China recalls death cargo, and how responsible markets could have prevented the stalemate

After days of stalemate China has finally backed down and recalled its weapons shipment to Zimbabwe. The story is fetched from the English edition of Al-Jazeera.

Kudos to the dockers trade unions in South Africa for refusing to unload the crates of oppression that Mugabe so fondly wanted. However regular that shipment may have been on paper, the use to which it would be put was so outrageously clear no-one selling those weapons could expect his hands to be clean of innocent Zimbabwean blood.

Commenting on the shipment at a regular foreign ministry press briefing in Beijing, spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the decision had been taken by the Chinese company involved to recall the vessel.

She said the shipment was completely legal and fell within the established norms of international trade.

"In the field of conventional weapons, we have trade relations with some countries. These are consistent with our laws and with Security Council resolutions and China's international obligations," Jiang said.

"We have been very responsible and cautious with regards to weapons exports."

I can say nothing with respect to the obligations, norms and agreements. What amazes me is that someone would actually decide to take an order from a butcher AFTER an election he was clearly losing. Chinese weapons enterprises seem to combine blindness and the most wicked business spirit in a very efficient manner, making the phrase "business is business" sound eerily disturbing.

I may be accused of double standards. On one hand we have the manufacturer's duty to turn a profit (i.e. sell to whoever buys) and the blindness of the free market. On the other we have the concern for the life of innocent Zimbabweans and the clear indication of a butcher's desire to cling to power at any cost. I wish to analyze this situation in the light of a market failure due to the west's inaction and a lack of market transparency.

Mugabe should have been expected to order more firepower, since his own people were turning against him en masse. A transparent international weapons market would have recorded the assassin's bid for weapons and China's willingness to supply them. All the concerned West should have done then (to put their money where their mouth is) was outbid Zimbabwe for any weapons shipment they laid their eyes on.

The end result could have been the impossibility for Zimbabwe to bid against the economic might of the West (unless some rich thug was willing to buy the weapons for Zimbabwe), a weapons supply shortage causing a rise in prices thereby bankrupting many paramilitary organizations or thuggish governments relying on cheap armaments. A weapons stock exchange maybe, like the system we use for oil supplies?

Although I recognize this is no long-term solution, the market does hold a temporary answer to such crises. In the long-term we should all strive for thugs not to be elected to government in the first place and for democratic means to be the sole way of settling issues of government and representation.

Just a hope for now.

Bring on the outsourcing!

All too often we hear many economic woes blamed on China, with its cheap and limitless workforce. Western trade unions in those professions threatened by outsourcing and moving jobs become the most vocal advocates of protectionist policies and government bail-outs, at the expense of the taxpayer of course, who is inevitably presented with a heftier tax bill and artificially engineered consumer choice patterns. We pay more to obtain less.



At the student seminar in Montreal hosted by the Fraser Institute the participants were treated to an insightful presentation by Germain Belzile on why we should NOT fear China, as well as how frequently we are the cause of our own problems. Government and advocates turn a deaf ear, as blame-passing is an art human beings have mastered in its totality. The failure to broaden one's perspective, however, is not a luxury a responsible government can afford in the long term: globalization expands the opportunities for positive outcomes but also exacerbates the consequences of short-sighted choices.



Today the progress from primary economy based on agriculture and natural resources towards tertiary service economy is nothing short of an axiom. In this optic, the gradual death of the manufacturing industry is a sign of progress if it is counterbalanced by an increase in tertiary skill, which few politicians seem to emphasize. On the contrary, trade unions and sympathetic administrators pretend to serve the nation's interest by holding the economy in an artificial time-freeze, averse to change in the name of the common good.

Job losses due to outsourcing overseas are a tragedy for many families. Bail-outs and welfare are, however, a greater tragedy in the making due to the consequent increased reliance on government rather than hard work and skill progress. Cars produced in China may justify one-off shipping costs, but every technological item will someday require maintenance which cannot be outsourced completely. Notwithstanding maintenance, at any given time every country has a skill deficit, be it in plumbing or software engineering.

Simplistic as it may sound, consider the case of automotive servicing. Manufacturing workers should ideally be cogent in the mechanics and nitty-gritty of car functioning,according to their speciality. Would it not be advisable for them to pool their individual skills together and open up a car servicing station when their plant closes down? Would it not be beneficial to the consumer, whose expense for vehicle maintenance would be reduced due to increased competition?

The provincial and federal governments have the duty to recognize market failure as a necessary step in capitalist progress, which punishes inefficient resource use and attempts at economic engineering. Thus current expenditure for agonizing industries should be immediately redirected to skill programmes that would allow workers to have a job when the industry dies. A manufacturing employee whose job is at risk should have the opportunity to re-train for free in his (little, admittedly) free time in a skill that cannot be outsourced. I can't send my leaking sink to China, can I? And plumbers are expensive!

Skill re-training instead of stagnation, dignity of work instead of the burden of welfare and, above all, an ultimate benefit to all consumers and the economy.

China's just sick!

News of tainted Chinese exports rampaged through the media, and products for domestic consumption aren't safe either. 750 people have been arrested in a crackdown on fake and dangerous products, and the Chinese Government gave enormous prominence to the execution of a bribed official. I am not buying this. A system with no embedded accountability is the best soil for growing corruption and reaping its bitter fruits.

Parents who fed their newborns milk powder with a fraction of the claimed nutrients know this first-hand. We know this first-hand when we get injured by a product that made it to the stores only through currency-stuffed brown envelopes.

I can't be scandalized by the scarce attention paid by many Chinese producers to the safety of the products they peddle us. After all, we're not them, so what do they care.

But even with over a billion inhabitants, not fighting for the life of your own citizens just ain't right. How can one define a statist government that doesn't watch over the safety of the products on the shelves? Which words can describe this horror?

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/06D3F821-6801-40AA-B117-14B23D030A5B.htm

Advice for China: never say never

The Commies are at it again: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7043942.stm

So China will never copy the Western style of democracy, huh. Why does that ring a bell for everyone with a faint knowledge of history? Someone else said, many decades ago, that his country's system will bury American capitalism. That country was the same Soviet Union which imploded without honour or dignity in 1991, and Communism has thankfully been receding ever since.

True economic progress is achieved only with a sustained drive towards individual freedom, otherwise the benefits of growth are not shared by the general population. The current Congress is set to change the Constitution to include provisions for avoiding pollution and preventing a widening gap between the rich and the poor, the former getting richer and the latter stuck in a rut.

Pardon me, wasn't Communism made exactly to serve that purpose? Clearly something has gone terribly wrong if they haven't managed to solve that problem in over 50 years. If the Communists wasnt to stay in power they'd better start reforming their system radically, rather than clinging to an ideology that has been confined to the dustbin long ago. How about private ownership of land for starters? How about limiting the power of local officials? How about taking some duties away from the central authority? There's no need for a multi-party democracy if you don't want one, but this comes at the expense of the State shedding off its influence on people's choices.

I'm sure that in my lifetime I will see either the red flag go down or Marx and Mao turning in their graves one more time seeing how far their societies have strayed from their perverted ideologies. I'll keep a good champagne bottle chilling in the fridge for that occasion.

Never say never, comrade.