Whither China

Meanwhile our largest trade benefactors have basically threatened to sanction both China and China's largest oil supplier, Iran, and citing various off the wall reasons. These are acts of war. And our stooges grounded in morality would continue trading merrily with war criminals while they perpetrated another shock and awe.

@ Ryan 1812

 

It should be "whither" China, preferably with a question mark at the end.

Otherwise it reads like you want China to dry up and blow away.

Ironically, I meant for there to be the initial 'h' but I guess I missed it. Oops.

The H hath been returned to its rightful place among us.

Fidel, that is an extremely important point you make. We are looking at the global method of evaluating currencies and concluding that they are wrong and dangerous feeding a for-profit market based on speculation.

While I think that pegging to one wrongly evaluated currency can amplify the distortion, there has to be an alternative to the current system.

The Chinese are presently seeing their own workers attempt to improve their positions at the bargaining table-- this is of course directly related to evaluation. I suspect over time this will resolve.

I like Liang Jiajie's approach here in that it is not defining respect for China to be one where we would need to deny expression here or refuse to express concerns. Respect is more subtle, it means avoiding the more clumsy approaches we have made on delicate issues but not assuming that we have to agree and force the agreement of all aspects of our society with a single vision. I also agree that Canada should exploit the assets we have. I think there are a lot more than Da Shan and Bethune to consider (Interestingly Da Shan was hired as the host for Canada's Shanghai Expo contribution).

These assets must also include the fairly large Chinese community we have. To that end, encouraging more of them to be involved in public life and public process has purpose. Further, China is very interested in joint ventures in business, these opportunities as they come up are worthy of consideration for public investment. I do think that we can do better in a couple ways-- one is to clean up the visa and immigration rules to make the system more predictable. It does not help to see people apply for family immigration based on a roughly 2-year process only to see, after they have paid their fees, the process grow arbitrarily to a 5-10 year process (this through cutbacks rather than just demand)-- that system is loaded with problems and can be repaired without swamping Canada with new immigrants. As well, Canada could do more to promote the Sino-Canada relationship from inside and that does not need to be political.

 

@ Clearpath

End imports from and outsourcing to China?

Some of your points make sense, there are others, these in particular, that will simply never happen. There is no getting around dealing with China.

I am thinking about a U.S.-made car with components from China as a simple example.

Clearpath is resorting to personal attack in another thread.

There is no point engaging.

for Sean in Ottawa and Fidel

Whatever alternate currency system the future holds, it won't be one in which China can have an unfair advantage.  Ditto for its business environment -- if it wants to continue acquiring foreign assets it will have to permit the same access to other states within its borders; Chinese businesses enjoy legal protections in foreign countries, so China will have to provide the same to foreigners.  Working within the international system means accepting that sometimes states must accomodate the wishes of other states, something that China has had great difficulty doing.  For instance, it recently announced that the G20 wasn't the place to discuss the currency issue.  Where else does the world discuss these international issues?  China wants a lot of things from the world, but it is much too often unwilling to reciprocate beyond words and half-measures.

So whither China?  Well, it recently agreed to sanctions on Iran and to allow for some flexibility on the yuan, but there's of course been controversy about whether the yuan reform is real or more window dressing.  One major test for China will be the role it decides to take on the North Korea question.  China is the only country that can take the leadership in the six-party talks and persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions and cease threatening South Korea with war. 

The idea of economic self-determination is difficult to achieve because almost all national economies affect other national economies, and I think Beijing is beginning to realize this as other states bear down on some of its policies.

I find it strange that innovation was added to the list of strategies. China's educational institutions are plagued by plagiarism, bribery, hierarchy, and rote learning. Despite 30 years of development and government intervention in the economy, there's no sign of a Chinese success story like Toyota or Samsung or Honda or Seiko or Hyundai on the horizon. In fact, there's a widespread and deeply entrenched culture of copying in China.

The article also left out a significant fact: China has privatized its healthcare system, a neoliberal's dream.

