Eric Reeves in the Boston Globe today (Sunday, October 3)

Sometimes it is helpful to cut through the diplomatic posturing, and the careful avoidance of blame-laying, and remember that we are dealing here with a genocide. Eric Reeves has an editorial today in the Boston Globe that goes right to the point. By the way, if you have any doubts about the dramatic death rates being perpetrated in Darfur, read first the claims by Islam Online that the death rates are inflated, and then read about the newest and most scientfic epidemiological study, reported by the Reuters. But for a stronger read, try Eric's piece--either in full in the Globe, or in the excerpt below:

The most urgent task is humanitarian intervention in Darfur, with or without UN authorization. An expanded African Union force, with robust rules of engagement, should initiate such intervention even if Khartoum objects. In addition to protecting the highly vulnerable populations in the camps for displaced persons, this force should be the means for initiating a massive increase in humanitarian transport and logistical capacity, provided by US and European allies.

The longer term goal must be to dismantle the National Islamic Front: No true peace will come to Sudan so long as this ruthless regime of Arab supremacists rules Africa's largest country. In the interim, the United States and others should work to impose sanctions directed against Khartoum's leaders and isolate the regime. A widely representative government-in-waiting should be assembled.

Finally, ordinary Americans and Europeans should support a fledgling divestment campaign targeting the large European and Asian multinational corporations whose investments prop up Khartoum's genocidal tyranny. Many have stocks that trade on American exchanges, and are represented in numerous mutual funds and pension funds. These corporations must be forced to suspend commercial relations with Khartoum until genocide in Darfur has ended and a comprehensive peace agreement is reached with southern Sudan. Stripped of this immoral economic support, the regime will become far more vulnerable to international pressure, and susceptible to the dismantling desired by the overwhelming majority of Sudanese desperate for new leadership.

One hesitation on the divestment campaign idea. Unless it focuses on Chinese, Indian, and Malaysian comanies, I'm not sure it can have much effect. Western companies such as Canada's Talisman Energy have already pulled out of Sudan. It is really the Chinese, the Indians, and the Malaysians who are supporting the regime by helping build up the oil export business. And it is the Russians who are supplying the most high tech arms to Sudan's military, including aircraft. I'd like to hear from Eric more on this issue, of how we can best target companies that truly matter to the Sudanese economy--and particularly to the military side of the Sudanese economy.

There is a "two step" way to proceed, and that is by targeting western companies that do business with China, India, and Malaysia, in order to send a message to those nations that we will not continue to support their economic growth if they in turn promote genocide in Sudan.

Perhaps we need a consumer boycott on Chinese products sold in the US. A good way to do this would be to target Wal-Mart, which currently buys about %1 of China's entire Gross National Product, and sells the goods in the US. The other would be a boycott of Hewlett-Packard and other companies' computer products. Most of the personal computers sold in the United States are now assembled in China. A consumer boycott against Chinese products could have several benefits--it could show support for Sudan, support for manufacturing jobs in the US, UK and Europe, and support for the effort to get China to revalue its currency upward--thus helping to stem the predatory pricing that China is currently using to push its manufactured products into nations like the US.

What do you think?

Comments

[Karen]

Considering the outsourcing that the US does to India, isn't that tantamount to boycotting ourselves?

It seems that anything the US protests mysteriously becomes protected activity in the UN, no?

[rutty]

I have had a personal boycott against China for years now. How can anyone help support the eceonomy of a country that has flat-out said that it is preparing for war with us? I love the idea of a large-scale boycott!

[Katherine]

With as enmeshed as our economy is with China right now, boycotting Chinese products would backfire horribly. I work for an American company which has been in existence for 137 years. We have outsourced nearly 75% of our manufacturing to China. However, we continue to employ 1,000+ Americans in administrative, managerial, and distribution positions. Boycotting China would cost America these jobs, 82% of which pay more than 30K, 20% of which pay more than 60K.

Money we spend at your employers, no doubt.

[Dave]

The boycott at first sounds worthy, until you look at it from a geopolitical/economics viewpoint. It will only succeed if all nations that currently outsource to China recognize and honor the boycott. That includes most of the EU, the U.S. and Japan. Since outsourcing is an attempt by companies to become or stay competitive, it will be difficult to enforce, especially since it is private industry, and not the government which can be pressured.
I also think that working any pressure throught the U.N. is futile, since the U.N. equates dictatorships and other opressive governments with democratic gov'ts. Due to this equivalency, there are governments who currently don't want to label what is going on in Sudan as genocide! They will not label it as such, and things go no further. So much for trying to act multilaterally.

[Stephen Frost]

How does a boycott of manufactured goods made in China encourage Chinese resource companies to divest from Sudan? What connection is there between a massive SOE in the resource sector investing in Sudan and - for the sake of argument - a Taiwanese-invested plant in southern China making parts for a computer that Flextronics (US owned, Singapore based) puts together in China and Indonesia with additional parts from Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia for HP? Boycotting HP will at best put a couple of thousand Chinese and other workers out of a job. I'm not sure how that brings pressure to bear on an SOE drilling for oil or building pipelines in Sudan. Given that the Chinese companies in Sudan are often SOEs, and if publicly listed still often majority owned by the Chinese government, I'm uncertain also how the fledgling divestment campaign would work.

Just out of interest, what choices do you have in the US in the computer market for machines not touched in some way by Chinese workers? I live in Hong Kong and am not from the US, so my question is genuine.

