Letters:

G8 protest critic off the mark

So protesters in Genoa "have purposely ignored the fact that it is free market economics and globalization that have lifted many poor nations from poverty and created job opportunities for poor people," have they? Cao Chang-Ching's (曹長青) simplistic analysis of the benefits of global capitalism ("Who are the protesters fighting for?" July 27, page 12) deserves comment.

It is tempting to focus on his imaginative use of source material, like quoting "economic leftist" Chris Patten, supposedly transformed into a free marketeer by his experiences in Hong Kong. Surely that can't be the same "leftist" who'd already been a senior minister in Margaret Thatcher's free market Conservative government?

Or I could pick on Cao's glib assumption that "a global distribution system that claims to be based on people's needs" is "supposed to be realized under a communist style, centralized, planned economy." "Supposed to" by whom? Does he think the protesters were all Stalinists? I could even mention Cao's complaint that none of the Third World's poor were among the protesters. How did he suppose they would get to Genoa?

But to spend time picking apart Cao's sources, assumptions or logic would be to miss a serious point: that the world economy, while expanding the international system for production and distribution of goods, leaves more than half of humanity out of the loop. According to the UN Human Development Report of 1994, "What emerges [looking back over the previous 50 years] is an arresting picture of unprecedented human progress and unspeakable human misery, of humanity's advances on several fronts mixed with humanity's retreat on several others, of a breathtaking globalization of prosperity side by side with a depressing globalization of poverty."

Can this be true? Yes. Currently half the world -- nearly three billion people -- live on less than US$2 a day. According to UNICEF, almost a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names, while less than 1 percent of the world's annual spending on weapons would have put every child into school by the year 2000. According to a 1998 UN report, 20 percent of the population in the developed nations consume 86 percent of the world's goods. That leaves 80 percent of people to consume the other 14 percent.

Can these be some of the "supposed inequalities" referred to by Cao? Luckily it's obvious which side he is on, since he admits he sees equality as

"neither the essence of economic development nor its purpose."

The world's economic, financial and political system is run by elites who are naturally concerned with preserving their power and wealth, and who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Can we count on them to steer capitalism in a direction that will really help the dispossessed? Maybe the Genoa protesters have valid reasons to be skeptical.

Jim Sadler

Taipei

Cao's twisted article is rather typical of the distortions of market fundamentalists in reaction to protests since Seattle.

1) Cao claims "History has proven that the two principal factors that can lead nations to economic prosperity are the protection of private property and free market competition."

This is false. The US has grown through a number of factors including: imperialism, which witnessed the conquest of American Indian lands under the rhetoric of "Manifest Destiny" and subjugation of much of Latin America under the Monroe Doctrine. Protectionism shielded US industries during the 1800s and 1900s, ignoring the British free trade rhetoric of the day. In the post World War II era, the military industrial complex has provided heavy subsidies for high technology via military spend-ing. In addition, US agriculture has been heavily subsidized and protected.