"Soothing Scenario": China is going to evolve and develop toward political liberalization and democracy, and that trade will help with this change.Pundita has a fourth viewpoint, which is based on the Chinese people's passive-aggressive streak: We support the Dear Leader until we can murder him in his bed. This is not China's 'future,' it's the reality -- look at all the actions that Hu Jintao has taken against Jiang Zemin and Jiang's supporters since Hu took power.
The second is what I call the "Upheaval Scenario": to use the vernacular, that China is going to "blow up" - for example, that some serious rupture in their banking system will in turn lead to dramatic political change.
There is what I call the "Third Scenario": politically, what we see in China is what we are going to get - one political system, no organized opposition, no independent judiciary. There are all kinds of nuances on the ground within China, so I don't mean to say that China is not changing. Small-scale changes are taking place, but these may not lead to fundamental changes.
The Chinese do things by revolution and purge -- as true today as during Mao's era. Not all the revolutions are especially bloody but the passive-aggressive way of bringing about change has more impact on China's politics than any other phenomenon.
Will the Chinese revolt themselves into democracy? Not if American businesspeople have anything to say about it and unfortunately they have great say. In In Fear of Chinese Democracy, Harold Meyerson delivers news on the latest machinations by our business community to deprive Chinese of rights that Americans consider fundamental in this country -- rights such as the freedom to change jobs.
[...] since March of last year, the government has been considering a labor law that promises a smidgen of increase in workers' rights. And since March of last year, the American businesses so mightily invested in China have mightily fought it.Meyerson goes on to make three good points:
Beyond the Starbucks of Shanghai, the China of workers and peasants is a sea of unrest, roiled by thousands of strikes and protests that the regime routinely represses. Cognizant that they need to do something to quell the causes of unrest, some of China's rulers have entertained modest changes to the country's labor law.
The legislation wouldn't allow workers to form independent trade unions or grant them the right to strike -- this is, after all, a communist regime. It would, however, require employers to provide employees, either individually or collectively, with written contracts. It would allow employees to change jobs within their industries or get jobs in related industries in other regions; employers have hitherto been able to thwart this by invoking statutes on proprietary information. It would also require that companies bargain with worker representatives over health and safety conditions.
It's not as if Chinese unions would use these laws to run roughshod over employers. Chinese unions are not, strictly speaking, unions at all. They remain controlled by the Communist Party. Their locals can be and frequently are headed by plant managers, whether the workers want them or not. And yet, these changes proved too radical for America's leading corporations.
As documented by Global Labor Strategies, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization headed by longtime labor activists, the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the U.S.-China Business Council embarked on a major campaign to kill these tepid reforms.
Last April, one month after the legislation was first floated, the chamber sent a 42-page document to the Chinese government on behalf of its 1,300 members -- including General Electric, Microsoft, Dell, Ford and dozens of other household brand names -- objecting to these minimal increases in worker power.
In its public comments on the proposed law, GE declared that it strongly preferred "consultation" with workers to "securing worker representative approval" on a range of its labor practices.
Based on a second draft of the law, completed in December, it looks like American businesses have substantially prevailed. Key provisions were weakened; if an employer elects not to issue written contracts, workers are guaranteed only the wages of similar employees -- with the employer apparently free to define who, exactly, is similar.
Business is relieved: Facing "increased pressure to allow the establishment of unions in companies," Andreas Lauff, a Hong Kong-based corporate attorney, wrote in the Jan. 30 Financial Times, "comments from the business community appear to have had an impact."
> Because roughly a quarter of the global workforce is in China, suppressing the wages of so many people via acts against unionization seriously impacts the global workforce;
> By blocking reforms that can lead to a civil society in China, US businesses are contributing to the security threat that China poses to the US; and
[...] since the Bush administration champions the spread of democracy globally, why hasn't it taken America's leading corporations to task for retarding democracy's growth in China?Regarding the last point, there have been many factors at work since the Nixon administration contributing to the situation; see James Mann's February op-ed The three futures of China in The Los Angeles Times for a review of the most obvious factors. However, there is no reason you can think of that does not trace back to the skewed thesis of economic determinism. World Bank-IMF programs and the unthinking application of neoliberal schemes to poor countries rest on the idea that once a certain level of business prosperity is achieved, the society naturally embraces democracy.
I don't foresee a collapse of China's government -- if nothing else Japanese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong bankers will bail enough water to keep the Mainland government afloat. I do foresee a collapse of economic determinism as a guiding principle in US foreign relations.
It's a shame that so much has to be accomplished through the mechanism of backlash, but as leftists in this country and around the world gain more power, their rejection of economic determinism will be virulent.
The truth is that US businesspeople have been guided by their government's acceptance of economic determinism. So until there is a US policy change, global US corporations will continue to justify their support of oppressive government policies in the nations they use as industrial plantations.
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