West Urged to “Tell Truth on Globalisation”

Long Yongtu, the diplomat who negotiated China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation, has urged western governments to stop politicising trade and start telling their voters the truth about globalisation.

He said that some politicians in Europe and North America had been blaming China for problems in their own economies that they had failed to tackle themselves.

“There are many misconceptions about globalisation in Europe and North America,” he said. “Governments should not deliberately politicise trade and economic matters.”

China and other developing nations in Asia did not like to be a scapegoat, he said on Saturday at the World Deauville Conference in France, which is designed to strengthen relations between Asia and Europe. “We have to have more public education to understand that globalisation is unavoidable.”

The European Union and the US have criticised China for unfair trade practices since its entry into the WTO and have imposed temporary restrictions on Chinese textiles and steel exports. Some European and US politicians have also blamed job losses on rising competition from lower-cost Asian countries, such as China and India.

However, Mr Long, who now runs the Boao Forum, Asia’s equivalent to Davos, said Europe should not fear China’s economic expansion but exploit it. “There are a lot of misconceptions about China’s economy. People believe that it depends on exports and external investment. But China’s economic development is basically driven by domestic demand, both investment and consumption.”

Christian de Boissieu, president of France’s Council of Economic Analysis, a governmental advisory body, said that Europe’s capacity to be a credible and constructive partner for Asia depended on its ability to implement economic reforms.

Europe could raise its annual economic growth rate to 3 per cent as long as it implemented the Lisbon agenda, a package of liberalising measures adopted by EU leaders to create a more competitive, knowledge-based economy.

However, Gary Coull, chairman of CLSA, the Asian stockbrokers, criticised European economies for having too many stakeholders and too much government interference, leading to institutionalised unemployment. But he said that Asia’s fantastic growth potential was being jeopardised by weak environmental standards, poor worker protection and widespread corruption.

“In Asia we need to learn a little bit more from Europe, but not too much,” he said.