Preserving Culture in the Face of Globalization

In the late 1970s, when China opened up its economy to the world market, almost all Chinese wore the traditional blue or gray Mao jacket and few consumer goods were available. Instead of cars, the wide boulevards of Beijing were dominated by the quite whistling sound of thousands of bicycles.

However, now things are different. On 29 August 2004, the final night of the Athens Olympics, many Chinese stayed up into the early morning to watch ‘spectacle of China’ on TV by Zhang Yimou, the country’s best known director. The show had been expected to extol the cream of Chinese culture. However, the event only combined many well known ‘Chinese symbols’ such as red lanterns, dragon dancing, kung fu, Peking opera costumes, Chinese musical instruments, Oriental women in modified changshan, etc. The consequence of this show was an immediate outcry nationwide.

In one hand, promoting globalization has invited more and more tourists into the state and created economic benefit. However, on the other hand, these random tourists have misled people's understanding of aboriginal culture and have destructed to the maintenance of the original cultural ecology.

How can China avoid the misunderstanding of its culture? China, like the rest of the wold, faces the challenge to retain its own cultural identity and correct national characteristics.

A loophole of antidumping- wooden bedroom furniture

U.S.- China trade rose rapidly after the two nations signed a bilateral trade agreement in July 1979 after establishing diplomatic relations in January of that year. Concluding the mutual most favored-nation treatment in 1980 spurs to increase their relations further. The Chin’s cheap labor costs and its currency peg have made possible for Chinese exports to the U.S. cheaper. Therefore, China has been a large source of products especially labor-intensive products for the U.S. However, these comparative advantages cause various kinds of disputes between the U.S. and China. A report of Ikenson describes one of the disputes in wooden bedroom furniture trade between the U.S. and China.
In recent years, the export of bedroom furniture from China has increased rapidly due to the development Chinese furniture industry. The Chinese share of the product in the U.S. increased 24 % in 2000 to 49% in 2004[1]. However, on the other hand, this fact caused 34,000 Americans to lose their jobs since 2001 to 2003[2]. As a result of that, in October 2003, a group of about 30 U.S. furniture makers accused China exports wooden bedroom furniture with illegal dumping on the U.S. market[3]. Then, on December 11th, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) formally placed the claim on file for antidumping investigation[4].
Even though the petitioners argue that the U.S. furniture industry is being hurt by Chinese imports, the cause is suspicious. The majority of these exporters were cultivated by the U.S. producers in 1990s. For example, Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Company, one of the largest U.S. producers and a petitioner, invited one of the largest Chinese producers in the late 1990s. After traveling China and seeing infrastructure there, Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Company thought that it can still sell the furniture made in China less than those made in the U.S due to cheaper labor cost in China. In other words, the voluntary actions of American furniture companies have injured themselves[5].
Even though DOC knew this fact, antidumping investigation has continued. In the conclusion of the article, Ikenson mentions that this case is a perfect example how high quality and low production costs can be used as an evidence of disputes between the U.S. and China and how antidumping rules are abused for commercial gain.

[1] Office of Public Affairs. Preliminary Determination of Antidumping Duty Investigation: Wooden Bedroom Furniture From the People's Republic of China. 18 June 2004. 11 Mar. 2007 .
[2] "US Restriction on China's Furniture Unreasonable." People\'s Daily 16 Dec. 2003. 11 Mar. 2007 .
[3] "U.S. to Launch Dumping Probe." Greensboro News Record 12 Dec. 2003. ProQuest. 11 Mar. 2007 .
[4] Ibid 2.
[5] Ikenson, Dan. Poster Child for Reform: the Antidumping Case on Bedroom Furniture From China. Center For Trade Policy Studies. enter For Trade Policy Studies, 2004. 11 Mar. 2007 .

Is China eating lunch from all over the world?

According to Rosen, for the past two years, Mexico's Maquiladora system, a darling of the 1990s, suffers a whammy: competition from China. Mexico's comparative advantages such as lower labor costs than the U.S. has given a nice lunch for the workers in Mexico. The popularity of Maquiladora system increased the employment in Mexico and now 3288 Maquiladoras hire over one million Mexican. This system also contributes half of the contry's export.
Mexico grew its global export shares in most of the industries in Maquiladora significantly in the late 1990s. However, as much as Mexico was changing, China was changing faster and growing its share of global exports in most of these same industries even faster. China wins on low labor costs and many other costs of doing business, while quality control, technology diffusion, mid-level management skills, and physical infrastructure are improving fast enough to impress even skeptics and make Mexico's shortcomings in these areas more apparent. Even for the high-weight items which is more expensive to ship, Chinese multinationals have set up manufacturing in North America precisely to compete in segments.
The U.S. government estimates that as much as 85 percent of global textile manufacture sector may be in China in the future: even though for the 27 percent of Maquiladoras and 226,000 workers still in that sector.
China has robbed lunch not only from developed countries, but also developing countries. We cannot estimate how gluttonous China is....