Beliefs are handy, because they relieve your brain of further work.
Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, the China business and finance editor at The Economist, writes that currency manipulation and unfair trade practices aren’t that important.
Because… well just because. I looked hard for data in his written piece, but apparently data was too much trouble to for him to find. Yet, he has methods for his argument.
1. Platitudes and cliches: Don’t worry about China, he says. Instead, Vijay has a plan. A good plan justified by worn out cliches. ”For a start, do no harm. … China’s rise does not have to come at America’s expense.” And how about this, “America’s leaders should see China’s inexorable surge as a rising tide that can lift all boats.” Aren’t those happy thoughts?
2. Fearmongering: We have to ignore systematic trade cheating, because of that thing none of us has ever seen… a trade war.
An even more dangerous prospect is a trade war, something that might happen as a result of Western governments ganging up on China at the World Trade Organization over its policies on rare Earth minerals.
Um… we’re ganging up on China for violating WTO rules? Isn’t that called enforcement? China cannot start a trade war because of enforcement of an agreement it already signed. If I may borrow an Occupy Wall Street slogan, “They only call it a trade war when we fight back.”
3. Distraction: Vijay says its our own fault. Of course, the best lies have some truth. It is our fault for not crafting and implementing a national trade strategy. But what’s his solution to our fallacy? More immigration. That’ll do it.
I wonder if Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, the author of this article, received payments from both the Chinese embassy and CATO for this article (in addition to his normal salary from The Economist). It would seem that a bonus system, similar that of of the Saints should apply to this kind of apologist journalism that so aptly tows the Chinese Communist Party line. Additional payments are due for the clever use of the “First, do no harm” line. As far as propaganda goes, it doesn’t get any better than that!
Arthur,
As Paul Craig Roberts says, in his excellent book “How The Economy Was Lost,” (2010), “The ‘free market’ shills on the payroll of the U.S. Chamber, N.A.M., and in economics departments and think tanks that are recipients of grants from transnational corporations are WHORES (my emphasis) aligned with the elites who are destroying the American work force.” p155
Could it be that Vijayjay is part of that contingent who have a vested interest in steering us away from China as the problem?
I thought that was exactly what my post said
In the vernacular of the past, which I remember, Vijay would be a fellow traveler.