Tuesday
(0)It is nice to see that a compatriot of mine is presently making the case for free trade at the WTO summit in Hong Kong, at which the usual bunch of vested interest and anti-globalisation protestors have shown up.
Seriously, that anyone can go to Hong Kong and then attempt to argue that free trade is against the interests of the poor just boggles the mind. But they do.
(link once again via Tim Blair).
You look right, at Hong Kong, the city capitalism and global trade built, and then you look left at the rest of China... yes, it really is beyond moronic that a person could not see the advantages of globalized trade.
Even the bits of mainland China experiencing explosive growth now... why? Globalized trade.
But them some people cannot see what they do not want to see.
Posted by Indeed at December 14, 2005 09:03 AM
But then again, I can remember the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, looking ineluctably plump and corrupt, standing at the podium of the HK Convention Centre and lecturing an assembly of the Hong Kong great and good that "no one can be an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty".
For me, it is one of Hong Kong's defining characteristics that I caught not one of the assembly blinking at this denial of their very raison d'etre.
I'm not making that up, by the way.
Posted by Michael Taylor at December 14, 2005 10:51 AM
"ineluctably plump and corrupt". An excellent phrase, which I am going to apply to Cherie Blair.
I wonder whether she's ever paid all the Customs duty she owes from having walked through the Green Channel with gifts worth thousands of pounds? Probably not. Paying duty is for the little people.
Posted by Verity at December 14, 2005 03:58 PM
Makes about as much sense as the Seattle longshoremen rioting against free trade, but they did.
Posted by Michael Kent at December 15, 2005 12:08 AM
