Yankee Utopians in the Chinese Century
For those who can yet recall the backyard blast furnaces of Mao’s China in the 1950s and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to re-instill peasant values in the 1970s, the news was jarring.
In 2011, said the Financial Times, China will surpass the United States as first manufacturing power, a title America has held since surpassing Great Britain around 1890.
Each year, China passes a new milestone.
Last year, China surpassed Germany as the greatest exporting nation. This year, China surpasses Japan as the world’s second-largest economy. This year, China became the first auto manufacturer on earth.
For a decade, China has been running history’s largest trade surpluses with the United States and has amassed a hoard of $2.3 trillion in foreign currency. She now holds the mortgage on America.
How has China vaulted to the forefront in manufacturing, trade and technology? Export-driven economic nationalism.
Beijing cut the value of its currency in half in 1994, doubling the price of imports, slashing the price of exports and making Chinese labor the best bargain in Asia. Foreign firms were invited to relocate their plants in China and told this was the price of access to the Chinese market. Beijing began looting these firms of technology, as she sent her sons to study in America. Industrial espionage and intellectual property theft became Chinese specialties.
And how has America fared in the new century?
One in every three manufacturing jobs we had in 2000, nearly 6 million, vanished. Some 50,000 U.S. factories shut down. We have run trade deficits totaling $5 trillion since NAFTA passed. The real wages of working Americans have been stagnant for a decade.
While China has resumed her 12 percent growth rate, the United States, with 25 million unemployed or underemployed, appears headed for a double-dip recession.
Yet even as the end of America’s tenure as the world’s first manufacturing power was being announced, The Wall Street Journal admonished us to keep our eyes on the prize: a new world order where it does not matter who produces what or where.
“The pursuit of some ideal global ‘balance’ in trade and capital flows is an illusion. … World leaders would do better to worry less about (trade) imbalances and more about whether their own nations are pursuing policies that contribute to global prosperity.”
There you have it — the conflict in visions between us.
For decades, America’s leaders have followed the Wall Street Journal ideology. We put a mythical world economy before our own economy. We put “global prosperity” before national interest. We forced our workers to compete, in their own country, against the products of foreign laborers earning a tenth of their pay. And we let in tens of millions of semi-skilled and unskilled immigrants, legal and illegal, to take the jobs of our countrymen.
And the Chinese? They put China first, second and third.
And who won the decade? And who is winning the future?
Inside the July 1 Washington Post is a small story about how the World Trade Organization finally ruled that European nations have been unfairly subsidizing Airbus — for 40 years.
While welcome, what good will it do now for scores of thousands of U.S. workers who built commercial jets for Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas, which Airbus took down, or Boeing, which was outsourcing jobs even before Airbus dethroned it as the world’s No. 1 aircraft manufacturer.
Why did some U.S. president not tell the Europeans when they started this: Either stop subsidizing Airbus to kill our U.S. aircraft companies — or start defending yourselves against the Russians.
The day the FT reported that China was sweeping past us to become No. 1 in manufacturing, The New York Times ran a front-page story on the closing of the Whirlpool refrigerator plant in Evansville, Ind., and the loss of 1,100 jobs. The plant is moving to Mexico.
The Times spoke with Natalie Ford, a worker, whose husband and son also worked at Whirlpool, as had her dad, “This is all about corporate greed,” Mrs. Ford said, “It’s devastating to our family and to everyone in the plant. I wonder where we’ll be two years from now. There aren’t any jobs here. How is this community going to survive?”
“My mom and dad told me that when they were young, there were jobs everywhere. They said we had Whirlpool, Bristol-Myers, Mead Johnson, Windsor Plastics, Guardian Automotive, Zenith. Now if you want to find a job, there’s nothing around.”
“Free trade! Free trade!” said Henry Clay in the tariff debate of 1833. “The call for free trade is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child in its nurse’s arms for the moon or the stars that glitter in the firmament of heaven. It has never existed. It will never exist.”
It will only place us, said Clay, “under the commercial dominion of Great Britain.”
Today, it is the dominion of China.
Patrick J. Buchanan is founding editor of The American Conservative and author, most recently, of Churchill, Hitler, and the “Unnecessary War”.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
Huge Meth busts, as Oklahoma is scooping up the cartels escaping the Arizona law. Maybe we could donate the huge amounts of meth to Obama, and he could sell it to the chinese…
http://krmg.com/localnews/2010/06/major-mexican-meth-ring-busted.html
The feds might as well be good for something.
In 2004, I ran a little computer shop in rural Oklahoma. The little kid who came in to hang out and help a bit, was 12. He kept telling me, the internet is designed wrong… And, the Chinese are poking into everything.
I asked what he meant (about China), and he said they must have buildings the size of football fields full of people, and every website he built and monitored, would get hit dozens of times per day from IP locations within China.
He just graduated this year (he was homeschooled), and has won some national prizes at a college level, and is going to college to specialize in computer and internet forensics.
He quietly assures me that the Chinese could “take over” our internet at any time they wanted. I’m not totally sure what he means by that, but it’s a scary thought.
(PS, I used to teach Microsoft Technicians to answer the telephone as tech support, in the mid-90′s)
“First they came for the steelworkers’ jobs, and I said nothing. Then they came for the autoworkers’ jobs, and I said nothing. Then they came for the aerospace workers’ jobs, and still I said nothing. By the time they came for my job, it was too late.”
I know it’s a cliche to paraphrase this quote, ( I think it originated form German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer) but it seems so appropriate.
A great column.
[...] Yankee Utopians in the Chinese Century, by Patrick J. Buchanan on The American Conservative web log (where I first stumbled across this information). [...]
Jeffrey Immelt: (paraphrase, CEO of GE)
“We’re worried about china.
Obama doesn’t like US business.
