Watching our economic competitor

[ScreamingEagle]

Africa is becoming the new economic battleground:

JOHANNESBURG (IRIN) - Providing cheap goods to African consumers is one way China is making inroads into the continent, but on a more fundamental level China is also engaged in a scramble for African resources to feed a roaring economy, expected to overtake Britain's as the fourth largest in the world by the end of 2006.

Herbert Chinembiri owns a small stall in a downtown Johannesburg flea market where he sells ostrich eggs and carvings to tourists visiting South Africa - practically everybody else sells goods made in China.

Across the street is the 'Asia City' shopping complex; down the road is 'Oriental City'; both supply the traders and are stocked with everything from low-priced clothes and shoes to televisions and household appliances - all imported from China.

"I don't know what we would do without the Chinese," said Chinembiri, "Finally, now there are things we can afford."

In the 1960s and 1970s China's engagement with Africa was politically driven: doctors, engineers, teachers and weapons were sent to support newly independent countries and liberation movements. Today Chinese officials touring the continent are flanked by businesspeople and bankers.

Western concern over China's renewed interest in Africa appears to be twofold: Beijing provides an alternative to the supposed consensus built around governance and development policies, giving China an "unfair" advantage in competing for the continent's resources.

"Under Western pressure for economic or political reform, China offers an alternative source of support. China's aid and investments are attractive to Africans, precisely because they come with no conditionality related to governance, fiscal probity, or the other concerns of Western donors," the US-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said in a report released in December 2005.

In a strategic overview, the CFR also noted: "American interests are not yet seriously threatened. But the United States does have to recognise that the United States, and the Western nations altogether, cannot consider Africa any more their 'chasse garde' [private hunting ground] as the French once considered Francophone Africa. There is a new strategic framework operating on the continent and it demands new ways of operating."

cont.
http://www.ports.co.za/news/article_2006_03_27_2231.html

 

[Hobbit]

And America might actully be able to compete in the market if oppressive tax and labor codes didn't drive up the price of manufactured goods so much.

 

[Hagbard Celine]

And America might actully be able to compete in the market if oppressive tax and labor codes didn't drive up the price of manufactured goods so much.

African economies may be growing, but I don't think we'll have to "compete" with them anytime soon. Have you seen them? Most of the savages over there still wear loin cloths and live in huts made out of animal skins.

 

[Bullypulpit]

China will fall by the wayside within 20 years or so. With an aging population and plummeting birthrates due to their aggressive enforcement of their "one child policy", they won't have a workforce available to sustain the economy.

 

[Bullypulpit]

And America might actully be able to compete in the market if oppressive tax and labor codes didn't drive up the price of manufactured goods so much.

Nothing like a race to the bottom, is there? That's what you're advocating...Unsafe working conditions...Environmental pollution...Low wages...A declining standard of living for American workers. Better if America insisted on fair wage and labor standards for workers in the foreign nations our government negotiates trade deals with. But that would mean the multinational corporations would only make reasonable profits rather than insane profits.

 

[Annie]

and other countries. This is really long, this is less than 1/3 the essay. There are others that have been saying similiar, but for different reasons. Mostly one is going to find these in think tank, university, foreign policy, and military sources. I like Peters, so that's the one I'll site:

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/03autumn/peters.htm

The Atlantic Century



RALPH PETERS

© 2003 Ralph Peters

From Parameters, Autumn 2003, pp. 4-16.

Throughout the previous decade, strategists and statesmen asserted that we were about to enter the “Pacific Century.” Global power and wealth would shift to East Asia. American interests, power, and investments would follow. The Atlantic would become a dead sea strategically, its littoral states and their continents declining to marginal status. Economic opportunities, crucial alliances, and the gravest threats would rise in the east, as surely as the morning sun.

An alternative view of the evidence suggests that the experts were wrong. Although the United States will remain engaged in the Far East—as well as in the Middle East, Europe, and nearly everywhere else—the great unexplored opportunities for human advancement, fruitful alliances, strategic cooperation, and creating an innovative, just, and mutually beneficial international order still lie on the shores of the Atlantic. The difference is that the potential for future development lies not across the North Atlantic in “Old Europe,” but on both sides of the South Atlantic, in Africa and Latin America.

Especially since 9/11, the deteriorating civilization of the Middle East has demanded our attention. But we must avoid a self-defeating strategic fixation on the Arab Muslim world and self-destructive states nearby. Any signs of progress in the Middle East will be welcome, but the region overall is fated to remain an inexhaustible source of disappointments. While Africa suffers from an undeserved reputation for hopelessness (often a matter of racism couched in diplomatic language) and Latin America is dismissed as a backwater, the aggressive realms of failure in the Middle East always get the benefit of the doubt. When the United States places a higher priority on relations with Egypt than on those with Mexico or Brazil, and when Jordan attracts more of our attention than does South Africa, our foreign policy lacks common sense as much as it does foresight.

