Chinese Censorship as Economic Advantage- Idiocy of "Free Trade"
Why do we worry about freedom in Iraq, when our government looks the other way as free speech and labor rights are ruthlessly suppressed in China?
Google took a lot of bad press (rightly) when it agreed at one point to censorship by Chinese authorities. But in some ways it's hard to blame them, when the Chinese government blocks US companies that promote free speech, even as US trade deals help build companies built on exploitation of Chinese workers or Chinese censorship. For a pure example of the latter, Just look at the dominant Chinese Internet search engine, Baidu:
Baidu is doing what no other Internet company has been able to do: clobbering Google and Yahoo in its home market...In exchange for letting censors oversee its Web site, Baidu has sealed its dominance with support from the Chinese government, which regularly blocks Google here and imposes strict rules and censorship on other foreign Internet companies.If China blocks companies who violate its rules-- such as censorship -- why doesn't the US block goods coming into the US using labor that violates international laws protecting labor rights?
This is where "free trade" ideology exposes even its economic idiocy, since it punishes companies that live up to international norms of human rights and free speech, while rewarding companies that agree to kowtow and even take advantage of human rights violations in places like China.
I don't understand. You seem to be calling for google to become an imperial crusader, doing its utmost to impose "international norms" (AKA western values) on the poor Chinese. Which is strange, because when other companies stand accused of imposing these western norms, some people get angry about it. Just ask McDonalds. I suppose it depends on which particular western ideals you are trying to impose; the ones lefties like, or the ones they disapprove of.
It would certainly be an interesting world if American companies only abided by american laws, nomatter which countries they were operating in. An unworkable one, but hey, we can dream. Why should companies obey the national norms of foreign countries? Why should they just be interested in doing business and not in crusading and values-proliferation? Why, those evil ingrates!
Frankly it seems perfectly reasonable to me that google is not in this crusading business, nomatter how much the republicans and democrats might want them to get on board the axis-of-evil war-on-terror damn-those-unamerican-foreigners agenda. Why should they be? They have to obey the laws of the chinese government when they do business in China just as they have to obey the laws of the French government when they do business there, or the American government when in America. Thankfully corporations are extremely law-abiding entities. They will lobby against laws they don't like, but they ultimately have to obey the law.
It would also seem that none of this has anythign to do with free trade ideology. In fact, the problem here is caused by an overbearing central government that thinks it knows best for its subjects - precisely the opposite problem. They still have hangovers of the lefty attitude of in China - this is one of them.
September 17, 2006 7:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
You miss the point-- I'm not expecting the US companies in China to ignore Chinese laws when selling service in that country. I'm expecting US and Chinese companies to obey US laws when selling here. Which means that companies wouldn't be allowed to ignore basic labor laws and human rights and still have access to the US market.
And if China wanted to sell to the US, they'd have to change their laws to encourage respect for labor rights and free speech or lose economic access to the US market.
The ridiculousness of free trade ideology is that we allow China to impose its rules on companies selling products there, but the US doesn't impose our consumer, labor and environmental rules on companies selling to US consumers. That's the idiocy of free trade.
September 17, 2006 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
So you want deprive American consumers advantages of having products produced by cheap labor kept docile with censorship and repressions, on land from which peasants are brusquely evicted etc.? But this is against efficiency!
How about giving the consumer free choice. Products from countries where workers and peasants are routinely abused would have to carry laber
MADE IN XXXX IN CRUEL AND DEGRADING CONDITIONS
unless a producer will undergo an inspection process. There are precedents: to send meat to USA, mwat-packer is regularly visited by American inspectors.
We could band together with other countries (EU?) interested in such standards and split the inspecting duties.
September 17, 2006 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
That doesn't make sense. Chinese companies do indeed have to obey US laws as regards their operations in the US, just as American companies have to obey Chinese laws as regards their operations in China.
In the case of Google, it is only its operations in China that are affected by the Chinese government - and quite rightly so. China has not told Google what to do in the US or anywhere outside China.
US Labour laws do not apply in China. American companies do not need to obey Chinese labour laws in America when they sell products to China.
I don't see what is absurd about any of this. Different countries have different labour laws. What to a wealthy American might seem like "exploitative labour practices" seems very different to the millions of Chinese peasants who emigrated to Chinese cities and quadrupled their income working in sweat shops instead of working their fingers to the bone doing subsistence farming. Labour laws cannot be universal and each country has its own variant according to local conditions.
I suppose it is possible that if you want to enforce your idea of decent working conditions on the Chinese then you could make an anti-trade, anti-cooperation law such as you propose. But I doubt that the millions of Chinese who have managed to get out of poverty recently would thank you, and I doubt the millions of Americans who have got cheaper goods as a result would either. In fact, it would be a regressive return to a poorer and more unfair world. The only winners would be a few trades unions and isolated interests.
September 17, 2006 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah- of course, requiring China to enforce labor laws to sell to the US will throw the whole workforce out of work. Yes, China would prefer to create an army of angry, unemployed Chinese rather than enforce decent working conditions.
