2007.03.30: March 30, 2007: Headlines: COS - Thailand: Writing - Thailand: COS - China: Fair Trade: Las Vegas Business Press: Thailand RPCV Peter Navarro writes "The Coming China Wars"
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2007.03.30: March 30, 2007: Headlines: COS - Thailand: Writing - Thailand: COS - China: Fair Trade: Las Vegas Business Press: Thailand RPCV Peter Navarro writes "The Coming China Wars"
Thailand RPCV Peter Navarro writes "The Coming China Wars"
Navarro starts his tome by dissecting how China has undercut the rest of the world's economies by creating a quasi free-market system, based on unfair trade practices that form the "China Price." That price is an economic reality born of endless cheap labor, a lack of spending on health and safety nets for workers, currency manipulation, export subsidies, and the literal counterfeiting of everything from condoms and razor blades to car parts and baby food. "Business and labor (here) will have to fight, to tackle these practices head-on," Navarro said.
Thailand RPCV Peter Navarro writes "The Coming China Wars"
The coming China wars
New book details environmental, economic threats from China
BY MATT WARD
The threat China poses to the well-being of the Western world looms larger every day, according to author Peter Navarro.
China's pollution is hitchhiking the jet stream into American cities. Its cheap labor pool and subsidized industry are stealing manufacturing jobs away from the middle class in the U.S., and have done so for years. Its counterfeit products and pirated software rob American businesses of the fruits of their labor.
But, ironically, the biggest threat posed by China, is to itself.
Prof. Navarro, who teaches economics at the University of California, Irvine, is an expert on China. It's a place that's fascinated him since he served in the Peace Corps in Asia in the 1970s. He realized several years ago that, in purely economic terms, "all roads lead to China."
In a new book, The Coming China Wars: Where they will be fought, how they can be won (Prentice Hall, 248 pp.; $26) Navarro spells out the risks posed to America and the rest of the world from China's out-of-control economic and industrial growth.
He says he wrote The Coming China Wars as a "kick in the pants, a slap in the face. Every American needs to be aware of the threat China poses to their well-being," he opined.
Navarro starts his tome by dissecting how China has undercut the rest of the world's economies by creating a quasi free-market system, based on unfair trade practices that form the "China Price." That price is an economic reality born of endless cheap labor, a lack of spending on health and safety nets for workers, currency manipulation, export subsidies, and the literal counterfeiting of everything from condoms and razor blades to car parts and baby food.
"Business and labor (here) will have to fight, to tackle these practices head-on," Navarro said.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Much more disturbing than China's economic undercutting of the rest of the world is the scale at which the country is setting new standards in environmental destruction. Almost 500 coal-fired power plants will be built in China in the next eight years.
During that same time, about 100 million new cars will take to China's new highway system. Coupled with an already sizable volume of pollution from existing commercial and residential coal use, as well as the rampant desertification of its land (most of China is a desert, with dust storms that make Las Vegas' look puny in comparison), pollution from China in 10 years will be five times greater than that of all the nations that signed the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions ... combined.
"These are critical times today. China is affecting everything we do," Navarro said. "There is little to nothing in China that puts a value on the environment."
Much of the Chinese population suffers from poverty, government oppression, lack of clean resources and a dearth of employment opportunities. Many of China's 1.4 billion people are still considered rural residents, where farming allows subsistence living but little more.
Chinese are routinely forced from their homes by developers, or by their own government in an effort to get people into the cities. Many of these people are never reimbursed for their loss.
Other factors in China that are taking a toll on its population include an explosive rate of HIV infection, rampant official corruption (the Chinese have a dozen phrases for various kinds of corruption) and little freedom of expression.
Without change, and soon, "China will implode," or worse, will engage in a head-to-head conflict with the West. And, if its environmental abuse continues, Navarro said, we all might end up "in a Hobbesian world where life is nasty, brutal and short."
mward@lvbusinesspress.com | 871-6780 x339
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Story Source: Las Vegas Business Press
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Thailand; Writing - Thailand; COS - China; Fair Trade
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