Sealing the deal with China

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Just a peice of small news (well, big news around here) from this corner of the globe:

Bolded part added by me. Despite only briefly mentioning this, it has become the main criticism around the country. Should a country be signing such agreements with a country with such low human rights standards? I guess that's also the question that is been asked around the world with the upcoming olympics.

Rest of the article can be found here :
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318360/1691151

 

Morally perhaps not, but since when have governments been moral?

Regardless of how they've got there or what human rights they have trampled on in the process China are one of the fastest growing economies in the world and if a country isn't going to make a stand against them then perhaps it is better that more benefit is obtained from the abuses.

My personal view is exemplified by the quote

but then I don't need to worry about the state of the economy.

As far as I'm concerned China should be economically and politically boycotted until they rectify their abuses. Unfortunatelly few countries seem willing to commit to such action - which is strange as so many of the excuses that were applied to Iraq prior to the invasion (especially by the British government) could also have be applied to China especially considering this article http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2008/03/29/2003407552 which suggests that they have around 1,400 ballistic missiles targeted at Taiwan alone. WMD anyone?

 

Still. singning a contract whit the devil is never wise. Politicians know.

 

Money and prosperity trump short term morality every time. I'm reminded of a quote by one of the Deveels in Robert Aspirin's "Myth" books. It went something like "do you know how much business we'd lose if we only dealt with sane people? We'd lose 33% of our income!"

In any event, there are some who would argue that by trading and working with the Chinese, European and European spawned democracies have a better chance of changing China's policies in the long term. I don't have a lot of solid data to back that up, but it seems to me to be a thought worth considering.

Another thought is that if we don't trade with them we might end up hurting the "little guy" more than the elites we're actually targetting.

 

Trade deals have nothing to do with morality. We have been dealing with South Africa, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and now China without much worrying about the human rights situation. I don't think it's a very good idea to try and use trade policy as some sort of a weapon against China for their human rights situation, it won't work. If you won't dealt with them someone else will and only you will suffer. The domestic situation in China won't change because of external preassure, China is way beyoned that now, the change has to be internal. So in short, the moral dimension in my opinion is moot.

Then to the economics. As long as China is keeping the yuan down artificially most countries won't sign a free trade agreement with them since the "free" in the contract will mostly be superficial, atleast of their part. However I would not know about New Zeeland and their balance of trade regarding China or any possible advantages/disadvantages of the deal so I can't really comment much on that one.

EDIT: I'll have to be sceptical about the 350 million though, these values are usually the gain that will come if everything progresses as planned, which they never really do in economics.

 

I wonder what impact this will have at all. Although, given the massive difference in size, China will only have to buy one more thing from us in very small quantities (for them) for it to be a big deal.

 

Well since we've just screwed up a deal with the Canadians on the Auckland International Airport, FTA with China is looking pretty good right now.