Some
Reflections on Bob Woodruff's China White Wash
By Peter Navarro
Author of The Coming China Wars
“So near to the truth, yet so far.” That’s the feeling I came away with after watching Bob Woodruff’s recent
China Inside Out documentary for ABC news. It’s
regrettable that a journalist of such a high caliber as Woodruff can
get so close to a story and not really see it -- while helping to perpetuate a
number of dangerous myths about China.
Woodruff’s approach seemed very
promising at first. He went to four different continents and
countries in order to assess the global impacts of China,
the countries being Angola, Brazil,Cambodia, and the United States.
The Angolan segment highlighted China's economic development model in Africa.
The myth perpetrated in this segment is that the development has
actually provided a net benefit to the people of Africa.
In fact, the real truth
China is
practicing a very sophisticated 21
st century version of
imperialism in which
China loans African countries
billions of dollars in exchange for encumbering natural resources. These
resources range from oil and natural gas to copper, cobalt, and titanium.
As part of its debt encumbrance strategy,
China gets to reduce its
unemployment rate by using a large Chinese construction workforce to actually do the work
–
rather than relying so much on the native population.
In this segment, Woodruff makes repeated references to corruption. However, in a glaring
omission, he fails to make explicit just how much of the billions in Chinese aid is
actually
siphoned off into offshore bank accounts held by the African
elites. Nor
does Woodruff highlight the intense poverty in the countries
China is supposed to be
“benefiting” -- other
than offering a few images of slums.
That said, the absolute worst
omission of the African segment is Woodruff’s failure to mention the
Darfur
genocide in the
Sudan.
Instead, the only thing we get is a passing reference to Chinese aid to
the
Sudan in exchange for oil.
In fact,
China regularly trades its veto
power at the
UN for African resources in exchange for shielding African despots from
UN
interventions.
What made Woodruff’s omission all
the more galling is that Woodruff did an extensive interview with China’s
United Nations Ambassador Wang Guangya. This is the same
reprehensible
“diplomat” who has repeatedly blocked UN action on Darfur. (Wang also has blocked action
following the sham Zimbabwe election and the attempts
of the West
to sanction Iran for its nuclear
development). The failure to confront Wang on the Darfur question
was tantamount to appeasement -- or, far worse, simple ignorance.
Woodruff’s omissions were equally in
evidence in his Brazil segment. The theme
Woodruff drew here is that China’s
increasing consumption for soybeans is leading to deforestation of the
Amazon and potential environmental problems. The biggest problems with
this segment were a lack of visual imagery to portray the destruction of the
Amazon, and the lack of science and statistics to explain how deforestation in
the Amazon is likely to affect the global environment and crop production.
In fact, most of the Amazon’s
deforestation occurs during the dry season in an orchestrated slash and
burn
campaign that fouls the skies throughout South America. Showing that massive
environmental carnage -- instead of a few big trees being felled --
would have
made for a far stronger presentation. Missing, too, was any good
explanation of why we should care about the Amazon. In fact, theAmazon River basin and its rainforest are
absolutely
critical to the global ecology because they are considered to be the
"Lungs of our Planet." By recycling carbon dioxide, the
rainforest in particular provides more than 20 percent of the world’s
oxygen.
Already, more than 20% of the Amazon
rainforest has been destroyed while the World Wildlife Fund warns that
more
than half of the forest will be gone by 2030. According to
many
scientists, this destruction of the rainforest has the potential to
create
severe drought conditions not just in South America but also as far north as
the American
and Canadian farm belts. The result may well be a global food
crisis --
high irony indeed given that the destruction of the Amazon rain forest
is
occurring in the name of increased food production.
Turning to the third segment on Cambodia,
Woodruff does a good job tagging the Chinese with at least some
responsibility
for the Khmer Rouge genocide of millions. Missing in this
segment,
however, was any insight into the real reason why China is setting up so many sweat
shops in Cambodia.
Too bad Woodruff didn’t get his cameras into some of these sweat shops
to expose the slave labor conditions!
