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politico83

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  response to  Thomas P.M. Barnett's post Ten Reasons Why China Matters To You

  China is far from a force for good

  Though this article does make several interesting points about China as a possible ally, in many ways the logic is rather flawed. The mistake is thinking that China is in anything but a harmful symbiotic relationship with the rest of the world.

  China is, quite simply, a country that drives all upward trends backwards. They are the headwind pushing back progress at every turn. When there's attempts to raise global labor standards China pushes back with low price goods made by labors with no rights in a police state. When there's an attempt to isolate a rogue regime like Iran or the Sudan China pushes back by funding their military in exchange for their resources. The argument that its just that they really really need resources is very flawed. Europe and the US both really really need oil too, but we don't make a faustian deal to get it.

  The problem is the consolidation of labor into China, not globalization. I would not say that China should be pushed out by high tariffs to protect certain factory jobs that are long gone in the US. What I would say is that the US and the world would be far better off with policies that only allow free trade without tariffs with functioning democracies that have a certain floor of fair labor standards.

  These countries exist both in Asia (Cambodia, India) and especially in Africa. If there's anywhere our money should be going its to the poor in Africa and South America that have democratic countries and relatively low labor costs. Is Mexico going to have bottom of the barrel 1 dollar an hour wages? Maybe not, but they don't have those wages because they have a democratic system of law and order. By sending the business to China a message is going out that oppression will be tolerated by the US if it saves our companies a few cents on the dollar. A worldwide rather high tariff on any and all governments without fair labor laws would both preserve globalization (since most of our trade partners are already democracies) and push rogue states to either join the fold or collapse economically.

  China does need the west since capital and advanced consumer markets are not found anywhere else. The west does not need China, there are plenty of other countries with cheap labor which will not use the money to fund Islamic extremists and genocidal regimes.

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  Commented on April 27, 2008 by - politico83