Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Fernando Solanas: I have to say again that today's world is developing via a series of inequalities and a series of great injustices thus producing huge contradictions like this one. The invasion of cheap products from China results in a menace for the development of whom? Not for the people. It poses a great threat to the development of the big corporations or the industries of the West. But the whole world is a big farce. This farce manifests itself in the so-called “world-circuit of commerce”. Europe and the United States imposed a series of ideas called “consent of Washington” on the rest of the world, in which they ask the rest of the world to open their economies, to abandon taxes, to permit free trade of all commodities, and to stop subvention of local products. But all this is an absolute farce, because the United States, North America and Europe are continuing since decades to scandalously subsidise with millions the exportation of its agricultural products thus causing gigantic losses for countries like those of Latin America or other manufacturers of agricultural goods. A gigantic loss. They want to impose on us measures of freedom and of non-protectionism and they themselves are absolutely protectionistic of their industries and above all of their agriculture. In the case of Argentina the subventions of Europe and North America for the agricultural production have generated a loss of 180 billion dollars within the last thirty years. I repeat: Argentina lost 180 billion dollars because of subventions, an amount equal to the whole external debt.

by Fernando Solanas

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Fred Matser: Well, I think that is for me a difficult question. Of course, it is important that, like us in the West, China has a chance to develop itself. And of course, we in our development in the West, we made many mistakes. And I think we have to allow China also to make "their mistakes." In the meantime, we are there also to help China, I mean the West again, to prevent them from making mistakes that we have made in the past and so that they can use our new technology and in that sense try and avoid their pollution. Yes, do we criticize? Yes, we do criticize. That is true. But, I think that it would be better to also look into our own history and then we can see that we went through the same stages in a different way, in a different time, but we made the same mistakes. Yes, I understand too the question is, how can we people in the developed world enjoy cheap products, we do. We indeed do, and perhaps the Chinese in the future can enjoy our products as well as we are setting up trade more and more. And so, I think it is possible. I think on this respect also the media can play an important role to place things in perspective and to help one another to understand that we all in the past went through difficult stages and allow the Chinese to go through their stages too of growth.

by Fred Matser

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Galsan Tschinag: This criticism applies, on the one hand, to the quality of the products made in China, which really is too low and can no longer be apologized. On the other hand this also displays the jealousy of food; the states that have a lead as far as business is concerned, won't give new competitors a chance.

by Galsan Tschinag

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Giora Feidman: Well, there are cheap products is something, their cheap product is something beneficial for all mankind. The question also can be focused from an angle how a country, and in this case China have success to share, to sell so cheap products? This question bring to an answer like or to another question. In this case, China is not relate the cheap products with human rights? We must watch this country. The meaning of human rights, of course, for different countries or different societies, the world, the idea of democracy is complete different; yes, it’s okay. But, I guess, the meaning of a respect for human being cannot be different. Again, we must research if in this case of China is not connect the cheap products with human right, the human abuse. This must be research and to bring and to overcome any difficult that countries put to avoid, to see, and to see the truth of the matter, in this case human rights.

by Giora Feidman

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Gladman Chibememe: The First World countries as I reiterated before, First World countries are in most cases selfish. They just want to preserve their monopoly over the economy, over resources. And in this case, if China can be able to have rapid the industrialization and provide cheaper goods to the world, why not and why do criticize them. And, it is precisely because First World countries want to keep the monopoly of the economy, they want to always dominate. So, in this case, we would find that we tend to criticize industrialization in China. But, there is no harm in having industrialization in China. We need to divest it in products. We need different initiatives from different parts of the world and we need different players to come in the economic field. So, the problem is that First World countries want to monopolize everything. And in this case, that leads to the problem of criticism and jealousies. It is a question of jealousy, self-preservation, egoism and which I think has resulted in this world being run in a bad way as it is today. We need to shed ourself to move away from the egoistic way of looking at life, from being selfish into a way of looking at life in which we accept that everyone of us have got an important role to play in contributing to sustainable development. So, China has got a right to industrialize just as any other nation in this world has the right. So, we don’t need - who are we to condemn the developments in China.

