Sir, - Conor O'Clery takes the Government to task (The Irish Times, February 11th) for its "slow boat" stance on China. He quotes China's customary figure of 8 per cent "real growth" annually in the economy as evidence of China's importance. When is this myth of China as a financial promised land going to be dispelled?
As Gerald Segal of London's International Institute of Strategic Studies recently pointed out, China's economic status in "real terms" is well down the international league, 65th in GNP (behind Latvia), or 107th (behind Albania) according to the UN Human Development Index. Recent reports in a variety of economic publications have shown the celebrated "8 per cent annual growth rate" to be a fantasy. Chinese statistics, since the Great Leap Forward, are routinely inflated by a factor of as much as 40 per cent to satisfy party quotas.
Some sobering facts. The majority of Chinese, roughly 900 million, are peasants living on about $150 a year. Of the remaining 400 million urban dwellers, most survive on less than $300 a year. State unemployment figures studiously exclude a roving population of unemployed "excess agricultural labour" estimated at 250 million - landless peasants seeking work in the coastal "boom-towns". At least 2 per cent of the annual "growth" is accounted for by useless stock in the state-run rust-bucket industries.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal, returns on Western investments in China average a meagre 3 per cent. The depth and extent of corruption throughout Chinese Communist officialdom is a major hurdle to normal business relations, as is the scant regard for copyright and international trade laws. More worrying for Ireland is our China trade deficit of over £300 million, with Chinese imports recently appearing in the Irish Craft Trade Fair.
To this extent Conor O'Clery is right about our need to engage with China, to reverse the deficit. But how are our exports to compete in a market dominated by the world's cheapest labour force, which includes the extensive labour-camp system? - Yours, etc.,
Anthony O'Brien, Tibet Support Group Ireland, Ailesbury Road, Dublin 4.