescription for the United States - the world’s mist unsustainable economy by far.

What is sauce for the goose ought, surely, to also be sauce for the gander. In the United States, however, people are so intent on consuming that personal savings have virtually disappeared.

As Brown points out, Americans have an average of five credit cards for every man, woman and child. Of the 145 million cardholders, only 65 million clear their accounts each month. The other 90 million cannot seem to catch up and are paying steep interest rates on their remaining balance.

“Millions of Americans are so deeply in debt that they may remain indebted for life,” says Brown. The official US national debt, the product of years of fiscal deficits, nowe totals $ 8.5 trillion.