China's development model isn't at all unique. Japan used a very similar model beginning in the 1950s, but it collapsed in the 1990s. Actually, China is showing the same sympton Japan had in the 80s, namely a very hot housing bubble.

This development model was useful for Korea and Japan when they began to emerge on the global scene, but the model has its limits because of the demands of globalization.

 

My knowledge of Japan is very limited as far as their housing bubble. What I can say of China is this, they have clamped down on their hot housing market. How this will result is still up for debate but consider the following: they have now limited second mortgages and made much more difficult to purchase primary mortgages in the upper income brackets. The down payment that you need now for a second mortgage is 50% and I'm hearing rumblings of it moving higher to help limit speculation. This is a smart move and somewhere that state regulation has helped cool the housing market. We've already seen the effects on housing stocks here locally (remember I live in China) so at least in the interim period, I think China's heavy handed movements have worked and I would applaud them. I think what needs to be done next is to build more low income housing. So many developers are building apartments in my city that are geared towards the upper class, not surprisingly I think. There is some social housing, but as expected, it's insufficient. I think in the next year, as we have seen China move to reform health insurance, which is already broadly applied, housing will be addressed in a more complete way. For now, as development is hot, China's move to slow down speculation and second mortgage acquisitions is well intentioned.

 

If our weak and ineffective stooges in Ottawa refuse to stop dealing with a U.S.-backed right wing death squad government in Bogota that murders more unionists and human rights activists than any other country in the world, then how can we expect them to cut off our third largest export market, China? Capitalists will deal with the devil and cock hind legs up in any old port in a storm. The problem is that market economies are not driven my ethics and morals. In fact, it's the opposite. Capitalism today is driven by appalling greed and corruption.

The "union" representing Walmart workers in China is one of the Party controlled official "unions" not an independent workers' union.  http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/is-union-reform-possible-in-china/ The officially sanctioned "unions" in China are more like company unions, who see their main mandate as "maintaining order and discipline", not defending workers against the employer. I suspect that Walmart would welcome the same kind of "unions" here if they could arrange it.

China strikers bypass union, organize with social media Demand more cash from Japanese and Taiwanese companies, workplace democracy

And just for a quick comparison to one of Canada's other trade partners in our own hemisphere: 

Colombia: army attacks striking workers at BP facility

Colombia: Another Trade Union Leader Assassinated

Neither is Colombia a worker's paradise. But that doesn't stop our phony minority stoogeocracy in Ottawa from trading freely with a death squad government though. And in this very hemisphere, too.

The point is that if our stoogeocracy turns a blind eye to Colombia and what is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists and social activists, then what chances are there that the stoogeocracy will do anything more than puff up their chests and condemn China once in a while for the sake of paying lip service to human rights issues? I think the odds are slim next to nil that they will actually do something to confront the CCP running a country of over a billion people on the other side of the world. Nada next to nil. Members of the CCP slide into Ottawa and meet with our stooges behind closed doors all the time and under the public's radar. Same with Colombia's colonial administrators, the Hondurans, Salvadoran's etc, all countries where US-backed right wing death squads have murdered thousands of their citizens in recent years. Our stooges just don't care. They are colonial administrators and hirelings of multinational corporations in Ottawa and nothing more.

Our stooges can afford idle talk as it's quite cheap actually. Their words are much larger than their actions 99 percent of the time.

I think what happened in Japan is that between 1945 and '85, their's was a model state-capitalist banking system financing prosperous post-war era growth. But then with the Plaza Accord, the US begged Japan to commit suicide and allow the Yen to rise in value against the dollar and making Japanese exports more expensive. The US was disappointed with Japan's rising star economy status. Japanese domestic markets were then flooded with credit at low interest rates and enabling the US to do the same in order to inflate the US economy coming out of an ideologically driven recession of short-lived tight money policies a la Friedman-neoliberalism. By 1990, cheap credit bubble burst in Japan, and they've been paying for it ever since. This led economists to joke that the Bank of Japan was acting as the Thirteenth Federal Reserve District and the Japanese government as the Republican Re-election Committee.(US economist Michael Hudson)