by Gladman Chibememe

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi: That is funny, but that is how it happens. It is hypocrisy. People in the developed world enjoy cheap products because of the cheap labor costs that China and India offers. Why should we worry about being criticized? We must make the best use of our strengths, our advantages and continue to work to relate with people in every part of the world to access our products. It is how we see it, and how do we want to go about it, and not get worried about being criticized. Because it is our people who need to make it possible for them to enjoy the benefits of these advantages. It is not possible to relate with the developed world in the way -- some in the developed world criticize China for its rapid industrialization. But the China also needs to look at how do we do it in a manner that [audio ends]

by Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Hans-Peter Dürr: That’s an absolute contradiction. But the whole economy is a mistake as a whole. And we shouldn’t be surprised if one thing doesn’t correspond to another. The consumption fever is being created not only to do something good for the people but also to make them dependent, to turn them into people who voluntarily go the way that is being dictated to them, in order the producers themselves make their biggest profits and the people become their slaves more and more without noticing it. We have to realize that the human development, which is actually natural for him and what brought him in front of all living beings in the course of the evolution, lies in the fact that he has possibilities to develop himself, not only physically in order he can kill another one at war, but to overgrow himself and to develop his skills, to reach the level where he could see that he’s a part of the bigger whole and he could try to learn even more about this commonness. And I am sorry to see that China actually goes the same way as the big economic states. It goes so to say from one kind of slavery into the other which is no less awful. I always thought that also in the communist China people still had enough self-assuredness, that when they planted something they could feel what growth is, what the real creating of value is, that what comes from the earth needs care and has something to do with it. And with a skilled hand they could make a plant grow.

by Hans-Peter Dürr

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Harry Wu: I think the author forget one thing. The people have not criticized Chinese for the rapid industrialization. The people have criticized Chinese government systems, because the government political system, economy system is not really right, that is the major problem.

by Harry Wu

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Helena Norberg-Hodge: Very often, the people who critique China’s rapid industrialization are very different from the people who enjoy lots of cheap consumer product. Very often the criticism comes from environmentalists who are not very enamored of the consumer culture. But, I think more importantly, when we look at China, we have to understand, number one, that this rapid industrialization has happened with foreign multinationals, foreign aid, World Bank loans, IMF intervention. In other words, the rapid industrialization of China is a product of a global economy dominated by the G8. It is particularly dominated by US pressures. So, we cannot see China in isolation. The process of trade deregulation that allows businesses to go into China, businesses like Wal-Mart for instance, to produce products to sell cheaply in America is a process that is affecting people in the west as well as in China in a very negative way. Many people in China right now are enjoying an urban consumer lifestyle but it’s at horrendous expense. The major expense being the widening gap between rich and poor, the disastrous mega urbanization and the depletion of natural resources, the air quality, the soil, the water table all are suffering tremendously. This experiment which has been foisted on China to a great extent by foreign banks and corporations is a very short-lived phenomenon. We all need to understand right now that the issue that affects all of us is the process of economic globalization and that economic localization rapidly reducing our dependence on oil, reducing our dependence on export and import, rebalancing production for home needs and production for export, so that there is a sense…

by Helena Norberg-Hodge

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Homero Aridjis: The reason why the developed world enjoys cheap products and at the same time criticizes China for its rapid industrialization because China destroys the environment and does not respect the human rights. China is the biggest exporter of plastic waste and useless products, and at the same time it destroys many local economies by inundating the markets with its cheap products.

by Homero Aridjis

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Irina Yasina: It’s a funny question, because people in developed countries who criticize China for its rapid industrialization are actually afraid of it because it seems to them that China would take away some jobs and their production begins to collapse. These critics come from the fear. At the same time it testifies that these people in developed countries that criticise China just don’t understand that they are on the next development level, in the post-industrial society creating quite different advantages and moving forward. Industrializing China produces no new technologies. It is on catching-up development level that’s why it produces technologies which have been already invented. The Western World has to face up to this challenge. It simply has to develop faster, that’s all. People don’t like such challenges because it’s comfortable to be leaders. And when somebody starts stepping on the heels, one should just move faster. I mean that rapid industrialization of China is the way that Western countries passed several centuries ago, or decades ago, but nevertheless they have already passed it. And it’s necessary to accept it, that this great powerful country takes the same way of development. It is necessary to be happy about it and try to react adequately inventing, developing, producing more interesting things in the future.

by Irina Yasina

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Jerry Mander: Answertext will be available soon.

by Jerry Mander

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Jesper Green: We can enjoy cheap products in the western world and also criticize China for its rapid industrialization because we have seen the problems we have created with our rapid industrialization. And I think we can criticize China because we know how much pollution, how cruel we have been on the planet’s resources to gain our rapid industrialization. In that way we are cleverer than China and can criticize them for not taking care of human rights, planet rights, animal rights, global rights. And I think it’s very important that we still criticize China or other rapidly industrializing countries so they can learn from our experiences, so they don’t make the same mistakes that we did ... or that we made.

by Jesper Green

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Jodie Evans: How can people do that? They do. Human nature to assuage guilt, to keep control, to have their own power, to, you know, keep their finger on China. I think what was interesting about the question is that it's not something I was so aware of, that we criticize China for its industrialization that -- that it's, that someone in China can be, can understand that that development is frightening the Western world -- I found quite interesting. And that the story, I mean even if we look at everyone being afraid of what if every Chinese had to have a car and what if, what ifs, that we are so unaware of how just in the Western world, there's attempts to be sustainable, those same things exist in China even though it's, it's, that that could be growing as as rapid a rate as the industrialization isn't discussed.

