09.13.10
Even the Chinese are dismayed
Coincidentally, in the news today from Associated Press:
China’s plans to vaccinate 100 million children and come a step closer to eradicating measles has set off a popular outcry that highlights widening public distrust of the authoritarian government after repeated health scandals.
It stems from distrust of the central government and its response to the regular appearance of poisoned food and health products in the Chinese consumer chain, among other places worldwide.
AP reads:
“The lack of trust toward our food and health products was not formed in one day,” said the Global Times newspaper. “Repairing the damage and building credibility will take a very long time. The public health departments need to take immediate action on all fronts.”
In recent years, government agencies have dragged their feet or withheld information about the spread of SARS, bird flu and, last month, an outbreak of cholera. China’s slow response to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, was widely blamed for causing the outbreak that swept the globe in 2003, and led to deep mistrust both internally and internationally.
Milk products contaminated with industrial chemicals are still found despite mass recalls and several criminal convictions, including
executions, after tainted infant formula sickened 300,000 babies and killed at least six two years ago.
Contrast it again with the absurd rot one infrequently reads, generated by Western sources, on Chinese superweapons and science. (Here, where my piece from last week is mirrored at GlobalSecurity.Org.)
Or pass it over to read even more rot from little Tommy Friedman, again off on his current jag about how the middle class is spoiled and lazy. And it will have to sacrifice even more in the coming years (probably true, but not because of anything he thinks is the reason):
Who will tell the people? China and India have been catching up to America not only via cheap labor and currencies. They are catching us because they now have free markets like we do, education like we do, access to capital and technology like we do, but, most importantly, values like our Greatest Generation had. That is, a willingness to postpone gratification, invest for the future, work harder than the next guy and hold their kids to the highest expectations.
In a flat world where everyone has access to everything, values matter more than ever. Right now the Hindus and Confucians have more Protestant ethics than we do, and as long as that is the case we’ll be No. 11!
Not enough Protestant work ethic, prole slobs!
Values do matter more than ever. And Friedman surely doesn’t have them, either. In fact he’s the cigarette smoker so addicted he forgets he has two hanging out of his mouth when he tells ya to quite smoking.
Friedman needs to be one of the first to go in any long overdue turn of the tide in the class war.
In the same edition of the newspaper, Paul Krugman publishes a more hostile piece toward China, while dragging in US business a little bit.
China is beggaring the west by manipulating its money and subsidizing exports, which readers will have noted American businesses which have deindustrialized are only too happy to take advantage of at everyone else’s expense.
And in a depressed world economy, any country running an artificial trade surplus is depriving other nations of much-needed sales and jobs. Again, anyone who asserts otherwise is claiming that China is somehow exempt from the economic logic that has always applied to everyone else.
There is an American passivity in response to this, writes Krugman, partly caused by “business fear of Chinese retaliation.”
“So this is a good time to remember that what’s good for multinational companies is often bad for America, especially its workers … Will U.S. policy makers let themselves be spooked by financial phantoms and bullied by business intimidation? Will they continue to do nothing in the face of policies that benefit Chinese special interests at the expense of both Chinese and American workers?”
I’ve edited it down a bit so you should read the entire thing. It makes a much finer argument than you’ll ever read here.
I’ll stick to the blunt: I bought a new toilet! It was made in China!