I don't think China will make the same mistake that the Japanese did in 1985. "Chimerica" is now looking at divorce proceedings wrt China diversifying away from the US dollar. They don't want to recycle US dollars by buying more US debt. And neither do India or Russia. They don't want to be financing US Military buildup around them with their country's savings. The SCO-Asian countries have asked the US in 2005 for a time line to pullout US military from Central Asia. They now see the US as an aggressor and lawless nation living beyond its means. This time it doesn't look as if the US will have its way with dollar imperialism.

The Plaza Accord only aggravated Japan's loose fiscal and monetary policies of which the real estate bubble was a sympton.  Japan had been easily lending money and providing industry with resources at below-market prices for decades before the 80s bubble.  Hudson is right to emphasize that Japan's economic success was dependent on its export sector, but that's how the Japanese development model works, and China, South Korea, and Signapore worked it to their advantage.  Unfortunately for the long-term, what ultimately makes this model work is the toleration of foreign markets to accept inexpensive goods that undercut their domestic producers.  The U.S. tolerated this in return for wide influence in the formulation of Japan's foreign policy.  It was only a matter of time until the U.S. and Europe asked Japan to open its domestic markets to foreign competition.  It should be noted that the U.S. also used the same strategy to kick-start the European economy after the Second World War.

I also disagree with Hudson's characterization of Japan's developmental model as warfare against Japanese workers.  One of the mode's tenets is to sustain employment despite profitibility which is why the Ministry of Finance continued to provide funds to companies that would have otherwise went bankrupt.  So it's not at all clear that Japan abandoned its workers.

And I wouldn't describe Japan's banks as "model."  By the time of the Plaza Accord, Japanese banks were barely profitable and were loaning money to a select few clients, effectively turning the relationshp between borrower and creditor into a symbiotic one to the point where conglomerates acquired banks. This says nothing of the collusion between Ministry of Finance officials and the banks they regulated, or the substitution of personal relationships for critical screening when evaluating potential borrowers.  

Japan's export sector had become dependent on import restrictions, government subsidies, and on lenient foreign governments.  This is what China has to avoid now. 

LJ:

"This access to cheap money was good for the Japanese economy when its export sector was in development mode and its industrial sector was sprouting, but it eventually led to dependency, waste and inefficiency, like Tokyo-style real estate speculation.  I thnk the lesson here is that, unless China wants to be detached from the international economy, it will have to move towards a free market economy."

 

Is that like the economy in which  finance capital was bailed out to the tune of several $trillion? Perhaps we should give THAT economy another name...say, the "bailout market"...or "state reliant market"... something signifying that there is nothing "free" about it?   

Rational market economy is a myth. Globalization, which is neoliberalism has been a lesson in deregulation and privatization. What it  really stands for is financial fraud and rigging markets in favour of a handful of supranational corporations, financial capitalists, and military industrialists. The market is supposed to, in theory, be an efficient means of providing goods and services to people. This market provision has been replaced by a profit-driven "killing machine" in support of America's global war on terror.(Chossudovsky and Marshall).

I think that China's command economy right now it's what's best for China. It's not really limiting what's coming into the country, as I've seen for myself first hand. Yes, there are some things that are more expensive, but the Chinese people themselves don't midn very much. I talk openly with my Chinese coworkers about how they live in China and they are quite candid with me about how they feel. They are happy!! I talked to one about the command economy as oppose to a free market economy and she said that she prefers the command economy becuase she feels that the government knows better what the Chinese people should have and shouldn't have and are better able to protect Chinese people from harmful products. She agreed that i the west we have more access to many many things, but also said that it allows for too many products and too much competition. Again, I think this is interesting and we need to listen more to how the Chinese feel in many circumstances instead of just placing our western "preferences" onto them. Of course, I accept that not all Chinese feel this way, but we don't even know if the opinions are shared or not. I will say though, the majority of the people I work with all feel the same way with many things economic and political.

