Chinese embassy lobbies U.S. business to oppose China bills
reuters.com
reuters.com
Something that China had been pushing for years now…
Given the source and the target of said message, it reads like a mob-like "you have a nice business here, it would be a shame if something happened to it".
In the US, the Foreign Commercial Service (and to some degree the Foreign Agriculture Service) are explicitly tasked with this job.
It's only now that CCP start to play the same game.
The rivalry between US and China is going to be interesting. I hope in the process other developing countries would gain much from these 2 big boys looking to influence people across the globe.
We could onshore factories and staff them from all over the world. Pay workers wages comparable to what they would get from working in factories at home (ie. not "US wages" since we can't compete on cost with China, Vietnam, etc.), but give them decent hours, a housing stipend, education for their kids, and a promise of US citizenship. Also offer them courses on American culture, English, etc. "Melting pot" rather than unsupported labor. We could make it really comfortable and attractive.
To incentivize business, we could offer zero taxes over the next fifty years to run factories domestically. Start with the critical pieces, and then build everything.
Growing beyond 300M would also dramatically increase our consumer base.
To keep natural born citizens from getting angry, we can offer tax incentives for people having children. We can pay kids $20/week to study and get good grades (not a bad idea - it especially incentivizes poorer kids!). We can also grant credits for kids that excel in math/science, music/art, sports/club, etc. Keep them engaged and growing.
Then what? What if half choose to immediately move to New York or Los Angeles to find a better job?
Are you planning on keeping the 50 million factory workers imprisoned as second-class citizens in mid-West factories for the first 5 years? 10 years?
Companies generally have a poor track record of investing in their employees.
Immigrants moved to New York or other places, and worked exceptionally hard to provide for themselves or were forced to return home.
Now, they can move to San Francisco and have the city spend thousands of dollars on them for free.
It's nearly impossible to starve on US streets today, because there's free food on nearly every street.
This fact naturally attracts low intelligence economic migrants who don't have the conscientiousness or work ethic of early New York immigrants. We've seen it in Europe. The vast majority of the migrants (who settled in the places with the best welfare systems, not the closest safe country) do not work and do not contribute to society. There's also evidence they push crime up, as well as having values that are fundamentally illiberal (for example, wanting to criminalize homosexuality and supporting terrorist groups).
But what I cant look past is the audacity to suggest and eveb imply that historical migrants from Europe(mostly) worked hard and had some magically higher IQ. What? If even the academic elite, who pride themselves in their rational objectivity, can whitewash history to that extent - it is worrisome. Truly frightening.
Just chalk it up to being the worlds pop cultural, economic center - and deal with it. People have always migrated to the country/state where the opportunity to prosper is greatest. It's osmosis and you can't really stop it until and unless the US becomes a third world country devoid of wealth, freedom and opportunity.
To put this in perspective, the US Army generally doesn't accept people below 85 IQ because they are ineffective in any position (yes, they are considered inadequate to be a janitor).
You also didn't address my point about values or crime, both of which are proven. Particularly, some immigrant groups have huge portions of support for groups like ISIS. [1] That's before we get into the homophobia and abuse of women.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and...
See, heres the thing: some countries really have no implicit interest in [copying] or attempting to define themselves by European standards. Does that make sense?
So things like western education (countries like S.Korea, Japan, India and China being the exceptional European standard [chasers?]) Will always score not western countries lower because the west is the defacto standard due to colonization and globalization.
To put it in simpler terms, we can't judge a fish by its ability to climb trees as the adage goes.
Which is interesting because sone countries overall growth and development strategy is based on copying verbatim the trajectory of 20th century Europe/US and offering no alternative. This is a false suggestion that European standards are the end all, the pinnacle of human progress.
Just a though dear fellow. Just a thought.
If there were no welfare, the Luxembourgian banker would still be able to immigrate. As would lower and middle class people who work. The only people you're defending at that point is the people who refuse to work (a significant portion of the migrants during the EU migrant crisis still do not work).
A "safety net" is not supposed to be used so you never have to work. It's supposed to be a temporary cushion if you are in a bad spot. Not 2, 3, 4, 5 years (which you spend not integrating into your host country at all). Integration is a major problem, and migrants have created enclaves in Sweden, Germany and the UK with rules that do not match the host country.
https://cis.org/Report/Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native-Hous...
