Regarding trade: I think China (and any country) should have absolute say in how they do business, and who they want to do business with, who to allow in their internal market, etc.
And of course other countries should be free to reciprocate. That would be actually free trade in my book: with any nation being free to do business as it pleases (trade this, impose tariffs on that, etc).
The current "free trade" is mere lip service in the sense: "we promote free trade to force others to open their markets to us, but we ourselves use tariffs, wars, and whenever we like to further our interests". So, I don't like it, and I also don't like the "totally free" trade (which I find a pipe dream, as big players wil always work their way around it).
>Do you believe the advantages they enjoy are all justified? (Note: for the sake of this argument only, karmic payback for US historic behavior is not considered a valid justification.)
I think "fair" can only be considered in context. Something is fair or not according to how the actual players play the game, not according to some abstract rules. If everybody cheats, China is fair to cheat too. In that case, I don't think the "karmic payback" is irrelevant to answer the question, nor I believe it's mere US "historic behavior" (if the latter implies something that happened only in the distant past and is not active behavior it's benefiting from at the moment).
Regarding human rights: China is authoritarian (and on the fore-front of authoritarian abuse of technology). That said, the situation is accepted well by the vast majority of its population, who doesn't have much tradition of free elections in the first place, and who probably worries of the impact of a breakdown of the regime.
Naive pundits might call for the immediate dissolution of the CCP for example, but in 1.6 billion people state a power vacuum could lead to chaos, schism, and civil war than makes India/Pakistan, or modern day Iraq/Libya etc look like Disney movies. In any case, it's up to them, not to outsiders to call their shots (or to take sides in their internal power struggles). All kinds of countries had their popular revolutions, reforms, etc, if China (as a nation) doesn't like its regime, they're welcome to change it.
I don't necessarily disagree, except:
- does this take into consideration explicit agreements they've signed with the WTO?
- if this behavior is perfectly fine, why the extreme reluctance (on both sides, at least until recently) to acknowledge specifics of how the game is actually being played?
> I think "fair" can only be considered in context. Something is fair or not according to how the actual players play the game, not according to some abstract rules. If everybody cheats, China is fair to cheat too.
That seems perfectly reasonable, but my question was: is the US "cheating" China? Are de-facto terms and actual actions (actual actions, so excluding "karma"-based justification) of trade between the US and China "fair", or are they not fair? As far as I can tell, that question remains unanswered.
> Naive pundits...
I absolutely agree on a philosophical basis, but unless I'm mistaken, this seems orthogonal to my specific question. For the sake of clarity and conversational efficiency, I'd rather we not add new topics of discussion to this particular sub-thread.
China has neither. Free is free as in no restriction, not free to do whatever you want.
Free to do whatever will make global trade more difficult for everyone as all countries will have tariffs, as it was historically.
Well, the term (and its proponents) should not hijack the concept of freedom them. One could call it "open" (or sometimes "forcefully open" market, e.g. like when the British waged war on China so that they are free to sell opium there).
Free as in freedom should include the freedom not to trade.
>China has neither
Well, despite that is one of the biggest importers and exporters of the world, and they've been rising from an agrarian economy to the worlds top manufacturer, and being in the top-2 global players. So looks to be working for them.
>Free to do whatever will make global trade more difficult for everyone as all countries will have tariffs, as it was historically.
That's a good thing in my book. We need less global trade, if not for anything else, for environmental reasons (the "reduce" part of the reduce, reuse, recycle).
If the people in some country feel as if they benefit from trading something, they can always choose to trade it. But if they have negative consequences from trading, i.e. importing or exporting X, then why should they continue to do so and suffer them?
I also agree that open trade is a better name
This answer seems to pretend the prisoner's dilemma doesn't exist.
The world grows more when it works together. If China doesn't want to play by the rules of the global trading system, it should stop reaping the benefits while undermining it for everyone else.
That being said, what's your take on China's behavior specifically, do you believe they are acting in a "fair" manner? Do you believe the advantages they enjoy are all justified? (Note: for the sake of this argument only, karmic payback for US historic behavior is not considered a valid justification.)
EDIT: I'm curious why explicitly acknowledging valid points but then asking a clear and specific question (that excludes these points as they are not directly relevant to current trade with China) is being downvoted? Downvotes for disagreement are appropriate according to HN guidelines (or they used to be), but I'm not asserting anything, I am literally asking a serious question.