Richard Fyers: The real story of the Chinese

Opinion

Sometimes I miss the factual accuracy of state-controlled media like the China Daily and One News. I had such a moment reading Willy Trolove's recent article about China. I'm all for free press, but most people reading a Herald article would believe they are reading the truth, which is somewhat stretched by Trolove.

On the same day I read his piece headlined "Just don't mention the tanks in Tiananmen Square" (see link at the bottom of this page), I got an email from a Canadian lawyer in Shanghai. He had been testing censorship on the internet in China. He got plenty of hits for the words "Tiananmen", "gang of four", "tankman" and names of dissidents, and the only troubling phrase he could not find was "falun gong".

He could get as much sex on the net as he could in Canada.

Even back in 1993 when I first started working in China, my friends used to love telling me their Tiananmen stories - "My friend got shot beside me", "I fled back to my rural village for a few weeks to hide" and so on. No one seemed to care, then or now, whether or not the Chinese Government was listening.

Chinese in China also freely discuss Taiwan and Tibet. A Chinese bureaucrat told me: "If Taiwan doesn't accept we are their boss, I will take a gun and my wife will take one too." A Chinese lawyer said: "I can better understand Tibet being independent than Taiwan. The Tibetans at least have a separate and different culture."

Trolove may have a point on Taiwan but it is not for us to resolve. Mike Moore told me: "It should be left to time, maybe 500 years." We have our own intractable cultural divide to grapple with.

There is a false perception of Chinese intellectual property law. I once visited Haier, the Fisher & Paykel competitor now taking the world by storm. The chairman proudly told us that the air-conditioning division of his company filed for a new patent every three days. He would have laughed reading Trolove's view that China doesn't have robust intellectual property laws.

Lu Qing, LLM from New Zealand, is now very busy doing IP law in a large Beijing firm. She just says "dumb bloody Kiwis".

Last year a Chinese factory manager showed me a range of motor mowers saying: "The first three are designs owned by United States and European companies so we can't make them for you but the last two are generic models - we can make those and put your brand name on them."

A few months ago, Beijing authorities bulldozed Silk Alley, a famous outlet for counterfeiters. Of course there are people in China ripping off intellectual property, as there are in New Zealand, but both countries have similar intellectual property laws and try to enforce them.

The Chinese worker, far from being exploited is on a wealth creation escalator.

A New Zealand company just got a quote to have components manufactured in China - the prices were all higher than the same components manufactured in New Zealand. Since the company has recently been subject to strikes called by a national union demanding a 5 per cent pay rise, it may move some manufacturing anyway.

Unskilled factory workers in Shanghai now earn more than $2 an hour plus bonuses, and a factory engineer's basic salary commonly exceeds $50,000 a year.

Some newer factories have state-of-the-art facilities and systems but in an old factory I met middle-aged workers, healthy, smiling and talkative - obviously it wasn't a sweat shop to them.

China's Communist Party has passed many labour laws, for example, minimum wages; 44-hour maximum working week; triple time for working on a statutory holiday; powerful remedies for unpaid wages. They comprise a set of employment laws many might find superior to our own.

Trolove's swingeing attack doesn't fail to trot out "human rights abuses". He doesn't explain what he means but I recognise this as the ignorant person's code for "they don't have rules like ours".

Some of my friends who marched in Tiananmen Square have now worked and studied law overseas. They have an informed view of "human rights" yet still prefer to live in China and find the Chinese system more rewarding than ours. Maybe Willy's careful analysis will convince them.

Willy says the Chinese want a free-trade agreement that leaves their tariffs on primary produce in place. However, Fonterra says the Chinese have reduced their milk powder tariff already from 25 per cent to 10 per cent and the agreement may reduce it to zero.

A free-trade agreement with China will mean New Zealand will have to remove practically no tariff or other barrier to the entry of Chinese goods while China will have to remove many duties and controls. Yes, it is a hard call for New Zealand to make.

* Richard Fyers is acting chairman of the New Zealand China Trade Association