The World Must Boycott China.
World dominion should not be tolerated.
Following the fatal clash between Chinese and Indian border defence troops in the Galwan valley region, many pro-government groups and individuals in India have been promoting a China “boycott”.
Calls for a boycott of Chinese goods, technology and investment have been growing in India since early May, when Chinese troops began to build up in disputed territory in Ladakh, and violent skirmishes and stand-offs occurred between troops on the ground. An Indian-built programme that helps users identify and delete Chinese apps on their phones was downloaded more than 5m times in May before it was blocked by Google.
Though it sounds far too aggressive and extremist to boycott all trades with China, it has its rationale. It is not deniable that there certainly is some emotional drive to it from an Indian point of view, but the justifications for it are more than legitimate not only for India but also for the entire world.
When I say “China” here, I am specifically referring to the communist party of China, not the country or its people. A party that has established its total dictatorship over the population.
The communist party of China has made its motives very clear. Their ideology of world hegemony and monopoly power has been discovered.
India solely boycotting all Chinese products would be an economic suicide, however, “Boycott China” is an achievable goal if the world unifies in doing so.
India is not the only country that is having to deal with China’s intrusions. Similar intrusions were observed in Taiwan. Economically, China has been using unjust trade practices like export subsides, counterfeiting and goods dumping to get an advantage over other countries. One of their tactics has been to create a trade surplus and thus making the country dependent on China for trade.
In this article, I’ll try to systematically disintegrate some of the most noteworthy methods used by China to spread its influence all over the world.
It is important to understand, why the free world must get together to boycott China and pressurize them into changing their practices.
Trade basics.
To understand how China exploits a country’s trade and export industry, we’ll have to first understand some basic reasons for why do countries trades resources and products.
There are three main objectives of trading:
- Resources unavailability. The unavailability of certain goods(either raw materials or finished products), in one country, while it’s available in another.
- Cost efficiency. Availability of a product or service in another country at a cheaper price.
- Superior quality. The third reason is the availability of better quality products in another country.
So, the advantages of trading are pretty clear, consumers will have more choices, access to cheaper goods, and every country can specialise its own indigenous areas and be able to produce better products. This benefits many countries at the global level.
So economically, it makes complete sense to trade. In fact, trading is so practical that a research indicated that for every 1% increase in the trade to GDP ratio, there’s a 0.47% increase in the GDP to per capita ratio of that country.
However, this is an oversimplified theoretical explanation and there are many complications in the real practical world. For instance,
- What about the developing and underdeveloped countries that cannot specialize in any sector on their own?
- If a country doesn’t have a great natural resource nor any specialization, they won’t be able to export goods or services to other countries. Imports would be their only trades.
Under such circumstances, trade will only result in loses. What shall such countries do then?
In such a situation, many underdeveloped and developing countries levy import taxes that are called tariffs. Taxes have to be paid on the purchase of imported goods. Imposing such taxes ensures the benefit to the local industries of that country.
However, there are several other motivations for imposing tariffs. For instance, when a country wants to pressurize another country regarding a geopolitical decision or when a country disapproves of an economic decision of another country, they levy these taxes.
So tariffs are also imposed to mound pressure.
Let us now see how the Chinese communist party abuses trade and tariffs against other countries.
Dirty trade tactics.
China joined the WTO in 2001. Certain conditions were imposed on China at the time. China promised to liberalize it’s economy further to facilitate trade exchanges.
But 20 years later, China has aggressively misused the WTO for its own benefit.
So how bad is the situation today?
Made in China products are available in almost every country across the world. That is the extent to which China exports but when it comes to importing, there’s a drastic contradiction.
The largest networks of the world — Facebook, YouTube, Google, Amazon are nowhere to be found in China. China has not allowed them to enter its realm. This is a one-sided trade, in a way. China enables exports of products but restricts imports from other countries.
Furthermore, China has duplicated these companies and pilfered their technology and created clones of these companies in their country.
In China, YouTube is replaced by Youku, Amazon Alibaba, Google by Baidu and Facebook by Weibo. These are all copycat companies that stole their entire concept and ideas and have created clones, hence hindering other countries from profiting.
