China's Challenge

Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post achieves a neat trick in his op-ed piece on the attempt by China's CNOOC to buy Unocal: he writes as both a free-trader and a liberal - hearkening back to the Victorian days when those were the same t Viz.,

If nothing else, CNOOC's bid for Unocal is forcing us to prioritize our conflicting ideals. The offer pits traditional nationalism against the conservative belief in free trade and laissez-faire capitalism. It comes as a fire bell in the night for the pure free-traders, what with communist China en route to becoming our chief capitalist rival. Surely there must be some companies -- Boeing Co., say, or Intel Corp. -- whose sale to the Chinese government even the Wall Street Journal editorial board would oppose.

This August still another conundrum for the champions of globalized capitalism will emerge. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents the janitors and is endeavoring to represent the security guards in the high-rises of major cities, will convene in Chicago a gathering of similar unions from around the world.

Whether a global union, or just an alliance of national unions, will emerge from the Chicago meeting is impossible to predict. But global unions are surely coming, and when they do, they'll pose a challenge for polemicists for the new global order. For if the goal of globalization is simply to maximize shareholder value, then the rise of global labor will be viewed as some new pandemic, threatening profit margins with -- oh, the horror -- a fairer distribution of income. But for commentators who insist that globalization is today's way to realize the greatest good for the greatest number, the advent of global unions could force them to stop their ad hominem attacks on their critics as protectionists and compel them to explain what model of globalization they have in mind. Do we stand, with the Chinese communists at Unocal, for the interests of shareholders? Or is America about something more than that?

Even if it's a bit much, I like that penultimate line about Americans who support the Unocal's sale to CNOOC actually being allied with the Chinese Communist government, the majority owner of CNOOC. This is a deft way to highlight a key paradox of globalization: the fact that "free enterprise" actually expands not through businesses' autonomous activities, but through the work of the governments which shelter - or own! - those businesses. Free trade's a myth. The CNOOC buyout already shows how deeply governments are embedded in trade decisions and will almost certainly elicit more proof as the deal moves along.