Shift in Global Geopolitical Power and China's Role

By Albert Tobby in Beijing, China

IT seems that almost all of us share the same view about what is happening in Papua New Guinea, regarding the anti-Asian/Chinese campaign.

I even receive face book messages condoning the acts of the looters and adamantly accusing the Asians.

I think we PNG are missing something here. We probably are missing out some information here about how the global businesses are functioning and change in the geopolitical powers.

With the unfolding of the 2008 Financial Crisis, which is still going on throughout the world and analysist and practitioners still cannot predict how adverse it’s going to get and when it’s going to end.

Anyway the financial crisis marked the end of the Brettonwood system and the Washington Consensus which are the pillars of the Liberal Market economy.

Brettonwood institutions such as World Bank and IMF are taking major institutional amendments to their ways of doing business.

China is now given more voting right. In fact after the October G20 meeting in London, China contribution to IMF and World Bank has increased.

President Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy (French President), Dimitrive Medvedev and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown all agreed that China should be considered as a partner in global development and not a rival.

Chairman of Rio-Tinto when selling its shares to China, said, "The world is turning towards China and forming a strategic alliance with China is very important.

Nobel Laureate Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffery Saccs analyzed that the Washington consensus has come to an end and the world today will see the Beijing Consensus dominating business rules and operation throughout the globe.

By the way, Washington consensus was a mean to exhibit USA’s hegemony but it has declined since the end of Cold War.

And USA was further defeated when Washington gave in to Cuba recently.
China is now regarded as a factory of the world. Simply, factory of world economy next door to PNG.

The impact of China’s manufacturing industries and business is felt everywhere in the world well beyond the confines of corporate boardrooms.

China’s rapid integrations into the global economy adding more than 1.3 billion consumers and labor force of 800 million to the worlds total can't help but change the global economic equilibrium broadly.

America and Europe are market hubs of Chinese products. More than 50% of Chinese manufactured consumer goods are bought by Europeans and Americans.

With the Chinese magic of cost-innovation, Chinese manufacturers are offering customers dramatically more for less.

Chinese companies are offering customers high technology goods at low cost, the Chinese companies are presenting the customers with unmatched choice of products in what used to be considered standardized, mass-market segments and thirdly Chinese companies are using low costs to offer specialty products at a dramatically lower prices.

These strategies are destabilizing the global business circles and the Chinese competitors are moving aggressively into the global market core pushing the traditional players mainly from the West to the market periphery.

While that said, some of our MP's are collaborating with the conspirators of this looting and protests to push out the Asians because of the current governments alliances with the Chinese government and business.

I get this one from the media report yesterday but cannot verify the facts. However the whole thing looks fishy to me though.

The truth is PNG need China to eradicate poverty and bring employment. PNG can be the manufacturing hub of the Pacific if we align ourselves properly with the growing Chinese market.

If we continue to mess around like this, we will see Fiji and Vanuatu flying over our heads in development status because they are aligning with China now.

They are already way ahead of us right now and given few more years, the gap will be much bigger than imagined.

I agree that at the micro level, there is much needed to be done. Things such as government bureaucracy and institutional profiteers, rent-seekers, irregular regulatory system and wantokism that cause continuous systematic institutional failure that made PNG lack of control over business practices and activities.

This situation has provided favorable environment for unscrupulous activities and it is not only the Chinese who are doing it.

We have the Indians (City Pharmacy) selling cheap anti-viral snake bite medicine, at a remarkably high price, which cannot be used to treat popular snake bites from snakes like Papuan black.

These drugs are brought in illegally. The Malaysians and Japanese engaged in massive logging without proper socio-demographic survey and even collaborating with state institutions like Police to form illegal security forces to intimidate and threaten the traditional land owners.

These have been going on for the last 30 years and no one talked about it. The Indonesians are walking across the border illegally with low quality products to be sold at the high prices to Papua New Guineans in Vanimo and Wewak.

The Filipinos are exploiting our marine resources with over fishing without any marine surveillance from any authority.

Walk to Vidar and you'll see hundreds of Tuna lying outside the fishing baskets which are not supposed to be part of the catch that will be canned.

Yet no one talks about it. Even the waste from the factory is dumped just near the villages next to the factory, which increases flies population and stinky stacks that is harmful for the villager’s health.

No one is talking about it, even though research by IMR proved it to be detrimental to the local community's health.

We haven't seen big Chinese investment of those magnitudes apart from small enterprises and supermarkets.

Ramu Nickel is the first, even though they haven't got into operation, they've already faced discriminations by Papua New Guineans.

Chinese are not alone in this. There is a gross institutional regulatory failure in PNG and us genuine Papua New Guineans need to step up.

I believe Papua New Guineans are not born discriminators, we single out the Chinese in the sins committed by all Asian community.

Is it because we have been doctrinated by the Western Medias and school of thoughts.
Westerners always have a suspicious view of the Chinese and feel threaten to the rise of Chinese.

Simply because it is the only existing biggest communist state after the cold war. Its advancement and rise means a failure to the Western Liberal Democratic underpinnings.

Can we at least take few minutes to think outside the box? According to whose standards are Chinese products considered low quality?

Unlike, China has met its MDG of alleviating 50% of its population out of poverty. China did it within 3 years after the MDG was established in 2000.

It is the only country in the whole world to meet its MDG requirement. They have a proven track record of alleviating poverty.

For the last 30 years we have aligned ourselves to the Western Economies but see what happen.

The current development indicators speak for itself. HDI is very low compared to small countries like Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Fiji, who do not have the resources like PNG do.

Even though PNG is so rich yet we are developing an increasingly poor society. The micro economic and political issues determine a nations participating at the macro level. It also reflects our alliances at the macro level.

I'll close with comparative analysis from an African Country. Angola which is affected by the continuous civil war and unrest that deteriorated the whole economy for more than 30 years have refused to seek aid from IMF and World Bank but instead turned to China for financial assistance and business cooperation.

Angola is now progressing steadily to meet its MDG development requirements.
Angola, like PNG is rich with natural resources, however, haven't developed with western dominance.

With the rise of China, she provides an alternative development path that is workable in least developed economies.

So China is in PNG to help. Let’s embrace her or regret eternally.
Note:

Note: This article is contributed by Albert Tobby, a PNG student in China. For inquiry, email: m_yakai@hotmail.com or phone: +86-13174486296 or visit www.mathewyakai.blogspot.com/ and leave comments