May 21 2000

Competition or Conflict is Choice of Trade Status

Hopefully, the House of Representatives will consult literary giants Rudyard Kipling and C. Northcote Parkinson before it votes this week on China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

Both men were British subjects when their country was the primary western power in Asia with long experience in trading there.

Wrote Kipling in epic verse:

“East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet

“Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat.”

“The end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,

“And the epitaph drear: ‘A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.’”

After Kipling came Parkinson, a history professor/novelist with a keen eye for bumbling bureaucracy. His most famous observation is: “Work expands to fill the time [made] available for its completion.”

For today’s discussion on “most favored nation” trade statusfor China, let us ponder two more Parkinsonians: “Expenditure rises to meet income,” and, “Policies designed to increase production increase employment, policies designed to increase employment do everything but.”

In Parkinson’s serious historical work, “East and West,” he makes a case that competition between Oriental and Occidental cultures is essential to progress.

“In studying history we come to realize that there have been alternating phases of Eastern and Western ascendancy.

“Periods of high civilization are found to last from one to two thousand years, more or less. Scholars can break these periods down into phases of origin, growth, achievement and decay.

“Whatever their life span, whatever the height or splendor of their flowering, all civilizations known to us have ended in decadence,” he states.

Parkinson traces the rise and fall of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Chinese and Europeans. As each took their brief bows on the world stage, the seeds of their own destruction already were sown.

Why?

“We have learned to associate decay with over-taxation, but is that a symptom or result?” Parkinson asks. “Over-taxation is the cause of a growing burden of useless – and worse than useless – bureaucracy. But has that also a biological aspect?

“The one, evident fact is that national decadence is at least accompanied by the individual’s loss of energy. The arts become sterile, a policy becomes timid and the outposts are abandoned.

“It is this decay which creates a vacuum into which another and more virile civilization is drawn”

Parkinson contends the suction created by a progressive decay draws in a flow of ideas, fashions, inventions and words.

“It attracts missionaries, travelers, merchants and teachers – with agents both commercial and secret,” he declares. “It spawns trade missions, cultural delegations, military advisers and high-powered diplomats.

“Actual invasion comes later, as a rule -- being followed by tax collectors, administrators, surveyors and philologists, architects, engineers, art critics and crooks.

“Where peaceful pressure is sufficiently unopposed, actual invasion may not be needed. More than that, the pressure may continue even after an invasion has failed. The offensive is only perhaps incidentally of a military kind – the campaign being more dramatic but not necessarily more important.”

American union workers are understandably angry over the loss of their kind of jobs to Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore,Taiwan, India, Philippines, and Korea.

Under these circumstances, it is difficult to stand back and view globalized world trade objectively.

We should note that the process of conflict and decay between East and West continually accelerates. Each succeeding civilization flowers and dies in a shorter period of time. What once was measured in millenniums is now marked in centuries.

Technology determines the rate, and the United States is in the forefront at the moment. The cycle of conflict turns of resolve. The question before us is – which nations have the most of it?

“Once set in motion, this gigantic and clumsy engine – this alternating accordance of East and West – must seemingly pound on,” Parkinson concludes somewhat gloomily.

Perhaps so, but the reversal doesn’t have to occur on our watch.

The upcoming vote in Congress will test American resolve – whether to regroup and compete peacefully, or retreat to the bunkers to await conflict.

PARTING SHOTS

Another State Department laptop computer is missing. Officials worry that secrets may have been revealed. Relax. Employees are stealing computers, not secrets.

* * *

President Clinton says he is “proud” that his impeachment “saved the Constitution.” Gad! What if Al Gore is elected president and appoints his buddy to the Supreme Court?

Lindsey Williams is a Sun-Herald columnist and can be reached at linwms@lindseywilliams.org