Dave Schuler, writing at Outside The Beltway wonders why the New York Times is suddenly so anti-China:
On Friday the New York Times ran a fear-mongering story on the prospect of a Chinese company acquiring Seagate Technology, a leading manufacturer of hard drives:
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 24 — A Chinese technology company has expressed interest in buying a maker of computer disk drives in the United States, raising concerns among American government officials about the risks to national security in transferring high technology to China.
The overture, which was disclosed by the chief executive of one of the two remaining drive makers in the United States, William D. Watkins of Seagate Technology, has resurrected the issues of economic competitiveness and national security raised three years ago when Lenovo, a Chinese computer maker, bought I.B.M.’s personal computer business.
The NYT is late to this party. Hard drives have been manufactured overseas for many years now and China is a leading supplier if not the primary supplier. Engineering has followed manufacturing, first to Taiwan and now, increasingly, to China (where a lot of Taiwanese companies do their manufacturing). Is it a surprise that management would follow engineering and manufacturing? What did you think the Chinese would do with all the dollars they’ve been accumulating?
All very true. However, this gets deeper…
Yesterday the Newspaper of Record painted a horrifying picture of environmental degradation in China:
BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.
But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.
To the paper’s credit the article obliquely suggested that market forces be harnessed to gain control over the situation. Little was said about the political, social, and legal reform that would make that possible.
Schiller makes several other valid points, usually in the form of questions. However, here, I think, Schuler swings into the truth, without realizing it. The fact of the matter is that China, be they our friend or our foe…(And I think them neither) is probably the best example in the world today of what happens to both freedoms, and standard of living, once you start swinging away from socialism. Their rate of success has been directly connected to the rate of that swing away from socialism. Entrepreneurship has to a large degree taken over in China, and their massive economic might these days is a direct result of that swing. I see no signs of that stopping. I suggest that eventually China will become a more democratic state than are many of the nation’s whom we are pleased to call friends today.
I am by no means suggesting that China is without problems in these regards. Nor am I suggesting that the swing toward entrepreneurship and increased individualism is without problems, either. The recent abuses as regards Fisher Price, for example. The recent pet food scandal, for another. I am suggesting, however, that these will be resolved as a matter of course , not as a matter of edict, either internally or externally.
All this represents a threat to the leftists everywhere, not least of which at the New York Times. The success story that China has become stands in direct opposition to that kind of world that the Times and it’s ardent readership has been striving for for the last 60 years.
By the same token, the New York Times flat out loves the mess that Fidel Castro has made of Cuba. Thus the Times fawning over Castro each time the subject comes up. He provides no challenge to socialism. Of course, he provides no bettering in the standard of living for the Cuban people either, but that’s inconsequential to the Times.
Where freedom proves successful, even when applied in limited amounts as in China, it’s a sure bet that the New York Times is not going to look favorably on it.
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