I would put it in slightly different terms: China's growth is the result of a process of global restructuring driven by transnational capital. Workers and capitalists not part of the new productive structure are suffering in most countries.
Thus, workers in the US are being hurt by the process supporting Chinese growth (note I am speaking of the process supporting/driving Chinese growth), so are workers in South Korea (where some 52 percent of all wage workers are now irregular, making some 53 percent of what regular workers make, and where capital is fleeing to China so that investment has been stagnant), as are workers in China itself, and in Mexico, and in Japan, etc. And companies in most of those countries that are domestically oriented are also suffering as domestic consumption remains limited because wages are being kept down so as to support export competitiveness. In particular one can see that China's growth which is increasingly becoming dependent on the export activity of foreign capital has made it hard for countries in Latin America and Asia to sustain their own rates of growth as they find it harder to attract foreign capital. Investment in those countries is largely stagnant, real wages have been falling, and rates of growth remain limited. This is not to say that wealth is not being created but rather that it is becoming increasingly concentrated in fewer hands and the process of creation is coming at greater and greater expense for working class majorities. Thus, the Chinese growth process cannot be replicated even if one wanted to do so, and it is far from anchoring a broader global process that is supportive of better working and living conditions for most workers. Marty On Fri, 14 Apr 2006, raghu wrote: > > > > If you read Paul and Marty's rejoinder to their critics in Critical Asian > > Studies, they make an important point about the unit of analysis. It should > > not be the nation-state but the world economy. > > Under capitalism, there are > > winners and losers. China's gains have come at other nation's expenses. > > I am inclined to agree with you, but it is not clear at whose expense > has China grown? Which country do you think has suffered in parallel > with China's growth? (The US has "suffered" but only in paper debt > terms.) > > --raghu. >
