http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b2dba6dc-7a00-11db-8d70-0000779e2340.html
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Weapons of mass production and other tales
By Morgen Witzel
Published: November 22 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 22 2006
02:00
[...]
What is new - and sinister - is how Prof Navarro weaves these into his
theme. In every single
case, the Chinese government is directly or indirectly responsible for
the problem. In every
single case, the problem is linked to China's attempt to achieve world
economic domination.
For example, Navarro believes that piracy and counterfeiting are
tacitly supported by the
Chinese government. Referring to "China's buccaneer nation", he quotes
a senior executive
from an American pharmaceutical company who says: "Let's be practical
here. It won't get
much better until China has its own intellectual property to protect."
Thus is reinforced the lie that China produces no innovations of its
own but merely scavenges
off the west. The idea that the country that invented gunpowder, paper
and ketch-up, among
other things, has no intellectual property of its own is laughable but
Navarro asserts it as "fact".
He is critical too of the urbanisation of China, seeing it as
deliberate policy to ensure a supply
of cheap labour for the "WMP". But urbanisation is a hallmarkof a
developing economy. China's
share of GDP derived from agriculture is comparable to that of medieval
Britain: 39 per cent for
the former in 2003, 44 per cent for the latter in 1300. That must
change. Migration to the cities
is a natural,if painful, part of growth.This point is ignored.
The obscurations go on, but it is the chapter on drugs that really sets
the tone. "No single country
plays more of a key role than China in the global production,
transportation and distribution of . . .
illegal hard drugs," he writes, adding a long list of scary statistics
to prove his point. He does not
blame the Chinese government directly - but any reader who wishes is
free to make the inference
that the government of China is indirectly, if not directly,
responsible.
The policy prescriptions offered for averting this "threat" are both
absurd and chilling. He advocates
stripping China of its veto position on the UN Security Council on the
grounds of its "immoral and
opportunistic use of its UN veto as a diplomatic shield for all manners
of outrage". This would have
the added benefit of humiliating China.
Meanwhile, drug trafficking, pollution and piracy are to be combated
through tighter border controls
and sanctions against companies involved in them.
He warns American consumers of "the real and dangerous hidden costs
that are embedded in the
purchase of cheap Chinese goods". But even if American consumers
stopped buying them, how
would this help the US economy? They would buy equal-ly low-priced
goods from other sources.
Then comes the moment when hair stands up on the back of the neck.
"What virtually all these policy
prescriptions share . . . is that they require the economic and
political will to stand up to China along
with the military might to back up the prescriptions."
The author offers no credible evidence to support the thesis of an
aggressive Chinese quest for
domination. When he discusses China's difficult internal social
problems, he goes a long way towards
contradicting it.
To suggest that China is engaged in "an aggressive drive for global
economic hegemony" is nonsense.
To assert that the US must respond with economic confrontation backed
up by the threat of war is, to
borrow a phrase from Jeremy Bentham, nonsense on stilts.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
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Micky Wong wrote:
> Book Excerpt: "The Coming China Wars" Introduction
>
>
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0132281287/ref=dp_proddesc_0/102...
>
> Excerpt. (c) Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
>
> Introduction
>
> News Release, October 25, 2012
> U.S.-China Chill Melts Down World Markets
>
> NEW YORK-Global stock exchanges were devastated this week by the worst
> collapse in history as a wave of panic selling followed the sun from
> Asia through Europe and back to Wall Street. The pandemonium was
> triggered by a Chinese government announcement that it would no longer
> finance the mounting budget and trade deficits of a "profligate United
> States" that "refuses to live within its means" and that "insists on
> scapegoating China for its own internal economic problems." Nor would
> China continue to try to prop up "an increasingly worthless dollar."
>
> As the Chinese began dumping U.S. assets on Wall Street, both stock and
> bond prices plummeted. The panic soon spread to other exchanges around
> the world as gold soared to more than $1,000 an ounce and fear of a
> global depression deepened.
>
> China's actions have been widely interpreted as harsh retaliation for
> U.S. congressional passage of stiff protectionist tariffs on a wide
> range of manufactured goods. With the presidential election less than a
> month away, both houses of Congress up for electoral grabs, and the U.S.
> economy stuck in reverse, Republicans and Democrats alike are pushing
> additional legislation addressing everything from the growing trade in
> Chinese counterfeit goods, illegal drugs, and ballistic missiles to the
> international spillover from China's mounting environmental pollution.
>
> It's been a tough year for Sino-U.S. relations. In January, the U.S.
> ambassador to the United Nations stormed out in protest over "the
> repeated crass commercial use" by China of its U.N. veto to "shield
> terrorist regimes such as Iran from diplomatic sanctions in exchange for
> oil." In March, China's president abruptly cancelled a state visit after
> the U.S. Treasury Department branded China a "currency manipulator."
> During an unusually hot August that raised collateral fears of global
> warming, the U.S. Pacific Fleet engaged in a tense, week-long standoff
> over Taiwan with China's recently acquired, and nuclear
> missile-equipped, blue water navy.
>
> Meanwhile, domestic unrest in China continues to escalate as an
> increasingly restive population seeks greater income equality, more
> worker rights, improved health care, a cleaner environment, a halt to
> widespread government corruption, and an end to massive public works
> projects such as the Three Gorges Dam that have displaced millions of
> people without adequately compensating them. A recent report released by
> the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has warned that should such
> domestic unrest reach a boiling point in China, the result may be
> "sharper military conflicts with the United States, Taiwan, and possibly
> even Japan as Chinese leaders seek to unify the now increasingly
> fractured nation against a 'common enemy.'"
