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Home  Blog Americans are wondering whether Santa Claus is Chines
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Americans are wondering whether Santa Claus is Chines |
As Christmas circa 2006 looms, US paranoia over China’s rise has got to
the point that some worried Americans are even beginning to wonder
whether Santa Claus is Chinese.
One prominent American who
thinks Santa is Chinese is Lester Brown, a former president of the
World Bank and now head of the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), a
Washington-based think tank.
In an article titled “Santa Claus
is Chinese or, Why China is Rising and the US is declining” published
by the EPI on December 18, Brown writes: “I know Santa Claus is Chinese
because each Christmas morning after all the gifts are unwrapped and
things settle down I systematically go through the presents to see
where they are made. The results are almost always the same: roughly 70
per cent are from China. After some research, it seems that my
one-family survey is representative of the country as a whole.”
Warming
to his theme, Brown says, “Let’s start with toys. Some 80 per cent of
the toys sold in the United States - from Barbie dolls to video games -
are made in China. Talking toys that speak English learned the language
from Chinese workers. Electronic goods - from Apple’s iPod to
Microsoft’s Xbox - are made in China. Clothing - from the latest
Cashmere sweaters to gym suits - are also likely to have a Made in
China label.”
Until as recently as the early 1990s, conventional
wisdom had it that no developing country had ever got rich exporting
cheap plastic toys to the US. That caveat, it seems, is now passÈ - if
commentators like Brown are to be believed.
Continuing with his
Christmas thesis, Brown writes: “The Christmas tree itself may come
from China. While real Christmas trees are grown in every state in the
United States and are marketed locally, many families now gather around
artificial Christmas trees. Eight out of every 10 artificial Christmas
trees sold in the United States are made in China. Last year Americans
spent over $ 130 million on plastic Christmas trees from China.”
I
am reminded, in this context, of what an American lady of my
acquaintance said one day back in the early 1980s while visiting the
home of some friends of mine in New York State’s Westchester County
where I happened to be staying. Admiring a flower arrangement in a
corner of the living room, the lady remarked, “What lovely flowers! Are
they artificial?”
I remember thinking at the time that things
had come to a very sorry pass indeed if artificial flowers had become
the yardstick by which the beauty of flowers was judged.
To
revert to Brown’s article, he writes: “This year Americans will spend
over $ 1 billion on Christmas ornaments from China. And in perhaps the
greatest irony of all even nativity scenes are made in China.”
According
to Brown, last year Americans spent $ 39 million buying nativity scenes
shipped in from the East. “China’s success in attracting foreign
investment capital and mobilising this huge workforce has made it the
workshop of the world,” says Brown.
But China hasn’t only become
the workshop of the world; it has become the factory to the world and
an export powerhouse. Its trade surplus with the United States exceeded
$ 200 billion last year. Its foreign exchange reserves now total over a
trillion dollars (the highest in the world). In 2005, China overtook
the United State’s as the world’s biggest recipient of foreign direct
investment, with inflows totaling $ 59 billion.
Data released by
China last year show that the Chinese economy is much bigger and less
dependent on exports than previously reported.
China raised its
GDP in 2004 to $ 1.93 trillion from $ 1.64 trillion based on the
results of the country’s first nationwide economic survey. According to
an announcement by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics on the
survey’s main findings, China’s rapidly growing tertiary or services
sector now constitutes 40.7 per cent of the economy. It was previously
believe to constitute 31.9 per cent.
In 2004, China overtook the
United States to become the world’s leading exporter of information and
communications technology (ICT) goods such as mobile phones, laptop
computers and digital cameras, according to data compiled by the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
China
exported $ 180 billion worth of ICT goods in 2005, compared with US
exports in the same category worth $ 149 billion. In 2003, the US led
with exports of ICT goods worth $ 127 billion, followed by China with $
123 billion. Thus, China’s exports of ICT goods grew by a staggering $
57 billion in only one year.
China’s share of total world trade
in ICT goods, including both imports and exports, rose to $ 329 billion
in 2004, up from $ 35 billion in 1996. Thus, China’s total trade in ICT
goods grew nearly ten-fold in eight years - a rate of growth unmatched
by any sector of any other economy in history. Could it be, then, that
not only Santa Claus but Bill Gates, too, is Chinese?
Reverting
again to Lester Brown’s article, he writes: “That the US Christmas is
made in China is a metaphor for a far deeper set of economic issues
affecting the United States. Today Christmas is celebrated in both the
United States and China - but for different reasons and with far
different economic consequences. For the Chinese, the manufacturing
bonanza means record profits, rising incomes, and, in a society where
people save some 40 per cent of their income, a sharp jump in savings.
In the United States, Christmas shopping expenditure, headed for
another record high this year, contribute to rising credit card debt
and a soaring trade deficit.”
Says Brown: “Underneath the
American Christmas spirit and good cheer is a debt-laden society that
appears to have lost its way, marred in the quicksand of consumerism.
As a society, we seem to have forgotten how to save so we can invest in
a better future. Instead of leaving our children a promising economic
future, we are bequeathing them the highest debt burden of any
generation in history.”
Massive military spending by President
George W. Bush’s administration on its misadventures in Afghanistan and
Iraq, coupled with tax cuts for rich Americans, has wiped out the
federal budget surpluses inherited from the Clinton administration and
has increased the fiscal deficit to an all-time high.
US
military spending on the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and
Iraq now totals well over $ 600 billion and is headed for the
trillion-dollar mark. The Iraq occupation is costing US taxpayers $ 8
billion a month and the bill could rise even higher if Bush follows
through with his plan to increase US troop levels in Iraq.
Reverting
to Brown’s article again, he writes: “At the personal level, credit
card debt just keeps climbing and at the government level we have the
largest deficit in history. At the international level, we have a trade
deficit that moves to a new high month after month.”
Says Brown:
“It’s not that our Christmas is made in China, but rather the mindset
that has led to it that is mot disturbing. We want to consume no matter
what. We want to spend now and let our children pay. It is this same
mind set that introduces tax cuts while waging a costly war. Economic
sacrifice is no longer part of our vocabulary. After the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbour, President Roosevelt banned the sale of private
cars in order to mobilise the manufacturing capacity and engineering
skills of the US automobile industry to build tanks and planes. In
contrast, after 9/11 President Bush urged us to go shopping.”
What
Brown failed to point out in his article, however, was the fact that
the United States has long been the most wasteful society in the world.
With less than five per cent of the world’s population, the United
States consumes 28 per cent of the world’s annual output of resources.
US
economists keep urging developing countries to adopt policies aimed at
“sustainable” economic development. But we seldom hear them
recommending the same prescription for the United States - the world’s
mist unsustainable economy by far.
What is sauce for the goose
ought, surely, to also be sauce for the gander. In the United States,
however, people are so intent on consuming that personal savings have
virtually disappeared.
As Brown points out, Americans have an
average of five credit cards for every man, woman and child. Of the 145
million cardholders, only 65 million clear their accounts each month.
The other 90 million cannot seem to catch up and are paying steep
interest rates on their remaining balance.
“Millions of
Americans are so deeply in debt that they may remain indebted for
life,” says Brown. The official US national debt, the product of years
of fiscal deficits, nowe totals $ 8.5 trillion.
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