C-FAR #329 November, 1998
China Is Desperately Poor
In Red China, "economic reforms have created
a substantial class of newly wealthy mainlanders, with more than 5.3 million
families boasting annual incomes of 50,000 yuan or more, the Beijing Daily
reported yesterday. ... In 1996, city dwellers made an average 4,839 yuan
per year and rural residents 1,926 yuan." (South China Morning Post,
August 3, 1998) It all sounds so wonderful, doesn't it? In comprehensible
terms, "of China's 320 million families..." (Toronto Star, July
31, 1997) ... just 5.3 million (or 1.65 per cent of them) earn $9,018.60
Cdn. -- roughly what a single person can expect to earn on welfare in Canada.
The average Chinese city dweller earns $873.83 Cdn. The rural peasant earns
$347.12 Cdn. None of which exactly explains why Canada has pinned it's
economic hopes on China and Chinese immigrants with "high powered
business connections back home. China is currently our number-one immigrant
source country. "Leading economist Hu Angang has warned as many as
15 to 18 million people could be out of work [on mainland China next year].
His figure excluded the 160 million 'surplus labour' in the countryside,
the China Economic Times reported." (South China Morning Post, October
14, 1998)
Mounties Harass Gun Owners' Rally
More and more Canadian police seem only too willing
to take on the role of political police and enforcers for the politicians,
the same role played by their counterparts in the Third World despotisms
-- Cuba, Red China, and Indonesia -- so favoured by our Prime Minister.
On September 22, I attended the anti-gun control rally in Ottawa -- the
"Fed Up Rally." I heard a very positive speech by Reform MP Gary
Breitkreutz. Among the guest speakers were Americans, British, and Australians,
who reminded us that gun control is part of a United Nations conspiracy.
At first, I thought the crowds were on the thin side. However, within an
hour I could look behind me and noticed that many more people had arrived
late. Having had a lifetime of experience at demonstrations, dating back
to my role in Toronto's Edmund Burke Society (1967-1972), I estimated our
numbers at between 25,000 and 30,000. The press in Ottawa would put the
number at about 14,000 and the press in Toronto said 10,000. Some gun owners
told us that their buses had been delayed by the RCMP who, allegedly, had
received a bomb threat. [The gun owners were going to blow up their own
buses?] Of course, no bomb was found. Gun owners were convinced that this
was a deliberate delaying tactic to break up the demonstration. That, in
turn, may account for initial press reports of such a low number of protesters.
According to a number of gun owners who were
on the buses, security staff for the Parliament of Canada boarded the buses
before they arrived on Parliament Hill and issued the following orders:
"No guns, no alcohol, no replicas (replica firearms), no cammo (camouflage
clothing), and no nasty signs!" This fact is confirmed by Globe and
Mail reporter Erin Anderssen in her September 26,1998 article on the protest.
Not only do these orders insult our intelligence, but they challenge the
rights and freedoms of Canadians living in a so-called free society. I
am not suggesting that demonstrators should bring guns or replicas, but
some hunters were dressed in cammo, which is part of their hunting attire.
And everyone carried nasty signs, I'm proud to report. That is the right
of political dissenters in a free society! To make matters worse, demonstrators
began noticing snipers on the rooftops surrounding Parliament Hill. I personally
witnessed at least three snipers at various points of the compass around
the Hill. One could tell with the naked eye the silhouette of a heavy weapon
equipped with a bi-pod. Some gun owners had brought binoculars and confirmed
our suspicions. When you add it all up, it spells intimidation, not security.
Had you been on the Hill that day, you might have concluded the people
of Canada serve the government, and not vice versa. -- Urmas A. Toming
What's Wrong With the Third World?
The following news story helps explain the causes
of the desperate backwardness of so much of the Third World, a backwardness
that cannot be solved by huge infusions of Western taxpayers' money. It
is a story of greed, laziness, government indifference to the poverty of
their own people, and backward social practices that make women bear children
and do most of the work.. A story datelined Jesse Nigeria reveals: "He'd
been at a party when it all began, joining in the laughing and drinking
that follow the funeral of an old man in this part of the world. Then,
the roar of an explosion tore through town, shaking the party into silence.
