RE: China's Dissidents Urge U.S. to Back Normal Trade WithBeijing

At 6:34 AM +0800 13/5/00, Boles (office) wrote:
>I didn't think the article "rang true" at all, and I lived in Hong
>Kong and
>worked with activists there for several years recently.
>
>Activists in Hong Kong, including those from Asian Migrant Centre
>and Asian
>Monitor Resource Centre, focused on the abuse of workers, but
>certainly did
>not call for free trade liberalism.   I believe the article was obviously
>(well maybe not obviously) a propaganda piece by and for US and Asian
>liberals.  First, consider the one-sidedness of this comment:


I do not wish to get drawn into an argument about who gets to speak
for whom, and whose voice rings true in this context. But I suggest
that you not read the quotes/views from within your frame of
reference alone, namely free trade liberalism, hence support for PNTR
and entry to WTO as the view of "Asian liberals". They may be right,
or they may be wrong -- but in this instance they are not talking
about free trade liberalism per se so much as whether WTO/PNTR will
provide the levers for eroding the monopoly of their state. And their
views of 'dissidents' who call for no PNTR/WTO as a lever upon the
Chinese state would be that it constitutes an appeal to and
legitimation of the global (rogue) policeman role of the USA. [For
comparison, it might be noted that many (not all, not perhaps even a
majority) Indonesian progressives actually saw the IMF as the
battering ram that brought down the Suharto regime; does that make
them "puppets" of the IMF/Washington?]

Thus, I might suggest that those who are campaigning for Congress to
oppose PNTR are indeed upholding the "super-rogue" (title of a recent
book I believe) status of the USA to decide who will or will not be
allowed to enter this or that club, and what should be the conditions
of membership. For the same reason, I found the response given to the
Metzler report by some American "progressives" most disturbing.
Nominally, the IMF and World Bank are multinational institutions: Why
should a committee of the US Congress have the power to determine
what happens to them, including the regional development banks? If
anything, there should have been an objection to Congress arrogating
to itself that power, a rejection of that report as illegitimate
because it excluded the voices of the rest of the world, etc.

I suggest that you might wish to re-read the following sentences that
you wrote:

>problem.  The point is not for China to catch up to the US.  That may be
>good for the Chinese, but what does it do for the rest of the excluded
>world?

and think again what it really means. China and the Chinese are to be
held ransom, and not "catch up to the US" (as if that was really
within the realm of possibility -- even if China's GDP were to
continue to grow at 10% pa for the next 50 years, it still would not
catch up with the USA, unless the USA were to recede at something
like -5% pa, or some such figure)?

If the real concern is "the rest of the excluded world", I humbly
submit it would be much more fruitful to hold to ransom the USA and
Americans? Others can better reel off the figures on shares in world
consumption, pollution, etc. of different countries/people, on the
increasing gap between the richest and the poorest countries, and so
on.

Perhaps we should exclude the USA from WTO in the interests of "the
rest of the excluded world"? Or better, form a new WTO without the
USA -- only problem being that most other governments at this time do
not have the gumption to do so?

Seriously, the point on this issue is not whether WTO is or is not
good for the people of the world; nor is it about whether the Chinese
government is or is not oppressive. It is about whether the USA
should or should not have the unilateral right (it has the power) to
dictate who passes or fails its standards and what those standards
should be. Which does put some of us who have difficulties with the
WTO and all that in a bit of an awkward situation -- but we should
resist a feint in the east to attack in the west, or the enemy of my
enemy is my friend, kind of logic.

KJ Khoo