Those reading this who are older than thirty five or so might remember an exciting film, The China Syndrome, in which a near nuclear accident threatens what Americans call "the China Syndrome" - the fanciful description of a nuclear meltdown making its way down through the earth to emerge somewhere in China. But thanks to a feisty Jane Fonda (when was she anything else?) and her sidekick Michael Douglas, the evil machinations of the nuclear scientist Jack Lemmon are thwarted, the world is saved. But I can't help thinking that the idea of some catastrophic meltdown in regard to China is not a far fetched possibility for the future. I am not thinking of a nuclear meltdown, but an economic and environmental one. 
For some time I have been concerned about the willingness of western business everywhere to relocate to China, and other low cost Asian countries such as the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. It is not so much that we shouldn't be offering business opportunities but it is the way it is done, our acceptance of the sweat shop, child labour, wages insufficient to live on, pollution, dangerous work practices, etc. By purchasing goods and articles from these countries, which are manufactured in working conditions that we would not tolerate at home, and indeed have spent the last one hundred years trying to improve, we are collaborating with a very major social and economic injustice. In some ways this out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to some quite serious economic, social and ethical dilemmas reminds me how we can equally thoughtlessly buy our fish supplies whilst we ransack the ocean and wreck the sea-floor, purchase a leg of lamb without grappling too hard with the ethics of animal husbandry or the violence of the animal's death, or make use of Chinese plywood plundered from increasingly vulnerable and damaged tropical rain forests. 
In my review of the film The Corporation elsewhere on my site, I mention the Nike sweatshops in the Philippines where the wage content of the thirty dollar T-shirt is 3 cents, or one thousandth of the eventual purchase price. Between this machinist and you the purchaser, someone is making a lot of money. Certainly Nike's sales of about US$12 billion would seem to confirm this. When one is prepared to pay so little to the people you employ to make your products, who work long hours in appalling conditions, it must be consoling to be able to say, as Phil Knight (Founder and CEO of Nike) does that "Business is war without bullets." There may indeed be no bullets in this war, but there are certainly a great many casualties. 
It is with these vague thoughts in the back of my mind, that I have been watching our government and business for the last few years pursue a Free Trade Agreement with China. My immediate reaction to this proposal is one of dismay. New Zealand is a country that used to pride itself on its libertarianism, its social progress and its individuality. New Zealand is a country, whilst not as wealthy as it should be, and I talk about that elsewhere, in any survey of openness and lack of corruption comes near the top. In fact this 2005 latest survey and rankings by Transparency International shows us as being second equal, after Iceland and ranking the same as Finland. China is 78th equal along with Senegal, Sri Lanka, Surinam and Morocco. To think that New Zealand will be linking its economy with such a corrupt regime is frightening. Understand that I am not anti-trade as such with China, but with the risk of loosing more and more manufacturing infrastructure to China, there has to be a much higher degree of caution and scepticism in those promoting such an alliance. Our past history of naivety in commerce and the sell-off of so much of our productive assets does not inspire confidence. 
The other major matter with this proposal is the obvious one. This is of a tiny, relatively non-industrialised country getting into economic bed with a giant, the world's most populous country, which is expanding fast into an economic monster. There is something preposterously out of proportion with this proposal, we are not, and we cannot be, equal partners. The continued economic and political naivety of business and government in New Zealand is worrying. The simplistic prognostications of economic gain to me seem more like the avarice of a smug and self-centred clique. And of course, the same injunctions apply to any proposed FTA with America. 
Here are some facts about China:
A few days ago, Air New Zealand announced that its heavy maintenance of long-haul aircraft will be outsourced, some of it to Asia (China). Air New Zealand says this will save the company $100 million over five years. The company says around 600 jobs will be "disestablished". ("Lost" would be a better word, four letter Anglo-Saxon words are often the most appropriate). Apparently many other airlines, including Qantas are doing the same. I just hope they've done their homework correctly, once gone, this facility would be very difficult to regain. If the New Zealand dollar were to fall, which it well could, and the Yuan to appreciate, equally likely, then the savings mooted are unlikely to be realised in practice. You might say, well that's Air New Zealand's business, they're the experts, they'll have done their homework. But I don't agree, I have come to understand that the higher the executive salary, the less the executive competence. After all, if you are paid so much money that a two or three year stint will pay you enough to comfortably retire on, what incentive is that to hard work or long term loyalty to the company? And I can't forget that nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer's money went to rescuing this company from its previous private incarnation and incompetent management, have things changed that much? The simple fact is I no longer trust executives to make correct long term decisions, and that mistrust is founded in many examples of misguided short-term decision-making and abuse of monopoly both here and overseas. But even if you disagree with my assessment, the fact is that the loss of 600 highly skilled mechanical and avionic workers is not going to help our much vaunted "knowledge economy".
