China Story

Great Debates
1

I’d like to present this Chinese news story which created some questions for me. You must read this if you wish to continue.

Please note what I get out of it.

  1. China’s centralized control of their people has a very high priority.

2.China will lie to protect this priority

  1. China will kill their own people to protect this priority

Which leads to the following debateable questions,

Why do foreign democratic governments even do business with these mobsters?
They steal copyrights and employ slave labour as well.

And why attack an environmentally friendly powerplant such as a windfarm to protest an anti- Kyoto coal fired plant. This was not a global environmental issue obviously. This was the pain of a village with deep familial roots (I assume this)
see their piece of heavenly environment go for a shit . A loud and noisy protest on another ugly governmental imposition on their land was their only option left.

Don’t you also think that the rulers of China will never give it up and go for democracy?They now have a pretty good thing going on the world trade scene. Why disrupt their path to success?

Unless the world smartens up and refuses to trade with China.
Does the worlds free press really have that much access to a small village in China ? That surprises me.

2

Because there’s a whole lot of business.

We can afford a trade embargo on Cuba. Not on China.

3
  1. You can’t afford to piss China off. Between their population and keeping the lid on Korea, China being happy is a good thing.
  2. They’re going to kill their own people either way, but when happy they’re probably going to kill less anyways.
  3. Doing business with China and getting modern-day technology and knowledge in is probably the best route to forcing the government into modernizing. Shunning them just makes it easier for them to block out the rest of everything from their populace. …Not to say there might not be a revolution of some sort due to the knowledge that comes in, but I suspect that at some point that’s going to have to happen regardless.
4

At the risk of sounding a curmudgeon, what part of this story doesn’t fit with seeing the Chinese gov’t run over peacefully demonstrating students in Tianamen Square?

Back in 1992, one of the issues Clinton ran on was to hit Bush for his lack of response to Tianamen Square. After he got in office (I don’t mean this to sound like it was a 24 hour about face) he supported making China’s Most Favored Nation trade status permanent. It’s was a huge market then, and it’s only gotten bigger since then.

5

Because, by and large, foreign democratic governments are run by hypocrites, where it comes to trade.

Mobs seldom think rationally.

You got it. Except that the Chinese government, while still tyrannical, is nowhere near as bad as it was. Perhaps foreign governments are hoping that liberalising policy towards China will keep the government on the same path. Or maybe they just want the trade.

Nobody can afford not to.

It’s only over the border from Hong Kong. Which still has a (relatively) free press. Though the authorities will try to impose a news blackout, there’s bound to be a lot of leakage.

Bear in mind that I’m not defending them at all, but I would like some citation for this statement:

6

A cynic might note that many conservative politicians, commentators and organizations criticized Clinton for expanding trade rights to China and for making an official visit in 1998. That criticism dried up after Bush took office and pursued the same basic policies.

Companies that profit off China trade also give money to both political parties under the form of legalized bribery known as campaign finance. We could put a trade embargo on China if we wished to do so. The bulk of the profits comes not from selling American stuff in China, but rather from using cheap labor to manufacture cheap stuff that gets sold in America. There’s cheap labor available elsewhere in the world, so China isn’t essential. it’s just that no one has the will to do it.

7

Far from China becoming dependant upon us, its the other way around.

No-one in business can afford to allow their competitors to undercut them with the use of cheap labour.

No-one in business wants to do this either, they make much greater mark ups, they have no pension and health plans to pay for and they are far less accountable in terms of health and safety and environmental concerns.

All of us like products that cost less too, so there is plenty to go around.

China has seen just how much we are prepared to sacrifice our so-called morals when it comes to cheap labour, we like trainers, and don’t really care too deeply how those who make them are treated.

This is a very long tradition, we had it on our countries, we organised and cut it out, but we still want the products.

Look around the world, from sugar production, tea, coffee, rubber(especially the notorious ‘Heart of Darkness’ era) and what you see is not all that much has changed.
Prisoners are still used as slave labour, slave and child slave labour is still used in many places, children are bought and sold for slave labour.

Closer to Europe, East European women are bought and sold as prostitutes and it isn’t all that unusual.

We put up with it because we are hypocrites, we talk about freedom, libertarianism, and then export work to cheaper producers and do not think too much about the actual cost to the workers.

We lay off our own workers, cut their pensions etc, and we can do nothing about it, because when one company uses this advantage, it is commercial suicide for others not to do likewise.

Meanwhile, shares and dividends continue to rise.

Simple answer, we have no real objection to slavery, we just don’t like it right under our noses, so we export it.

8

I would like to agree with the above two posts (and to clarify for non-Brits that ‘trainers’ are ‘sneakers’), but also add that many western businesses are incorporating themselves in China not just because of the cheap labour, but on the assumption that China will become a vast consumer market, usually at a loss at the moment.

The signs are already there that the Chinese middle class is (however inequitably) getting lots more surplus money to throw around - and even if the middle class of China only makes up 1% of a population of impoverished people, that’s still a lot of fairly rich people, which will in turn affect aspirational working class people who will eventually have access to consumer credit.

9

Yeah, but if you go and conquer all the countries with evil dictators who kill their people, everyone complains about how it’s not our right to do such.

Most countries these days have signed some form of document saying they will respect certain rights if they want to deal with everyone else. The fact that they have signed this gives everyone a perfect right to give them some mean looks and get good deals out of them for a time following any blatant misbehaviour. Given that the country (China in this case) doesn’t like looking stupid or losing out, they are generally going to try and not blatantly misbehave. Whether that means they will improve their ways or simply do a better job of keeping a lid on internal activities is of course a coin flip, but over time in general I suspect that “protecting rights” will win out as the easier and more profitable path.

Nothin like ye olde stick and carrot, yeah baby!

10

Er , why.

Its possible with the penetration of cell phones and other media , that the press could have been there before peking ever knew about the situation.

Declan

11

China has almost 400 million cell phone subscribers so it is plausable. I don’t know if the cell phones are controlled or not though.

12

If you assume that the No1 priority of the chinese government is to maintain control, why would a trade embargo achieve anything? It hasn’t worked on Cuba, it hasn’t worked on North Korea, why should it work an a country orders of magnitude larger and more powerful?
What makes you think that the chinese leadership are more likely to go “oh no, no more economic growth for the peasantry, better do as the West wants and surrender control” rather than “ah well, no prosperity so we’d better distract the masses with some rabid nationalism and start off a cold war with Japan and Taiwan”?

Sage Rat has it right - messy compromises and the usual push and shove of diplomacy will get China to be a peaceful and prosperous country a lot sooner than trying to force them there at gunpoint.