Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

265 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH
Ciccantell then argues that Chinese steel manufacturers are trying to dictate terms to
Australian and Brazilian iron ore owners. Although he refers to “raw material peripheries” (p.
126), it is not obvious how his analysis is linked to cores and peripheries. Is Australia usually
considered semiperiphery? Is Brazil China’s periphery?
What China is doing, as described by Cincantell, is better understood in terms of
international relations realism. Beijing seeks oil from “Russia, Iran, Sudan and Venezuela…to
reduce dependence” on U.S. firms and U.S. navy-controlled sea routes (p. 122). However, the last
figure I saw in a Chinese source found that 88 percent of the energy pumped overseas by Chinese
enterprises was sold for profit on the world market and was not imported by China. Nonetheless,
Cicantell sees a Chinese attempt to steal raw material sources from America and Japan which
could lead to war.
John Gulick claims that no nation can serve as a global economic hegemon in today’s
complex world. While China, supposedly wrongfully accused of manipulating its currency to
enhance exports, is said actually to be structurally tied to Wall Street and about to suffer greatly
from the 2008 forward financial crunch (Hung agrees), America is said to be moving in a
protectionist, racist and anti-foreign direction. As a result China will join with Japan to build pan-
Asian institutions and free Japan, “a pliant vassal of U.S. imperialism” (p. 137), from
subordination to America. China will also partner with Russia to defeat American hegemony. The
result, however, will be China and Russia “accorded roles in the trans-national capitalist order”
(p. 144). But Gulick then says the change will “constitute the greatest danger to a liberal
international order” (p. 146). Gulick does not explain how.
The chapters by Stephanie Luce and Edna Bonacich and by Beverly Silver and Lu Zhan
link China’s rise to a world socialist transformation. Luce and Bonacich accept that China
manipulates its currency (p. 155). Their careful analysis of job losses caused by China’s rise finds
that it is greater for Mexico than for the USA (p. 156). In general, the rise of China, and the
dynamics of the post-Bretton Wood era reduce “workers’ power” (p. 157), contributing to “the
race to the bottom” (p. 158). The question is, how should global labor respond?
Luce and Bonacich urge the workers of the world to unite. But the authors do not clarify
why workers in emerging market economies to which production is being shifted should
cooperate with labor in the OECD nations trying to protect jobs from being out-sourced. The goal
of global labor standards imposed on the entire system, a policy which the authors embrace, is the
position of the AFL-CIO (a group they damn) and is opposed by China, India et al. Luce and
Bonacich hope that the CCP’s phony national labor union will join with OECD unions to
restructure the IMF. Their hope for “gaining power for the working class as a whole in relation to
transnational capital” (p. 170) is not based on an extrapolation of on-going dynamics.
Yet Silver and Zhang argue from the perspective of a “militant working class” in China
(p. 175). Consequently, to them, “it is not far-fetched to conclude that…China is becoming the
epicenter of world labor unrest” (p. 176). Wages therefore will rise in China and Americans will
no longer be able to purchase cheap consumer goods. The neo-liberal order will end.
“Catastrophic” consequences (p. 184) are possible unless all sectors of the world agree to “a more
equal world order” (p. 185).
Hung, in his skepticism about the rise of China, seems is suspicious about claims about
fundamental global transformations. Assuming a stress on the forces that re-stabilize the worldsystem,
perhaps one should expect a future where a Chinese bubble bursts (as with Japan in 1991