Not long ago, Chinese officials sat across conference tables from American officials and got an earful.
The Americans scolded the Chinese on mismanaging their economy, from state subsidies to foreign investment regulations to the valuation of their currency. Your economic system, the Americans strongly implied, should look a lot more like ours.
But in recent weeks, the fingers have been wagging in the other direction. Senior Chinese officials are publicly and loudly rebuking the Americans on their handling of the economy and defending their own more assertive style of regulation.
Chinese officials seem to be galled by the apparent hypocrisy of Americans telling them what to do while the American economy is at best stagnant. China, on the other hand, has maintained its feverish growth.
Yes, China HAS maintained a feverish growth……but at what cost? The air in their cities is some of the most polluted on Earth, their water is unfit to drink, and their “human rights” record is a joke!
China is playing catchup. When starting from where they started, it takes massive growth to get to where the US is.
You nailed it, Cennydd. Talk to anyone who has visited, you’ll hear the horror stories.
How is the US supposed to compete with Chinese companies that are: 1) directly subsidized (if not owned) by the government; 2) allowed to pollute at will; 3) allowed to pay slave wages and no benefits to the mass of workers?
The answer so far seems to be to cut wages and benefits for average working Americans, while the income gap in our country grows and CEOs continue to rake in big compensation packages, even when their companies are tanking!
China needs to change its ways, and so do we.
One wonders if the Chinese are a bit on the defense, knowing in their innermost selves the moral deficits of their cultural economy. There is this, for example:
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200806/CUL20080616a.html
describing the systematic elimination of a percentage of the female population and its effect on the economy.
There is the fact that at a minimum, several thousand Chinese die in mine accidents every year. The Chinese response to this is that “life is cheap”, and they really mean that. They do not see basic mine safety practises as worth the investment since there is an endless supply of working bodies.
And then there is their perennial refusal to readjust their currency to world standard, all the while participating in a world economy.
The Chinese, with their pathetic retrograde building practises and widespread corruption of officials who should have enforced existing regulations in seismogenic zones, have much to be on the defensive about. And they desperately hope Westerners will still come to their Olympics…..
And I am not even mentioning their state crackdowns on practising Christians of various types.
And guess what happens to those corrupt officials who “should have enforced existing regulations in seismogenic zones?”
The answer is that, following a public “show trial,” they’re taken to a killing field and shot……either in the back of the head, or the chest, depending on which of their organs the State intends to “harvest” for sale to anyone who needs a transplant. Or they’re executed by lethal injection in specially-built roving vans.
Cennydd, the corruption among Chinese officials is endemic and legendary. Yes, apparently a few (very few) were scapegoated for the horrors caused by the collapsed schools in the recent earthquake. But talk to anyone trying to do business in China: there is one tangled bureaucratic hurdle after another, and everyone seems to have her/his palm out (but usually subtly). Freebies and lavish gifts to many levels of officials are required to ‘clear’ the regulatory maze.