>
> The best of economic times for China are fast becoming the worst of
> times for the rest of us. China's "cowboy capitalism" and amoral foreign
> policies are triggering a whole range of economic, financial,
> environmental, political, and military tsunamis that threaten to engulf
> us-as well as the Chinese people. The ever-growing dangers lay in a
> model of rapid, unsustainable economic growth, coupled with a wanton
> disregard for both human life and intellectual property. The myriad
> dangers from the Coming China Wars are real-and increasingly personal.
> Consider these scenarios based on actual events:
>
> *
>
> Your father almost dies from a massive heart attack because the
> "Lipitor" prescription he filled on the Internet was laced with Chinese
> fakes. Your mother breaks her hip because the phony "Evista" medication
> she took for osteoporosis was nothing more than molded Chinese chalk.
> Your house gets robbed by a drug addict high on methamphetamines made
> from ephedra grass grown on Chinese state-run farms and transported to
> New York via Panama by Triad gangs.
> *
>
> You walk out of a Wal-Mart with a big smile and a large basket
> laden with cheap Chinese goods ranging from a fancy new laser printer
> and plasma TV to shirts, socks, and running shoes. Your smile quickly
> turns to a frown as your eyes begin to sting and lungs burn from the
> Asian "brown cloud" now visible on the horizon. It is 90-proof "Chinese
> chog"-a particularly toxic atmospheric smog that has hitchhiked on the
> jet stream all the way from China's industrial heartland where
> everything in your basket was first manufactured.
> *
>
> Your bank balance drops precipitously as rising interest rates
> drive your adjustable rate monthly mortgage payment off the charts and
> as you shell out more than you ever dreamed to fill your gas tank. Your
> mortgage payments are being held hostage to China's
> currency-manipulation policies. You pay dearly at the pump because of
> the price-shocking effects of China's rapidly rising thirst for oil.
>
> The Coming China Wars is not just a story about how China's emergence as
> the world's "factory floor" is affecting you and your pocketbook. The
> story is far larger than any one of us or any single country. This book
> takes a tough, hard look at the eight major China Wars already well
> underway:
> 1. The Not-So-Swashbuckling Piracy Wars
>
> Following a centuries-old tradition of skullduggery in the South China
> Seas, China has become the world's largest pirate nation. China's modern
> buccaneers, with the strong support of their government, are not just
> stealing software and Hollywood movies on DVDs. They are blatantly
> counterfeiting virtually the entire alphabet of goods-from air
> conditioners, automobiles, and brake pads to razors, refrigerators, and
> the world's most recognizable pharmaceuticals such as Lipitor, Norvasc,
> and Viagra.
>
> In the process, these pirates are posing grave health risks to hundreds
> of millions of people. They are also destroying all semblance of global
> intellectual property law protections vitally needed to spur innovation.
> 2. The 21st Century Opium Wars
>
> With an unholy triangle of Triad gangsters, international smugglers, and
> corrupt Communist Party officials as cartel kingpins, China has emerged
> as one of the world's biggest dope dealers. Most despicably, China is
> not just the world's "factory floor" for legitimate goods but also for
> the so-called precursor chemicals used to produce all four of the
> world's major hard drugs: cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and Ecstasy.
>
> China has also retained its historical role as a major transit area for
> opium from the Golden Triangle, and it is rapidly emerging as a highly
> efficient production center for Ecstasy and speed. Not coincidentally,
> Chinese criminal syndicates are awash in illicit cash, and China's
> banking system is becoming an important hub for global money laundering.
> 3. The Air Pollution and Global Warming Wars
>
> With claim to 16 of the world's 20 dirtiest cities in the World Bank's
> environmental Hall of Shame, China has been dubiously crowned as the
> most polluted nation on Earth. As a result of its rapid
> industrialization and lax environmental controls, China's prodigious
> toxic emissions are now spewing well beyond its environmentally porous
> borders.
>
> Storms regularly rise up from China's Inner Mongolian desert steppes and
> blanket Korea and Japan with tons upon tons of toxics-laden dust.
> Chinese chog regularly hitchhikes along the jet stream, only to descend
> thousands of miles away in big cities such as Los Angeles and Vancouver
> and to despoil visibility in pristine towns such as Aspen. With its
> belching coal plants and rapidly multiplying automobile fleet, China
> will soon eclipse the United States as the single largest contributor to
> global warming.
> 4. The "Blood for Oil" Wars
>
> With its economy rocketing, China has emerged as the world's second
> largest petroleum consumer behind only the United States. Astonishingly,
> China now accounts for almost half the growth in global oil demand and
> is the primary catalyst for an oil market hurtling toward $100 a barrel.
>
> To lock down its petroleum supplies-and lock the rest of the world
> out-China has adopted a reprehensible foreign policy based on President
> Hu Jintao's amoral mantra of "just business, no political conditions."
> It has shipped ballistic missiles and transferred nuclear weapons
> technologies to the radical Iranian regime, used its diplomatic veto in
> the United Nations to sanction genocide in the Sudan, and facilitated
> the looting of public treasuries by dictators in oil- and mineral-rich
> African countries from Angola to Zimbabwe.
>
> This unconscionable blood for oil diplomacy has resulted in the
> slaughter of millions, the impoverishment of millions more, and a rapid
> spike in nuclear proliferation in both the Middle East and Asia.
> 5. The New Imperialist Wars
>
> In a supreme historical irony, one of imperialism's worst former victims
> has become the 21st century's most relentlessly imperialistic nation.
