Across the Pacific, a discernible wind of change is blowing.

Says Eric Roseman, Investment Director and Editor of Commodity Trend Alert, “In a dramatic shift of trade flows this decade, Pacific economies now export more to Europe and other markets across Asia than to America.”

Roseman notes that this dynamic trend is not a recent phenomenon. Intercontinental trade between the U.S. and Asia has been slipping since 1990. U.S. trade has suffered at the expense of booming interregional trade in Asia.

“For the first time in history, the U.S. was not Asia's largest export partner last month. Instead, the European Union overtook the United States as Asia's primary destination for exports. And China and other regional markets logged record trade surpluses with the European Union (EU),” Roseman continues.

“In the 1980s and 1990s, Congress targeted Japan with their rising protectionist sentiment as imports flooded the United States. For years, Japan continued to record massive trade surpluses with America while Japanese imports declined.”

“Today, the winds of protectionist sentiment have changed. But unlike 20 years ago when Japan was the hot target, the United States is now directing their protectionist sentiment toward China. The U.S. government vehemently accuses China of unfair trade practices to maintain a cheap and undervalued yuan currency,” Roseman points out.

Indeed, as the Pacific continues to accumulate wealth this decade, the region is relying less on the United States for its exports. This is a marked shift based on historical trends in the post-WWII period.

From 1990 to 2005, a manufacturing revolution swept through Asia. China led the revolution as China transformed into an export powerhouse, mainly to the world's developed economies. Since 2005, China has been U.S.'s major trading partner.

Asian wages are only a fraction compared to those in the expensive developed economies. China and other Asian exporters increasingly commanded a greater share of the world's business.

Roseman observes: “The United States, Germany and Italy, for example, still manufacture excellent high-end goods, namely machinery. But China can produce virtually every low-end item for just pennies on the dollar.”

“Global multinationals (MNCs) continue to build major manufacturing presences in China because unit production costs are simply much cheaper compared to factories in the West. This secular event will last for decades to come until China and other regional manufacturing centers eventually lose their export competitiveness,” Roseman opines. (i)

The Palm Oil Truth Foundation observes that this trend of China bashing can be discerned in recent months.  Take the most talked-about topic of the day – contaminated Chinese products. The impression is that Chinese manufacturers, under the protection of the Chinese government, have neglected the safety of consumers. But this is only part of the truth. Sure, we cannot deny that there are some unscrupulous businessmen in China. But the real situation is not one depicted by mainstream media where the Chinese government has tacitly allowed contaminated goods into the market. When dangerous products come into the market, the first victims would be local Chinese consumers. The Chinese media has been reporting extensively on contaminated, dangerous products far before the Western media caught on. The fact that these products have not completely disappeared can be attributed to the lack of educational and legal enforcement, as well as the immensity of the population there.

Regarding problems with exported Chinese goods, such as the recall of toys containing lead, the responsibility does not lie only with China, as Western media would like to claim. These products were investments by Western companies in China, and therefore these companies should be held responsible for the products they produce, whether the products were produced in China, the United States or India.

On the topic of global warming, there has been a recent trend to push the responsibility on China. Even countries that resisted the Kyoto Protocol seem to feel justified in criticizing China’s role. Whilst the United States took more than a hundred years to reach its current level of industrialization, China has only stepped into its industrialization no more than 30 years ago.  To argue then that China has already caused such extensive environmental damage is jaundiced to say the least. China’s lack of knowledge in environmentalism and environmental laws is at fault, but the responsibility also lies in other industrialized countries that have moved manufacturing into China. (ii)

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, these actions of the Western Media in targeting China over the past months are, to put it mildly, counterproductive.  Wave after wave of negative news about China is only going to get worse before the Beijing Olympics.  Already, with months to the Games, the West, in cohort with the Western media, and lately even with Amnesty International is trying to disrupt the Games and discredit China by using the Tibet independence issue.  It’s indeed ironical that the West is now calling for a boycott of the Games, just months after their construction firms, consultants and suppliers have pocketed billions from the construction of Games facilities such as stadia and media centers.  The Palm Oil Truth Foundation has to ask just why there was no talk of boycott when the Games facilities were being constructed.  After all, the Tibet issue is more than a few decades old.  We also have to ask how Amnesty International could label China as the “Champ of Capital Punishment” and yet stay strangely muted on the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis following the invasion of Iraq.  Are these innocent Iraqi lives worth less than convicted criminals?

All these are strangely reminiscent of the relentless attacks against palm oil by the self-same media at the behest of Western environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Wetlands, et al which only smacks of economic subterfuge and sabotage.  How so?
 
First, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), in its now infamous tirade against palm oil in a now discredited “report” that it called “Cruel Oil:  How Palm Oil harms Health, Rainforest and Wildlife,” CSPI rails against how palm oil “promotes heart disease” and harms the environment.  The reason for CSPI’s bizarre attack against palm oil can be discerned from the preamble of the CSPI “Report” itself – “Palm oil is forecast to be the world's most produced and internationally traded edible oil by 2012.”  Therein lies the real reason behind CSPI’s extraordinary attack!  

Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Wetlands, et al have also, in recent months, been falling over each other to blame palm oil cultivation for contributing, in their words to “deforestation, destruction of habitat for orang utan, and ultimately, to global warming”!

For one, dozens of scientifically conducted studies have shown that palm oil is, contrary to CSPI’s allegations heart friendly. There is also little evidence to show that palm oil, at least in Malaysia has contributed in any significant way towards deforestation.  The Malaysian Palm Oil Council has also recently inked an agreement with the Borneo Conservation Trust together with Bursa Malaysia to establish a 20 million Ringgit (about US$7 million) fund towards orang utan research and conservation in Sabah, Malaysia.

Apart from failing to provide concrete evidence, there is an all pervading suspicion that these previously respected environmental organizations are motivated more by the funding that such a position attracts from competing oil seed lobbies than purely altruistic and conscionable posturing.  What is more disconcerting is the whiff of planned economic subterfuge and sabotage in their increasingly wild allegations against palm oil.

In conclusion, the Palm Oil Truth Foundation takes the position that the real reason behind all these China bashing and scathing vitriolic has to be the country’s incredible development and economic growth which has been viewed as a threat by the West. One can say that the negative criticism of China by the mainstream media is at least partly purposeful and discriminatory. Consequently, instead of targeting and relentlessly blaming China, the United States and the EU should focus the blame on multinationals earning gargantuan profits in Mainland China.  

Similarly, in the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, the Western oil seed producers should concentrate on improving yield and productivity, instead of viewing palm oil as an economic threat and resorting to palm oil bashing to stem what is, to these oil seed competitors, an inexorable march of palm oil towards global acceptance by the world market, in view of its obvious superior productivity and innate healthful characteristics.

References:
(i)  The Sovereign Society Offshore A-Letter, Oct 29th 2007
(ii) Joseph Leung, Tsing Tao Daily, Aug 25th 2007