Dear Gunder,
We've had earlier correspondence on your ReORIENT thesis, but I was not
satisfied with how we left things. The quote below, from your recent
widely-publicised announcement provides the context I need to make my
point...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
5/31/98, Gunder Frank wrote:
>
> R e O R I E N T :
> G L O B A L E C O N O M Y I N T H E A S I A N A G E
> [University of California Press, May/June 1998]
> by
> Andre Gunder Frank
>AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT
>This book outlines and analyzes the global economy and its sectoral
>and regional division of labor and cyclical dynamic from 1400 to
>1800. The evidence and argument are that within this global economy
>Asians and particularly Chinese were preponderant, no more
>"traditional" than Europeans, and in fact largely far less so.
---<snip>---
>Europe took advantage of this world economic opportunity
>through import substitution, export promotion and technological
>change to become Newly Industrializing Economies after 1800, as is
>again happening today in East Asia. That region is now REgaining its
>'traditional' dominance in the global economy, with the Chinese
>'Middle Kingdom' again at its 'center.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have no problem with your analysis of the period 1400 to 1800, in fact
I'm not qualified to comment, and even my sincere praise of your bold
originality is not well-enough informed to be worth these bytes that
express it.
Where I have a serious objection is when you say:
>That region is now Regaining its
>'traditional' dominance in the global economy, with the Chinese
>'Middle Kingdom' again at its 'center.'
OK, I can easily go along with the thesis that there is some kind of
`dynamism', or whatever, in Asia that would, if things were left to their
`natural devices', lead to a global dominance by Asia. I can even believe
that your book documents this dynamism and shows its historical roots.
In fact, the existence of this tendency toward Asian power is rather
obvious from more recent history, without reference to the earlier era.
What must be noted, however, are the specific Western response to this
tendency. Allow me to briefly review a few well-known historical
`incidents' to illustrate what I mean...
1) Opium War. We had a situation where Britain was importing more
tea than could balance its exports to China. In other words,
China's natural economic dominance was beginning to display
itself, as you `predicted'. But what happened? A specific act
of _agency is what happened! Q. Victoria launched a specific
imperialist war to achieve a specific enonomic objective: by
forcing China to import opium, a mechanism was created that
reversed the balance of payments and allowed the West to retain
its economic dominance for another century.
2) WW-2. This time Japan was the focus of Asian power stirrings.
Japan's dynamism allowed it to create a world-class industrial base,
a navy that could challenge the US Navy, and an economic sphere that
rivaled those of the Western great powers. Gunder - this _was the
emergence of the "'traditional' dominance" that you describe!
It has _already happened! And what was the Western response? The
response was again a specific and decisive act of _agency. The
Western powers made the decision to suppress this uprising, rather
than welocme Japan as another great imperial power. This led to
the `Pacific Theater' in WW-2, the destruction of Japan, and the
systematic rebuilding of Japan in such a way that it became a player
in the Western-controlled imperial system, able to compete econom-
ically, but not able to participate in geopolitial management.
3) Containment of Red China. Again we had a situation where an
Asian power was declaring its independence of Western hegemony,
and aiming to assert itself. The _agent response in this case
was military, economic, and technological containment, which
succeeded in keeping China's influence and economic power down for
decades.
4) SE-Asian currency crisis. Again an Asian power-nexus developed
in Asia, this time the `tiger economies' of SE Asia. And again
this uprising was squelched by Western agency, this time by
pulling out investments precipitously and systematically
rebuilding the economic and social structures under the guiding
hand of the IMF (dominated by the same Western banking interests
that control the international financial system and who pulled the
plug on the tigers). What took MacCarthur, so to speak, a gener-
ation to accomplish in Japan is being done in a fortnight by
the IMF in SE Asia. And recent developments indicate Japan itself
may be brought to its knees in the same way, and of course it
will be re-programmed in the same way by the IMF.
5) The coming confrontation with China. China is gearing up to
establish itself as Asian hegemon. It has said as much, it has
asserted its `right', and it is launching on a `leap-frog'
military upgrade, aimed especially at neutralizing the flagship
of the US Navy, the carrier task force. In the meantime, the
US is racing to upgrade its C4 warfare technology to enable it
to overcome whatever the Chinese are able to come up with, gain
`control of theater', and do to China what it did to Iraq.
The strategic key to this coming confrontation is _tempo, and in
that regard all the cards are held by the West. At the current
moment the US could readily `win', under some definition of
`acceptable losses', a military confrontation with China. So
beginning now, the US can track Chinese developments, monitor
its own progress with C4 deployment, and _choose the moment of
conflict to its own advantage, never allowing China to get to
the point where it might `win'. The US-engineered India-Pakistan
conflict can be viewed as `keeping the pot simmering' vis a vis
US plans for decisive intervention in Asia.
So there you have it. The power struggle between Asia and the West has
been going on uninterrupted since 1800. The natural dynamism of Asia has
demonstrated itself time and time again, and always the West has used its
specific advantages of the moment to keep Asia down and to systematically
intervene in Asian arrangements so as to overcome the natural dynamics and
re-channel them to permit continued Western hegemony.
Imperialism is kind of like setting up an irrigation system, only instead
of moving water to irrigate deserts, you move wealth from where it is
created to those who control the canals.
I therefore find the following statement highly misleading and in urgent
need of retraction or substantial refinment:
>That region is now Regaining its
>'traditional' dominance in the global economy, with the Chinese
>'Middle Kingdom' again at its 'center.'
This is not at all a minor point. When one reads your AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT,
this claim about a coming rise of Asia is in fact the climax of your
presentation, literally the last sentence. You are in fact _selling your
book on the basis of its supposed relevance to current affairs! There is
indeed a relevance, Asian dyanmism is part of the equation, but your
predicted `rise' has been occurring ever since 1800, has been
systematically managed and controlled by the West, and this regime promises
to continue indefinitely, just as has the domination of what we
euphemistically call the Third World, most of which, as Parenti points out,
should be `naturally' quite wealthy and prosperous.
Sorry to be so confrontational about all this, but I just _hate it when
knowledgeable people sell mumbo jumbo disinformation to the masses.
rkm
cadre@cyberjournal.org
http://cyberjournal.org