What you neglect to mention is that Europe and the US had high import taxes to protect their industries from eachother.

Somehow the US still managed to become a superpower. China will be fine if it can transition to a better system of government. Globalization doesn't seem necessary for a country with a huge domestic market.

Demanding better working conditions for Foxconn employees is called having a conscience not hypocrisy.

The same could be said about the US. If they could transition to a better system of government, they'd be doing fine with globalisation.

Ok the historian in me has to say something. The US is only a superpower because we pilfered an incredibly large and resource-rich land mass and had incredibly good geopolitical luck during World War One and Two. And that involved dropping a nuclear weapon on a civilian population. Those circumstances are NOT repeatable.

The US is the only superpower because of two reasons:

1 - The Atlantic 2 - The Pacific

Those two present enormous competitive barriers in a fight.

The British Empire changed its board of directors.

> China will be fine if it can transition to a better system of government.

lol, so the one that brings more and more people out of poverty everyday should suddenly change and adopt the American style of government where more and more people are ending up in poverty? Genius idea mate...

I know this comment has been downvoted, but I think in light of current events it does deserve merit. China has managed to do a spectacular job of lifting its populace from abject poverty... while spectacularly abusing human rights and flagrantly violating rules of law and due process. But the American system, if it continues to be dominated by rich oligarchs...how does it work for the benefit of its weakest citizens? I really hope that it does not turn out that way, but you can't deny that it isn't a possibility, with the current US president calling the media "Enemy no.1", not having any respect for independent judiciary, attacking other religions etc.

I purposely came off rude in my comment - probably contributed to the down votes. But I do think it's a big worry for many people here in the west when an ideology that is diametrically opposed to what we are use to over here is not only succeeding but thriving. It feels like people here have already given up; on Reddit, the buzzword is now basic income (i.e., give me free stuff). Pew survey shows Americans are essentially expecting to regress while people in China are very optimistic.

"When children today grow up, will they be better off financially than their parents?" http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/74/survey/17/res...

People want change, but they're unwilling to consider anything else - democracy, like all systems have pros and cons. Learning from the successes of China doesn't automatically mean adopting the full ideology.

It's also worth mentioning with respect to the environment that they didn't know any better. Now we do.

And with respect to treating workers terribly, there was no concept of treating workers well, for the most part. You can't really apply our standards today on people of the past. It's not hypocrisy. It's enlightenment.

But let's say you're not ok with it, do you think China should ruin the environment, let kids get their hands cut off working in factories at 13 years old, or die have workers die en mass in industrial accidents and stuff just because the US and Europe did it 100 years ago? You also can't oversimplify "we have a higher standard of living now" based on ruining our environment and treating workers poorly. It is FAR more complicated than that.

>And with respect to treating workers terribly, there was no concept of treating workers well, for the most part.

This isn't really true. The rapid industrialization that happened in England led much contemporary criticism. It's been an incremental process to get from where we were to where we are now.

Let me preface this by saying that I don't in principle agree with poor labor laws or polluting the environment, in fact very much the opposite. I only think that the West cannot claim a high moral ground against China, or any other developing country when it has itself been guilty of the very same practices in the not too distant past. That is by definition, hypocrisy.

> It's also worth mentioning with respect to the environment that they didn't know any better. Now we do.

Yes, so what do you propose? That China not build power plants to provide a higher standard of living to the masses of Chinese people who desire to benefit from it? Let's remember that currently China is a signatory to the Paris Climate Accord and its Trump who is threatening to withdraw. Lets please stop treating China as the enemy of the environment when its still the West that's responsible for most Greenhouse emissions.

> And with respect to treating workers terribly, there was no concept of treating workers well, for the most part. You can't really apply our standards today on people of the past. It's not hypocrisy. It's enlightenment.

I mean, come on... people thought that sending kids to work in Coal mines was OK in pre-industrial England? Really? London at one point was a huge slum with regular outbreaks of Cholera. It wasn't like nobody knew that was bad...people just didn't care. And conditions in China, although they are bad for workers, are still better than that.