The average household headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) costs taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare benefits, which is 41 percent higher than the $4,431 received by the average native household.
https://cis.org/Report/Cost-Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native...
America has never been a champion of immigration, and honestly I don't really remember a time that the 'floodgates were open' so to speak, and it's not even a partisan issue. The last major immigration tightening was Bill Clinton with IIRAIRA in 1996 while the last amnesty was Reagan in 1986.
Don't take my word for it, here's what Benjamin Franklin, founding father, had to say.
"Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, ’tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain." - Benjamin Franklin, 1753.
Tell me that's not a highfalutin 1700s take on "they're not sending their best, folks."
> We could onshore factories and staff them from all over the world.
That doesn't need people, it needs robots. The factories of the future have zero people inside.
97.91% of US citizens have immigrant ancestors, if that's not championing immigration nothing is.
The US is not, and has never been, a champion of immigration. Immigration has been seen as "people taking our jobs" pretty much since the founding of the country. Immigration has always been tolerated as a "necessary evil" by policymakers.
> We could onshore factories and staff them from all over the world. Pay workers wages comparable to what they would get from working in factories at home (ie. not "US wages" since we can't compete on cost with China, Vietnam, etc.), but give them decent hours, a housing stipend, education for their kids, and a promise of US citizenship. Also offer them courses on American culture, English, etc. "Melting pot" rather than unsupported labor. We could make it really comfortable and attractive.
Where does all the money for that come from, though? Existing citizens will not tolerate the tax hikes. And if the companies are paying "home country" wages, the people who come here won't have any purchasing power. You're basically importing poverty if you do that, and are creating a weird hybrid of a "company town" system, which we know leads to abuse and exploitation.
> To keep natural born citizens from getting angry, we can offer tax incentives for people having children. We can pay kids $20/week to study and get good grades (not a bad idea - it especially incentivizes poorer kids!).
I don't think these suggestions are politically feasible. Many of the people who hate immigration would also see a bunch of that stuff as "welfare" and "handouts" and wouldn't want it.
That isn’t true at all, if only because the US isn’t some homogenous being with one opinion. Immigration as a “necessary evil” is still pro immigration, vs a place like China where getting even a green card if you aren’t Han requires an act of god.
Compare it to Saudi Arabia which gets free pass on basically any atrocity because oil and US military bases. Or Pakistan supporting Taliban and de facto defeating US army in battle of mental attrition in Afghanistan from the shadows. Or Israel which is committing war atrocities on Palestinian population, and running biggest concentration camp in western world (Gaza Strip). And so on.
Sure, they do bad stuff that they view will help them in future to have more homogeneous population. Which will probably end up true.
You wanna 'held them at arms length'? Well slap tariffs on Chinese-manufactured goods, you can start with Apple products.
China is not a perfect system, and the response to terrrorism in Xinjiang should probably not be extensive prison camps and a surveillance state - but again, the US doesn't have a leg to stand on for criticising this when their response to terrorism is to lay waste to several different countries and cause millions of deaths.
It's all very well for us to sit here and wish for a better system in China, but we all have a much better chance of fighting for and winning a better system here in the USA that would actually change lives here.
I don't quite think the idea that the country needs a "coherent moral framework" to justify taking action to improve particular moral issues. China itself has a coherent framework, but it's wrong and promotes grave injustice (coherence does not mean correct).
Maybe to better understand each other you could comment on my criticism of making "the perfect the enemy of the good" since I think that's the defining issue that's causing me to struggle understanding your point of view.
US has been doing that since 1978. US capital and domestic market improved China's economy tremendously. And in the process US capitalists get astronomical amount of profit.
Should US interfere China's political system?
Sure. But since China is so powerful in its military. I see no reason that US can force that upon China.
The goal of US foreign policy has never been to improve the lives of people anywhere outside the US. A sibling comment points out that one of our closest allies in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that publicly beheads dissidents and has incredibly sexist laws, yet the US does nothing, and we see nothing like the neo Cold War coverage that Xinjiang produces. The US will remain an ally of Saudi Arabia because that is beneficial to the interests of the US, not the people subject to the Saudi regime.
