Neoliberalism ‘with Chinese Characteristics’

example, Samsung Electronics announced it was moving its entire

PC-making business to China, having previously invested $2.5

billion there, ‘creating 10 sales subsidiaries and 26 production

companies, employing a total of 42,000 people’.

35

 Japanese out-

sourcing of production to China contributed to the decline in

Japanese manufacturing employment from 15.7 million in 1992 to

13.1 million in 2001. Japanese companies also began to withdraw

from Malaysia, Thailand, and elsewhere in order to relocate in

China. They are now so heavily invested in China that ‘more than

half of China–Japan trade is conducted among Japanese com-

panies’.

36

 As happened in the US, corporations can do very well

while their home countries su

ffer. China has displaced more

manufacturing jobs from Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and else-

where than it has from the US. China’s spectacular growth both

internally as well as in its international trading position has corres-

ponded with long-lasting recession in Japan, and lagging growth,

stagnating exports, and periodic crises in the rest of East and

South-East Asia. The negative competitive e

ffects on many

countries will likely deepen in time.

37

China’s dramatic growth has, on the other hand, made it more

dependent upon foreign sources of raw materials and energy. In

2003 China took ‘30 per cent of the world’s coal production, 36 per

cent of the world’s steel and 55 per cent of the world’s cement’.

38

 It

went from relative self-su

fficiency in 1990 to being the second

largest importer of oil after the US in 2003. Its energy companies

sought stakes in Caspian Basin oil and opened negotiations with

Saudi Arabia to secure access to Middle Eastern oil supplies. Its

energy interests in the Sudan as well as in Iran have created ten-

sion with the US in both arenas. It competed with Japan over

access to Russian oil. Its imports from Australia quadrupled in the

1990s as it sought new sources of metals. In its desperate need for

strategic metals such as copper, tin, iron ore, platinum, and alu-

minium it scurried to cut deals with Chile, Brazil, Indonesia,

Malaysia, and many other countries. It sought agricultural and

timber imports from everywhere (massive purchases of soy beans

from Brazil and Argentina helped breathe new life into those econ-

omies), and Chinese demand for scrap metal became so enormous

as to raise prices all over the globe. Even US manufacturing has

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