January 21, 2011
CHINESE GLOBALIZATION IS AN OXYMORON:
The myth of ‘post-American globalization’: It would be a huge mistake to blow China’s rise from Communism out of proportion (Terence Corcoran January 18, 2011, National Post)
If you follow the cosmic realignment of global group-think on the state of the world, you will know that it is now firmly established that the ideological planets have realigned. Market-dominated democratic liberalism, long represented by America, is in decline, while Chinese illiberal authoritarianism is on the rise. Free markets and private enterprise, property rights and individual liberty are said to have lost their appeal and are being trumped by state enterprise, regulatory corporatism and heavy doses of social repression. [...]When it comes to such cosmic global group-think, nobody gets to the punch bowl faster than the Financial Times. The paper’s famous 2009 collective effort — titled “The Future of Capitalism” and inspired by encyclicals from lead columnist Martin Wolfe — announced the death of capitalism with apparent glee. “Another ideological god has failed,” declared Mr. Wolfe in March of 2009.
On Tuesday, the FT unleashed the next theme in its global re-alignment assessment. In a new series titled “CHINA SHAPES THE WORLD,” writers of varying stripes portray China’s growing role in world affairs as a direct threat to and even a repudiation of the United States, market economics and the West in general. [...]
That anything might be post-American has long delighted the Financial Times. But there’s an unsupportable breathlessness to these and other reports on the rise of China as a model at the expense of the United States. There’s also much exaggeration, misconception, deception and misrepresentation. China is undeniably gaining by economic measures, and it is certainly making political and military moves that seem deliberately antagonistic. But it would be a huge mistake to blow China’s rise from the Communist swamp out of proportion to its actual achievements.
An even bigger mistake would be to assume that the fundamentals of American economic achievement — dependence on an open economy and liberal polices — should or will be abandoned as if China offered some desirable alternative.
Suppose, against all evidence, that China's economic growth in recent decades was a function of control by a corrupt single political party and its military wing--rather than of loosening said control enough for business to assemble American-designed trinkets on the cheap. Now try to imagine the process whereby polities would choose to surrender their liberties to these central institutions in order to lower living standards to Chinese levels. Dubious, eh?
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