If you think I’m a cynic or conspiracy theorist, take a look at what the US has done in other countries since WW2, in many cases overthrowing democratically elected governments in favor of US friendly regimes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r.... This is what the US has always done to other countries, expecting them to care about morals or improving anyone’s lives is missing their goal completely (and taking their propaganda at face value).
Whatever the goal of confrontation with China is, improving human rights is the least likely possibility.
So the BS meter is rising.
It was obviously foolish to help China become an economic power since the CCP has been at war with the US since the end of WW2 (2 Taiwan Straits wars, 2 Korean wars, Vietnam war), largely driven by Maoist ideology. (The USSR was involved in stopping the Straits wars to prevent wider conflicts.)
(The USSR dealt with an aggressive CCP by obliterating their forces during a border conflict using overkill. The CCP doesn't understand anything less. The USSR also planned to use nuclear weapons on Beijing around 1969, but the US intervened.)
I followed outsourcing to China in the business press from about 1972 to 2000. I shook my head at the end of each article. But here we are.
What's important to realize is that both the CCP and Russia make public statements and:
1) they're either obviously hyperbolic or
2) they accurately represent their actual plans.
#2 is not well-understood by our politicians for some reason. Pompeo is one of the few people to get it, hence the US' very effective strategy for the CCP during the Trump administration.
Note that China has structural weaknesses that will diminish its power: they import 50% of their energy and food, and have a demographic problem that could cut their population in half. They also have serious flooding issues, with 100,000 questionable dams built since 1945.
And the US can currently only make one F-35 per week, while in WW2 the P-51 was literally stamped out.
This is the only thing that gives me hope, honestly. The West is too busy trying to play nice for whatever reason[0]. I think the only thing that will save us is China making catastrophic mistakes during their continuing rise to power, or the structural problems you mention that they may not be able to do anything about at this point.
[0] Any thoughts there? You seem to be pretty knowledgeable on this topic. My general assumption is that business interests like where China is going (a richer China means more and more access to a huge market), but don't care about the long-term effects to the US economy. But that sounds too simplistic to be the whole story.
It did start in 1890. Read about the Populist Party, Cross of Gold speech, Pullman strike, Haymarket affair, US occupation of the Philippines. All of this started before the 19th century. In any old industrial city, check the date when the old national guard armories were built. Why did large, fortified national guard armories start popping up all over the industrialized parts of the country just before the turn of the 20th century?
They can make money far more easily by employing Chinese workers, growing Chinese industry, than they do local.
And of course, anyone that pushes back against this is (conveniently) a "xenophobic, racist, white supremacist, Trump-voting blah blah blah...".
I think ideology plays a part in why this is "bad", as well. As an American, I wouldn't mind so much if the next growing superpower believed in democratic principles. As much as I'm happy I was born in and grew up in the US, I wouldn't see a problem with a "better US" growing beyond the US in terms of economic and political power. But I'm not particularly comfortable with the idea of an authoritarian country in that position; China already constantly uses its political clout to censor US citizens and businesses, for example. I expect China's power over citizens of other countries, people who will never even set foot in China, to increase over time, and that worries me quite a bit. It often feels like our only hope is that China makes some huge strategic mistakes, or succumbs to unfixable/unknown structural issues.
Effectively the us threw open the gates on the hypothesis that it would be a Cold War win and that China would eventually liberalize. This problem was well understood by the 90s but the war on terror ultimately blocked any US policy shifts.
Chinese labor force isn’t going to help defend Taiwan by making tank gadgets for them. Investing in Chinese labor has so many issues. If we didn’t have a rust belt (that led to Trumpism), we would have left a better nation to lead the world and maybe we can think about leveraging world wide labor - but this time with fair conditions and well paid workers.
It’s not just US, it is the same in EU and many other G20 nations.
Your thinking is appealing to emotional and not rational understanding of the globalism. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
I don't agree with this take. The terms "developed" and "developing" is just a politically correct term to classify countries based on their industrial base.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country
It's use has less to do with developed countries and everything to do with the need to frame the issue as countries working to get where others already are at the moment.
> This entire thinking and it’s psyche in our society feels like straight up propaganda. It used to be first-world and third-world.