>
My other big beef with the Cambodian
segment was the failure of Woodruff to mention how China is using its upstream positioning on the Mekong River to dam that river with bullying
impunity. China’s
dam-happy Mekong River design will eventually
include 15
mega-dams. These mega-dams are likely to create economic and
environmental effects that are vast and far-ranging -- and Cambodiais
at the front lines of this onslaught.
To understand the problem, consider
the impacts of China’s
dams on one of the world’s most fascinating ecological treasures, the
legendary Lake Tonle
Sap in Cambodia.
For much of the year, the lake is only a yard deep with a footprint of
only a
bit more than 1,000 square miles. During the rainy season, however,
flow from
the Mekong River helps deepen the lake to
roughly 30
feet and increases the area of the lake more than five-fold. This turns Lake Tonle
Sap into one of the
best breeding grounds
for fish in the world.
The obvious problem facing the Tonle
Sap is that the China’s
mega-dams are evening out the flow of water and thereby preventing the
world’s most fertile natural fishery from realizing its full depth and breadth
in the critical fish breeding season. Already, fish catches have declined
dramatically. This is already having a significant negative
effect on Cambodia’s
fishing economy.
Woodruff clearly saved the worst for
last in his discussion of the impacts of Chinaon
the American economy. He leads off the segment by helping to perpetuate
the
myth that China’s
emergence as the world’s factory floor is the result of cheap,
hard-working
labor. (The mouthpiece here is Evan Osnos, Beijing Bureau Chief
for the
Chicago Tribune -- an otherwise cogent voice.)
In fact, my research has clearly
shown that cheap labor is only a small part of the China puzzle. Much of China’s
advantage in world markets comes from five unfair mercantilist trade
practices
that include a complex web of illegal export subsidies, blatant
currency
manipulation, counterfeiting and piracy that lowers production costs,
and lax
environmental and health and safety standards that likewise lower
production
costs.
That China blatantly manipulates its
currency
seems to be totally lost on both Woodruff and the seemingly clueless
Fareed
Zakaria. Indeed, it is Zakaria who helps perpetuate the myth that
the
Chinese are more frugal savers than American consumers and that’s why China helps
the U.S. with its debt by buying U.S.treasury
bills.
Note to Woodruff and Zakaria: The
purchase of U.S. treasury bills is an
integral part of
the currency manipulation process. To maintain China’s fixed peg to the
dollar and keep the yuan grossly undervalued, China must
recycle dollars back into the U.S.
Of course, individual Chinese citizens have no say in this matter;
rather they
are merely press-ganged into their frugality by China’s central bank --
which wants to keep exports to the U.S. cheap and imports into China dear. (It’s no
accident the U.S. trade deficit regularly
hits record
highs.)
The failure of Zakaria to understand
this currency manipulation process (and the broader role of unfair trade
practices in China’s
grab of American markets)
makes it perfectly understandable why Zakaria ignorantly advises that
the U.S. has only two options
with China:
“either ride the wave or drown in it.” In fact, what theU.S. government
should be doing to prevent
the loss of American jobs is cracking down on China’s
unfair trade practices. Leveling the playing field would go a
long way
towards bringing jobs back to the U.S.
On that note, it is useful to point out perhaps the biggest myth of the documentary – one perpetuated by
none other than Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York.
His Honor piously insists that “the jobs that [China]
is creating are low-priced jobs” and “that’s not the kind of jobs we
want for
our citizens.”
Note to the Mayor: While you’ve
apparently been sleeping, China has moved steadily up and
across the
value chain into everything from autos and biopharma to commercial
aircraft. It’s not just about cheap toys and sneakers anymore.
My bottom line is that I would love to see an in-depth, fair and balanced critical look at the economic,
environmental, military, political, and social impacts of China on rest of the world.
All that we have gotten so far from TV is a bunch of puff pieces that miss many
of the major points and keep perpetuate a set of very dangerous myths.
©2008 Peter Navarro
