Op-Ed Columnist: Attack of the Killer Bras

The New York Times

December 10, 2003
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

SHUN SHUI VILLAGE, China - The most important thing
happening in the world today is the rise of China, and
that's the reality hovering in the background of the
delicate U.S.-China talks under way in Washington this
week.

So I decided to "cover" the talks not in Washington, where
it's easy to be overwhelmed by details of Chinese bra
imports and U.S. policy toward Taiwan, but here in southern
China's Taishan area, which accounted for a majority of
Chinese emigrants to the U.S. until a few decades ago.

The descendants of Taishan include my wife, Sheryl WuDunn.
(A WuDunn is what you get when you cross a Wu ancestor who
doesn't speak English with a U.S. immigration officer who
doesn't speak Chinese.) When Sheryl and I first traveled
here in 1987, we met her distant cousins, poor peasants who
spent their time wading in the rice paddies. The entire
clan had about as many teeth as Sheryl does.

Back then, Shun Shui Village had no paved roads, no motor
vehicles, no telephones and three black-and-white
televisions. Now, along the paved road through the village,
every house has a color television, and most have phones
and motorcycles. Among Sheryl's distant kin, the youngest
son of parents with only a second-grade education has just
graduated from the university and bought a cellphone.

Multiply Shun Shui's transformation by the 700,000 villages
of China, and you begin to appreciate the implications of
China's industrial revolution. One study has found that
China accounted for 25 percent of the world's economic
growth from 1995 to 2002 (measured by purchasing power
parity), more than the U.S.

Soaring Chinese demand has become the major force propping
up world energy prices, and the International Energy Agency
predicts that China will have net oil imports of four
million barrels a day by 2010 - twice Iraq's current oil
exports.

Where will that oil come from? What will China's carbon
emissions mean for global warming and the New Jersey
coastline? Will the U.S. and China go to war over Taiwan,
or over the Diaoyu Islands now controlled by Japan? Will
China sustain its boom or collapse into chaos?

Instead of engaging on these issues, the White House and
both parties in Congress seem intent on launching a new
trade war with China. Washington appears unable to focus on
anything more weighty than the supposed Chinese dumping of
bras and nightgowns in our markets (even though U.S.
companies don't make bras).

That's myopia. There was a wonderful American movie in 1966
called "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,"
which poked fun at anti-Soviet hysteria. Maybe it's time
for an update: "The Chinese Nighties Are Coming!"

President Bush has generally handled China quite sensibly,
and it was also smart to warn Taiwan against steps toward
independence. China's leaders have reciprocated, and have
been especially helpful this year in restraining North
Korea.

But with next year's elections approaching, the White House
has turned demagogic and begun clubbing China over trade so
as to win votes in manufacturing states, while endangering
cooperation on a broader agenda. There are plenty of
reasons to prod China to behave better - I know people who
are in prison here, including a South Korean photographer
(who often shoots pictures for The Times), whose only sin
was documenting the plight of North Korean refugees in
China. But our trade denunciations are petty and
intellectually dishonest.

Unlike Japan a decade ago, China does not have a huge
global trade surplus. Its imports are growing faster than
its exports, up 40 percent this year. And exports to
America grew after factories moved from Taiwan and Hong
Kong to the mainland. Moreover, some 52 percent of China's
exports come from foreign-owned factories.

One can quibble about China's keeping its currency cheap to
promote exports. But China is stabilizing its currency by
buying U.S. debt, financing Mr. Bush's budget deficit and
keeping U.S. mortgage rates low.

Managing the rise of China will be one of the world's
toughest challenges in coming years. Prime Minister Wen
Jiabao is offering Mr. Bush both cooperation and patience,
and it ill behooves us to slap him around for selling us
cheap bras.