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The Rise of East Asia: Threat or Opportunity
Who are the losers in China's economic advances? Well, those who worked in industries that have been wiped out by Chinese manufacturing competition. Boeing before every visit of important and distinguished Chinese leader to America, secures several new orders for their planes. Increasingly, the small and medium-sized enterprises which sold to Boeing aren't in the United States, they are in China. If you were to make silk ties, then you would have been likely wiped out, just as you have if you have, say sell quite a lot of machine tools.

The sign of the time, Pres. Chirac, always being a good weather vein of Protectionist sentiment, the sign of the time, in Pres. Chirac's language, recently talking about the "brotherly love between France and China." Even more recently talking about China delivering equivalent to a death blow to European jobs.

It is more of a problem to argue the case for free trade, to argue against protectionism in America and Europe, when those who argue for Protectionism can point to specific examples of market distortion in China. More difficult when they can point to manipulations of currency, the politicization of credit to low or non-existent environmental and safety standard, to the absence of unions and human rights. All those issues, I am afraid, play into the hands of the Protectionist fronts, whom we are, in my judgment, going to hear a good deal more.

Economic change, economic modernization and development in both South Korea and Taiwan, helped to promote political development. The same would have been true in Hong Kong, had the great and a large educated middle-class not coincided with the run off to the transferred of sovereignty. And Singapore has, at least as long as your famous but not always hugely grateful alumnus, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew is around. Its own notions of participatory government, which is not quite ___, but hardly Tom Paine either.

The most interesting question about China's future is what will happen to the internal politics of China as economic growth continues with desperate and unplanned consequences. To any outsiders who believe in Pluralism and has some knowledge of history, China appears to be faced by a paradox. On one hand, the Chinese government clearly feels obliged to push economic growth hard in order to go on creating job, which is believed essential to the maintenance of security and stability. On the other hand, fast economic growth makes it ever more difficult to retain tight political control. Can China defile the odds and keep an iron gripe on politics while economic and social developments transform the country?

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