We’re worried about Obama.”
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/GE-head-Jeffrey-Immelt-slams-China-over-hostility-Report/articleshow/6119551.cms
(Other references can be obtained by internet search.)
Kinda makes the Tea Party guff about Auto company bailouts look a little pathetic. If we had not bailed out our poorly performing auto makers just where would we be now? The sooner we drop the bumper sticker mentality and articulate a vision of who we are and where we are going..the better. Can we drop the We’re the biggest dog on the block routine and build up our own country. We like boasting internally about it a lot. It has it’s costs all this armchair swaggering.
Voting against unemployment payments with such high unemployment while we fund foreign governments (put all your favorites in here) and still keep an army in Western Europe etc is just plain silly. These are American citizens and with very high unemployment theer genuinely isn’t enough work to go around. Pats right… we exported our jobs for better balance sheet results.
The Chinese government however articltes a clear direction and plan and arn’t obsessed with outside countries etc. Is China firing schoolteachers, firemen, librarians and similar professionals? Could we learn something or is learning from foreign experience somehow demeaning?
Lastly my mothers brother was killed by the nazis in 1941 …I know who they are and they wern’t Liberals, Conservatives Americans or Muslims. If you agree with anything Mr Beck has to say you are not a conservative. You’re just gullible and have too much time on your hands.
[...] anti-imperialist, anti-neocon voice of reason. But then I remember that he writes columns like this one. It’s another economically illiterate screed against free trade. Like I said when I covered [...]
I know I love paying more for my protectionist products at prices determined by my nationalist planned economy!
@Ian, it was UNIONS that killed the Auto industry. You and your buddy Obama are PAYING off the unions, using PUBLIC money.
We all said, “After the government gets a monoply, look for government interference with other non-government automakers”.
Do you see the massive amounts of “recalls” lately? The government is trying to make a hostile environment, to run off the Toyotas, et al.
You said, “Voting against unemployment payments “. You wish to “rob” the successful, and pay the unsuccessful, and assist Obama in creating a permanent UNDERCLASS of permanent Democrat voters.
I hope that’s just because you don’t understand what he is trying to do…
Come join OUR side, with a stated goal of making EVERYONE middleclass or better. (And help us punish the theives on OUR side who pander to industrial/war/illegals.)
Don’t believe their propaganda. We DON’T have any problem with safety nets, when they are used for only THAT purpose.
As a Democrat and environmentalist, I have to say I agree with everything Pat says – yet again. No doubt we’ll continue to have plenty to argue about – from the need for stronger basic regulation to deficit concerns. I’d rather see populists of all stripes and coloration stop shouting at each other and focus on the common, overwhelming threat. That is Corporatism. Their only allegiance is to themselves. They are devastating our economy, our communities, and the very life support system of the planet. Global corporate interests helped spur our misbegotten empire and our wars. This is the actual hydra headed threat, and it’s coup is now very far along.
The very title of this article, “China First”, drives home the fundamental problem plaguing America today, which has given China an edge: China serves China’s interests first and foremost. America, well, America serves Israel’s interest first, whereas the interests of Americans is relegated to the leftovers and table-scraps.
OOO Tom . What killed US auto makers…lots of things and yes the unions killed them with high wages and having such a fixed unflexible labour force so tht guys stayed on the books even when not making cars. Subsidised oil also killed US automakers as their mileage is so poor they’re unsaleable overseas so have a poor export market. The high costs of production meant that corners were cut in design and quality to compete on price. The trouble had been brewing for a long time.
On the unemployment there does not seem the ability for the economy to provide anywhere near sufficient jobs so what are people with no work to do? A hungry man tom knows no laws.
Are all these foreign adventures and empire building really better for Americans than providing a safety net in this worst since the Great Depression circumstances? I say I’d rather subsidise Americans than say keeping an army in western Europe when their armies are aleady stronger than Russia. Thats just one example. I don’t mean to sound like a Randologist. I do not believe that Afghanistan, bases all around the world fit with being a conservative. We’ve become more like King George than George Washington.
“If you’re going to be a player in the global landscape in five years, you have to play in places such as Brazil, Russia, India and China”
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worldbiz/archives/2010/04/20/2003470983
The tricked-out turbo diesel Ford Ranger that you can buy in Thailand, but you will NEVER be able to buy in the US:
http://sonimotors.net/ranger.html
De-industrialization of USA is clearly deliberate and planned. Elites (like Wall St. Journal) are not denying it. However the sugarcoating of it by elites as explained by Mr. Buchanan does not make sense. Indeed, however far-fetched it sounds, treason by elites sounds more plausible.
I wish I could understand the master plan of the elites.
China is in more of a bind than Buchanan suggests. It’s probably inevitable that hyperinflation is coming in the US, which would destroy the value of China’s holdings of our treasuries and cash and make their exports less attractive. The real questions are how much of a hit on standard of living we will have to take as a consequence, and whether China will try to make a move in the Middle East against us to secure oil supplies. I suspect China’s trying to wait until we move out of the region like Britain was forced to in the 50′s. While I agree that our occupation of the Middle East is entirely imperialistic and exploitative in character, there is no question that for us to relinquish control over the oil supply would leave a power vacuum almost certain to be filled by China. It would impoverish us overnight and make us vassals of China in the fullest sense of that word, and THAT is the reason we don’t leave the Middle East, not the admittedly vile machinations of our oligarchical elites.
White “Christian” America is practically unanimous that for the USA, Israel should be first.
Then we have this gargantuan unproductive military-industrial complex and the endless wars that it, the foreign lobbies, the political puppets in the evangelical movement and the corrupt corporate media, bids we should pay for and fight.
Let’s face it: Americans just need to suffer – a lot.
Maybe then they’ll rediscover a genuine concern for their own people, for their own land.