Xi's trade deserves Trump

By Deauwand Myers

President Moon Jae-in's position isn't enviable. Korea is wedged between geopolitical juggernauts and a rogue state.

To Korea's east, there's Japan, the third-largest economy on Earth. To its north, there's North Korea, helmed by a venal dictator, where the casual brutality of state-sanctioned violence, mass incarceration, summary executions, and large-scale starvation are commonplace.

Then there's China, the second-largest economy in the world, led by an increasingly authoritarian government. Before President Xi Jinping, China was once ran as a council democracy, where political elites debated and voted on national agendas. China is now an outright autocracy, where power is concentrated not to a few, but to one; in this case, President Xi.

A few decades ago, according to scholars and pundits, China's economic rise was supposed to be matched by a more democratic government, with burgeoning liberal ideals of the rule of law; freedom of speech, the press, and religion; along with a freer market approach to the economy.

Unfortunately, the exact opposite has occurred. Under Xi's heavy hand, the government has only become more adept at suppression of all political dissent. Under Emperor Xi, the People's Republic of China has only tightened its grip on the citizenry with breakneck speed and precision.

Xi has created a powerful police state apparatus, wherein political rivals, human rights lawyers, and political dissidents are disappeared, sometimes for months, years, or indefinitely, without trials or juries.

Remarkably, China has created a mercantile, quasi-capitalist society without the dynamism of democracy or the usual guidelines a regulated free market system entails.

A wealthier and more powerful China necessarily meant a modernization of the military, but the international community was taken aback when China claimed that all of the Pacific southwest maritime territory was basically Chinese sovereign territory, (especially when looking at a map).

Some Americans did not and do not deserve Trump, but China surely does. For decades, China has misbehaved in international trade and commerce.

China is infamous for the mass production of knockoff goods, from luxury bags, to DVDs, to Apple iPhones; and those who operate in this black market have only become more sophisticated in the production and distribution of said goods.

Theft of defense and intellectual property was and is rampant and systematic. The Chinese military has a whole cyber espionage unit dedicated to this very purpose. China forces foreign companies to share its proprietary practices with the government or a government-backed entity in exchange for access to the Chinese market.

The PRC subsidizes or majority-owns the largest companies in China, in fields like telecommunications (China Telecom), technology (Huawei, Tencent, and Alibaba), and infrastructure (China Railway Construction Corp.). This subsidizing includes offering benefits, like tax incentives and government contracts, to Chinese-backed companies over foreign ones.

Though Trump's tariffs aren't the answer (and will do long-term harm to producers, like American soybean farmers, and American consumers), President Trump is correct about Chinese trade.

The Chinese have operated with abandon and impunity for the last 30 years in international trade. There was and never has been good faith efforts by the Chinese government to heed multiple warnings across several American administrations to conform to international trade norms, or follow rules and regulations set up by the World Trade Organization.

Worse, China doesn't have any excuse at this stage in its economic development. China is on the cusp of being a global superpower, and though there are still millions of poor people in China, its economic rise has seen an elevation of a middle class at a speed and number unprecedented in world history.

Moreover, Xi's consolidation of power has been so absolute, if he really wanted to create meaningful economic reforms backed by the enforcement of the law, he could do it.

Consider: Much more complex, and certainly dangerous, was Xi's implementation of his anti-graft campaign, which has seen many high and middle-ranking Chinese government and military officials imprisoned. Now, undoubtedly, some of this was to stifle any potential political rivals. But some of these figures were legitimately and breathtakingly corrupt.

Unlike intellectual property theft, for example, graft has been embedded in Chinese governmental circles, in some form, for thousands of years. Such a culture, now augmented by technology and an influx of cash via foreign investment, would seem to be intractable. It wasn't.

If Xi can grapple with containing graft, he could muster the same political will to play fair on world markets. China can't have it both ways: access to free markets and all the attendant benefits, while playing so underhandedly while doing so.

It doesn't work that way, and unlike the genteel manners of Obama and Bush II, the human wrecking ball called Trump may just well be enough for China to take the legal constraints of international trade seriously.

Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.