The U.S. In Chinese Eyes
AS I SEE IT
By Paul S. Ropp
I am dismayed that the United States Department of Commerce is imposing import tariffs of over 30 percent on Chinese-made solar panels and 21 percent to 73 percent on wind towers made in China on the grounds that the Chinese government is "unfairly" subsidizing these industries. This comes despite our desperate need to curb our dependence on foreign oil and reduce our carbon emissions.
What high moral principle, the Chinese might ask, is violated by devoting public funds to the development of technologies that will be essential to the future environmental health of planet Earth?
Unfortunately, we have a long history of making demands on China that we frame in terms of "universal human values" but that appear to the Chinese as utterly self-serving and hypocritical.
In the 19th century, American missionaries told the Chinese they were doomed to hell unless they embraced Christianity. At the same time British (and some American) merchants, self-professed Christians themselves, sold opium in great quantities to the Chinese people. When Chinese officials tried to suppress the drug trade, Britain went to war with China in 1839 and in 1856 to force the Chinese government to accept the drug trade, which doubled by the 1880s.
Westerners justified the Opium Wars as a matter of "free trade."
Following the first Opium War, "free trade" included the thriving "coolie trade" as hundreds of thousands of Chinese and other Asian laborers were enticed or kidnapped onto overcrowded ships and sent to work as semi-slaves in mines and on plantations and railroad construction sites in the Americas.
As a result of this history (which is drilled into every schoolchild) and our current trade retaliation against China, not to mention talk of burning Chinese-made Olympic uniforms, our hymns to the glories of free trade have a hollow ring in Chinese ears.
American columnists and politicians often argue that the current Chinese system is unsustainable, and that China is heading for a catastrophe if its government doesn't liberalize its political system and follow the American model.
In 2001, the respected Chinese-American author Gordon Chang published a best-selling book titled "The Coming Collapse of China."
How ironic that the American economy collapsed in 2008 while China's has continued to grow at over 8 percent per year. What happened to the supposedly honest, efficient and transparent U.S. financial system that could lead to such a spectacular failure? And why should China aspire to follow the American model of insider trading, predatory lending, credit default swaps and white-collar crime that goes unpunished?
One of China's most serious problems is income inequality, which is a direct result of its American-style free market reforms starting in the 1980s. The Gini coefficient, which measures the degree of inequality in family incomes, ranges across the globe from the highest inequality in Namibia (74.3) to the lowest level of inequality in Sweden, Japan and Denmark (all around 25). On the Gini scale, 100 represents total inequality and 0 represents total equality.
According to United Nations figures, China ranks number 35 in the world in inequality with a Gini coefficient of 44.7, and the U.S. ranks number 52 with a Gini coefficient of 40.8.
The UN has statistics on 125 countries, meaning that 90 countries have less inequality than China, and 73 countries have less inequality than the United States. Just in terms of economic inequality, the U.S. and China are more similar than we are different.
Americans see in China a closed political system run by a small political and financial elite. But from China, America looks very much like a closed political system run by a small political and financial elite. Our Supreme Court has ruled that money is a form of speech and that corporations have the same rights as individual people to contribute unlimited funds to American political campaigns.
Individuals in America clearly have more rights than individuals in China to publish angry letters in newspapers denouncing public officials, but as individuals we have little real access to political power unless we are backed by concentrated wealth and its accompanying fame and influence. Politics in America is very much an elite enterprise, just as it is in China.
So let us spare the Chinese our lectures on the necessity for them to follow the American model. Our system is the one that appears unsustainable with our current level of public debt, and our political system paralyzed by partisanship. When our politicians threaten an American government default rather than compromise with their opponents, they make the Chinese Communist Party seem rational and public-spirited by contrast.
Paul S. Ropp is research professor of Chinese history at Clark University. His most recent book is "China in World History" (Oxford University Press, 2010).
What high moral principle, the Chinese might ask, is violated by devoting public funds to the development of technologies that will be essential to the future environmental health of planet Earth?
Unfortunately, we have a long history of making demands on China that we frame in terms of "universal human values" but that appear to the Chinese as utterly self-serving and hypocritical.
In the 19th century, American missionaries told the Chinese they were doomed to hell unless they embraced Christianity. At the same time British (and some American) merchants, self-professed Christians themselves, sold opium in great quantities to the Chinese people. When Chinese officials tried to suppress the drug trade, Britain went to war with China in 1839 and in 1856 to force the Chinese government to accept the drug trade, which doubled by the 1880s.
Westerners justified the Opium Wars as a matter of "free trade."
Following the first Opium War, "free trade" included the thriving "coolie trade" as hundreds of thousands of Chinese and other Asian laborers were enticed or kidnapped onto overcrowded ships and sent to work as semi-slaves in mines and on plantations and railroad construction sites in the Americas.
As a result of this history (which is drilled into every schoolchild) and our current trade retaliation against China, not to mention talk of burning Chinese-made Olympic uniforms, our hymns to the glories of free trade have a hollow ring in Chinese ears.
American columnists and politicians often argue that the current Chinese system is unsustainable, and that China is heading for a catastrophe if its government doesn't liberalize its political system and follow the American model.
In 2001, the respected Chinese-American author Gordon Chang published a best-selling book titled "The Coming Collapse of China."
How ironic that the American economy collapsed in 2008 while China's has continued to grow at over 8 percent per year. What happened to the supposedly honest, efficient and transparent U.S. financial system that could lead to such a spectacular failure? And why should China aspire to follow the American model of insider trading, predatory lending, credit default swaps and white-collar crime that goes unpunished?
One of China's most serious problems is income inequality, which is a direct result of its American-style free market reforms starting in the 1980s. The Gini coefficient, which measures the degree of inequality in family incomes, ranges across the globe from the highest inequality in Namibia (74.3) to the lowest level of inequality in Sweden, Japan and Denmark (all around 25). On the Gini scale, 100 represents total inequality and 0 represents total equality.
According to United Nations figures, China ranks number 35 in the world in inequality with a Gini coefficient of 44.7, and the U.S. ranks number 52 with a Gini coefficient of 40.8.
The UN has statistics on 125 countries, meaning that 90 countries have less inequality than China, and 73 countries have less inequality than the United States. Just in terms of economic inequality, the U.S. and China are more similar than we are different.
Americans see in China a closed political system run by a small political and financial elite. But from China, America looks very much like a closed political system run by a small political and financial elite. Our Supreme Court has ruled that money is a form of speech and that corporations have the same rights as individual people to contribute unlimited funds to American political campaigns.
Individuals in America clearly have more rights than individuals in China to publish angry letters in newspapers denouncing public officials, but as individuals we have little real access to political power unless we are backed by concentrated wealth and its accompanying fame and influence. Politics in America is very much an elite enterprise, just as it is in China.
So let us spare the Chinese our lectures on the necessity for them to follow the American model. Our system is the one that appears unsustainable with our current level of public debt, and our political system paralyzed by partisanship. When our politicians threaten an American government default rather than compromise with their opponents, they make the Chinese Communist Party seem rational and public-spirited by contrast.
Paul S. Ropp is research professor of Chinese history at Clark University. His most recent book is "China in World History" (Oxford University Press, 2010).