Minutes later, the injured began to run past, some of them on fire. And
then James Agbugho's world fell apart. Someone came to tell him his three
daughters, Emeyitite, Ogberekoba and Keni -- his only children -- had been
near the gasoline pipeline when it erupted into an inferno, killing hundreds
of people. Soon after, he found out they were dead. Days later, sitting
in his four-room mud hut, comforted by a local schoolteacher, the 72-year-old
man is stunned. 'I still cannot believe they are dead,' he said. 'I do
not know how I will carry on, and who will bury me when I die?' For the
people of Jesse, a town of about 12,000 cassava farmers and small traders
in southern Nigeria, the last week has been a journey into darkness. ...
'The effect of this fire is in every house,' said James Ogbakpa, who lives
next door to Agbugho and who lost his wife in the explosion. 'The fire
has eaten the community, and the weeks and months ahead are going to be
difficult for all of us.'
On Oct. 17, as many as 1,000 people were gathered
around the gasoline pipeline that runs through Jesse, scooping up spilling
fuel. It's not clear what opened the pipeline, though officials blame vandals.
For the poverty-stricken people of the Niger River delta this was a gift,
a fountain of money. In a country where gasoline is often a rare commodity,
marked up 1,000 percent for the black market, the people of Jesse could
make more money in a few minutes of gathering gasoline than they could
in a month of selling cassava. No one knows what happened next; perhaps
a scavenger's tool caused a spark, perhaps someone lit a cigarette. But
before anyone knew what was happening, a burst of flames shot through the
crowd, enveloping them. At least 700 people are believed to have been killed,
many of them burned beyond recognition. But ask around, and people say
the real number might be 1,000 dead, perhaps even 1,200. And people kept
dying, particularly in the first days after the blast, when the handful
of local doctors struggled to keep the wounded alive before help came.
A town crier was sent to Jesse after the injured began fleeing hospitals,
worried they would be arrested for causing the fire or for theft. It is
still not clear whether there will be prosecutions. Officials have said
no one will be arrested. But the powerful state petroleum corporation,
which owns the pipeline, reportedly wants officials to charge whoever caused
the leak. In Jesse, though, the fear of arrest has subsided. People are
just trying to find ways to start again. But Agbugho sees no such way.
He is long past the age when he can tend his own cassava fields. His wife
and now the children who cared for him are dead. Two daughters, neither
of whom were married, left young children behind that he must look after.
'My whole family has been wiped out,' he said, 'and there is nothing I
can do now without them.' While no one has reliable figures, townspeople
believe most of those killed in the blast were women. As in much of rural
Nigeria, the women of Jesse bore the brunt of the work and were the family
breadwinners. They would have dashed for the gasoline. Ogbakpa's wife was
among those breadwinners. With her gone, he worries what will happen. ...
Help most likely will not come from the oil wealth that flows through this
town. Nigeria makes billions of dollars in oil profits every year, but
squanders much through corruption and mismanagement. Little of the cash
filters back to the communities where it originates. There are calls for
the government to help. But officials have ruled out compen- sation for
the families of the dead, saying they are thieves. For Josiah Oyawiri,
a senior chief of Jesse, the oil is nothing more than a curse. 'Our only
link with our (oil) is the tragedies which it brings,' he said." (The
Associated Press, October 25, 1998)
Asian Miracle -- Foolish "True
Believers" Misled Us
"The World Bank has come to a firm view
on why the Asian downturn has been so bad. Chief economist Joseph Stiglitz
says it is because of the lack of accurate information about companies,
markets and economies. Speaking at the launch of a World Bank report entitled
Knowledge for Development he said: 'Company accounts in many of these economies
were not transparent and, taken together with other weaknesses in the region,
investors felt they did not know if their money was safe and so left in
a panic.' Something is missing here. If the standard of company accounts
were the determining factor in the severity of financial crises then Asian
markets should have suffered one wild panic after another 20 years ago
and now be models of stability. People who have actually followed Asian
markets over the past 20 years know that accounting standards have improved
steadily and significantly. It is true that some finance directors are
adept at juggling their corporate accounts to present a falsely optimistic
picture. But it does not happen in Asia alone and it is not always the
case that nasty surprises are the result of previous manipulation. Could
one really expect Bangkok retailers in the euphoria of 1996 to have published
accounts foreshadowing insolvency in 1998? Such transparency is not given
to mortals. Much the same goes for econo- mic statistics. If Mr Stiglitz
wants data he can drown himself in the mainland's inflation analyses by
province and product or Taiwan's and South Korea's industrial production
breakdowns or even the details Malaysia publishes of financial institutions'
balance sheets.
