News flash! China heading for civilization!

In a March 2005 essay titled Pharaoh I made an issue out of the obvious fact that individual workers in democracies are not in competition with individual Chinese workers for jobs; they are in competition with China's government. I've pounded away on the issue ever since, and to no avail. But on Friday, under pressure from Democrats in Congress, the US Department of Commerce took a small step toward acknowledging that the US worker plays against a stacked deck when it comes to competing with China's workers:

Commerce announced that US manufacturers could seek penalty tariffs, known as countervailing duties (as distinct from anti-dumping sanctions), because Chinese government subsidies such as favorable loans, debt forgiveness, and low-cost loans to China's manufacturers constitute unfair trade practice with the US.

The decision is based on a case brought by US firm NewPage Corp., which contends that Chinese high-gloss paper imports are fueled by subsidies that constitute unfair competition to US-made paper.

Of course Beijing is screaming about the decision, and we can be sure that the Red Team is having conniptions, but at least some Democrats are hanging tough:

In a joint statement, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel and Representative Sander Levin, both Democrats, called the sanctions a "long-overdue change in policy." They said they intended to push forward with legislation that would explicitly change US law to make sure the Commerce actions will withstand any court challenges.(1)

One can always hope but I'm not sure there is a substantive policy shift in the works and whether the penalty tariffs won't be scaled back under pressure from the Red Team, Washington's foreign policy establishment, and the very powerful China trade lobby. As late as March, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was resisting calls for "protectionist" actions, even as the trade deficit with China rose to $232.5 billion, the highest trade gap ever recorded with a single country.

An editorial in Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section, The Limits of Bad Policy, lambasted the US State Department's assumption that the US could forge nondemocratic Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt into an effective coalition to help the situation in Lebanon and Israel-Palestine negotiations, and stand up to Iran's aggression.

[...] attempting to achieve U.S. strategic ends through partnerships with Arab autocracies yields mixed results, at best, in the short term and is cancerous in the longer run. [...] When she first unveiled the new strategy, [Condoleezza] Rice described the Arab alliance against Iran as one of "moderates." She shouldn't have been surprised to find last week that in terms of America's fundamental interests, Middle Eastern dictators are neither moderates nor good allies.

True, all true, but is there something intrinsic to Arabs or might we plumb for a general principle? Methinks the Post editors practice selective logic, if they would be unwilling to also huff that China's military dictatorship makes a poor US ally of convenience. Oh but that's right! Silly Pundita; I forgot -- the Post doesn't see China's government as a military dictatorship, and neither does the foreign policy establishment they cater to.

I bring up the issue now because there are serious suggestions that the US partner extensively with China in helping the Africans. My response tracks with an observation by Yan Yu, a specialist in enterprise management at Beijing University. Speaking on another matter, he told a reporter that China is now "respecting individuals and respecting the will of common people, which means we are heading for democracy and civilization."

I'm glad to hear it, but let's wait until China arrives at a civilized juncture before we go partnering with them in African development and aid initiatives. We're already way too "partnered" with China at the World Bank and other multilateral development banks.

1) US imposes sanctions on Chinese paper products