by Jodie Evans

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

John Gage: China should not be sensitive to the kinds of comments or question it feels are important. In fact, the world admires China for its immense capability to produce, for the enormous capability of the Chinese people to produce, to work, to device new methods of creating products, which then benefit the world, by being cheap, by being of high quality, and by transforming the interior structure of China in ways no one yet fully appreciates. Now, the criticism that could be made of any one who is efficient in production is that they do not adequately represent the costs of the things that they are making in the product. That means they are damaging the environment, they are casting off into an immense free sink of the atmosphere, the kinds of by-products, which, if they were fully costed, would change the final cost of that object. So, if there is criticism, it’s criticism, and there is criticism, the criticism, the proper criticism is of those productive processes that in fact impose costs on all the rest of us not reflected in the price of what is made. That’s causing carbon dioxide, the carbon depositions, the effluents into rivers, all of those products of industrialization that poison the earth are a result of those who are involved in production not feeling the price of what they are doing? So, how do we change this? We change this by changing the accounting systems. Every meeting, every gathering, every daily trip, everything we do have a carbon cost. We are beginning to account for that carbon cost because the planet feels that carbon cost, we all feel it in global warming. So, there is some hope that, as China drives toward industrialization, China will emerge with technologies that will allow the rest of the world to learn from China and admire [audio ends].

by John Gage

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Jonathan Granoff: Rapid industrialization has not been often criticized anywhere. I haven't heard that. I've heard criticism of failure of honoring human rights in China. I've seen arguments that the Chinese are not being environmentally responsible. But rapid industrialization? I haven't heard anybody criticizing that. I certainly wouldn't criticize rapid industrialization. I would join in the criticism of inadequate - from what I've heard, I've never been to China but what I've heard is inadequate respect for the rights of laborers, and an inadequate sense of the sacredness of the environment, and the need to protect it. Does - must industrialization abuse workers? Must industrialization abuse the environment? Those are not questions about China, those are global questions. And the answer that we all have to give is that if China follows the route of economic development of say the United States, I don't know if there'll be enough resources, everywhere. So it'd be foolish I think to criticize China on the grounds of industrialization, but we've got to criticize any place where there's a lack of justice.

by Jonathan Granoff

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Jonathan Meese: Humans are arrogant, schizophrenic, illogical, haughty and so as they are. Hence they ask for exciting things as well as unexciting. Confusion is the only existing measure, not knowledge. Show your confused vision, then you are the most political. The obscure politics is reflected in your face. Industrialisation has not taken place yet, there is only the industry of the nature. The industry of nature is the herald of the total revolution. Anything else is man-made and has no meaning. The nature makes its products on its own, as it wish, and it will present us prolificly, if we treet her suppliantly. That means: The nature gives what it is able to. It is not possible to give more, as well as there is no need to. Man is his own provisions. Expect everything of yourself, carry more than you can, take more than possible, and give even more, give everything, only give. Convert everything that is given to you. This is the evolution of the thing. I told to myself that I am obedient and this is really good. Nobody is more hermetic than me. Karl Marx said: "We ourselves are our industry, we are our factory, these factories are in us."

by Jonathan Meese

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

Jonathan Stack: Does the word hypocrisy mean anything? I mean that people are -- I don’t know -- I don't think most people know -- they know these two things. I think people who enjoy cheap products enjoy them because it makes their lives easier. And if they are thinking like that, then they are not worrying about what the effects are of that in China. Trust me, most people aren't thinking about that. I personally am not into the cheap products. I just like -- I don’t know if there is any better answer than just there is hypocrisy involved. I think most people are just worrying about today and they are fearing tomorrow, so they could sit around, and if they are happy today, that's what they are worrying about and they are afraid of tomorrow. And so, they don't want to deal with it. And the idea of China becoming a global economic superpower, which it already is and what the effects of that might be on the environment, which ultimately will effect them in a much more profound way than their ability to buy cheap sneakers is a normal and human flaw, just that's how we are. It's not right. That's why it's hypocrisy. This doesn't make any sense. Anyhow we have no right to judge China's desire to go global -- globalization and rapid growth, rapid industrialization if we are not doing it in our own country, that's for sure. I always think like the main thing of personal economics is just consume less, it's just something personal to like do less damage, just consume and judging less as well.

by Jonathan Stack

Sep 9, 2006 10:50:00 AM cite

José Manuel Prieto:

by José Manuel Prieto