I also don't feel you're right here as well. "Third-world" does not refer to a ranking. It was a classification based on where a nation was with regards to the Cold War. Either they're a NATO and NATO-aligned country, a Warsaw pact and USSR country, or you kept yourself out of the cold war and thus were a part of the third world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
Development and industrialization and economic output had nothing to do with it.
Outsourcing also freed how labor pool to other pursuits such as college and white collared jobs. Without a large pool of workers eager to leave to Rust Belt, Silicon Valley may not be the same place that it is today.
https://quillette.com/2021/07/21/silicon-valleys-cynical-tre...
But I think the reason we are seeing this more front-and-center now is because the effects are starting to become noticeable, and because globalization has made it easier for the rich to not really care as much about their home country's economic success; they'll profit regardless, as long as they've made the right investments in the right places.
Instead of cars and moving the headphone jack from one place to another, they should be investing in new forms of automation for manf.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit."
A little ageist, are we?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?It is not particularly courageous to take a position that is generally accepted as good in your society. It comes with zero personal risk.
CCP as the representative of the China Corp, is coming to buy their influence...
Mark my words, those jobs are never coming back to American human workers. And that's fantastic, they sucked. Society needs to prepare for the future where there's more people than work to be done.
Of course all else being equal unions are going to look out for their members and their members jobs. It's that or the unemployment lines. However, the society of the future simply won't have those jobs. It will require some new and different social contract. UBI perhaps is an alpha.
https://ilaunion.org/2021/05/latest-long-beach-terminal-auto...
"TTI would become the fourth automated container terminal in Southern California. Total Terminals International’s (TTI’s) decision this week to automate its 385-acre Pier T terminal in Long Beach sets up a classic struggle between terminal operator employers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).
"The union opposes the project on the grounds it will eliminate some dockworker jobs, but employers say automation is needed to increase capacity and keep the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles competitive." [...] ILWU Local 10 in 2019 tried unsuccessfully to convince the city of Los Angeles to block a construction project for the APM Terminals automation project.
Here is the AP:
https://apnews.com/article/49e7d246e6984738b107a9ae0e25f954
The uproar comes as a facility operated for Denmark’s Moller-Maersk by APM Terminals plans to use the battery-powered, self-guided cargo handling equipment, which APM contends is a response to the ports’ clean air rules. [...] Union members, however, fear the equipment will spread to all terminals and hundreds of jobs will be lost. They contend APM could use manned electric vehicles.
Las Vegas Culinary union strike:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-workers-jobs-inequal...
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/05/50-000-las...
Over 50,000 union workers in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, are set to go on strike if new contracts are not settled. One of the main drivers for the strike action is the fear that robots will gradually displace human operators.
The Culinary Union is just one of many labor unions grappling with how to respond to the spread of automation and artificial intelligence – whether driverless trucks or lifting and sorting machines at warehouses. Alongside the fears automation poses to workers, there are concerns that it is also undermining the very organizations designed to support them: labor unions.
Harry Katz, former dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said automation has reduced unions’ might in many industries by shrinking their membership and making it easier for companies to break or survive a strike. Organized labor is likely to lose further power and membership as a result of the ongoing wave of automation, he said.
* Boeing machinists' union:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boeing-machinists-union-tussl...
Union leaders are concerned about a Boeing campaign known as “Quality Transformation,” which relies on automated processes such as robotic riveting and precision machining to cut down on manufacturing defects. Boeing says such processes make airplane assembly more “mistake-proof.”
Aero Mechanic said Boeing laid out its plans and their potential effect on quality-assurance jobs in November.
“Per the PowerPoint Boeing presented to our union, Boeing estimates their plan will impact 451 QA jobs next year and potentially a similar amount in 2020,” the newspaper reported. “This will not only place a heavier burden on our mechanics but will also eliminate the second set of eyes on thousands of work packages.”
* 1953-55 UAW strikes at Ford over automation
see this historical case study:
http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Labor/L_Casestudy/L_casest...
Rising to speak in support of the automation resolution, Alfred Granakis, Local 1250’s convention delegate, stated, “I just want to say a couple of words on this because we have got 78 people in Cleveland doing the work of 770 people from the Rouge and we are out-producing them with 78 people. . . . I am representing more machines than I am men in Cleveland. The thing I would like to see is this changed just a little bit.” He then chided UAW President Reuther: “I wish the Executive Board would be instructed to formulate a policy and inform the local union affected by it.” Reuther responded, “We are completely aware and fully conscious of the problem which the resolution covers. . . . The Ford engine plant is the best example today where they have whole batteries of machines with a fellow on one end and another fellow half a block away with the whole thing mechanized.”
