The fear of Chinese trade is really puzzling. It reminds me of the fear of all things Japanese in the 1980s. I suspect it’s a strong case of xenophobia, disguised by a weak understanding of basic economics.

Cherryflava makes a good point (albeit unwittingly) about China:

With everything from pyjamas to Barbie dolls suddenly subject to spontaneous combustion scares - it must be asked: “Why are local manufacturers not kicking the giant dragon in the head..and the nuts…while it’s down?”

Finally - a reason to charge more and sell locally made stuff.

Yes…. this t-shirt is made in Epping, costs R20 more and will not blow up and entire neighbourhood block when you combine it with domestic washing powder.

Personally, we’ve got a feeling that all this anti-China news flooding every paper, smacks of major conspiracy theory. But that being said - now is the time to promote that whole Proudly South African thing. Perceptions around cheap Chinese imports are being tested…GO.

The point to note is that any voluntary trade is based on the subjective perception of value of the traders. Both parties benefit from the trade, or they wouldn’t engage in it.

If our people buy cheap Chinese clothes, they will effectively be richer, retaining more income to spend on housing, education, investment or Gucci bags. If our industries buy cheap Chinese imports, this means their input costs are lower, and they can earn more job-creating profit, or out-compete others more aggressively. The local industries that cannot compete with Chinese imports should go out of business, or differentiate themselves, or find something they’re better at, because that way, the greatest number of South Africans benefit.

It has nothing to do with patriotism. Buying local isn’t better for the country, it is worse. It means we’re propping up unproductive industries. By artificially propping up unproductive jobs, we’re prolonging the pain of structural unemployment elsewhere in the economy. For each unproductive job lost, more than one productive job can be created.

Now if consumers make a judgement that says Chinese goods are not of sufficient quality and will no longer do, they will voluntarily choose alternatives. This decision means that China has lost the competitive advantage that implied trade with them is better for South Africa than local production.

Whether or not to buy Chinese should be a free, subjective value decision on the part of consumers. It should not depend on government programmes like tariffs and subsidies, on protectionist cartels like Proudly South African, or on xenophobic fears that believe trade is some sort of foreign ripoff or play for dominance.

Trade does benefit both parties, but only if the decision whether to engage in the trade or abstain from it is voluntary. Only if that decision is not based on coercion or false information. Those are known as extortion and fraud.

As per my previous post, the Mail & Guardian Online has invited me to blog for their new opinion section, called Thought Leader. This is my second post:

Thabo Mbeki is quite right

The elevation of axed deputy minister of health Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge to heroine status is a little farcical. The president has every right to relieve members of the executive of their duties, for any reason, or indeed for no reason whatsoever.

It is true that she has been publicly hostile towards both the Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and President Thabo Mbeki in the past. If that isn’t enough, Mbeki certainly has the right to fire her if the member in question disregarded protocol or acted against direct instructions, one of which is almost certainly true. Besides which, flying to Spain accompanied by her son, on business class, at a cost of seven RDP houses, is among those profligacies that the opposition and the media have consistently — and most aptly — criticised before.

So why not be consistent and welcome Mbeki’s prompt action? After all, Madlala-Routledge is a member of the Communist Party, so she hardly deserves loyalty from the classical liberals in the Democratic Alliance. Mbeki was quite right to fire her, and setting her up as some kind of saint smacks of shortsighted partisanship.

You can read the rest of it here.

Along with a few dozen other writers, the Mail & Guardian Online has invited me to blog for their new opinion section, called Thought Leader. Not sure about the leader bit, but I sure have a surfeit of thoughts. What follows is an extract from my first post, which went live last week during beta testing:

The upside of an unfree press

Like the charred oak of a toasted wine barrel, an acute struggle for liberty imparts rich vitality to an oppressed media. The all-enveloping mix of peace and violence, calm and trauma, relief and fear, elation and despair creates in reporters a sense of history, and of the role and responsibility they have in its unfolding.

During the last days of South Africa’s own fight for freedom, the then Weekly Mail and the ill-fated Vrye Weekblad were both famous for their fearless, fresh, and gritty reporting. At these papers, many a young reporter learnt the rigours of research, the importance of accuracy, the grave duty to be unbiased.

There are distinct echoes of these papers to be found in The Zimbabwean, a weekly newspaper aimed at the estimated 25% of that country’s citizens who live in exile. On sale in South Africa for just R4 an issue, it puts many of today’s South African newspapers to shame. …

Read the rest over here. Do comment, rate posts and browse around on the site. It’s a pretty cool evolution of the opinion/editorial page idea.

You know, you’d think it’d happen only in bizarro freakshow acts. Like this dinky fellow, Demon Dan, who ended up in A&E with a vacuum cleaner superglued to his dinky dong. I thought it was unlikely, but there’s photographic evidence of the act, if not the accident:

If you think this sort of entertainment is crude and pointless, you’d be quite mistaken. Superglue can change the world!

Consider, if you will, these wailing inmates of the asylum. Evidently yearning — no, keening — to be committed to the tender mercies of state healthcare, they glued themselves to the gates of Bedlam Psychiatric, more commonly known by its abbreviation, BP:

Words fail me. Laughter, luckily, does not.