`History doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes from time to time` - Mark Twain
One advantage of the West having a moral monopoly is the finger we can point at other nations we decide to be more barbarous than the actions of our own living history. But when barbarity plays host to leaders from Sudan, Zimbabwe and others, a moral high ground no longer becomes the international super-currency over which the UN fantasises.
The Chinese/African situation at the moment is almost swings and round about - or at least it would be in an ideal world. For the £2.8 billion of Chinese aid offered to these mid contenent dictatorships, the African people loose even more of their rights and priveldges than they barely had in the first place. China has economicly outgrown the Secondary Industry that brought it to its place as an economic super-power, so it outsources sweatshops to Africa for a wysiwyg trade - If it looks right it to buy then the rights of people become abjectness.
But is this international moral hole really any different to the spice trade of 19th century colonial India? Or any worse than the 18th century slave trade? As the global moral absolute, it's easy to look down on the lessons we learned in our shared Western history - like a father questioning his son about the sandwich bag of pot hidden under the mattress all the while knowing that he himself smoked worse in college.
The thing is, much as the colonial British Empire brought trade and economic reform to countries such as India and South Africa, they also ushered in a NWO of corruption and exploitation. The only difference between the BE and China's industrialisation of LEDCs is that China is (almost commendabily) bribing it's very own commonwealth for doing so.
While these laconic minor states count their chickens, the unspoken message of the Chinese UN ambassadors is the prosiac justification of their humanitarian violations. And while the Chinese count the yen to be made from international loans and cheap foreign labour, the West loose sleep at the moral implications of trading with it's indispensible Asian small goods outlet country.
Like it says in the title: `history rhymes`, so in this two-tear Brandt little world, maybe we can afford to perhaps let our third world allies develop themselves on an economy of more substance than that to be developed from the scraps off the EU's table.
The paradigm of the industrial revolution as experienced in Britain, Germany, North America, Italy and others is a country develops economicly (courtesy of the industrial revolution) so the state gets richer. As the state gets richer, the education sector develops in accord with the increasing demand for more intellegent variables. As the country becomes more educated the people become aware of their own exploitation and the demand for human rights are born. (Except in China, where conciencious objects are *hushed*). My point is, no country except Utopia has evolved naturally out of humanitarian disgrace - like Orwell says `hope, if there is any, lies in the proles`.
My take on this affair of the complicity between Africa and China is: I encourage it. As much as the West is stropping that the limelight of globalisation has been transposed from the North to the South of the global divide, the cursory aid it offers isn't sufficient to build a future or a stable political/economic integrity. Britain used to suffer from outbreakes of the Black Death, Cholera, Small pox, and the reason we aren't afflicted by these any more isn't the aid we would have received - but the country has developed to a culture of sanitation and responsibility that has come with industrialisation.
Poverty in Africa will never be defeated by aid alone. But aid alone can be a domestic national commodity if the state has the resources and the wherewithal to provide it. So while EU trade emargos proscribe the bulk of African industries, and UK trade laws shake hands with sound economies - there's no blaming Africa for corroborating with China, nor is there blame for China to profit from Africa's human rights grey areas. After all, we can afford our morals.
The Chinese/African situation at the moment is almost swings and round about - or at least it would be in an ideal world. For the £2.8 billion of Chinese aid offered to these mid contenent dictatorships, the African people loose even more of their rights and priveldges than they barely had in the first place. China has economicly outgrown the Secondary Industry that brought it to its place as an economic super-power, so it outsources sweatshops to Africa for a wysiwyg trade - If it looks right it to buy then the rights of people become abjectness.
But is this international moral hole really any different to the spice trade of 19th century colonial India? Or any worse than the 18th century slave trade? As the global moral absolute, it's easy to look down on the lessons we learned in our shared Western history - like a father questioning his son about the sandwich bag of pot hidden under the mattress all the while knowing that he himself smoked worse in college.
The thing is, much as the colonial British Empire brought trade and economic reform to countries such as India and South Africa, they also ushered in a NWO of corruption and exploitation. The only difference between the BE and China's industrialisation of LEDCs is that China is (almost commendabily) bribing it's very own commonwealth for doing so.
While these laconic minor states count their chickens, the unspoken message of the Chinese UN ambassadors is the prosiac justification of their humanitarian violations. And while the Chinese count the yen to be made from international loans and cheap foreign labour, the West loose sleep at the moral implications of trading with it's indispensible Asian small goods outlet country.
Like it says in the title: `history rhymes`, so in this two-tear Brandt little world, maybe we can afford to perhaps let our third world allies develop themselves on an economy of more substance than that to be developed from the scraps off the EU's table.
The paradigm of the industrial revolution as experienced in Britain, Germany, North America, Italy and others is a country develops economicly (courtesy of the industrial revolution) so the state gets richer. As the state gets richer, the education sector develops in accord with the increasing demand for more intellegent variables. As the country becomes more educated the people become aware of their own exploitation and the demand for human rights are born. (Except in China, where conciencious objects are *hushed*). My point is, no country except Utopia has evolved naturally out of humanitarian disgrace - like Orwell says `hope, if there is any, lies in the proles`.
My take on this affair of the complicity between Africa and China is: I encourage it. As much as the West is stropping that the limelight of globalisation has been transposed from the North to the South of the global divide, the cursory aid it offers isn't sufficient to build a future or a stable political/economic integrity. Britain used to suffer from outbreakes of the Black Death, Cholera, Small pox, and the reason we aren't afflicted by these any more isn't the aid we would have received - but the country has developed to a culture of sanitation and responsibility that has come with industrialisation.
Poverty in Africa will never be defeated by aid alone. But aid alone can be a domestic national commodity if the state has the resources and the wherewithal to provide it. So while EU trade emargos proscribe the bulk of African industries, and UK trade laws shake hands with sound economies - there's no blaming Africa for corroborating with China, nor is there blame for China to profit from Africa's human rights grey areas. After all, we can afford our morals.
posted by Ben F. Foster Esq. (c) @ 5:00 PM
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