Translation
courtesy of
China mines us
By Laurent MAURIAC
Saturday February 19, 2005 (Release - 06:00)
When China changes the world
Erik Izraelewicz, Grasset, 306 pp., 18,50 €.
"L has China worries me", says the duchess of Guermantes in A the research of wasted time. A long time after Proust, this concern haunts the Western countries. It is in the center of the book that Erik Izraelewicz, deputy manager of the drafting of the Echoes, devotes to the boom of the Chinese economy. Or rather with its return, after a long bracket. The country was "during almost the first eighteen centuries totality of our era the principal economic power of planet", points out the author.
Is it necessary to worry? Not, if one believes the classical economics of it. All the countries are gaining with the rise of a new trade partner. A theory already illustrated by other Asian countries since the Fifties. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea knew a takeoff carried by the low wages, then a progressive correction with the rich countries. "In 1960, Japan had unit wage costs twice lower than those of France; in 1980, they were identical; they are higher today." Can such a scenario reproduce with China? The author in doubt. Initially, because of the size of the country, of this "reserve army" of 1,3 billion inhabitants. Then, because China invites itself in the international trade in full universalization of the exchanges. Lastly, because the method implemented, a "hypercapitalism" with the minimal rules, controlled by a "entire State with the service of the capital", is single. From where a speed in the changes which defies all the forecasts.
Throughout book, Erik Izraelewicz gets busy to show this exception, by successive keys, by multiplying the anecdotes and the illustrations. It is, for example, of the French owners visiting, in 1990, the building site of Pudong, the new economic center of Shanghai, incrédules in front of the announced metamorphosis of the city. They are the figures as regards construction: 50 % of cement consumed on planet or the cranes in activity in the world. It is the strategy of Wal-Mart, the American giant of the distribution, which reviewed of China its principal supply. This example illustrates the contradiction in which are plunged all the Western countries: the distributors are supplied in China, in the name of the interests of the consumers. They thus cause suppressions of employment and a fall of the purchasing power.
What can make the Western countries? With this question put at the any end of the book the author advances a little vague answers. To leave to the attack the Chinese market, to accelerate European construction... Admittedly, but the conclusion which rises from the accounts and the examples brought is more pessimistic: the reader guesses that the purchasing power in Europe and in the United States will not be able to be maintained a long time. The author suggests that one can share the concern of the duchess of Guermantes, but does not go completely at the end of its reasoning.