Huggable Panda or Hungry Dragon : The Coming Wars of china

The ‘China Price’ and WMP

• Low wages, high quality work done by discipline, nonunion workers (reserve army of unemployed)
• Minimal worker health and safety regulations
• Lax environmental regulations and enforcement
• Catalytic role of foreign direct investment
• Highly efficient form of industrial organization – ‘network clustering’ (Adam Smith’s division of labour at best. Network in Guangdong Province for toys)
• Elaborate government sanctioned system of counterfeiting and piracy
• Undervalued currency
• Massive subsidy to target industries
• Protectionist trade barriers

Piracy Wars

• Conniving local authorities whose revenue depend on local pirates
• Central government looks the other way because action would mean closure and increased unemployment.
• Mao belief that property is communal and any technology is the property of the masses.
• Fake product for almost anything from baby food to shampoo, from auto parts to toilet seats, from hard drives to make up and perfumes.
• Pharmacy products – snake oil distributed through word wide web.
• Highly profitable venture. No R & D; no marketing cost, advantage of economies of scale – fake of several companies.
• Lax legal system

Pollution War

• Home to 16 out of 20 most polluted cities.
• Two third of large 100 cities (population above a million) fail to meet WHO air-quality standards.
• World leader in sulfur-dioxide emissions.
• Largest carbon dioxide emitter. Surpassed USA.
• Main culprit for acid rain in Japan and Korea.
• 400,000 die pre-matured deaths due to pollution related diseases.
• Over cultivation, overgrazing.
• Lax controls and implementation
• Blood of Oil wars
• Growing oil thirst.
• Second largest consumer of petroleum products. Imports 40 % and projected to reach 60 % by 2020
• High energy security concerns leads to befriending rogue states. Development support and arms against oil. Even Veto support. Iran, Sudan. Genocide support to Sudan in Darfur
• Chinese connivance leads to European support to rogue states.
• Corruption and looting in Angola
• Imperialists Wars and Weapon of Mass Construction
• China wars for minerals and raw materials
• Heavy industry leadership or model. Overtaken US and Japan in steel production.
• Largest buyer of copper, second largest of iron ore, third largest for alumina.
• Top customer for Thai rubber, Burmese teak, Chilean and Philippine copper, cobalt from Congo. Many other industrial material like limestone, phosphate rock
• Aid and construction against mining rights
• China presence through out Africa. Erecting dams, roads, supermarkets, stadium, palaces.
• China destroys local industry
• African countries in increasing debt of China
• Latin American tango – Links with Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba

Opium War

• China produces annually 100,000 metric tons of acetic anhydride to transfer poppies of Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos and Thailand) into pure ‘China white’.
• Also conversion of poppies from Golden Crescent (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran)
• Second largest producer of potassium permanganate which turns coca leaves in cocaine.
• China active trader and transporter and has improved the old Opium Route in Central Asia.
• China chief Ecstasy (MDMA) logistic support provider
• China banking system is the launderer for China’s criminal syndicate.

Damnable Dams and Water Wars

• 85,000 dams and counting
• Dying and dried up rivers
• Three Gorges symbol of Chinese dam-happy strategy
• 30,000 dams in ‘critical condition’ threatening over 400 cities and 150 million people. 3,484 dams collapsed between 1954 – 2003.
• Massive destruction and displacement
• Damning Mekong river and starving down stream Burma, Thailand, Lao, Cambodia and Vietnam. Potential for starvation and war.
• 70% rivers polluted. Half of China’s population gets contaminated water. High incidence of stomach and liver cancer.
• Rivers, industrial waste dumping grounds
• Massive fertilizer and pesticide runoff
• Politically dangerous water scarcity and excessive ground water extraction

Wars from within

• 100,000 riots annually
• Workers’ revolt
• Peasants’ debts and frustration
• Discontent of dispossessed. Shanghai alone has displaced a million in a decade.
• Class war 1% owns 40 % of wealth
• Corruption reigns
• Muslim separatism and ethnic strife

Grey Dragons

• Where have pensions gone?
• No promised health cover
• HIV time bomb. Strikes at the productive age of 20-40.
• High macroeconomic cost of HIV.
• Expected incidence 40 million by 2025.
• 1 to 3 5% of GDP loss.