Dear list members
I know academics are not immortals living in the cloud and
they have to have tenures, publications, grants and so on. They therefore need
to be defending the “national interest”. In this particular issue US specialist on Chinese economy, foreign
affairs, so on and so on will have to defend the US
national interest such as protecting US jobs and industry and so on, as I have
seen some prominent China
scholars have been dong. Fair enough. However, would it not be difficult to
talk about human rights for the Chinese and universal values at the same time? On
what ground do we hold the moral high ground? I know: democracy!
In this case, would defending the US national interest
not be morally (either intentionally or unintentionally) responsible for the predictable
suffering of the Chinese poor, now or later, more so later? It goes like this
(see China
weighs dollars and sense of revaluation http://chinastudygroup.org/newsarchive/7858/
for details)
- The
US consumers buy
commodities made by migrant workers in sweat shops in China at
increasingly lower prices (you would think it should be the other way
round!)
- The
US government directly
and therefore the US
consumers indirectly borrow from the Chinese government directly and
therefore the Chinese poor indirectly to spend on these commodities (Chinese
purchasing of US bonds and US dollars reserve)
- At
the moment the exchange rate of US and Yuan is about, say, 1:8.38. The
pressure is on by the US
to appreciate Yuan as they did on Japan in 1985. Millions of
dollars are flowing into China
now, expecting this to happen
- Under
the pressure with the help of our academics the exchange rate becomes,
say, 1:6. US dollars will flow out of China like plane loads
- The
outcome: Foreign firms made loads of money either way and US consumers
enjoyed all the sweat shop commodities for nothing.
- The
poor Chinese? We all know (perhaps we don’t) what is and will happen
to them. There are millions of them of course.
You don’t agree with
this? Let me know.
Regards
Mobo