Tag: China

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Blame China

The Great Depression was made “great” by government mismanagement. 

Political action, first under Hoover and then under FDR, made things a whole lot worse. And it wasn’t just the Democrats’ misguided New Deal barrage of regulation, cartelization, and general anti-​business central planning. The Hoover Era Smoot-​Hawley Tariff, a huge Republican reassertion of high-​barrier protectionism, crippled international markets and devastated the one industry it was meant, especially, to help: agriculture. 

Protectionism is the idea that government should outrageously harm domestic consumers to “protect” domestic producers. And politicians, often thinking they must “do something” (i.e., “anything”) often feel the push to “save us all” by erecting barriers to trade. Since the crash of 2008, I’ve kept an eye on our Washington insiders, to see if they’d try to revive Thirties-​style self-​destructive nostrums.

Well, we’ve got a sighting. 

Congress is gearing up for some anti-​Chinese protectionism. An unfortunately bipartisan movement is festering there, saying China’s yuan is too valuable, making trade “unfair” for American producers. The Senate seems bent on passing the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act.

But, according to Daniel Ikenson, what’s really going on is politics: Faced with “public approval ratings hovering in the low-​to-​mid teens, an embattled Congress is looking for plausible scapegoats for the dismal state of U.S. economic affairs.”

This is not sophisticated economic theory. It’s not conscientiously developed public policy.

It’s grasp-​at-​anything grandstanding.

And it could do a whole lot of harm.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Tire Trade War, Tiring

Political folly comes around, again and again, like a puncture in a rapidly deflating tire as you drive down the freeway. The end is never good.

President Obama and congressional Democrats pushed a tariff hike on China-​made tires, up to 35 percent — and the WTO okayed it. They excuse their action because they wish to “retaliate” against China for its alleged monetary “manipulations” — manipulations that bear remarkable resemblance to our own Federal Reserve’s policies, by the way — which they say cause our current trade imbalance.

And, like non-​economists everywhere, these buffoons judge the trade deficit a horrible thing. The fact that U.S. consumer’s get great benefit from lower-​priced goods coming from China, and can — as a result of less expensive, Chinese-​made tires – afford to replace their tires more often, thereby saving lives and health-​care costs, doesn’t appear in politicians’ protectionist arguments.

It’s the economy that’s making our representatives stupid, of course. Blaming foreign competition is an easy out, when times get tough. It helps you avoid blaming your own country’s regulations, taxes, and (ahem) monetary policy.

This blame game is nothing new. The Smoot-​Hawley Tariff was pushed through early in the Great Depression, and it made a lot of sense to … politicians.

But the the trade wars the infamous tariff engendered became a major factor in making the Great Depression so Great.

Our politicians, reviving tired old policies — regarding tires, no less — merely make matters worse. Greatly worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom

Searching for Google’s China Policy

Google took flak a few years ago when it announced that it would cooperate with Chinese censorship to operate a Chinese version of the Google search engine. The company’s top brass wrung their hands about the decision, since it seemed to clash with Google’s official “do no evil” policy.

In January, Google and other large companies suffered a major cyber attack apparently originating in China. In Google’s case, the target of the assault was the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Further investigation in the weeks since then has tended to confirm that the Chinese government sponsored the attack.

In response to the attack and further assaults on freedom of Internet speech in China, Google said that it was “no longer willing to continue censoring” its search results. It said that it would shut down Google​.cn if the government would not let it provide unfiltered results.

Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb reports that Google​.cn is still censoring its search results. The Chinese government isn’t about to cave. 

So why hasn’t Google left China?

Sure, it would be disruptive. People would lose their jobs. But in January’s   statement, Google seemed to be taking a belated but praiseworthy stand on principle. They should follow through. If there’s anything worse than doing evil, it’s publicly repenting it and then continuing to do evil as if nothing had happened.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

China’s Not-​so-​Great Wall

The Chinese government has been tightening its cyber-​noose. Its officials fear  the ideas that can proliferate so easily on the Internet. So they’re making it ever harder for citizens to use the Net — even to visit nonpolitical websites.

Multiple-​choice question: The new restrictions mean that Web surfers will have a harder time a) viewing pornography; b) watching streaming TV shows; c) starting an Internet-​based business or personal web site; d) criticizing the Chinese government; or e) all of the above? 

The answer is “all of the above.”

This year, China has blocked Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and many other sites. The latest round of restrictions has resulted in the shutdown of some 700 homegrown sites. Chinese dictocrats talk about combating pornography or piracy to justify restrictions that have a much wider scope. But they also freely admit their eagerness to block the flow of ideas they call “bad,” which is to say, inconvenient to themselves. China’s public security minister complains that the Internet “has become an important avenue” for “anti-​China” forces.

Beijing can’t stamp out the Internet altogether. But it can certainly keep cooking up new ways to boil it down to an easier-​to-​control (or comprehend) size. 

Chinese citizens who are determined to keep resisting the tyrants need more and better technology to circumvent the firewalls, and to protect their own anonymity and privacy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

$800 Billion Gorilla

It somehow didn’t come up.

Last week, when President Barack Obama met with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, there was reportedly no discussion of the fact that our country owes China over $800 billion. 

Just suppose you owed someone $800 bucks … or $800,000. Do you think it could affect the relationship?

What about nearly a trillion dollars?

The Obama Administration just announced that American-​Chinese relations are “at an all-​time high.” But a story in the Washington Post compared our relationship with China to the nuclear stalemate of the Cold War, known as “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD. We’re dependent on them for future loans; they’re dependent on us to pay back old loans and new.

Kenneth Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution explained that “the Chinese can pull the rug out from under our economy only if they want to pull the rug out from under themselves.”

Reassuring? Not very. 

Why have we allowed a foreign power to gain such leverage over us? 

Because our politicians cannot — will not — limit their yearly spending to the trillion-​plus dollars in revenue from American taxpayers.

When it comes to debt, China’s tyrants  have taken better care of their country than our politicians have of ours. But we needn’t cede them control. Far better simply to stop borrowing billions from Beijing. 

How? Slash spending. If our politicians can’t do it for us, maybe they can do it for their Chinese allies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Welcome to Beijing

Many say that the Olympics are all about international competition and sportsmanship, nothing about politics. Or shouldn’t be.

But you can’t read about the Chinese government’s preparations for the Games without concluding that politics is involved here somewhere.

For one thing, officials have cracked down on beggars and disabled persons, who are being ordered off Beijing streets. Too unsightly, apparently. Also, it seems one of the quaint things Chinese citizens do is walk around in their pajamas in public. This too is outlawed during the Games.

Even dogs are on a tighter leash. Owners may now walk them only at certain times. And the canines better have their papers.

Foreign visitors are prohibited from displaying “religious, political, or racial banners.” Will the government be sending tanks against protesters?

Seven years ago, while bidding to host the Games, China promised that journalists would enjoy “complete freedom to report” — including unfettered access to the Internet. That’s now been tossed out the window, thanks to a recent “negotiation” with the International Olympic Committee. For example, reporters won’t be able to access Amnesty International or websites about Tibet.

Maybe China declared that if the IOC didn’t like the censorship, it could pack up and take the games somewhere else … figuring it was too late for the Committee to do anything but relent. But for the sake of freedom in this world, the Committee should have called the bluff.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.