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Don't sink to China's level

Globalization of the world's economy impacts each of us, whether rich or poor, in every corner of the globe. We are all swept up in a momentum which is both impossible to ignore and difficult to control. While hundreds of billions of dollars are thrown into China to buy a piece of what many see as the Holy Grail of opportunities -- from cellphones to car parts, T-shirts to pajama tops, motor oil to olive oil, high speed trains to nuclear reactors -- largely ignored is the unwitting complicity this opportunism has in creating LCD (least common denominator) economics, essentially erasing the last 125 years of progress in labor relations in most developed countries.

LCD economics means bringing the rest of the world down to Beijing's pitiful social standards through exploitation of hundreds of millions of Chinese workers, instead of lifting China's standards up. As it now stands, Beijing's relentless exploitation of Chinese labor has produced a sinkhole that threatens the standard of living in every developed nation in the world.

China's standard of living and wage rates are so low, and its labor pool so vast, that to compete, the rest of the world would have to go back 150 years to penny-per-hour wages, and 15-hour days. Is anyone willing?

What corporations have been unable to accomplish under developed countries' labor laws they have done almost overnight through the single greatest anti-labor machine in history -- Communist China.

While the communist "revolution" was purportedly designed to benefit and pay homage to the "worker," communism as it has developed is instead a system based entirely on the concept of worker exploitation and LCD economics. Communism has historically selected the lowest benchmark of any concept or system -- the least common denominator -- and brutally enforced it in the name of "collective equality." The result has been to create a system in which competition and freedom of choice are abhorred, or worse, prohibited, and where more than a billion of the world's very poorest and exploited workers are an available pool of the world's cheapest labor, now available to foreign employers fleeing their own country's hard-won labor regulations.

In the past, this meant less to workers in a factory in Texas, where the competition was between US and Chinese manufacturers, not between US and Chinese laborers. The factory worker's job was safe, but the company was fighting the cheap goods from abroad.

With globalization, the WTO, and China fever, the entire system of world capitalism has been jolted by a 9.2 temblor from Beijing. That jolt has manifested itself in the closing of tens of thousands of factories, the loss of millions of jobs and an influx of goods to developed nations produced on the backs of China's impoverished, where for pennies a day, foreign corporations can mass produce lower quality goods for a mere fraction of the cost (the minimum wage in Shanghai was reported as of July 1 at US$76 per month, or a measly US$3 a day for 10-12 hours of work per day; the minimum hourly rate was set at US$0.73 per hour. These are the regulated rates, and do not represent the actual amounts paid -- which are likely less, as enforcement of these regulations ranges from lax to non-existent.

Now, that worker in Texas is competing for his job directly with workers in Xiamen or Shanghai. Very likely, he has now been replaced by ten workers in China, and the factory in Texas is closed. Some companies compete with cheap Chinese goods by moving factories to South America or South Africa, where cheaper labor is available. The result is the same -- migrating jobs.

While developed nation's consumers feverishly fork out ready cash for "cheap" goods (who wouldn't want to pay US$5 for a shirt that looks just like a domestic shirt that costs US$25?), they fail to appreciate the danger. They don't see the pink slips in the mail, the factories closed, the bottom lines shrinking, the sinkhole expanding.

China is not just exporting cheap goods to the US. It is also exporting its LCD economics and its drastically lower standard of living around the world.

In order for the world to compete with a system that has completely escaped the labor revolution for more than a century, to compete with a system that has exploited workers and citizens for fifty years, developed countries will either have to drastically reduce labor benefits and wages, or move to China.

When a few companies opt for the move, it is a "phenomenon." When 10,000 companies opt to move, it is a disturbing trend. When 100,000 companies leave, it is a danger that cannot be underestimated.

Let us clearly understand the stakes. If we continue to buy cheap Chinese goods, import them, or allow them to be imported without restriction, the only direction for the standard of living of every single worker in the US and in Europe, Australia, and any other developed nation is down, down, down.

Talk about opening the "huge China market" is meaningless. The China market is not so huge. Ninety percent of its citizens don't or can't buy foreign goods, or can't afford to, and as soon as something is imported into China that is successful, it spawns copies by China's corporate pirates.

It doesn't have to be like this. Instead of using China's uber-cheap standard as the benchmark, developed countries could very well reverse the trend and impose tariffs or restrictions to level the playing field. China will complain bitterly about "free trade" (as will consumers and importers), but the standard of living of billions depends on it.

While there is a happy medium to be produced by "competition," the competition must be fair -- in other words, the benchmark is not only free trade, but fair trade, and the sooner the WTO gets that point, the better.

The alternative is the rest of the world free-falling down to China's level, a mortifying prospect. When workers in the US, France, Italy or England wake up to find their hourly pay has shrunk by 90 percent, they will revolt. Yet, that is what they are facing in unfair competition from China.

The communists destroyed any hope of a competitive market long ago. While life for people in Beijing and Shanghai may mimic developed countries in some small way, their comfort is nevertheless built on the torment of the millions of China's working poor. Life outside the big cities is nowhere near the same.

Either China plays by today's rules (which means allowing a period of labor reforms to bring labor regulations in China from the 18th century into the 21st century), or it doesn't get to play at all. No more jailing labor activists, no more executing labor protesters, no more exploitative policies, no more US$50 per month salary.

China proclaims that it is somehow the "most efficient manufacturer" on earth. The simple truth is that China is the most ruthless and barbaric manufacturer in the world, and the system that rewards that barbarism is itself to blame as much as the communists. It is ironic that communism was supposedly a revolution of the workers, and yet it is the "workers" themselves who have been the greatest victims of China's "rising." The "rising" is subterfuge; and like many of Beijing's proclamations, it is a mirage.

China is the "Brand Name Outlet" in the desert where you can get huge discounts for imperfect goods ("seconds"). Only this outlet sells cheap goods with one hand and steals jobs with the other. Who would shop at an outlet that did that?

Human rights activists rush around the globe chasing Nike and a host of other corporations, complaining about sweatshops and labor conditions, and the exploitation of workers, marching for a variety of rights, including the basic rights of workers. In this "march" against exploitation, the benchmark for these rights cannot, and must not be the LCD economics of China, erasing all of the progress workers have bled and died for for over a century.

While the highly political AFL-CIO complains bitterly about President Bush on its Web site, it just doesn't make enough noise about the actual culprit, China. We need more noise from labor organizations about China's unacceptable labor practices from the dark ages, and less internecine politics. The sinkhole is growing day by day. It envelopes us everywhere.

To trade fundamental improving living conditions in the developed world for cheap socks is pathetic, but that is what is happening. LCD economics must be stopped now, without delay. One united global voice (not including France, which will never protest anything China does as long as Beijing continues to dangle big contracts for AirBus and other French corporations) can make the difference. A small ripple can become a strong tide.

Put down that pair of cheap pajamas, those cheap socks, that cheap toaster, cheap whatever, and think about it. Every time you buy a pair of cheap Chinese socks, you put someone in your country out of a job. Buy a Lenovo, close a factory. Just think about it.

Lee Long-hwa
United States

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