Can I tell you somethign interesting...Jackie isn't the only person who thinks this...Chinese people do as well. It's funny, but they really do think very differently from us and it's quite enlightening. I'd like to say as wellt hat I hope people don't think that rich and powerful people and corporations should do what they want.  However, what do you do when the corporations have spread their reach across borders and we have no power to stop them from pushing their agenda.

The brevity of your response belies the clarity of your reasoning. Am I to assume counter-globalization would be your vaccine for the corporatist virus we are so plauged by and what China is subject to?

Your comparison between Nazi Germany and global capital is probably much more accurate then some might realize. Germany was appeased over and over again and only in this was was Hitler able to build his army, grow his influence and become manifestly molevolent. The Free Market is the same, if only different in that is does not operate on the state level, but operates to bring states into the global order. It's as useless now to try and subvert the free market as it was to try and change course against Hitler in the summer of 1939. The difference, also, being that at the end of WWII, Europe was destroyed and the US came out victorious. With the free market, nobody will win and everyone will lose.

China strike wave continues

Workers at a Japanese-owned electronics factory in north China have been on strike for three days, the most recent dispute in a wave of labor unrest [...] Some analysts are also concerned that demands for higher wages could erode China's competitiveness as the world's low cost factory [...] Other economists believe wages in China have been too low for too long and higher wages will actually boost long-term growth, by fostering domestic demand rather than forcing China to rely on foreign exports.

As the latter analysts point out, an economy that can absorb what it produces is much less vulnerable to the machinations of a foreign country; geopolitically, this would be good news for the Party.  The export sector, whose growth relies mostly on low wages and weak enforcement of environmental laws, comprises 36% of China's economy, a figure that's much too high if China wishes to advocate more forcefully on the world stage.

"There is no way to see the future with the wage we are making. Living and working like this, my life has no direction," Zhang, a 22-year-old welder who works at a factory making exhaust systems for Honda said.  "I dream of one day buying a car or an apartment, but with the salary I'm making now, I will never succeed."

It's clear that some Chinese don't have as much patience as the Party.  The Party faces a dilemma here.  It could quash this "labour unrest" in the name of its ever important policy of social stability, or let workers continue demanding higher wages and achieve some measure of financial betterment, a long-term goal that the Party can't achieve on its own.  The paradox, of course, is that the Party seeks economic prosperity to provide social stability and legitimize its position, but it has been in the past all too willing to supress workers seeking better working conditions and higher wages.

In the short-term, the Party will have to permit China's people to demand better from their employers, otherwise it risks losing more legitimacy.

As a communist party, yes.  But the Party refashioned itself in the early 1990s as a nationalist party and as the provider of individual economic prosperity.

Well, China's unusually high household savings rate tells us Chinese are already on their toes.  Lack of a disposable income (and other things) makes generosity hard to come by even if one is concerned about the fate of others.  That said, higher incomes and the proliferation of charitable organizations and advocacy groups would allow Chinese to donate some of that disposable income.   

You're right, K25. And it depends on "us".  Sort of like "we" should do this or that. But Great Gaia, look at all the intervening factors facing the individual that has to make the choice(s).  As an old soc. prof. used to sum it..."all other factors being equal."   I'm not sure Homo sapiens is up to it, unless facing a firing squad.  Mao tried it all...including the firing squad.

 

And we live in hope, Jiajie.  But I'm glad I came on the Earth scene when and where I did. 

The Globe informed us yesterday that "In the year 2000, there wasn't literally an ounce of gold that moved around China without passing through the People's Bank of China (but, now) there is open selling of gold to the public, new designs, new jewellery, government support for people investing in gold...".     And this is good for the Canadian market. Gold constitutes 12 per cent of the TSX.  And great for Goldcorp and Barrick, the two biggest.  Not so great for those countries where their mining operations impinge on soil and water purity. 

I'm "braced" for "it" Ryan, but I wonder if it is too late for China to go over to the Cuban model?  