Our obsession with the Middle East is not just about oil. It’s about intellectual habit. We assign unparalleled strategic importance to the survival of the repugnant Saudi regime because that’s the way we’ve been doing things for half a

4/5

century, despite the complete absence of political, cultural, or elementary human progress on the Arabian Peninsula.

Certainly, the United States has genuine strategic interests between the Nile and the Indus, and the threats from the region’s apocalyptic terrorists and rogue regimes are as deadly as they are likely to be enduring. But we must stop pretending there is a bright, magical solution for the darkest region on earth, if only we Americans could discover the formula. The Middle East will remain a strategic basket case beyond our lifetimes. We will need to remain engaged, but we must be careful not to be consumed. If you are looking for hope, look elsewhere.

Apart from crisis intervention and measured support for any promising regimes that may emerge in the region (such as, perhaps, an independent, democratic Kurdistan), we need to begin shifting our practical as well as our emotional commitments away from the Middle East—and even away from Europe and northeast Asia—in order to help Africa and Latin America begin to realize their enormous strategic potential. Our past lies to the east and west, but our future lies to the south.

This is not a utopian vision. On the contrary, the returns of such a shift in our commitments would be practical and tangible. Turning our focus to Africa and Latin America would be the strategic equivalent of a “dogs of the Dow” approach, investing in “stocks” that are out of favor and unwanted, and placing our resources where the potential returns are highest, instead of continuing to throw them at strategic investments with, at best, marginal rates of return.

Nor is this about forging a neo-classical American empire. Rather, it’s about creating strategic partnerships to supercede our waning relations with continental Europe and about structuring alternatives to an overreliance on the states, populations, and markets of East Asia. Although the United States, where all the relevant cultures converge, would be the most powerful member of an Afro-Latin-Anglo-American web of alliances, this would be a new kind of informal, democratic network, based on shared interests, aligning values, cultural fusion, and mutual advantage.

Turning our attention to Africa and Latin America is also the right thing to do, although that will not impress the advocates of Realpolitik. For them, the argument would lie in the security advantages, the profit potential in developing human capital, the expanded markets, and the enhancement of American influence even beyond our current “hyper-power” status.

5/6

Old Asia and Old Europe have devoured American lives and consumed our wealth. The regressive societies of the Middle East are sick—and contagious— with hatred, jealousy, and congenital disrepair. Whenever the United States is forced to engage cultures whose glory days are behind them, we win, but we often pay a bitter price.

America always has done best on frontiers, from our own West through technological frontiers to our pioneering of the society of the future, in which gender, racial, and religious equality increasingly prevail (to the horror of our enemies, foreign and domestic). And the great human frontiers of the 21st century lie to our south.

 

[Hobbit]

Nothing like a race to the bottom, is there? That's what you're advocating...Unsafe working conditions...Environmental pollution...Low wages...A declining standard of living for American workers. Better if America insisted on fair wage and labor standards for workers in the foreign nations our government negotiates trade deals with. But that would mean the multinational corporations would only make reasonable profits rather than insane profits.

Wow, you're even more delusional than I thought. First off, there's corporate income tax. Corporate income tax takes a huge, wet bite out of all revenues, and since only individuals can pay taxes, the consumer ends up paying corporate income tax. Then we have some states' rediculous minimum wage laws which drive up the cost of business, which also drives up the prices. As for the third thing, I'm all in favor of safe labor practices, but when it becomes the corporations fault when an employee is stupid around dangerous equipment and all employers are required to give health insurance that covers aromatherapy, I draw a line. The limitations on corporate behavior in this country are downright appalling, and in the end, it hurts everybody.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

Nothing like a race to the bottom, is there?

Nope, especially when it's lower prices for consumers. Companies must pass along savings or get their throats cut by competitors.

 

[Mr.Conley]

I've been saying we should go into Africa for years. Now it looks to be almost too late.

 

[Annie]

I've been saying we should go into Africa for years. Now it looks to be almost too late.

Interesting though, that in the midst of WOT, which started 9 months after taking office, GW has spent more investing in Africa and trying to rebuild some bridges in the Americas, than any president before. So far, this has been ignored by everyone-right, left, MSM. Reminds me of the 'rediscovery' of what Nixon did right in his terms, without the scandals of course.

 

[Toro]

Nothing like a race to the bottom, is there?

Its a race to the top, not the bottom.

It would be fabulous if Africa were to join the world economy. However, I am highly skeptical. Until the rule of law is firmly established, Africa will lag.