[lbo-talk] Superprofits

uvj at vsnl.com uvj at vsnl.com
Wed Nov 5 09:06:12 PST 2003


Doug Henwood wrote:


> >Are you sure China is not a colony/semicolony of Imperialism today? Can
we
> >have a definition of a semi-colony or a colony?
>
> How about a country the U.S. could carpet bomb at will?

I don't think the US would be able carpet bomb India at will. It's not easy to go to war with a nuclear weapon state.


> >China's enjoys trade surplus of $100 bn with the US. Does any developing
> >country have the kind of market access to the US and Japan that China
has?
>
> That's not what I was asking. China has been able to attract FDI on
> very favorable terms, requiring lots of tech transfer and local
> sourcing. Has India been able to do the same?

India has received much less FDI than China, though there is local sourcing and tech transfer, e.g. auto MNCs developing local suppliers or software MNCs outsourcing to Indian enterprises. Moreover, it is possible to buy technical know-how for lumpsum payment and/or royalties without foreign direct investments. India can always buy capital equipment and know-how, since there is enough FX available to import technology. FDI is not the only source of technology.

An important source of technical know-how for India was the fSU. Much of Indian industry in the state owned enterprises was built with the Soviet help. This included for the civilian, military and dual use technical technologies. e.g. Equipment oil exploration/drilling, both onshore as well offshore came from the fSU. Steel, machine tools, oil refining, nuclear reactors, rocket engines etc etc. (Indian Maoists believed that India was semi-colony of the Soviet Social Imperialism upto the dissolution of fSU !) The presence of the fSU broke the monopoly of the West. Today Indian industry is able to build nuclear power plants, large ships and bulk carriers, satellites, super computers, drugs etc etc. All this was unthinkable 50 years ago.

FDI inflows in China are related to China's exports. That's an important factor in FDI flows to China. India's exports to US and Japan are probably one tenth of China's exports. This is _one_ important factor in larger FDI flows to China. Taiwanese, Japanese and the US corporates invest in China for exports to North America and Japan.

Ulhas



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