I’ve been thinking a lot about China lately. China and the U.S. of A., and Canada too, and our relationships with each other as nations, and how they’re changing and likely to change. China recently surpassed Canada as the biggest trading partner of the U.S. That’s a rank this country has enjoyed for decades, but when you think about it, once China woke up from its communist dogmatic stupor, it was bound to leave us in the dust. China is surpassing every country on the planet, one way or another. More people, more growth, more pollution. Where will it lead? One of the good things about the new China seems to be that it (its government, at least) cares about how the world sees it. For example, the recent bad publicity about shoddy Chinese products has caused a delightful reaction back in China. One definitely gets the impression that the Big Boys of Beijing are not as indifferent to world opinion as they once were. This is not surprising, perhaps, given how much their current wealth and increasing economic (and other) power depends on foreign trade. Nevertheless, it wasn’t always so, and it seems a very good thing. On the other hand, it could equally be argued that China (government, again) cares too much about its image. If it’s all about ‘status’ and not enough about good relations with other countries, it could lead to bad results. It would be great if China were satisfied with economic superpowerdom. But clearly, the government wants to be a military superpower too. Its attitude towards Taiwan, Tibet and Indian border issues have shown that despite the economic enlightenment, in other ways, the regime is anything but enlightened. I can’t say China is the most warlike of nations, but neither is it a peacemaker. Can you see China admitting its mistake in occupying Tibet and getting out of there? How about just agreeing to live and let live with Taiwan? Not a chance. Too much ‘loss of face’ involved, apparently, which to my western eyes seems ridiculous, not to mention dangerous. Does this attitude of government genuinely reflect the attitude of the people? Hard to say. Also hard to say how long an economically-liberated populace will want to put up with a one-party state controlling everything. But while the boom times continue, maybe such questions are moot. The Chinese are perhaps too busy building factories and getting rich to worry about such abstract concepts as political freedom. How long will the boom times last? As long as the cheap labour does, said an industry chap I spoke to last year. It’s all based on cheap labour. As long as China can keep producing goods of reasonable quality cheaper than other nations can, they’ll have willing buyers. And how long might the cheap labour last? I asked the fellow. “At the present rate of industrialization, given China’s population, it could last another 100 years,” he said. That’s a century worth of peasants pouring off the land to work in factories – precisely the same process that happened in the industrial revolutions of Europe and North America, fueling a couple of centuries worth of prosperity – not to mention environmental destruction. We live in interesting times.

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