Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-29-Speech-4-039"
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"en.20050929.5.4-039"2
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".
Mr President, it is very timely that we are having this debate on my China report straight after the debate on textiles. The thrust of my report is that the textiles industry is really just the tip of the iceberg. We are talking about textiles today, but tomorrow it will be footwear, the day after that it will be bicycles, and then automobiles, machine components or high-tech goods. What we are facing here is not just a one-off issue limited to one sector, but a systemic issue, a challenge of much greater scope than I believe the Commission recognises.
It is only by challenging the key free trade model that we can really make sure that all workers in the world have the chance to earn a decent livelihood. I urge Members to support this report.
What we have heard from Mr Kovács echoes what we hear all the time from Mr Mandelson too. To be honest, it is not very reassuring. What we are hearing from the Commission is an extraordinarily complacent and also rather patronising attitude that somehow, all we need to do in the European Union is to move a little bit further up the higher value-added chain and even perhaps to give up what is left of our old manufacturing base and concentrate instead on the knowledge-based industries. That kind of idea seems to be in complete denial of the fact that China is developing its own lower-cost but highly-skilled expertise in those areas too. Almost 20% of China's exports are now classified as high-tech. With over 2 million graduates every single year, there is every reason to believe that percentage will grow.
The traditional assumption that the EU and US will keep leading in knowledge-intensive industries, while developing countries will somehow just be left to focus on the lower-skilled areas, is rightly being seriously contested. This is a patronising and complacent attitude and one that is completely out of date and out of tune with where we are today.
That is why my report calls on the Commission to rethink its strategy, to wake up to the fact that old fashioned concepts of national comparative advantage simply no longer apply in a world where brain power can zip round the globe at the flick of a computer key.
The importance of rethinking that old trade paradigm is crucial, not just for employment in the EU, but also for the survival of many developing countries' industries as well, including some of the poorest in the developing world. To take the example of textiles again, we have heard already in the debate how countries such as Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Nepal all depend on textile and clothing for the vast majority of their industrial exports. Many of them face devastation as a result of increasing volumes of cheap Chinese exports. Not only are they facing the closure of their own factories, but we are seeing Chinese competitive pressures forcing down social standards, This essentially savage free trade dogma means that some of the poorest countries in the world are being thrown into cut-throat competition with one another in a race to the bottom on wages, social standards and, basically, anything that can be made cheaper.
In the Philippines the government has ruled that the minimum wage will no longer apply in the textiles sector. In Bangladesh restrictions on night work and overtime are being lifted. We are seeing these key standards that have been fought over for very many years now being rolled back in the name of trying to be ever more competitive.
As well as demanding a complete reassessment of the trade model, it is clear that we also urgently need to redouble our efforts to ensure that international trade is based on a platform of minimum social and environmental standards. It is clear, unfortunately, that China's competitiveness is built, at least in part, on its exploitation of its workers and on its externalisation of social and environmental costs.
For example, although in theory at least China has strict laws when it comes to what is in its rule books, in practice those laws are flouted time and again. It is a shocking fact that over 100 000 people per year are estimated to die in work-related accidents in China.
The report calls for minimum social standards, the ILO standards, trade union standards, and cooperation between European trade unions and those groups that are trying to set up similar bodies in China. It also looks at the environmental impact of the development model which we in the West have also followed. We need to change it, but what we see in China is the acceleration of that model. The impact is clearly a massive one on the resources of other nations. China is already the world's second largest consumer of oil and water and trails only the US in CO2 emissions."@en1
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