New Delhi: At ThePrint’s Off The Cuff on 10 May, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman warned that India may be celebrating too early about manufacturing units shifting from China. While the entire world believes that there will be a push back against China due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Friedman, it will not be so.
Even though China has been criminally opaque regarding Covid-19, all supply chains are linked to factories in the country.
Furthermore, while the world is still grappling with the pandemic, China is opening up. It has even opened Disneyland in Shanghai and people are going there with masks, hand sanitiser and maintaining social distance. This opening-up indicates that their economy will be back in shape before others.
Friedman argued that since China is opening its economy while the other countries are still in lockdown, manufacturing may further move to China and the world may become even more dependant on it.
Friedman also argued that the Covid-19 pandemic shows that China is the most resilient of all countries, and this means more businesses can shift there.
Also watch: Off The Cuff with Thomas Friedman
China will not accept enquiry if Trump attacks alone
Friedman criticised the way US President Donald Trump has dealt with China. Questioning Trump’s move to walk out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement in 2017 and taking on China alone in a trade war, Friedman said US should have signed it and brought the Asia-Pacific countries to its side and then dealt with Beijing with a united front.
US had walked out of the 12-nation trade deal, which was the brainchild of Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama and covered 40 per cent of the world’s economy. It was negotiated in 2015 by nations such as the US, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Mexico.
Friedman said China will accept a formal enquiry about the origin of the virus, but not if Trump continues to attack them alone. When Trump attacks China, it only incites nationalist feeling in their citizens and Chinese President Xi Jinping gains politically.
“They (Trump administration) should [have] signed the Trans-Pacific trade agreement [and] brought together 40 per cent of global GDP under American trade rules around the Pacific without China. Then gone to India and Europe and joined them and then hold the Chinese for a negotiation where it would’ve been the world versus China,” he said.
Also read: India’s pluralism and democracy a blessing for the entire world, says Thomas Friedman
Indian system is under threat
Friedman also said that the Indian system of democracy and pluralism works well and the whole world would be different if that wasn’t the case. If India wasn’t plural and it was like Syria, the whole world would be a mess.
Additionally, if China was democratic like India, the virus would have been stopped at Wuhan.
However, Friedman also warned that there are threats to Indian democracy and pluralism today.
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China no good life live