POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY THE DAILY TELEGRAPH'S RICHARD SPENCER
Stopping China's growth would be impossible, short of something like war.
What could anyone have done to stop the Industrial Revolution in England?
It was a force of nature, and just so this other great industrial revolution. China will emerge a great state.
And just as in England or America, eventually democracy will emerge. This is a natural outcome of development, not the creation of bureaucrats in Washington or the result of carpet-bombing with B-52s.
It seems it should be almost not necessary to say this, but the assumptions behind many stories in the Western press every week are really that uninformed and arrogant.
And just as in England or America, the problems of pollution will be ameliorated.
People forget that the air used to be so bad in London that sometimes thousands died. We used to think that London fog was romantic. It was actually smog and it was deadly.
Despite all the problems and doubts, it is quite wonderful to see China emerging. In a few generations, a land with so many poor will offer the blessings of a better life.
Indeed, the only real threat to China's future is the envy and misunderstanding and arrogance of the United States. The danger of a great crisis over the next couple of generations is considerable.
Back to foreign investment, you cannot treat capital as though it were a cake to share at a birthday party.
It is more like a great river flowing and churning its way across a vast and complex landscape. It seeks the best avenues to progress. Flooding through the best paths, its velocity and force actually increase. If you try damming it up, you lose a great deal of its force.
The United States has already dammed up what should be natural channels, as for example American energy companies. Ipso facto, the world's economy is less efficient and productive than it would be otherwise.
Just think on a small scale the trades and investments made in a small village emerging from backwardness. It becomes almost chaotic in appearance from the order that once prevailed. It is absolutely no different on an international scale. Capital, like any other of what economists call 'factors of production,' simply has no recognition of international boundaries.
The boundaries of politics are just as artificial as the pink and blue and green areas of an atlas. In a physical atlas, they don't exist.
Every act of restricting or re-directing in the economic and financial world is an act of making the world a less productive place.
After many generations perhaps, we will all come to recognize H.G. Well's profound observation that our true nationality is mankind.
Considered from an economic view, American-style hyper-patriotism is simply a force serving to restrict others and keep the world a sub-optimal place favoring American interests. It represents a huge waste of resources on armaments (China spends one-tenth of what America spends) and effectively serves to keep the world from progressing at the pace it might.
I do look forward to the emergence of China and India and, to a lesser extent Brazil and a number of other states as redressing the existing imbalances to a considerable degree.
Russia, too, may surprise us, and an EU which worked cohesively could help make the world a better place for all mankind.
