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Comment by jordanb | Hacker News Reader

Again containerization happened in the 1970s and 1980s. The China Shock was 2000-2010.

What technology was invented in 2000 that allowed everything to go to China? No technology. That was the year the US adopted Permanent Normalized Trade Relations with China. It was a government policy change!

By the way the US already had trade relations with China. All PNTR did was promise not to change the policy in the future. That was the starting gun that signaled to all American companies that they should start investing in production in China.

So would globalization happen on some scale just because of the march of technology? Sure. But the way it happened, the speed at which it happened and the extent to which it happened, were the result of policy choices.

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Offshoring to Asia began long before it moved into China. What you are describing is the acceleration point of the trend.

I'm pretty sure that China demonstrating that they are a stable country, that they want foreign investment, that they won't gank your investment two weeks after you make it, and that they aren't going to do another Great Leap Forward may have had something to do with why foreign investment in it skyrocketed.

This sort of thing takes time, and by the 00s, enough time (and a recent Hong Kong transfer that did not result in mass liquidation) passed, and foreign investors were gaining confidence.

The world, and especially China has agency of its own, it isn't sorely driven by whatever American policy is it's flavour of the week.

> a recent Hong Kong transfer that did not result in mass liquidation

No, but there definitely was a much slower gradual repression over a longer period, with a final round of protest repression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr...

> The world, and especially China has agency of its own, it isn't sorely driven by whatever American policy is it's flavour of the week

Amen. A two-pole model is simple and attractive but the rest of the world is also, you know, doing stuff and buying things. America can, for example, preserve its car industry by refusing to allow Chinese EVs, but will gradually discover it has become uncompetitive overseas.

Completely agree Jiang Zemin spent the 1990s courting global capital.

The point is that it wasn't technology it was policy, on the Chinese and American side, that drove the China Shock.

This was also what a lot of anti-globalization people were say at the time. The pro-globalization people were saying not only is it good but it's inevitable. There Is No Alternative.

The anti globalization people were saying if it's inevitable why does it need all these policy changes, trade agreements, and bigwig conferences?

Those would be part of the mechanisms of inevitability (under that hypothesis). Globalization is a phenomenon at the human societal level, they would be predicting human behaviors, it's not like rocks and rivers were going to precipitate it. It's not like those singular events "changed everything" either, it's an accumulation of decades of social sentiments, purchasing decisions, etc.

This whole subthread is from like an alternate timeline where the world actually found out or agreed that globalization was bad and stopped or slowed it somehow? Did the US meaningfully take back manufacturing or something?

If globalization is not inevitable, what's the alternative?

The globalization we are talking about here is not inevitable, and it is facilitated by global capital with their own interest in mind and in order to exploit the working classes in cheaper labor markets as well as the consumer in the local market by selling them subpar products at inflated prices.

The local consumers don‘t want this and would rather get quality products for a fair price, but are forced to participate because of the economic situation. Likewise the workers in the cheaper labor markets don‘t want this but are forced to participate due to their economic situation. And there are systems in placed enforced by both global capital as well as governments to keep it that way.

True globalization would have open borders where the flow of workers are as free as the flow of capital in the current system. Where cheaper labor markets simply wouldn’t exist and therefor could not be exploited by the owning class. True globalization would have solidarity of workers reach across international borders. Such that striking textile workers in Bangladesh would see retail workers in America refuse to sell clothes from involved factories to American consumers in solidarity.

The type of globalization we are talking about here is only globalization of capital. It is a misnomer, and should instead be called global exploitation of the workers.

The globalization we are talking about here...is facilitated by global capital with their own interest in mind and in order to exploit the working classes in cheaper labor markets...

This is true, but, in their efforts to maximize short term gains, they are moving us towards your "true globalization" whether they intend to or not. That's kind of the inevitability. You can't send all that economic activity and expertise over there without lifting those people up. They are inexorably chipping away at the reserves of cheap labor to arbitrage. China's getting better, and I'm here for it.

I am not so optimistic. A globalized world with free movement of people and workers seems further away then ever, and if anything we are moving further away from that world every year. The very same politicians that help facilitate the free flow of capital and exploitation are at the same time pumping up xenophobia and advocating for closed borders. The border walls are coming up both a literal one in America and a tech dystopia one in Europe.

China is getting more rich, that is true, and workers in China are not living in the same abject poverty they were in the 1980s, but labor rights in China have not improved much, and neither has consumer rights. And even if by some miracle the next General Secretary of the Chinese Communist party is a socialist that enacts labor rights and consumer protection across all of China, making exploitation just that much more expensive for capitalist exploiters, there are other labor markets which are unlikely to get such reforms, particularly in India and West Africa. Also the borders into China are not exactly open either.

Yes it will be annoying for the capitalist class, but they will absolutely do it, if it means more profits, and they will lobby governments to keep borders closed, to shut down any potential for free movement of workers, and global solidarity.

There is a reason why a popular slogan among unions is: “No free movement of capital, without free movement of people!”

EDIT: Thought of an example to back up my case. Within the EU the free movement of people was inseparable from the free movement of capital from the start. This has been a great success. On the contrary, NAFTA had only the free movement of goods and services and capital, but neglected the free movement of people. Allowing free movement of people was hardly even discussed, and after 9/11 there was no way it was ever going to realize. Now NAFTA is dead. True globalization was, in fact, not inevitable it turns out.

Another good example is how these trade deals strip liability at the border.

I recall an example of when a Mexican worker in an LG plant lost her hands in a poorly-maintained stamping press. Theoretically Mexico has robust worker protection laws, but in reality the courts are corrupt and controlled by the maquiladoras.

So instead lawyers tried to sue LG in US court on her behalf. In fact they sued the actual TVs being imported by LG US that were made in her factory, the same way counterfeit goods are sued and arrested at the border by intellectual property owners.

The US judge dismissed the case arguing that the TVs were owned by LG US, who bought them in Mexico from LG Mexico. Both companies being owned by the same parent company is irrelevant to the law which saw them as completely separate entities and neither LG US nor the TVs it bought have any responsibility for the conditions in the Mexican factory.

Now if the drafters of NAFTA cared at all about worker conditions they could have easily made liability follow the goods across the border the same way they made copyrights and trademarks follow the goods across the border. They did not care about the workers and in fact they saw the mistreatment of workers as an advantage of the free trade deal.

Yeah, it's tough, there are a lot of discouraging developments and backwards things still going on. I don't think anybody would claim that it would all happen within our lifetimes. And even in the long term, I can't say whether we're headed toward an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots or a more egalitarian society, but there are some positive indicators. And I think the "global community" is steadily pulling together (when looking over the whole timespan of civilization).

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