Andy,
Is it even "U.S." hegemony, or even G-7 Transnationalism? I see little
reason to make a victim of China - China seems able to take care of
itself. That is to say, Chinese companies (mostly government-owned) seem
to be as efficient at raping the Chinese populace as G-7 companies are at
raping the G-7 populaces. Banana republics may be victims of G-7
hegemony; African and south Asian agriculturalists may be the victims of
G-7 hegemony; but China?
I'm no China scholar, so I'm happy to be corrected on the facts, but as I
see it, U.S. software producers pushing the U.S. government to try
to force copyright laws on Chinese software producers, and Chinese
software producers pushing the Chinese government to bribe the U.S.
government into dropping the issue is a matter of the wolves fighting the
wolves - or the coyotes fighting the coyotes.
I think that there's too much of a tendency in the world-systems world to
be tough on first-world big business but soft on third-world big business.
In my limited reading, third-world big business is even more harsh on
workers, even more insensitive to the health and safety of their
communities, and even more corrupt than is first-world big business.
Yours,
Salvatore
On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
> I don't think they are OUR companies, Salvatore. Transnationals are
> driving the global process. But they still work through the old
> inter-state system, and U.S. hegemony is still big and bad enough to serve
> as the bludgeon to make the necessary impression on recalcitrants.
>
> Andy
>
>