On a philosophical point: should Chinese migrant workers scrabbling for a living in factories bear the brunt - if boycotts are successful - of opposition to SOEs making profits in Sudan? Migrant workers are themselves working in dangerous conditions, for long hours and low pay. Is it okay to punish these people, mostly young women from rural townships and villages, for the acts of companies they may have never heard of let alone profit from?

I happen to think you and Reeves have tripped over the single largest unspoken issue about Chinese investment abroad. But boycotting Wal-Mart and HP seems a roundabout way to achieve your ends.

[Robert]

Yes! Please boycott all goods made in China. It is not necessary for all nations to do this, just the USA. Visit my website and read of the horrors of the Communist Chinese and what they are doing to our country, and what their future plans are. Visit http://home.ioa.com/~vampire/index.html and ask me for a free "Boycott China" bumper sticker! All I need is an address to send it to.

It matters not how it would effect our economy. Do the right thing! Why do people want to do business with a country that beats women to death for handing out bibles, forces abortions on them, etc.

[Jim Moore]

In response to Stephen Frost's post, the reason that a boycott of Chinese consumer products might influence China's oil companies is that the Chinese economy is quite centralized, and China is executing a number of delicate strategic moves on the international stage, and is loath to have them exposed and made controversial. This, for example, is why to date China has threatened but not used its veto in the UN Security Council. It does not want to appear the bad guy and call attention to itself.

The Communist Party and the Foreign Ministry have a good deal of influence over how Chinese companies behave. More to the point, the Chinese Foreign Ministry sets the overall relationship with Sudan, as well as with other nations in Africa and the Middle East. It is within this context that Chinese investment and trade is carried out.

Right now the Chinese strategy--at the Ministry level--is to become the customer and investor of choice in oil producing nations that are fearful of the United States and that maintain authoritarian and human-rights abusing internal policies. The Chinese and the Sudanese, for example, have been quite explicit about their shared view that "business is business" (ah, a capitalist refrain by a communist power!) and that Sudan's internal policies are Sudan's affair.

China is executing many other coordinated elements of a grand strategy. For example:

China is quite active in South Asian regional politics, helping to set up trade blocks within which the US and the west have diminished influence in comparison to ASEAN.

China maintains an artificially low rate of exchange to the dollar, which essentially allows it to "predatory price" against American-made products, which in turn has both rewarded and force massive outsourcing to China from the US, and destroyed manufacturing jobs in the US.

China is also buying up vast quantities of construction materials in the US, driving up the cost of plywood by more than 40%, and increasing the cost of scrap steel to the point that US mini-mill companies are suffering.

There is pressure on China to modify these policies, but so far little public awareness. American companies such as Wal-Mart and HP have learned to profit--and American's enjoy the low prices when they have their consumer hats one. On the other hand, this Chinese sourcing comes at the expense of the manufacturing capacity of the overall American economy, and has been devastating to American manufacturing workers.

A consumer boycott would not directly affect Chinese resource companies, of course, but it would help highlight China's overall grand design to the public in the US. Public pressure of this nature would give strength to those in the US administration and Congress that want to be tougher on China.

The Chinese leaders are quite sophisticated and protective of their world image--recognizing their vulnerability to shifts in public opinion in the major democracies. I don't think it is too much to believe that a US-based consumer boycott of selected, highly visible products might encourage the Chinese government to become more helpful in Sudan.

Finally, if Wal-Mart and HP felt that their brand equity was in danger of being tarnished, they have the ability to lobby the US administration to put increased pressure on China And I think there is more pressure to be exerted. The US is putting pressure on Sudan but, in my view, has not really asked the Chinese-and the Russians and the Egyptians and the Pakistanis, to help.

Wal-Mart, currently buying 1% of China's GNP, might also be able to go directly to its friends in the Chinese government to ask for some help in protecting its brand equity, by way of helping in Sudan.

Consumer boycotts in general are about putting pressure on the most visible companies with the most to lose in brand equity--think Polaroid and South Africa--in order to get leaders of those companies, and friends of those companies to in turn use their influence with the more culpable and less vulnerable (to public opinion) of the offending national economic ecosystem. We put pressure on those companies that we can get at, who in turn use their influence to get to top leaders, who in turn use their influence to get other leaders to put pressure on Sudan.

These tactics work--to the extent they do--because these economic ecosystems and leadership relationships are deeply enmeshed.

Last point: Of course this seems very roundabout. A single cruise missile explodng a section of the South Sudan-Port Sudan oil pipeline might have a much faster impact, as would the imposition of a no-fly zone over Darfur and southern Sudan. Either could be imposed with very little direct cost or risk to American troops, and might help pave the way for Sudanese acceptance of the African Union as a lessor of two evils.

[Jim Moore]

One additional note on consumer boycotts. If your activism model is that you want to put pressure on a few highly visible companies, who in turn you hope will ask for help from the US government and from friends in China, then you don't need to boycott all or even most of a particular class of products or companies. You just need to make a few influential companies feel the pain and/or find a way to gain from helping the cause. The Nike sweatshop campaign was targeted in this manner. The fair trade coffee movement has been designed to give an advantage to those companies that are willing to help out. Perhaps some American computer companies could take the lead in helping on Sudan.

You don't need to boycott all Chinese-made clothing, for example, but rather boycott all shopping at Wal-Mart. You don't need to boycott all personal computer products--which, Stephen Frost is correct--are almost all made in China now. You need to pick one company that has a visible brand and that you think might be both vulnerable and persuadable..

Alternatively, you don't need to help all clothing or computer companies--you just need to find a company that is large enough to have influence, and is willing to use it for good.