They'll have open up NAFTA at some point to ensure that us serfs freezing in the dark by then have no other recourse but to rely on the market for buying scrap pieces of wood and whatever else burns from US-based scrap wood and whatever else burns companies. What's afta NAFTA?

It was Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

By that definition, your prescription for Canada is insanity, Ryan1812.

As is your expectation that you can continue in your 'libertarian' selfishness without being responsible for destroying our children's future.

Not all socialists are nationalists, I think is a fairly accurate way of describing it. I think fair trade is an excellent idea. And there are North American hawks who purport to be advocates of free and fair global trade. But as other socialists and leftist babblers will say to you, those rightwing hawks are mostly hypocritical. They have used trade as a weapon since WW II and even before that. Free trade certainly sounds good, but NAFTA has been anything but fair according to even former advocates of NAFTA who are now opposed to the expansion of Mulroney's Canada-US FTA, NAFTA in effect since 1994.

I think actor Martin Sheen said it well to a Vancouver audience in the 1980s. He said to Canadians that Washington is s madhouse really. Sheen told Canadians that Uncle Sam doesn't want to trade freely with Canada - he said that Uncle Sam and corporate America want to dominate Canada. And that's what's happened since 1989 and increasingly so since NAFTA.

China's rise is unique in recent world history in that it is not perceived to stand in opposition to the dominant system, capitalism. China is rising within the capitalist system and even integrating with the 500 year-old Atlantic power nations. And yet China is competing with the west for resources and continuing to expand economically at an average rate of 9 percent for the last quarter century, which is truly breath-taking considering how western economies are now in fiscal austerity mode with plans to shrink the one part of our leftover mixed market economies that was so vital to the survival of capitalism in North America post-1929. And as they attack labour and rollback ever more of our hard fought-for social democracy, our economies will fall further into decline. China and Asian econonmies continue expansion and are now the world's largest generators of capital wealth and will become the largest economies in the world in so many years as they once were in ancient times. It's their destiny.

Meanwhile, I think there will be no real recovery of capitalist economies here in the far west until our governments decide to scrap debt-driven monetarism altogether. It's bankrupt.. Their pro-creditor, pro-money economy does not work. In fact, the "new" liberal capitalism of roughly 1980 to 2008 is as much a colossal failure as what laissez-faire capitalism was by 1929 after 30 years in the test lab under optimal conditions, and as it was in Chile after just 16 years of near-perfect laboratory conditions. It's finished. Kaput. And while China and Asia continue rising, our leaders will continue downgrading democracy here and imposing austerity and low growth while their old cold war era rivals surge ahead. What will China do if the integrated economy goes for a big shit, some commentators have asked? The CPC will regroup and re-work the problem until central planners find alternatives. Meanwhile, our leaders will try to do-over what RB Bennett and Herbert Hoover were interrupted in pursuing, which was leave it to the market, laissez-faire nothingness for ten years. The rightwing think tanks and Bay Street bond salesment will lobby their hirelings in Ottawa and Washington to continue shovelling money to the banks and rich people while the North American economy goes down the tubes.

And the more our NAFTA partners spend on all things military the deeper they fall into recession and general turmoil at home. This is what our genius leaders Mulroney and Chretien-Martin tied Canada's economic wagon of fortunes to, and I think we need to trade freely with the rest of the world as a cure for what ails this country. NAFTA has looked a lot like old world colonialism with corporate America extracting raw materials and energy from Canada while essentially making mockery of Mulroney's promise to Canadians for "jobs, jobs, jobs." As Mel Hurtig described it, it's been more like the hollowing out of Canada. Canada is being Puerto Ricanized. Canadians will always come out on the short end of the stick as long as Uncle Sam and corporate America dictate their agendas to our weak and ineffective and corrupt politicians in Ottawa. NAFTA wasn't about trade so much as it was about securing corporate rights over labour and the environment. The Liberals finished what Mulroney started with FTA. They lied to Canadians in the 1988 and 1993 elections and then expanded FTA with NAFTA in 1994. They sold Canada's environment to Exxon-Imperial and the fossil fuel industry with NAFTA. And now Canada's national energy policy is dictated to us from corporate board rooms in America. What's afta NAFTA?