After the UAW convention Granakis again urgently wrote Reuther, “As you are well aware, the problem of production standards is one of a recurring nature and needs eternal vigilance, particularly with the reactionary Ford Motor Company.” In UAW Local 1250’s contract negotiations, automation continued to prove the most intractable issue. “As for the problem of Automation,” Granakis told the UAW President, “except for saying ‘no’ and insisting on more men on the job, I have taken no other position until I hear from you.” In order to capture the Ford negotiators’ attention, and possibly Reuther’s too, Local 1250 leaders sought and received formal approval for a strike authorization request from the Cleveland area UAW regional director.
In addition to high rates of absenteeism and numerous shop-floor grievances, [..] an overwhelming majority (almost 90 percent) of the engine-plant workers voted to authorize a strike in the midst of collective bargaining over automation problems. In 1953 the Ford Cleveland engine plant and foundry had four unauthorized work stoppages; in 1954 there were two unauthorized walkouts. These wildcat strikes idled 1,970 men and resulted in 8,439 lost man-hours. These walkouts comprised the tip of the iceberg of worker discontent over automation.
A lot of moderns don't understand the unique role of Germany in the historical pantheon of left wing movements.
Germany has historically been the hotbed of socialist movements, and has a long history of a very strong, well-organized, violent, militant hard left insurgencies. If you were to talk to most communists or socialists in 1900 and ask them what the first communist nation would be, they would answer "Germany". That was always the prize and it was their power base.
So Germany developed a number of techniques to fight against these movements, including codetermination, or the idea that unions be represented in corporate decision making which would give them a stake in the overall health of the firm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
It's no accident that the first iteration of codetermination laws were adopted in 1848, and their modern incarnation goes to 1951, at the beginning of the cold war.
Note that codetermination is the exact opposite of US labor law, which bans management from being union members and thus is virtually designed to create or intensify animosity between non-supervisory and supervisory workers, which frankly seems like a dumb and arbitrary distinction, basically designed to create conflict within the firm. This also explains why US firms are much more resistant to unionization efforts while at the same time they lead the world in things like stock grants to workers, and the U.S. has a large number of worker owned firms as well.
Yes, when you systematically support terrible ideas, of course your support for terrible ideas will be a common attack against you. What's the surprise there?
There were lots of awkward conversations when my job in China told all the foreigners that they had to pay the Trade Union dues but would get no benefits from it.
Now, I'm not arguing that automation isn't the "future", it is pretty clear that it is, but that future is not here yet, and it won't be unless someone spends 20 years willing it into existence. At this point I'm not sure the US can even do it, and things are rapidly getting worse.
As long as our hunger for more is insatiable, there will always be more to be done, than we can do. With less consumption we could easily live with less work. The only problem is that maybe some people will not be qualified enough for work in the future.
That said, the US still has a massive manufacturing industry, Mexico even larger, and of course there are places like India, and the entire rest of the world...
So China has zero stranglehold on "how to make things". Just current infrastructure to do so.
Note, the real issue is the economics. No China, and if no alternative cheap source of labour, mean massive, massive inflation.
This is big co propaganda. These jobs are "undesirable" because corporations won't pay adequate money for doing them. I know plenty of people who love working simple stuff, there is just no way to feed family out of it. Given how many billions these companies amass, there is money to pay for those jobs, they just prefer to "outsource" and lie that they can't find people.
Also as a Jewish person, a scary analog…
The members of Congress are selected by U.S. citizens and funded by international U.S based companies operating globally. This creates a delicate balance where the interests and goals of all major economies are balanced. The U.S citizens maintain full control of who they vote. At the same time the influencing working trough their mind, and trough their representatives ensures what they decide is for the benefit of the all.
A small fraction of relatively ignorant individuals can vote freely with selfish motives, but the system still works as a global government. Everyone in the world who controls market access or money can have a voice.
So, less than a million people out of the world's 7,000 million?
I truly hope this is sarcasm.
Its also a tremendously unpopular institution, the approval ratings have hovered at or below 10% for years.