That's absurd. The point of enforcing labor rights through trade agreements is not to throw developing workers out of work, but to raise their wages. But somehow all those who shed crocodile tears for those workers are quite willing to enforce trade rules against foreign pharmaceutical or music industries that violate US intellectual property laws.
So here's the standard. If foreign countries violate US IP laws, they are barred from exporting to the US. But if they violate labor laws, their goods are welcome.
Unless you also oppose enforcing such US IP laws against foreign made goods, don't cry crocodile tears about imperialistic trade rules.
September 17, 2006 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah. So because the US bullies others in one area, it is perfectly OK for it to do so in another? And what does this have to do with "free trade" anyway? All of your criticisms concern government practices, not the operations of the market. And your solutions involve using more bully-boy tactics, not less.
I'm not crying crocodile tears for Chinese workers. I just respect their ability to look after themselves and make their own decisions. The operations of Chinese society are not really any of my business. And no amount of simplistic arguments about how they need help via force and bullying is going to change that. It may be the intention of your proposed laws to make the world a better place. However, I guarantee that the effects would be quite the reverse. If Chinese workers had the same conditions as American workers, there would be far fewer Chinese workers.
I consider this a classic example of a western country trying to pull the ladder out from underneath it. Sure - it was OK for America to have lax labour laws and lax IP laws when it was in a state of rapid development, and then, when it had become a much wealthier society, start improving the conditions of its workers. But it seems we can't let the Chinese take the same course. We have to force our own ideas on them rather than let them take their own course. It just goes to show - there's really very little difference between the msot hardcore pro-war republican and the supposedly soft left. They both want to make the world a better place through force and intimidation.
PS China (and Taiwan etc) do indeed have very lax IP laws, and I am very much against imposing our ideas there too.
September 17, 2006 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
The article was about what the US government should do, not Google.
However, some values are right; others are wrong. Corporations should spread the right values and not the wrong ones. This is perfectly simple and consistent.
If you don't think corporations should serve any higher purpose than enriching the shareholders, I strongly disagree and I think that's about 2/3 of where the country has gone wrong in my lifetime.
Corporations have been granted the rights of a natural person. Shareholders have been shielded from financial liability and moral culpability in ways that no other individual ever would be. Any moral demand - beyond increasing the quarterly profit margin - is considered illegitimate.
As a predictable result, we see a corporate class of super-privileged individuals whose only function in society is to make themselves richer. And this they have done with ruthless efficiency, leaving everyone else to squabble over the stagnant leftovers.
But hey - at least the Chinese get to surf their censored Google.
--
-- All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. (John Kenneth Galbraith) --
September 17, 2006 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's great - who decides then, that some values are right, and some are wrong? The government, I suppose.
It would seem to me that google has decided that its values regarding the China issue are perfectly correct. So therefore there is nothing wrong with its conduct. There certainly isn't anything legally wrong with its conduct. So I am at a loss over what your argument practically means as regards Google.
You clearly think it has broken some set of universal truths or values. Where is this wonderful moral authority? A church perhaps? In the pages of The Nation or The Guardian?
In actual fact, I think you have to recognise that in practice nobody agrees on any set of values as being the right ones. And it is not clear that a multinational coporation doing business in multiple states with wildly different laws, cultures and values should not respect all of them in a local context.
September 17, 2006 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
The whole point of international labor rights is to allow workers to "look out for themselves" by protecting their freedom to form unions and otherwise speak out on their own behalf.
It's ridiculous to talk about 'respecting' their rights while allowing US companies like Wal-Mart and other big US companies to collaborate with the Chinese government in smashing unions by those workers. That's "respecting" Chinese workers?
September 17, 2006 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not comfortable with either side of the debate here, since I quite happily would interfere with violations of human right sin China, but I definitely disagree with Nathan. I can see lots of ways for consumers, businesses, governments, and world organizations to uphold fair labor practices here and abroad -- consumers and businesses by whom they by from and partner with, governments and world organizations by various pressures for human rights. Googol could even be asked to refuse advertising from Chinese companies. But I can't accept an advocate for Googol's suppressing search results.
For goodness sake, we just finished getting ticked at Googol for agreeing to suppress results in China, and Nathan is using the perverse argument that Chinese censor to advocate that we do the same. What kind of level of freedom of information is that bringing us down to? What stops a company with a search engine from then going on to suppress other things it deems not sufficiently respectful of American values? (And I guarantee that that language is not used by friends of labor or liberalism.) What's to stop newspapers from deciding, then, not to inform us about matters certain editors and corporate owners don't want us to hear?
I'm sorry, but Nathan is once again giving evidence for what I hoped was past us, a labor movement so interested only in its own members that it will abandon progressive causes and the bulk of Americans. As with health care, he still can show he means better, and I hope he will.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
September 17, 2006 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nothing is ever simple.