Some of it is undoubtedly suspect. It is an expensive
business to amass all the economic data people want and poorer countries
have to watch their budgets. It can also be more difficult to do than in
developed countries. Accurate retail sales figures, for instance, are easier
to collect from big computerised retail chains than from mom and pop shops
that keep their money in a bucket. Yet, with the notable exception of Indonesia,
the warning signals of the crisis Asia now suffers have been apparent from
economic data for several years. Massive inflows of foreign capital in
an environment of artificially supported currencies were reported every
month by official statistics agencies. If foreign investors now complain
that this was not transparent in company accounts they can turn first to
their own domestic banks which connived at hiding the details of their
foreign currency loans to Asia. It all reminds this columnist of an occasion
during the roaring bull market in 1993 when, as an investment strategist,
he had the temerity to ask a foreign client why that client was buying
a Thai property company that amounted to a set of architect's plans valued
at 2 per cent of gross domestic product. His reply: 'I can't help it. Our
Asian Tigers fund took in US$300 million this month and if we keep it in
cash our clients will tell us they can do the same. I have to invest it
fast because we promised to and that means anything we can lay our hands
on so don't get in my way.' He no longer works as a fund manager in Asia
but, if he did, he would probably say that his fund was hit by redemptions
of US$300 million this month and he had to sell everything he could, even
at bargain basement prices that would in other times have him drooling.
The fact is that in 1993 every investment periodical
in the US and Europe was billing Asia as the new hope for world growth
and the man on the street in Cincinnati listened. Now Asia is the black
hole of world collapse and he is still listening. The problem is not the
transparency of data. It is the transparency of eyelids. You can't see
through them if you have them closed. If you use your ears alone you leave
yourself open to people who tell fancy stories you have no way of checking.
And the one story that appeals when things go wrong is entitled 'It's Not
Our Fault'. This story has a big audience in Asia. It apparently now has
one in the World Bank too. (South China Morning Post, October 6 1998)
Red China Shelters Pirates
You know Jean Chretien's communist buddies in
Peking? They're the ones we never say boo to over human rights abuses as
we, with pepper spraying and manhandling of protesters and RCMP spying
on meetings of citizens concerned about Canada's constitution -- See Free
Speech Monitor, November, 1998 -- become more and more like the Oriental
despotism. Chretien's pals in Peking, it seems not only abuse their own
people but protect piracy on the high seas. "Beijing's decision to
free 12 Indonesian pirates instead of extraditing them to Malaysia where
they were wanted for hijacking a fuel tanker has enraged officials of the
International Maritime Bureau. The pirates' release raised questions of
a 'deep plot to cover up China's participation in criminal activity', said
the bureau's Kuala Lumpur- based piracy reporting centre. Chinese authorities
were reported to have repatriated the 12 men to Indonesia last Thursday,
despite Malaysia wanting them for hijacking the MV Petro Ranger on April
16 in the South China Sea after the vessel left Singapore for Ho Chi Minh
City. Malaysian police had applied for the extradition of the 12 men, who
were detained by Chinese port authorities after the vessel was found in
Haiku, Hainan province, on May 1. The tanker's 22 crew members were found
safe aboard the vessel. 'It is unbelievable- able that the 12 persons who
had committed a serious offence of hijacking a vessel were simply sent
home without being prosecuted,' the bureau's International Chamber of Commerce
said. 'This is in blatant disregard to the various international conventions,'
it said. China, as a signatory of the 1988 Rome Convention on unlawful
maritime acts, had shown it was insincere in wanting to play a role in
international maritime affairs. 'Piracy cannot be resolved in this way,'
said the chamber. 'The pirates will have every confidence to carry on knowing
that in China, they can extricate themselves out of difficult situations.'
The bureau said it was the second time China had ignored Article 10 of
the Rome Convention, after it freed 14 pirates arrested in Beihai, Guangxi
province, for the hijacking of a vessel in 1996. 'This is not the first
time that the Chinese ports have been used to shelter hijacked vessels.
'Local officials have been involved in earlier criminal activities,' the
bureau claimed. (South China Morning Post, October 21 1998)
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