I bought a copy of Spiegel’s International Edition, a special dedicated to globalisation, (Malta’s latest buzz word). I thought it would make good reading because unlike so many “local experts’ reports”, it is a very crude and realistic account of what is really going on in the world.
Malta recently had mass redundancies and a dim cry of competitivity has been heard. Yet I ask how competitive can tiny Malta get. Unlike our rather naïve approach, the German media has produced a highly informative report on what threats China and India are to this changing world.
Frank Hornig and Wieland Wagner report: “China is back along with one fifth of the world’s population, all of them with a personal ambition to escape personal poverty.” Yet even though the Japanese and South Koreans were driven by the same ideals, Chinese are driven by powerful historic claims of superiority and a yearning cultivated by a powerful party and nurtured by brain-washing in schools. This hunger for power is an attempt to mitigate the defeats suffered in the Opium Wars.
The Chinese did not follow the Japanese example of engaging in trading disputes with powerful opponents like the US. China has set on what it calls a “peaceful resurrection”. There are no fair rules in this game. China offers cheap labour to American and European companies. Frank Hornig and Wieland Wagner continue that China’s target is that by 2015 it will be able to lift 50 Chinese companies into the ranks of the world’s 500 biggest global players and to foster 500 mid-size and 5,000 small multinational businesses.
The Chinese market is diverse; it is not just exporting plastic toys and white gym shoes anymore. China is a global player in markets, business deals. China has invested in housing brand companies that want to increase their profits. Besides producing various products, it churns out double the number of engineers that graduate in the US. China and the US have been described in economic terms as Siamese twins. Thomas Friedman, columnist of the New York Times correctly asserts that “the US and China have slipped into a symbiotic relationship, yet China is neither a free market nor a democracy”.
China will probably beat the West with its own weapon, the economy. China produces two thirds of the world’s DVD players and other electronic equipment, not to mention textiles and toys and, above all, industries are heading towards China because they have an assurance of big profits and no trouble with employees’ rights and worker’s unions. China has become a perfect haven for power hungry, greedy enterprises. Reading the Spiegel accounts, reminded me of much of Stalin’s Gulags and thought the global trend is slavery once again. Unlike the Gulags though, the Chinese get a meagre wage and have a place to sleep. The Chinese government is capitalising on exploitation of workers, the difference this time being that it is not hidden, it is barefaced and has western blessings.
The Branded and the brands
When I was young, all you could find in a little bazaar was the infamous “Zarbun tac-Cina”. Today you find it under another name and package, a more attractive one called a brand name. China has attracted many companies and names we are familiar with. They are names we find around us all the time. Unlike the day when a Zarbun tac-Cina was equivalent to a Zarbun tal-qamel, today’s brand and marketing makes all the difference. On the package you will not have a list of how many workers were exploited, worked for 53-60 hours of a six-day week and got a meagre Lm44 a month.
Notwithstanding the fact that by Chinese working standard those are good conditions.
A picture of the workers at the shoe factory reminded me of a practice our teacher had in Grade I. The factory girls are having a break, their heads are on their work top and they are told to have a short nap, not even the liberty of some space or a chance to move around and loosen their tense muscles.
Recently, in Munich, there was a shop window in a souvenir shop full of pretty wooden soldiers and figurines. An invasive placard stood on the edge of a shelf it said: “These are made in Germany”. That explained the tremendously cheaper prices in the market stalls. Globalisation has not left anything authentic; the Asian sweat shops are capable of copying anything, and most things are finished in Europe to be able to fix the made in Germany, Italy or France mark.
China has a constant annual growth of 9-9.5 per cent a year in exports. In 2004 it exported $169.7 billion in goods and services just to the US.
On the other hand, Germany is not only facing problems of companies migrating to China to make use of the “Asian Sweat Shops”, but since the unification and fall of the Eastern bloc, the ideal of wage harmonisation between former East Germany and the West has collapsed. Former East Germany has become a burden because most of Germany’s 4.7 per cent unemployed workers come from there. With the fall of the Eastern bloc the doors were open to more competitive low wages from other East European countries. Black market jobs are the order of the day, the lowest offer takes the job. Notices for black market jobs are found everywhere – notes are stuck on lamp posts and in cafes. The article “German Job Roulette” recounts a story of a meat packer who worked in the Munich Abattoir; he lost his job in September 2004. He started working in the slaughter house 15 years ago and worked his way up to become head of carcass splitting. Last summer a group of Poles arrived at the abattoir with an interpreter. His colleagues were being made redundant. He was lucky enough to be kept in his post because he was the only one who knew how to use a computer. But when the Poles learnt how to use it, he got the sack.
This is not an isolated case and jobs are up for grabs, even locally. The trend is certain and so is the forecast of 10 hard years for Europe. Yet these 10 years of investment in China will probably crush the rest of us, especially Malta where the quest for being
competitive is more difficult. This is a
serious situation, which should not
be tackled when the doom and gloom is looming over our heads. We need a strategy, a serious one, which has to be addressed. The world is in a slump
as there have not been great innovative technologies for years. If we decide
to enter the global game we need to learn from countries larger than ourselves.
Unfortunately, there isn’t enough space for more extracts from Spiegel’s special on globalisation. I suggest that whoever found this article food for thought, to purchase a copy. We have been fed with buzz phrases that we need to increase our competitivity. How can we? Do we have the man power of 1,306,313,812 prepared to work longer hours for one fifth of the minimum wage? Can we compete or be competitive with such titans, who are allrounders and not just manufacturing based? Is the government suggesting that the next local trend is going to be exploitation of workers and non-existent workers’ rights? If it is so the achievements of so many countries over the past decades will be lost. As for the consumers who are workers as well, there is only one thing to try and stop this global sickness – know your brands, choose your goods and check your labels and support the European product and buy a copy, it is a must-read.