EU-China trade talks focus on piracy, trade imbalance

Officials from the Chinese trade ministry are meeting with their EU counterparts in Brussels, and the conversation sounds like a whine-a-thon by the Euros.

At issue, among other things, are Chinese tariffs and other trade barriers, along with China's complete disregard for Western copyrights and patents. The Euros are in a snit because they fear loss of China's astoundingly huge and rapidly growing middle-income market due to the tough barriers the Chinese have put in place, while Chinese rip-off artists, free to charge whatever they want behind China's legal and tariff firewall, make a mint.

They've got a point. The Chinese are not playing fair at all with the West in trade, law, and many other areas. But, as Billy Joel's Dodger said, "Fairs are for tourists, kid." The Chinese, with their enormous economic clout, rather scary military (which has no major current commitments other than some minor freedom crushing in Tibet and pockets of Xinjiang, unlike a certain other country who's acronym-du-jour is TSBFPMEMBACEHE, and fundamentally different ideas about the concept of "private property", are under no serious pressure to play by anyone's rules except their own. Don't expect them to come down with a case of the moral heebie-jeebies anytime soon.

It's easy to over-estimate the other guys, especially in a case like this, when there are gaping cultural differences between the average Americano/Euro and the average Chinese. At the same time, it's important to remember the Chinese version of "long term" is a lot different than that of elected and term-limited leaders in the West. Subtlety and nuance are woven into Asia at the DNA level, while the Bush Administration's version of "subtlety" is a wooden baseball bat to the head, rather than an aluminum one.

Eventually, the Arabs are going to be irrelevant. As soon as we have alternatives to oil, which will happen later if not sooner, most of their power will evaporate and they'll be back to herding sheep and killing each other on horseback, just like they were 60 years ago. The Chinese, however, are in it for the long run. And the assets they've got - an enormous, growing-rapidly-in-size-and-wealth market; an industrious population which values education; and a basically stable government run by smart and experienced dudes – are not going away so easily.