Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-06-Speech-3-333"
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"en.20060906.23.3-333"2
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"Mr President, I welcome this report not only because of its strong emphasis on the need for respect for human rights in China, but also because it echoes a key finding from my own report on EU economic relations with China, namely that the challenges posed by Chinese competition are not limited to individual sectors like textiles or footwear, but are in fact systemic in nature and require a much more comprehensive approach.
The Commission response to date has been to say that Europe simply has to move up the value-added chain; we simply have to diversify into higher-skilled, more specialised work. However, it is rather complacent and patronising to assume that Europe and the West can keep a monopoly on innovation and high-tech solutions, while China simply does the manufacturing. Chinese graduates are rightly, and to their credit, moving up the value-added chain and very soon we may need to face the possibility that there will be very little that Europe can produce which China cannot produce more efficiently. The old colonialist assumption that the EU and the industrialised countries will keep the leading edge in knowledge-intensive industries, while developing countries focus on lower-skilled sectors, is now open to huge debate.
Our response to the challenges posed by China needs to include a thorough-going reassessment of the assumptions that have underpinned international trade theory until now. Not for our own sake, necessarily, but certainly for the sake of many workers in developing countries, because the reality is that China’s deflationary pressure is already driving down wages right across the developing world, pushing global suppliers to reduce their workers’ rights and conditions in their bid to remain competitive at all costs, and forcing ILO conventions on freedom of association and bargaining on China is certainly part of the solution.
However, I would also ask the Commission to look much more closely at some of its assumptions about the winners and losers from the globalisation process."@en1
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