Seeking to continue our discussion on the WTO and its aftermath, I am getting concerned that the positive momentum of the Seattle activities may well be endangered by progressive policy confusions. Then again, it may be a matter of media manipulation.
I refer to reports that seem to have certain progressive forces targeting the vote on China as the logical follow up to the Seattle "victory." An example, a Wall Street Journal front page story (December 6, 1999) entitled WTO's Failure in Bid to Launch Trade Talks Emboldens Protestors. The article includes the following:
The talks' collapse left foes of free trade euphoric. And they left Seattle with a new energy, intent on fighting the Clinton administration's next major trade goal: getting China in the WTO. "China. We're coming atcha," yelled Mike Dolan, master planner of the Seattle protests, as he celebrated the disintegration of the WTO ministerial meeting. "There's no question about it. The next issue is China."
Later in the article there are quotes from Jeff Faux, president of EPI. Faux says that critics worry that with China in the WTO it will be "impossible to get labor and environmental standards" included into the WTO. And that is because China is a dictatorship and too big to push around.
Still later the article quotes Thea Lee, a progressive economist who now works with the AFL-CIO, and more mainstream AFL-CIO leaders, as pointing to the China issue and building to oppose it as the next big task. One example: "The China vote is going to become a proxy for all of our concerns about globalization," AFL-CIO spokeswoman Denise Mitchell said on Saturday.
This is a very dangerous turn. The fear about China is tied to the continuing push on the part of the AFL-CIO leadership to reform the WTO by adding a labor accord. I am not surprised that they continue to push that line. But what I worry about is that other progressives and progressive organizations might begin to have their focus turned in that direction. Rather than capitalism, or even MNCs, or even the WTO as the enemy, we now suddenly find that China is the enemy and that we need to keep it out of the WTO so that we can preserve the potential for reform. Very scary.
Coincidently, I happen to come across an article by an Economic Policy Institute economist, Robert E. Scott, in the latest issue of the journal Working USA. Scott's article is entitled WTO Accession: China can wait. In the article Scott argues that China should not be allowed into the WTO. Why? A major reason is that it has a state controlled economic system. In fact, he specifically criticizes the country's economic controls as when he says: "China's success in high-tech industries such as computers and commercial aircraft is due in large part to a number of market-distorting government policies, including requirements for technology transfer to domestic firms, local context and offset requirements, and import and foreign exchange licensing arrangements." Later he says "The second structural problem (in dealing with China on trade issues) is the dominant role played by China's state enterprises and the power of the state and of leading government figures in limiting market access and restricting access to foreign exchange." All of these interventions he finds unfair. And no because they are used to rich the few but because they are distortions that keep market forces from balancing trade with the US.
He also says China should be kept out because it is a dictatorship. And it should be kept out because China's exports are targeted at the US. And finally it should be kept out because China's entry into the WTO will not bring benefits to the US economy or US workers.
In the article he mentions that one of the ways in which China has increased its high tech exports to the US is through the activities of foreign direct investment. He says: "As in the case of computers, the United States exports parts and jobs to China's export platforms (foreign owned factories within China that import parts and export finished goods) and it gets assembled phones in return." Scott sees this as China dominating the US. But while he criticizes China he never raises a word about MNCs or global capitalism.
China, Scott says, should be allowed in the WTO, only if it agrees to enforceable labor and environment standards. And if it agrees to quantifiable commercial benefits to US trade, meaning that China's imports must go up and the US trade deficit must go down. The latter must involve China agreeing to appreciate its currency so that the deficit can be reduced and to numerical targets in key product lines. And finally the WTO mechanism must be adjusted to allow the US to enforce these things.
Again the scary thing is that the EPI is a progressive think-tank and the journal Working USA is a progressive journal. But here we are making China the big issue, and promoting as progressive, policies designed to adjust the world so as to preserve capitalist market imperatives. And all in the name of protecting US workers.
The strength of the WTO movement was that for the first time in a long time ordinary people began to see globalization for what it is, a politically crafted, capitalist driven process. This focus on labor agreements and China as the next big issue to fight to preserve a "fair" global economy is really a trap. The Chinese government and the US government and the Chinese elite and the US elite can fight this out. I do not think it is our major issue. Our major issue is how to build upon the awareness and energy generated by the WTO actions to create a real anti-capitalist movement that operates on principles of international solidarity.
I wonder what others think? Do we need to intervene to keep the movement on track? Where are the confusions in the progressive movement that we need to combat? Or is this just a media attempt to confuse that does not have to be taken seriously?
Marty Hart-Landsberg