Re: Re: Argentina, Australia and Canada

[Bill Burgess <burgess@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Grant wrote:

> > country         inward FDI stock/GDP    outward FDI stock/GDP
> > Canada           23.9%                 26.9%
> > Australia       28.1                    17.1
> > UK               23.3                    35.9
> > France           11.7                    15.9
> > Singapore      85.8                    56.1
> > Malaysia        67.0                    22.7
> > Indonesia       73.3                    2.4
> > Argentina       13.9                    5.4
> > Brazil             17.1                    1.4
>
> Interesting figures. I haven't had time to look at the comparable figures
> for other countries. In any case they don't prove a permanent/structural
> exclusion from "imperial" activity. For example, what about Hong Kong
> (pre-1997, not that it is yet a homogenous part of China)? The last I heard
> there was hardly any manufacturing left in Hong Kong because proprietors had
> shifted operations to the mainland. South Africa? Saudi Arabia?

Hong Kong               65.7            72
Saudi Arabia            22.7            1.3
s. Korea                6.1             6.5
Taiwan          7.8             14.7
New Zealand             66.2            11
Israel                  11.1            6.8
Spain                   21.5            12.5
Austria         11.3            8.2
Sweden          22.5            41.3
Belgium         61.7            50.2
Switzerland             26.5            69.1

I cited the FDI/GDP ratios against the suggestion that FDI from the likes
of Malaysia and Indonesia is dissolving the cardinal difference between
imperialist and imperialized countries. I don't see any real shift in the
last 75 years or so in this division. Hong Kong has 'moved up' a couple of
rungs on the product ladder, and a large part of the 'outward' FDI above is
the labour-intensive factories that were opened nearby in the (rest of) PR
China. But it lacks other characteristics, e.g. trade/GDP in Hong Kong is
135% - as Bill R. noted, emphasized, HK and Singapore are entrepots, and
they are city-economies, which indicates the need to qualify the
significance of their numbers (Malaysia has the third highest trade/GDP;
these three are the only countries with annual trade greater than GDP). The
best recent candidate for the 'imperial' club is probably s. Korea, but,
hello, this country is divided in half, occupied by US nukes, and could do
_nothing_ if Japan, Europe and the US stopped imports from s. Korea with a
stroke of a pen.

The balance of inward-outward FDI in Saudi Arabia tells the same story as
we know about other realities of foreign-dominated oil producers.

I'd be interested in more rounded characterizations of South Africa, but
the FDI data is consistent with the 'white'-settler state-now-lesser
imperialist status of New Zealand, Israel, etc. Bill R. and I have
discussed the NZ FDI stats before; I still have a hard time accepting the
66.2% inward rate in NZ as one that provides a realistic comparison to that
in other countries, but in any case, I think the difference between
presenting a NZ passport and a Malaysian passport helps clarify the social
relationships in world imperialism.

> Every bourgeoisie has to start somewhere. For example --- and I'm not going
> to revisit the complexities and vitriol of the "Kenya Debate" --- but I just
> came across this on the web:
Don't know what you mean with the Kenya stats, but there is _zero_  danger
of Kenya going imperialist in any serious use of the term.

 >Singapore's inward and outward rates are both high, but note that inward
FDI is still well above outward FDI in this city-state where annual trade
is also 160%  !!! of GDP.
> That trend is not unusual for countries with small populations and highly
> developed economies. What are the comparative figures for Belgium and
> Switzerland?

As you can see, Belgium and Switzerland show high rates of outward FDI, and
most FDI is to and from Europe - and almost nothing is _from_ the likes of
Argentina, Malaysia or Saudi Arabia.

Trade/GDP in Austria is 44% and 38% in Switzerland, again, most trade is
with fellow imperialist countries, not semi-colonial countries. They enjoy
'free' trade, not the imperialist protectionism and unequal exchange faced
by Malaysia or Indonesia. The price index for their manufactured goods
_rose_ from 72 in 1980 to 108 in 1997, while logs from Malaysia dropped
from 272 to 221, Indonesia's coffee producers faced a coffee index decline
from  450.4 to 161.2  !!!!!!! The index for cotton fell from 284.3 to 162.2
and for rubber from 197.9 to 94.5 (indexes from World Bank, World
Development Indicators).

C. Jannuzi wrote:
>I guess my point was that exploiter can easily become the exploited when
the US involved. As any US citizen should know.

If we can't distinguish between a big thief taking from a smaller thief and
theft from non-thieves we will never stop thievery.

Bill Burgess