Yes! This book provides a comprehensive overview of how China operates on the world stage, and at home too.

http://www.peternavarro.com/comingchinawars.html

Yet another whinge piece about China.

If the author cares to check his History of the Twentieth Century, he might find some substantial parallels in stories of the rise to economic prominence of the United States. The post-war expansion of US-based multinational companies, repatriating their profits to eager shareholders at the expense of their overseas outposts, was a significant factor in that country's dominance of world trade.

And if he went back further, he might also take a quick sideways glance at the methods of Cecil Rhodes and de Beers in South Africa, and before that the operations of the East India Company in India and China.

These - and others - had a substantial impact on the economy of the UK, and on that of their "target" countries. Had Mr Lewis been a commentator in those days, I wonder whether he would have exhibited the same level of disapproval at their antics.

And if he claims that he would indeed have been equally critical of their ventures, what alternatives might he have proposed, one wonders, to those European empire-builders? And whatever that advice might have been, I can't imagine anyone taking the slightest notice. Can you?

We live in the realities of today, not some kind of airy-fairy, if-only world of abstract idealism. And when you analyse it, the article is composed of little more than a long string of dog-in-the-manger gripes, caused by the realization that others behave today, precisely as we behaved yesterday and the day before.

Every day that passes lifts the veil on our collective hypocrisy just a little further, does it not. No bad thing, I'd say.

Pericles, answer no.

While i am well aware of wrongdoings of past, I am offering a Western perspective in accordance to what I believe in.

I do not look forward to living in a world ever dominated by authoritarian China, so i will keep on whinging while you may want to celebrate its success.

The other thing. i am not opposed to the rise of new economies and the decline of the old.

If one believes in fairer trade, then lower cost economies should have some advantage to close the gap.

However, free trade is being affected by major distortions caused by mercantile China, and the current policy orthodoxy which is allowing China to benefit most.

Until I am convinced otherwise, i do not see how the rise of mercantile and authoritarian China is good for the world, or the concept of freer and fairer trade.

So, again, i will whinge, whinge, whinge.

Chris
The arguments for free trade do not assume an imaginary state in which everyone else is also practising free trade. If Australia trades freely (or more freely) with another which is more protectionist, all it means is that the protectionist country (state) is, in effect, taxing its own citizens to provide free handouts to us.

China's history as an authoritarian state goes way back and I don't see it changing any time soon, but if there is one thing more than any other that can influence it towards freedom and away from authoritarianism is is free trade.

There's no point in getting snotty about it Mr Lewis.

>>I do not look forward to living in a world ever dominated by authoritarian China, so i will keep on whinging while you may want to celebrate its success.<<

Celebration does not come into the equation, any more than disapproval. Or vituperation, come to that. You may apply your value judgments as much as you like. You won't alter the facts.

And quite frankly, it matters not a tinkers damn whether you "look forward" to a world in which China has greater influence on affairs than it does today, or not. Instead of your "whinge, whinge, whinge", would it not be smarter to begin to consider how we might better prepare ourselves for the changing balance in economic power?

The point about observing the history of previous economies has nothing to do with colonial guilt, and everything to do with learning the lessons. The concept that what China is doing is somehow unfair, simply because it is not in our own narrow interest, has no resonance. And your complaint that what they are doing is somehow "not good for the world" is fundamentally shallow - what scenario do you suggest should replace it, and what would be the consequences of your alternative to a) the Chinese people and b) the world economy?

Your chosen role appears to be analogous to that of Canute's courtiers. Get with the programme. The tide's coming in.