 

I don't mind being called a republican (I only consider myself one as far as system of government is concerned, thanks Michelle Jean), since I don't even want to be attached to a monarchy in any way, it seems fitting. Assimilationist is fine too, though to be associated with Calgary does give me pause...does this mean I'm to be lumped in with the likes of Flanagan? Heavens no. No, the school isn't Christian based, and as far as Palin being President, say what? Listen, I'm an assimilationist but only in-so-much-as that I feel assimilating will be the best way for us to bring the standard up, instead of having it pulled down by those at the top. Broaden your gaze for a second and forget about what currently is and imagine what could be; a united North America would be an economic powerhouse that could effect global change in a monumental way. We could make social equality a reality, and I don't mean in a top down way either. Listen, I'm an activist. I organized a CAPP rally in my hometown. I heart democracy, but what I see right now in Canada is the increasing corporatization as a result of being more politically internal then anything else. I believe that this would change if we merged North America, as social change has almost always arisen first from the States and spread outwards as a result of social activism and dissent. This is the most idealistic I can get, however, before the Foucault in me shakes my brain and says, "Come on, that isn't going to happen. Get real."

 

Canada is America's gas tank. Canada is a semi-frozen Puerto Rico with a dwindling polar bear population and a lot fewer manufacturing jobs. Name one colonial outpost of corporate America's that is an economic powerhouse today. The G8s are all in economic turmoil, and the thirdworld capitalist economies are still thirdworld human rights hell holes.

Which future are you referring to?

The one in which all of our natural resources have been pillaged without any return to this nation? The one where environmental degradation reigns? The one where we can't feed ourselves, or quench our thirst from our poisoned streams and groundwater?

You see a future where technology has all the answers. I see a technological world totally dependent upon cheap energy, and becoming more and more unstable. Unstable politically, unstable economically, and unstable technologically as more and more complex technologies are more easily and quickly transferred around the globe, chopped up and repackaged without thought or any responsibility.

Yes we've lost lots of manufacturing jobs. And so has America and other OECD nations. I think what was keeping us from losing a lot of manufacturing jobs before was the lower Canadian dollar in comparison to the US buck. Now that's changed, and with so much foreign ownership and control in Canada's manufacturing sector, they couldn't wait to offshore. No other rich country has allowed a third as much foreign ownership in manufacturing as what Canada has. However, manufacturing is still an important sector of the economy for most rich countries and will continue to be in the future. 

And from what I've read of the future of manufacturing, it's going to be much more automated and increasingly more efficient as time goes on. After reading a little on nanotechnology, I really do believe that the future of manufacturing will be in IT and nanomanufacturing. We will see more areas of discpline cooperating and even combining human and other resources to make things. And I think that eventually the world really will become much smaller. Things won't be made in Asia and shipped all the way to North America by cargo ships in future. Instead they might ship us the designs for something over the internet, and our local all-purpose nanotech manufacturing plant will spit out exact duplicates on an automated assembly line.  And I think it will be more possible than ever before for the proletariat to own the means of production. Of course, this is if we don't blow up the world in the meantime.

And I think that the CERN lab in Switzerland is going to discover a new force or even forces of nature that will be as significant as tNewton's discovery of gravity leading to an industrial revolution. Europe should become a new centre of the world for wealth creation within the next one or two decades. We can't imagine the implications for society at this point, but I believe it will be very significant. China understands this and is why the CPC has offered to connect western Europe with city centres in China by high speedy rail and FOC to the currently cash-strapped Euro countries. The Chinese, I think, realize that the next 10 to 30 years are going to represent a new age of enlightenment for the world. And the China will likely be part of it. It's going to be big. Real big.