Walmart single handedly pulls about 150000 chinese out of poverty every single month. In any country there is a balance between the rights of the workers and the rights of wider society, and ideally government intervenes in ways most fitting for the health of the whole. Sometimes unions are too powerful, corrupt, or otherwise detrimental and in need of reform. At others they are solely needed force for the wellbeing of the workers.
In either case, I think it is up to the Chinese to decide just how they should treat unions at this stage in their development, and not up to Americans or anybody else to bully. It is all very well saying that Chinese workers have a "right" to all sorts of privileges, but if giving them those rights means that possibly millions of people will not be pulled out of poverty or even be returned to it then a reasonable man is given some pause before ramming his ideals down the throats of others.
Perhaps you feel perfectly sure about this issue and to hell with the consequences one way or the other. I just think it is something for the chinese to decide, and the thought of relatively wealthy western liberals people blandly proclaiming policies that could have extremely awful consequences for millions of people I find rather repugnant.
It seems to me that walmart has done more to reduce poverty in China than any amount of lefty bloviating or lusting after threat and force.
September 17, 2006 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was Nathan advocating censorship, or retaliation in KIND, meaning, they can enforce laws that we think are ridiculous, well, we can enforce our laws that they MAY think ridiculous (fair treatment of workers???!!!) but we do not.
September 17, 2006 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you sure that
(a) WalMart pulls 1.8 million Chinese workers out of poverty every year? Or perhaps they are pulled from one set of wretched conditions to another?
(b) Is it up to Chinese to decide how to treat their unions? There are more than billion of Chinese, how many can "decide"? Did you notice that this is a dictatorship?
China is very much a caste based society, in the sense that rural people remain "rural" even when they work in cities, where they have no residency rights, which makes them particularly vulnerable to employers. Government creates a situation in which city people, especially from the coast, are relatively privileged and their position would be threatened if the folks from country side got equal rights. And there are very, very few people who may decide anything.
September 17, 2006 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
If it were possible for the federal government to enforce American labor law standards in foreign countries what would be the effect?
Would American companies move their headquarters to another country in order to avoid the new regulations?
If they do the numbers of American jobs would most likely plummet into a bottomless pit. The corporate brass continues to make money and Americans are left jobless, and unable to purchase foreign goods. The loss of the American market is felt in shortly thereafter, but ultimately it is negligible because new consumer markets creep up around the new first world corporate headquarters in developing nations. The opening of the new markets otherwise unattainable creates unprecedented profits.
Or,
Would American companies find that it is cheaper and more effective to move their manufacturing plants back to the United States because of the new regulations?
Probably not, but if they did move labor jobs back the cost of products would no doubt skyrocket and collapse the consumer economy fairly quickly. The collapse of the American consumer economy would be felt more harshly in the developing nations where jobs were eliminated.
Or,
Would management remain in the states and would labor remain overseas? Not a bad choice. Prices would most likely soar in the short term, which could threaten the collapse of the consumer economy in the states. But, barring the total collapse the quality of life would continue to rise in developing nations, and laborers would be able to afford vacations and clothes from The Gap. Markets would expand and the corporations make even more money.
It’s easy to play with the hypothetical, but the federal government would never impose those restrictions on domestic corporations even if it could. But, why concern the nation with bringing democracy to Iraq when there are a number of problems with our own democratic-republic that should be addressed before campaigning in Iraq or China.
September 17, 2006 10:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
John-- I'm not even sure what you are saying? Where did I advocate replying with censorship? The point was that China is refusing to give Google unfettered access to sell its services to Chinese citizens, while the US government gives companies that violate the labor rights of Chinese workers full access to US consumers.
If democracies don't apply democratic standards to global trade, but allow dictatorships to apply dictatorial standards to that same trade system, you end up with a global economy based on the dictatorships' standards. Which is a bad idea.
We need a level playing field, a global economy that enforces uniform labor, environmental and consumer standards of freedom. How is that an abandonment of progressive causes?
September 18, 2006 2:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Apologies if I misunderstood you. It sure sounded to me like that's what you were saying. So it's just: don't buy Chinese? And is that individual boycott, or are you asking for national policy forbidding trade with China?
I have to think some more about it as national policy, since isolating nations has often made them dig in their proverbial heels or taken away some leverage, so there's that truth in the argument that free markets help bring other freedoms; but the free traders have not delivered on that promise of democracy and have often slanted "free trade" in self-interested ways. So I'll keep an open mind.
As for consumers, maybe you need to be working on assembling lists of companies whose goods rely on unfair labor practices, then putting those lists into the public eye?
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
September 18, 2006 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
What's the point of having a set of values if you are not ready to act according to those values? It's not a matter, as has been argued, of imposing "western" values on the Chinese, it's a matter of acting upon those values here.
So called "Free Trade" should not be an excuse for conditional values. Human rights and free speech are a set of minumum values without which capitalism degrades into fascism and tyrrany. "We hold these truths to be self evident..."
Nathan, you are absolutely right.
September 18, 2006 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink