The China Syndrome

As Scruton stated:

To suppose that the freedom to move capital and people is as much a part of free trade as the free exchange of goods and services is to jeodardise the very idea of trade.

Baldwin stressed the critical point of a new type of globalisation as being the communications technology revolution of the 1990s that enabled the radical lowering of the cost of "moving ideas" and led to the "great switch of manufacturing jobs" and a whole new meaning of globalisation. In the event, technology merely enabled the sell-out of Western jobs and skills.

Yes, the West's forelock tugging to globalisation theory has had grave consequences, China wise.

This new wave of post 1990s globalisation set up the whole scene for China to capitalise on naïve Western free trade thinking. China rode the wave of globalisation – right to the beach.

The emerging, latter day questioning by those on the right of the globalisation gospel, such as it is, is welcome.

But the West is stuck with the whole WTO infrastructure and its own servility to the Chinese trading god. We now understand what has happened. And we are powerless to respond. Spectator Australia columnists say – stop buying Chinese. Great! That will stop it. Mere right-of-centre virtue signalling.

The Australian enablers of the Chinese capitalist-imperialist play are there for all to see. Bob Carr. Shanghai Sam Dastyari. Alexander Downer. Bob Hawke. Andrew Robb. Daniel Andrews. Political chancers in the cause of their own bank accounts, as it turned out. They all enriched themselves in the process. It is almost as if an Australian parliamentary career is merely a step along the path to Chinese enabled wealth and influence. They have turned out to be servants of the Chinese ruling class, ironically. Thirty pieces of silver, indeed.

It might be said that it all started with Richard Nixon and Gough Whitlam, in the naïve 1970s. As Rob Stove has argued:

Nixon's … sin was his kowtowing to communist China, which by the early 1970s had already eliminated (according to the most cautious statistics available) 15 million Chinese. The result over the next half-century was to destroy the Anglosphere's entire manufacturing base, and to ensure the global spread of Wuhan's silent killer.

Second order, useful idiot enablers in the 2000s include all those DFAT types who cheered on the Chinese Free Trade Agreement and its associated diplomatic charades. Good work if you can get it.

We sold out, in the name of Australian exports and living standards. Well meant, no doubt. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.