 

Oh I don't doubt that corporations will try to own the future economy and means of production as usual. I think the value of things produced will be in the designs more so than in where or how its made. The manufacturing end of things will shift to all purpose machines that will be reprogrammable and refitted for whatever purpose in , say, rigth there in Cornerbrook or Edmonton or wherever they need a bunch of widgets made today for stocking on shelves locally no farther than the other end of the same town where it's made. And open source software and open source this and that from other areas of science will merge in future and making it harder and harder to monopolize much of anything. Unless we move toward more totalitarian societies ruled by corporations, information will become cheaper and more accessible. I think that the things worth buying in the future will not be widgets so much as services. Widgets will be made really cheaply in the future, whereas things like future health care services will be sought after. How much will a guy with a bad ticker pay for a new heart to be grown from his own stem cells in a lab? How much will the young woman pay for a genetically engineered hair wave and permanent new hair color? Will their insurance cover these things, or will it be medicare? Need a house? Poof! This big-giant automated house building machien comes rolling on to to a piece of property and builds some high-rise social housing with central heating in a few weeks or so working by itself around the clock. Pkay, maybe some roofers will be needed, and maybe not.

To me this kind of society seems like taking  a brave new world several steps further then planned. I think this world shall never come because, perhaps you may agree, corporations ALREADY hegemize everything. Take any product you have and trace it to it's root elements, whatever it is. It's a corporation that worked for that items development. If corporations vanished tomorrow we would be completely unable to cope. I don't like ikt, but I think a world of automated services, if ever accessable, will only be by those wealthy enough to not need these services in the first place.

The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

 

Migrant workers who aren't officially resident where they live are a sort of second-class citizen and it's getting worse.

Well, after all, if the Democrats ever block the movement of Tar Patch sludge into the U.S., China  stands ready to move it to the B.C.coast through a pipe that Enbridge Leaks has already engineered. 

Or does that prospect of a double whammy not suggest some sort of security either, Fidel ?    

Remember the days when babblers rose up in the West to protest and pooh-pooh our environmental concerns?  They've gone underground, I guess.

quote: "Meanwhile we have to eliminate China from competing for minerals and raw materials for reasons of "national security."

 

I would eliminate them both. Would you not?

I'm sorry but perhaps I've missed something. Eliminate China from competing? What are we asking for, elimination of China from our markets? Perhaps I did miss something. And Fidel, come on, a "made in Canada National Energy Policy?" How would it work in our screwed up federalism? Alberta already hates the center and it is barely holding, if at all. This kind of Nationalisation is the exact thing that Alberta faught in the Trudeau era. The war was won by Alberta and would be won again. We are no sooner going to come to a National Energy consensus then Venezuela is going to invite George Bush Jr. for a "cerveza." I think if China buys into our Potash, for example, all the better. At long as jobs stay in Canada and they are adherent to the market rules/labour rules we already have in place, why not sell off the company. Saskatchewan looks to make a hefty profit that they could invest into the province. Why is this a bad thing, I ask?

Oh GV, it's not denial, it's just accepting the inevitable. Come on, you know me by now. I've learned to accept the things I cannot change. One of those things is that China will begin buying up parts of the world it want's to own. If we had a government that was actually commited to reducing our impact on the earth, then China's purchasing of ANYTHING in Canada wouldn't be a problem. Instead of dreading China FDI, look to the government to strengthen rights and regulations to keep FDI in check.

The longer the US and Canada deny China and Chinese corporations right of way to buying large minority ownership in key American and Canadian economic sectors, the less pressure there is on Beijing to allow global speculation to control the value of the Yuan/renminbi. And the less pressure there is on China to recycle US dollars with buying US debt. And the more the US encircles China and Asia militarily, the less pressure there is on Beijing to play fair in general.

Ryan1812 -- The worry about Potash Corp. is that the potential Chinese buyers are state-owned, which means they're susceptible to the whims of China's domestic politics, a few autocrats in China, and international relations that wouldn't normally affect Potash Corp.  Given that China isn't an ally of Canada and that it doesn't operate under the rule of law, national security is a legitimate concern.  But if China had acquired the company, I suppose that Saskatchewan could simply break the law of re-take its potash reserves in a time of crisis.

