[N.B. - The video for Monday's "Fears and Facts About China," which is part of a week-long program "China on the World Stage" produced by TVO, is now available on Youtube. I have linked to it below. I wrote about the Monday episode here.]
Fears and Facts About China (Monday, July 19, TVO) (Links to video of episode).
Most of the episodes on The Agenda's "China on the World Stage" do have videos on TVO's website, including yesterday's (Wednesday, July 21) fascinating discussion.
First, there was a one-on-one interview with the The Agenda's resident political expert Janice Stein, followed by a half-hour panel with various political and intellectual experts. Stein talked with TVO host Steve Paiken on: "China's Authoritarian Economics." There is a video of the interview (15 minutes) available here, but it isn't very interesting, and not very enlightening.
Like her fellow Canadian on the ensuing panel ("Reinventing China's Economy") Bernie Wolf, Stein, I believe, is a China apologist. Her message essentially is that China behaves in an authoritarian, and often cruel, manner towards its workforce and people because that is the only way that things would get done. She even seems to be excusing China's notorious intellectual theft and unfair trade practices (mostly with the United States) on Chinese "culture."
I will venture to say that Canadians' opinions on China are clouded by their competitive (and dare I say, inferior) relationship with the United States. It is almost as though these two intellectuals (Wolf and Stein) are saying that any country that competes against, and diffuses, the United States' power is a good thing.
Below is the link to the panel of yesterday's "The Reinvention of China's Economy."
The Reinvention of China's Economy (Wednesday, July 21, TVO) (Links to video of episode).
Peter Navarro, who hails from the University of California, is a panelist on "The Reinvention of China's Economy." He says that China's behavior in the global economy is unprecedented, incredibly aggressive, and is the recipe for a future trade war between the Western economies and China (especially the United States and China).
He says, without mincing his words, that the Chinese are the biggest thieves and cheats of our global world, past and present. One of their audacious behaviors is to steal American inventions and to reproduce these same goods in their slave-labor style factories (his words, not mine) to later sell as cheaply as possible right back to the Americans (and the world at large).
His book: The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won, discusses the point he made during the panel that a trade war is inevitable if China continues (and is allowed to continue) in this manner.
Then there is Andrea Chun, who is presented as "a lawyer and host of Newsbeat, a Cantonese-language talk show on Fairchild Radio", which serves Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. (As an aside, look at the website for Fairchild Radio. It is entirely in Chinese). She openly apologizes for, and defends, China's behavior in the manner of "all's fair in love and war." Thankfully, Peter Navorro wouldn't cave in, and said that that this kind of behavior by the Chinese is recipe for a trade war. True to the manner of a bully, Chun, near the end of the panel, started softening her positions.
Andrea Chun is a prime example of the fruits of contemporary multicultural Toronto (and Canada). Loyalties are for the motherland, to the extent of even selling out Canada.
As an aside, Chun has a strange accent. It sounds as though she tried hard to extinguish her Chinese accent, but strange residues still remain. I've been noticing this Chinese/English style.
It is clear that in many ways the Chinese have free rein over what they are doing globally. I'm not sure how they were given such unprecedented power. Perhaps it is unprepared Western countries, with their own problems to deal with, or it is the "multicultural" ethos that has now permeated the world (notice how this is playing out with Muslim in the Western world). But, the Chinese (Indians, Muslims, Arabs) are not about to soften. Whatever they do will be in their own interest. Loyalties have now been divided where they can influence their own countries even while living within the shores of Western lands. Americans seem to be waking up to this. Canadians, represented by the likes of Wolf and Stein, are still in denial, clouded partly by their competitive nature toward the US. But, in the long run, Canadians are better off forming stronger links with their neighbor (and ally), the US.