*rudely butts in* - Edit 1
Before modification by Vodalus at 23/08/2011 04:42:52 AM
In the generation or so since every US president has maintained Nixons policy of ignoring Chinas human rights abuse so American multinationals could reap huge profits opening plants there and closing them here, Chinas economy has flourished at Americas expense .
No. Early support for the Nixon doctrine had everything to do with offshore balancing as a means of giving us a leg up in the Cold War and very little to do with economics. Deng's goal of making China rich--promulgated in '79, I think--was largely ignored by the West at the time. Investment in the 4 original SEZs came mostly from the Chinese diaspora at first and then the Japanese. We were latecomers, but we made up for it in sheer amounts of money later on.
EDIT: Oops. I just now realized you meant since Tiananmen.
Also, you really need to start filling in and out your argument on this whole corporate obsession of yours. China does a lot to make FDIs attractive to multinational corporations. For example, it grants subsidies, creates favorable regulatory policies, constructs supporting infrastructure, might employ government procurement to provide early markets, offers special tax incentives, and lot of other things I could list. Oh, I should add free land (sometimes) and an undervalued currency (huge, that). American companies aren't going there solely to fuck over the working class, which is how your message comes across. America could, and should!, start playing a slightly different game. Recognizing that Ricardo was wrong in many ways would be a start.
Something else to do is realize that economic decisions that in most countries are made based--like our national security and geopolitical decisions--on careful consideration of the objective national interest are, in Amercia, made largely on the basis of lobbying. I know you've got the latter, and perhaps the former as well, but it doesn't show.
There's a lot more to it than just lack of ambition or diligence among natives whose callous and unscrupulous leaders keep them cowed. The strong men hand out plenty of bribes and are rife with corruption, but a lot of that corruption is based on bribes they RECEIVE from multinationals...
Sure, and stability is simply a precondition. Organizational skills, managerial skills, and a social contract of some sort in a capitalist system of some kind are what really count. And a "free market, free trade" system is simply another name for American capitalism, done in a bid to pass it off as objective economic truth.
As to those bribes, did you ever stop to think that plenty of them are demanded by the strongmen?