China Crisis 11/17/2010
 
David Cameron's recent trip to China was hailed as an economic success for the country. But in reality has the PM endorsed barbaric farming practices and cost us jobs in
our high tech industries?

David Cameron’s recent trip to China is likely to leave the whole country feeling jet lagged. For the ordinary people of England, on the whole, this so called trip of ‘diplomacy to promote business’, has been a complete waste of time. Taking aside the Rolls-Royce engine deal with China Eastern (which because of an existing business relationship was in all likelihood going to go ahead anyway) Cameron has let down the people of England.

In reality, thanks to the destruction of our manufacturing industry, England does not make many of the goods China or any developing countries are interested in. If China requires machine tools or engineering expertise, they look to Germany or Japan. If they require wines, perfume or agricultural know how they very often look to France. The truth of the matter is England sells less to China than Italy. That is the fact and Cameron’s trip has done nothing to reverse that trend.

Let us look at the majority of people accompanying the Prime Minister on this trip. These consisted of CEO’s of blue chip companies that already have regional bases across China.  So why, when we should be promoting what industry and products we have left, are representatives from blue chip companies that already have a foot in China, talking to the Chinese?

It has often been said that we are now a service industry economy, and that the new technologies will be our future. The bottom of the pecking order in service industry work is call centre staff. Look how many call centre jobs have been lost to other countries where workers are paid a pittance and whose record on human rights is appalling. Could we now see more English based jobs in the IT industry being lost to China? Has this trip oiled the wheels of further jobs to be lost to the lands of cheap labour? The coming years and the unemployment figures will tell.

The Prime Minister's comments regarding students tuition fees should not go unnoticed either. When students in England face a lifetime of debt, Cameron was making remarks that overseas students were paying too much to attend our universities. Such remarks must dent the aspirations of young people in England, as they come from a Prime Minister that clearly has shown little concern for the aspirations of young people in England outside of Eton and Harrow.

One deal which it is believed Cameron did broker was the export of live breeding pigs to China.  It is well documented that China has horrendous unregulated farming methods, and this deal basically means live animals are going to be shipped half way round the world to be tortured. The main benefactors of this deal will not be the small farmers of England, but large industrialised intensive farms which in some cases do not even employ local labour!

Through investment in compassionate farming methods England can produce the finest meat products in the world - and sell these products to the world. When English meat is instantly associated with being compassionately reared our meat sales and our farming industry will benefit.  That is forward thinking, which seems completely out of tune with the Prime Minister’s ‘profit for the few’ philosophy.

So there we have David Cameron’s trip of diplomacy to promote business in a nutshell. A lot of taxpayers  money spent  to sign a deal on aircraft engines and servicing which would possibly have gone ahead anyway, to send pigs to be tortured and suffer agonising deaths and to possibly allow even more jobs to be lost abroad. This is not just the government’s way of thinking; unfortunately the whole of mainstream politics is tainted with this line of thought, and it has been happening for years. What is needed is a new brand of politics, a new political system and a new, free radical England.
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