The likelihood that a FTA with China will make this type of relocation decision even more ubiquitous, and the manufacturing base of this country even more perilous. As much as anything this is a strategic matter for countries to consider. Our economic entanglement with China means that if this relationship sours, or if oil price increases make this outsourcing less economically viable, then we will not be able to provide for this nation the ordinary items of commerce and household that we need to sustain us. This desire to become close economic associates of a country that most Westerners can't even begin to understand, and the bits that we do understand are frightening, is greed without without moral scruple, the desperate capitalist search for the ever bigger fish to land, even if that fish turns out to be the shark that bites him.
We need to do much more to help these countries, as much as we can, to develop their economies in a sound and sustainable fashion, bypassing the first two centuries of the Industrial Revolution. Short-term profiteering from the results of their environmental vandalism is not, in the long run, going to help them or us. We are buying into a frenzy of development that will end in tears for us all. Of course, that presupposes that the West has already accepted the self-evidence of the need for sustainable development. As that has not yet happened, then it is not surprising that those nations that are keen to ape our progress should also miss the point of this moral perspective, and that is why it is so supremely important that we gain this ethical high ground before we all sink deep into the economic and environmental morass that otherwise awaits us.
Added 8/2/06 - Amnesty International have just sent me an appeal for money to help Amnesty to continue its work in improving human rights in China - this is what Amnesty says "The Chinese government continues to commit appalling human rights abuses against its citizens on a massive scale..... tens of thousands of people are arrested every year for peacefully exercising their fundamental right to freedom of expression ... hundreds of thousands languish in "re-education camps" .... nearly 10,000 are executed by China's barbaric criminal justice system, etc" Most thinking people will have a profound respect for Amnesty International, and the care it takes in confirming its facts on which it bases its opions and its campaigns. Apart from reinforcing my own major concerns about our free-trade negotiations, I will be sending Amnesty $50 to help, may I ask any readers to do the same?
Added 16/2/06 - This is an extract from a BBC news page today. Satisfying China's demand for Energy. This starts by painting the background of China's instiable thirst for oil, and equally insatiable appetite for coal. It goes on:
But even that won't be enough. That's why China is also pumping billions of dollars in to renewable energy. Everything from solar, to wind power, to biomass. By 2020 China wants 15%of its power to come from renewable sources. Most of that will come from one source, hydro-power.
The five great rivers of Asia all rise in China; the Yellow river, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween and the great Brahmaputra. China wants to dam them all.
On the middle reaches of the Yangtze work is nearing completion on the biggest of them all, the Three Gorges Dam. When it's finished in three years time the world's biggest turbines deep inside the world's biggest dam will pump out 25 gigawatts of electricity. That's equivalent to one-third of the UK's total energy output.
But that's only the start. Plans have just been approved to build another mega dam, higher up the river, across the Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the most beautiful and spectacular river gorges in the world. Further west close to the Burma border plans to build a series of dams across the Salween (Nu Jiang) have recently been given the green light. Environmental groups are purple with rage.
But the simple fact is that China will need all of these projects simply to keep up with its breakneck economic growth.
On the middle reaches of the Yangtze work is nearing completion on the biggest of them all, the Three Gorges Dam. When it's finished in three years time the world's biggest turbines deep inside the world's biggest dam will pump out 25 gigawatts of electricity. That's equivalent to one-third of the UK's total energy output.
But that's only the start. Plans have just been approved to build another mega dam, higher up the river, across the Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the most beautiful and spectacular river gorges in the world. Further west close to the Burma border plans to build a series of dams across the Salween (Nu Jiang) have recently been given the green light. Environmental groups are purple with rage.
But the simple fact is that China will need all of these projects simply to keep up with its breakneck economic growth.
The world truly is going mad.