now I read
Opinion: Could trade war become an opportunity for China?
2018-08-12 17:18 GMT+8
by the way, if I recall correctly, somebody has said here recently that imported soybeans in China are mostly fed to swine (LOL), but this article indicates edible oil
It can be both. Here is a good article on trade war.When it come to China there is no difference between Republican and Democrat via Don Juan
China GDP percapita is close to $10000 so it is not far from $12000 percapita that define China as wealthy country. but the author is right China has no choice but to keep pressing with development that leave no room to concede to US demand
Politicians paint China as the villain who will 'rip off American jobs and industries' — but Beijing isn't the problem
Jake Werner,
Foreign Policy
It seems everyone in the US agrees that China is conducting trade in a predatory manner that hurts American business and workers.
•President Trump has condemned China for taking "our" technology and establishment Democrats are endorsing Trump's trade war with the country.
•Politicians' image of China as the manipulative villain resonates with a long history of anti-Chinese racism in the United States.
•China is being blamed today for the failure of free-market globalization to achieve inclusive growth.
•T
he problem is not Beijing, but the structure of the global economy itself.
A new attitude toward China is rapidly taking shape across the US political spectrum. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) echoes President Donald Trump's talking points, decrying the transfer of "our" technology to China and condemning investment there. Fellow progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is lining up with former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon calling for an "aggressive" policy. Establishment Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are endorsing Trump's trade war with China. Free-trade stalwarts like the Wall Street Journal editorial board and establishment bodies like the Council on Foreign Relations are finding common ground with protectionist unions like the United Steelworkers and trade critics like Global Trade Watch. While there are still significant differences of policy and strategy, seemingly everyone agrees that the Chinese are conducting trade in a predatory manner that hurts American business and workers, and that the time for confrontation has arrived.
Curiously absent from these arguments is any analysis of what motivates Chinese policy. In its place we find a crude image of duplicitous Chinese bent on taking advantage of innocent Americans. As Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, put it at a hearing in March: "China has stolen our intellectual property, held American companies hostage until they disclose their trade secrets, and manipulated their markets in a strategic manner to rip off American jobs and industries." Or as Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said, "We simply can't let China erode our national security advantage by circumventing our laws and exploiting investment opportunities for nefarious purposes."
This is an image that resonates in disturbing ways with the long history of anti-Chinese racism in the United States. And just as Chinese immigrants in the 19th century were made a scapegoat for free-market capitalism's inability to create broadly shared prosperity, so too China is being blamed today for the failure of free-market globalization to achieve inclusive growth.
The emerging confrontation with China is only the latest sign that something has gone seriously wrong in the global economy. China critics are not wrong that the United States and China are now trapped in a zero-sum competition for economic growth. The problem, however, is not Beijing but the structure of the global economy itself. As it becomes increasingly clear that the existing form of globalization has exhausted its potential to advance development, vilifying China has become a substitute for facing honestly the urgent need to transform the nature of global growth.
If Americans simply accept the constraints imposed by the existing structure and try to fight it out within them, then we're heading into a cycle of steadily accelerating conflict. That's because, for China, the central question is not trade but development. When understood from this perspective, it becomes clear that the demands Republicans and Democrats are posing are tantamount to cutting off China's path toward a wealthier society. To the Chinese leadership, this poses an existential threat.
It's true that the Chinese economy has grown at the highest rate in its history over the last three decades, dramatically improving the standard of living for hundreds of millions of people. Yet most Chinese remain quite poor because they started from such a low income level and because the wealth has been distributed in a highly unequal manner. One recent report put the median household income, adjusted for purchasing power, at $6,180. That figure in the United States stands at $43,585 — more than seven times higher.
While many of China's coastal provinces have attained a high degree of development, huge swathes of the interior remain mired in low-productivity smallholder agriculture. Even in Shanghai, China's richest city, a large majority of workers are employed in low-paying occupations, often working 12 or more hours a day doing backbreaking work on construction sites, working in sweatshops under dangerous conditions, running tiny shops on razor-thin margins, doing sex work, sweeping the streets, or scavenging trash.
The struggle to make a decent life under conditions of intense competition and general scarcity has made social unrest a chronic condition in China. The government no longer releases statistics on the number of strikes and protests, and the official media outlets rarely cover them, but there is little doubt that discontent is both broad and deep. China Labour Bulletin's unofficial tally of labor disturbances stood at 1,257 for 2017 and rose to 1,063 in the first seven months of 2018. Since these numbers reflect only the cases accessible online, largely via social media, the monitoring group believes the real number might be 10 to 20 times higher.
Chinese leaders have concluded that the only way to manage this dangerous instability is to continue the current trajectory of development and maintain China's movement to higher-value production. What they fear above all else is that China might fall into the "middle-income trap," in which a country's developmental trajectory levels off and stagnates well short of advanced status. Countries such as Egypt, Thailand, and Brazil are mired in such a condition, frustrating the aspirations of their people and giving rise to widespread political turmoil.
China's leaders are intensely aware of this experience as well as earlier Chinese precedents, including the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 that were fueled by high inflation and economic dislocation. Several years ago, Wang Qishan — often considered the second-most powerful man in China — made Alexis de Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the Revolution required reading for top cadres, warning explicitly that China's current situation resembled that of France on the eve of revolution.
Feeling their backs against the wall, no amount of pressure from the United States will convince Chinese leaders to give up their development strategy. But why should they? Raising a country from poverty and increasing opportunities for everyone should not be controversial goals. Why, then, are so many in the United States jumping at the chance to condemn China for it? The answer is that, under the existing form of globalization, the only way to achieve development is to "cheat" — where cheating is defined as significant state intervention in the market economy. The only major countries that have achieved a developmental breakthrough are precisely those that have manipulated the terms on offer by the global economy.
The record of growth over the last three decades of globalization demonstrates this. Only China has seen dramatic and sustained growth in per capita GDP. In contrast, other countries have shown modest increases in incomes, but no developmental breakthrough. The general structure of their economies remains stagnant — either subsisting in abject poverty or stuck far short of wealthy countries.
