The Irony of Anti-Globalisation
The protest du jour emanates from Hong Kong, where 9,000 individuals have staged an anti-World Trade Organisation protest, in advance of a summit to be held there Tuesday.
While I appreciate that a summit's location has never deterred anti-globalisation activists from, um, heading across the globe to protest trade policies, there's something ironic about the latest venue. Hong Kong, an island outpost with no natural resources, became one of the most prosperous jursidictions on the planet *precisely because it has relied on trade (and liberal economic policies to boot)*.
Without the "global integration" and "trade" that these activists decry, Hong Kong would be a mere economic cub instead of an Asian tiger.
posted by ROC @ 12:14 pm
2 comments
2 Comments:
Please note that a very good proportion of the most "active" protesters were in fact South Korean farmers - some of the more highly subsidised in the world after the EU and Japan.
As for the argument that "globilisation exploits the poor", one must sometimes wonder.
Tonga applied recently for membership of WTO. One of the preconditions was the removal of restraints on the "provision of services" to allow international competition.
It happens that "provision of services" such as tourism is the single largest item in Tonga's international trading. Removal of that restriction would, in effect, result in the overseas ownership of Tonga. Now that would be fine, if the owners were then to provide the income and services that the Tongan people might expect from their own right to trade.
I expect that is unlikely to happen.
SO is "free trade" a good thing for micro-nations?
The book is open.
Hong Kong could only exist as a free market because it was the colony of British Imperialism in the region and now is the colony of mainland China.
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