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According to a recent poll by The Economist, the Chinese are less tolerant to the use of torture than are Americans. How did the use of "enhanced interrogations" lead to the citizens of a democratic nation being more accepting of torture than those living under an authoritarian regime? We've come along way since George Washington said:
Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.
As well as:
Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands
Thank you George W. Bush for taking American down this path.
In an update to a story I posted last week, Jairam Ramesh, the India’s environment minister, went on record today that India would not even discuss signing up for any legally-binding limit on greenhouse gas emissions until at least 2020. This means that both India and China, home of 1.17 billion and 1.31 billion people respectively, have now refused to set any emission limits in the near- or mid-term because "their fast-growing economies should not be hampered when western countries were responsible for climate change."
Don't they see the difference between the United States, who only accounts for 4.5% of the global population, and themselves, home to 37% (almost 2 out of 5) of the global population? I realize that the current situation with our environment is due primarily to the industrialized world (with the US being the number one emitter of greenhouse gases) but what will happen once these massive nations repeat the same mistakes?
I'm anxious to see how this affects the upcoming international climate convention in Copenhagen later this year.
A story in the Financial Times today caught my eye and I thought I'd make a quick inter-country comparison of how each countries workers handle their disagreements with management. I'll start with the extreme example.
In China:
Tonghua Iron & Steel, a state-run enterprise with about 50,000 workers, had been in privatization talks with Jianlong Group, one of China’s largest privately-held steel companies, when the workers rebelled. After the manager, Chen Guojun, stated that he was going to lay-off all of the workers, they beat him unconscious then stopped an ambulance and police from entering. The manager died because of the attack.
In France:
France has several interesting examples. Two weeks ago, workers facing lay-offs at a Nortel Networks research center that is being closed in Châteaufort, near Paris, threatened to blow up their factories unless they receive more severance pay. They later admitted the bomb threats were a hoax. Back in April, workers at two Caterpillar plants in Grenoble, France, kidnapped five of their management team in their offices after the company announced it would be laying off 733 employees. More examples of the French workers "kidnapping strategy" can be found in this comprehensive article from the Washington Times. Though this strategy sounds extreme, the workers typically treat their "hostages" very well and mainly used the tactic to bring media attention and awareness of the issue to the rest of the country.
In the United States:
The only example of a successful worker rebellion (other than a strike) that I can remember in the past few years was the sit-in last year at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago that ended with the company getting an emergency loan that kept the factory open.
Why is it that extreme examples of worker protests don't happen in America any more? Where are all of the protests, like the ones in the '60s and '70s that made America famous? I ask because, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has the highest rates of poverty and inequality of it's member countries, with the exception of Mexico and Turkey. The OECD was formed in 1960 and currently has 30 members, that you can see here. The first link in this paragraph takes you to the OECD individual report on the US also has some other very interesting statistics, so I highly suggest clicking it.
Could America's worker's response to management be so docile because of the fact that their economic well-being is so fragile? I'm not advocating violence or bloodshed, but where are the domestic protests?
According to Bloomberg.com, China's stock market (currently valued at $3.2 trillion) may become the worlds largest in just 3 years, driven by it's nations 1.4 billion people putting more of their money in equities. Right now, the US market is the worlds largest, valued at $11.2 trillion. The two market, however, are headed in complete opposite directions.
The US market's value peaked in July 2007 at a value of almost $20 trillion, but has declined 41% during the financial crisis. Even with the massive stimulus efforts, the S&P 500 has only managed to gain 4.1% this year and GDP has contracted by 5.5% in the first quarter and an estimated 1.8% in the second quarter. Could this sluggish growth be because the Reinvestment and Recovery act had too many tax cuts and was too small overall, as Paul Krugman predicted and tried to warn us about? Or could it be because we diluted the "Buy American" provision so we ended up stimulating China's economy instead of ours?
Contrast that with how China's market is reacting to it's countries own 4 trillion-yuan ($586 billion) stimulus package, which included a "Buy China" provision that required all stimulus spending to go to only Chinese-owned and operated businesses, and you'll see whose approach is more successful: the Shanghai Composite Index is up 75% this year and their economy grew by 7.9% in the second quarter.
The most interesting question, in my opinion, is what will happen to the US-China relationship once their economy eclipses ours AND they are the majority owner of our national debt.
A former Boeing engineer was just convicted of handing over secrets on the space shuttle and Delta IV rocket to China. I can only imagine what this news would mean if there was a Cold-War-style relationship between us and China. I guess that is one positive side effect of them owning a healthy portion of our national debt...
How has this story not made bigger headlines?
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