Fidel....try to focus on "what should Canada do" in this case.  Saskatchewan has the say.  J L has laid it out for you. Please ease up on the "U.S. corporate America " theme for one goddam thread.

Most people here still see China through a very Western lens and see the level of control the government has in the economy as some kind of total figure that should rise or go down.

In fact I think what is happening there -- not so much through political force but a result of practical considerations -- is an experimentation over what the government should control and what it should not. So you will see in some areas the government has more control than certain countries in the rest of the world but there are also places where the government has less.

In time I hope as the Chinese government gives up more power in some areas, it will re-assert its power where ti has opted to go for the market solutions.

Another important point is that the Chinese economic and political culture is in fact so different that if you arrive at a system through practical experiment, there is no reason to presume that the Chinese system will look that much like what we have here. And we need to recognize that we will have to avoid trying to rank one as better or worse-- even if we could determine which was better for our people or theirs, we might never be able to determine which could be better overall since the contexts for the systems are so different.

I don't think that Canadian's should shut up and not criticize China but I also don't think the government needs to lead that chorus. With a somewhat free press here, we can let people say what they like and have the government be diplomatic where it needs to be. And there is value to saying things behind closed doors at times as well.

We can also look to economic arrangements that can lead to mutual benefit. The more Chinese workers are able to get paid more the better this gets and it is something the Chinese government won't oppose so policies that encourage the use of better paid Chinese labour and discourage lower paid Chinese labour when it comes to what we are trading and how are beneficial.

Sovereignty...goodness where are we in the 1890's. This talk of sovereignty is so anachronistic. It's a globalized world and sovereignty only exists in as much as our private lives extend into the public, and even those lives are public now through technology. Let's get serious and understand that for Canada to survive, turning inward is not the answer. Canada owns large swaths of other countries in as much as other countries own Canada. It's just reality. Sovereignty isn't even an issue. Sovereignty was lost the minute transnational capital became the preferred means of economic development. States are fading away and trade barriers continue to come down. The more Canada thinks to the future, diversifies its economy and, now this might scare the likes of GV, TRADE WITH OTHER COUNTRIES，the better for Canadians as a whole. Let's work on developing industrial standards with what federal power we have, and convince our provinces to hold industries to account. I think progressivism can still exist in stateless societies and moving towards progressive leftist stability is possible if we just pull our collective heads out of old paradigms

 

 

Sovereignty, Ryan, means being able to effect laws that maintain standards of environmental protection (now in complete disarray in the Tar Patch and in B.C.'s mining camps); that maintain standards of health care (now under pressure to give way to a private/public system based on privilege; able to effect opportunity for education, and at the other end of life's spectrum, a chance at a decent old age. Capitalism has given free rein to the forces of privatization through something called "globalization," but which is really only a blank cheque for finance capital and speculation.

You would have to show me how a declining export market for Ontario's industries, for instance (which are tanking) is better as a result of "TRADE WITH OTHER COUNTRIES," as you put it. How does the WTO requirement about openess to investment help when "sovereign funds" (look up sovereign in this case - your conception is rather dated) from China are being wielded to buy resource industries here, even while that country refuses to allow its currency to rise in value? 

Speak to L J 's points, Ryan. HE LIVES IN THE SAME COUNTRY THAT YOU DO AT THE MOMENT...was born there, I expect. And please...do not fall back on "it's just reality."  Death is just reality, but I don't promote it.

 

edited-- issue fixed

thanks

Momentum Builds Behind Chinese Workers Protests

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyid=130078240

"Karl Marx was right. We should struggle like he said in 19th century Europe. Chinese factories now are just like factories in 19th century Europe. And just like Karl Marx said, only through struggle with the capitalists can we gain our rights,' Leu says. As a result, workers are extolling a communist struggle to a Communist Party government that has ditched its allegiance to the workers and joined forces with capitalists..."

Closing for length.