Peter Foster: America needs China

Iam_zhcn

Peter Foster: America needs China
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/24/peter-foster-america-needs-china.aspx

Posted: February 24, 2009, 7:30 PM by NP Editor  Peter Foster, China


China is keen to be recognized as a major global power. If that’s what it wants, why not?
By Peter Foster

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came under attack last week for soft-peddling human rights during her visit to China. But then the U.S. appears to be in a weak position to lecture anybody about anything right now. “[O]ur pressing on those issues,” she said, “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”

This might appear like an all-too-typical sacrifice of principle to pragmatism, but then there is little evidence that hectoring China about human rights has ever done much good.

China is of critical importance to the U.S. for all sorts of reasons, ranging from the U.S. need for China to keep buying U.S. debt, to China’s unique diplomatic position vis a vis two of the three “axes of evil,” North Korea and Iran. As Harvard celebrity historian Niall Ferguson has emphasized, it is the symbiotic relationship of “Chimerica” on which the global economy now depends.

China’s non-democratic status at least means that it does not have to deal with the delusions of populist “do it yourself,” beggar-thy-neighbour “solutions” to the current crisis. As a nation that depends as much as Canada on international trade, it is at least as concerned about the dangers of “Buy American” policies. Nevertheless, it will continue to buy America’s debt as long as it believes that that is the key to global stability. In the longer term, the global economic system badly needs the Chinese miracle to reboot, and in particular for its domestic demand to be unleashed.

We obviously do not have access to everything that was discussed by Ms. Clinton while she was in China. The Chinese were probably particularly keen to assert their claim to Taiwan. The U.S. will also have asked China to exercise its influence to restrain Iran’s nuclear program, and to continue to keep North Korea off its back.

China is keen to be recognized as a major global power, and to have more say in institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Forum, membership of which is clearly more indicative of status than effectiveness. But if that’s what China wants, why not?

The other alleged major item on Ms. Clinton’s agenda was the climate change “crisis.” Certainly climate change policy is in crisis, but given the range of real issues facing the two countries plans to control the weather seem almost frivolous, particularly given that global temperatures have — contrary to all the modelling of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — cooled over the past decade.

China has every reason to love parts of the UN climate boondoggle, in particular those schemes under which it receives great gobs of laundered cash to close down facilities at little cost. But it has no intention of participating in any grand schemes to cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions. Nor should it.

Both the Obama administration and that of Stephen Harper have declared that China must participate in any successor to the disastrous Kyoto Accord. This provision may have been made with full knowledge that China would never comply. It thus provides a great excuse for the collapse of negotiations at the forthcoming mega-meeting in Copenhagen (which will inevitably be spun as indicating the urgent need for more and bigger meetings).

To achieve any significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would involve the further decimation of already flagging economies. Even more significant, it would have absolutely no impact on the climate.

China has very major pollution problems with which it is keen to deal, but these do not arise from the emission of carbon dioxide. During her China visit, Ms. Clinton visited a natural gas-fuelled plant built by General Electric and the Chinese government which is reportedly twice as efficient as a conventional coal-fired plant. It would be intriguing to know who paid for it.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson has pointed out that money funneled to China under the UN’s “Clean Development Mechanism” in fact merely serves to promote the construction of more coal-fired plants. However, these represent far more of a danger to local Chinese health than global climate. Dripping hubris, and a condemnation of capitalist history that could only have delighted diehard communists (very few of whom now exist in China), Ms. Clinton said, while touring the GE-built plant: “When we were industrializing and growing, we didn’t know any better; neither did Europe … Now we’re smart enough to figure out how to have the right kind of growth.” Just as “we” were smart enough to figure out how to manage the money supply, promote home ownership and regulate the banking sector.

China is still a country rife with human rights abuses (at least by Western standards), but has come a long way. From an historical perspective, economic growth is the best guarantor of increasing freedom, just as increasing freedom is the best guarantor of economic growth. Unfortunately, climate change policy threatens both growth and freedom. We should cheer China’s opposition to it.

Iam_zhcn

1. by iewgnem Feb 25 3:21 AM

I think you should be careful about taking detours from official NP editor approved opinions here, this article borders on the politically incorrect, and we all know how much the post cares about political correctness. In this case, political correctness is China=Bad

Personally I find a country who lifted half a billion people out of poverty in 20 years to be the greatest contributor to human rights in human history, but that's just me. We all know in Canada, clean water, shelter, food for your kids, education, health care, freedom to travel, freedom to afford services, they are all not part of human rights, and it instead consists only of... well, whatever the Chinese goverment doesn't allow (and add gun ownership if you are American).
by seine

2. by seine Feb 25 2009 10:15 AM

Peter
Thanks for pointing out that politics is more about optics than anything else, and for showing the stupidity of our commitment to carbon trading. Nice summation with that oxymoronic jewel from Hillery.

3. by arbyburns Feb 25 2009 11:44 AM

*Personally I find a country who lifted half a billion people out of poverty in 20 years to be the greatest contributor to human rights in human history, but that's just me. We all know in Canada, clean water, shelter, food for your kids, education, health care, freedom to travel, freedom to afford services, they are all not part of human rights, and it instead consists only of...*

I'm sure the Tiananmen students of 20 years ago, machine gunned and run over by tanks by the `People's' `Liberation' Army would whole-heartedly agree with that assessment (not to mention the Falun Gong killed to harvest their organs, nor yet the millions of prisoner slave-labourers...)!

krypton

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