China is indulged in Intellectual Property theft in almost every sector. Normally, it would not have been possible in a democratic country. For instance, if a UK based company tries to clone a product of some company of the US, the US company can file a case in any court of the UK.
On the other hand, in China, there’s no likelihood of any legal action. The government there promotes these clone companies and keeps them protected.
In fact, the rules have been twisted there to ensure the immunities of these companies. For example, according to one such rule, if any foreign company wants to set up a business in China, they’ll first have to transfer their intellectual property rights to a Chinese partner.
The European Union Commission had filed a complaint regarding this in the WTO in 2018.
It has been estimated that the USA incurs a loss between 300–600 dollars annually due to this pilferage by China.
Dumping Strategy.
Next in China’s arsenal is a dirty tactic known as dumping.
Dumping refers to the export of a locally made product at such ridiculously low prices that it would drive the industries of that country out of business. This increases their market share and facilitates in gaining a monopoly in that industry.
You might wonder, how China manufactures goods at such low prices. It is because the Chinese government provides export subsidies to these companies.
USB sticks, calculators, vitamin C & E, nylon cords, measuring tapes, CFL lamps, caustic soda, kitchenwares, solar cells, etc. are just some of the items that China is believed to be dumping in India. India government has begun a review process.
Not just India, investigations are ongoing in Australia on how China is dumping steel and aluminium over there. In fact, the EU has already increased the import tax on steel coming from China. Their investigation revealed how China was dumping steel in Europe and the USA.
Currency manipulation.
A third tactic is Currency manipulation.
China has often been accused of deliberately underpricing its currency in comparison to the US dollar in order to bolster its cost advantage. So that 30–40% is conserved whenever someone buys a made in China product.
The low value of the currency would not have been so if it were allowed to rectify in accordance with the free market.
Unfair trade tactics, IP theft, dumping and currency manipulation, these are the reasons due to which Donal Trump had declared a trade war against China. Import tariffs were hiked to prevent China from harvesting these benefits.
Disgusting Politics.
Politically, the Chinese communist party has been trying to exert its influence in the internal affairs of other countries through nefarious means. The best example of this is Australia.
Political spying.
China had tried to manipulate the internal political affairs of Australia. It had been alleged that China made several thousand WeChat accounts to defame the Australian Prime minister. China has also been accused of building their spy networks in the Australian Universities, to spy on Chinese students studying there.
Australian Strategic Policy institute released a report last week which revealed how China is employing covert and deceptive methods to infiltrate the foreign political parties and the multinational companies to topple democratic systems all over the world.
Debt Trap.
Even African countries have not been spared by the misdoings of China. Taking advantage of the poverty of these countries, China constructs highways, dams and large infrastructure projects on loans, being fully aware that those countries won’t be able to pay them back.
When these countries are unable to repay their loans, China occupies strategic locations in these countries. This is called a “debt trap”. Razing a country thoroughly by trapping it in debts.
There are several examples of this. Let’s take the example of Zambia. A 2018 report revealed that the Zambian government was selling off the entire control of its national electricity company to China as it was unable to repay China’s loans.
The largest and most important port of Kenya — port of Mombasa was forfeited to China because Kenya did not have the money to repay China.
This has also begun in many Asian countries as well.
An island in the Maldives has been sold off to China completely.
Hambantota, a strategically important port in Sri Lanka, has been taken up on lease by China for 99 years.
China is questioned on the same premise over its Belt and Road initiative. It is believed that China wants to construct through so many countries would basically be used to lure countries into debt traps.
Chinese dictatorship.
There’s no free media or opposition in the country due to its dictatorship in China. There is no opposition which can hold the ruling party accountable in the wake of corruption or wrongdoing.
This is the reason why, when a disease like COVID-19 spread outside from their country, nobody knew anything about what they had done or whether all information was disclosed or not. There was no free media to report.
So these were the ways in which the Chinese communist party is exerting its influence on the rest of the world.
The good news is China is up against all — Australia, USA, Europe and even Africa. So, if all these countries come together and unite against the Chinese communist party, only then would it be possible to contain their dominion.
As Abraham Lincoln had rightly said —
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