> But let's say you're not ok with it, do you think China should ruin the environment, let kids get their hands cut off working in factories at 13 years old, or die have workers die en mass in industrial accidents and stuff just because the US and Europe did it 100 years ago? You also can't oversimplify "we have a higher standard of living now" based on ruining our environment and treating workers poorly. It is FAR more complicated than that.

I didn't advocate for any of that. But it is a fact that Western wealth was built on the backs of extractive industries that exploited the lower classes of their own countries at first, then exploited slaves, and currently exploits low wage workers in developing countries. And for all those reasons its very hypocritical of the West to criticize China.

I disagree with your premise. Somebody did something once doesn't make it ok to do now. Running the environment once, even if we did know (and we didn't) doesn't make it ok to do now, just as having children work in coal mines or industrial factories was commonplace in industrial England (idk why you're citing pre-industrial England when children worked fields?) doesn't make it ok now.

> I only think that the West cannot claim a high moral ground against China, or any other developing country when it has itself been guilty of the very same practices in the not too distant past. That is by definition, hypocrisy.

Sure, but the "West" can very much say: "hey we did that and we learned our lesson on why that is bad and you shouldn't do it". Britain/US/etc... ruined their environments, whether out of stupidity or ignorance. That doesn't excuse China (or anybody else) to do the same thing.

>Yes, so what do you propose? That China not build power plants to provide a higher standard of living to the masses of Chinese people who desire to benefit from it? Let's remember that currently China is a signatory to the Paris Climate Accord and its Trump who is threatening to withdraw. Lets please stop treating China as the enemy of the environment when its still the West that's responsible for most Greenhouse emissions.

I'm not sure what the best solution is. But what I can say is that "doing what the West did because they did it even though it's bad" isn't the right approach. Trump may be threatening to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord but how is that relevant? I can't do anything about him being elected. In 4 years we'll elect a democrat and then sign back on. I don't treat China as an enemy of the environment more than any other country. If you're polluting you should try to stop it, regardless.

>I mean, come on... people thought that sending kids to work in Coal mines was OK in pre-industrial England? Really? London at one point was a huge slum with regular outbreaks of Cholera. It wasn't like nobody knew that was bad...people just didn't care. And conditions in China, although they are bad for workers, are still better than that.

Yes, as indicated by the fact that they did. Even if people at the time didn't care, we realize that their mindset of not caring is wrong today. Just like slavery, or pillaging cities, or whatever. But it's wrong today, from our perspective. You can't take moral standards of today and apply them retroactively on the past. It doesn't work that way.

> I didn't advocate for any of that. But it is a fact that Western wealth was built on the backs of extractive industries that exploited the lower classes of their own countries at first, then exploited slaves, and currently exploits low wage workers in developing countries. And for all those reasons its very hypocritical of the West to criticize China.

By sitting here complaining that it's hypocritical you are giving free-pass to countries (China or otherwise) to pollute because the West did it once. Even if it were to be hypocritical, it doesn't matter.

> currently exploits low wage workers in developing countries

Trust me, as bad as those jobs may be, they have been a great thing for China. Maybe if they hadn't had this whole stupid Communism thing and that mass genocide of intellectuals and free-thinkers they wouldn't have been in that position. It's sad, but those factory jobs (which won't be in China forever) have increased the standard of living. So if you want to call out the West for these exploitative labor practices, then you better be pissed at the Chinese who let their fellow people work in such poor conditions. Apple just pays people (and go figure works much harder than the Chinese do to increase working conditions) to build stuff. Nobody is forcing Chinese people to go work in these factories for next to nothing.

China free-rode off of that investment by adopting Western technology with no virtually no R&D, greatly benefiting.

The US did an almost similar thing, riding off European technology with virtually no R&D greatly benefiting. And before that, Europe did a similar thing by riding off Chinese (gunpowder and paper) and Indian (arabic numeral) technology, with virtually no R&D, greatly benefiting.... See how hollow that argument is?

   The US did an almost similar thing

Not an almost similar thing. Effectively the exact same thing, including the flagrant disregard of IP, etc.

It's worth thinking about when discussing what countries "should" and "shouldn't" do, as you note.

Just to add to the above, this is also reflected in historical GDP figures (pre Renaissance say): https://infogr.am/Share-of-world-GDP-throughout-history