Junket

Somebody please explain this to me: How will the globalization of protests against globalization convince us that globalization is wrong?

Each time the world’s trade ministers meet to discuss ways and means to improve the global trading regime so that it is both freer and fairer, the global anti-globalization protest industry sends shock troops to the meeting site in order to prevent the trade ministers from achieving what they set out to do.

The most spectacular incident happened during the WTO meeting in Seattle. Riots broke out in the streets, instigated by protestors who converged in that city from nearly every other city in the world. The large multinational contingent that gathered to condemn the multinationals thrashed the police and got thrashed back. Seattle was a heavily damaged city after that.

Because of their opposition to globalization, it seems a lot of anti-globalization activists did not know where Doha is. The subsequent WTO round of talks held in this city proceeded smoothly.

This week, the WTO round of talks is being held in Hong Kong. And, sure as day, the anti-globalization activists in their thousands have converged in the territory.

Hong Kong is a fitting setting for free trade negotiations.

This trading economy is one of the wealthiest societies in the world despite the fact that it has no agriculture, very little land and no natural resources to speak of – unless we include its deep harbor as a natural resource.

What made Hong Kong into what it is today is free trade. The British, when they ruled the territory, had the foresight to encourage trade by removing all restrictions on it.

As a consequence, a booming economy was built. A strong manufacturing and financial center emerged. A well-governed society was organized.

One wit so perceptively quipped, during the ceremonies marking the turnover of the territory from British to Chinese hand, that Hong Kong was actually not being returned to China. The port economy was absorbing China, establishing itself as the door of trade for what was once one of the most enclosed nations on Earth.

True enough, in a few years after the turnover, Hong Kong led China’s trade offensive on the rest of the world. It provided the financial muscle and managerial expertise to a much larger society that was finding its way back to capitalism.

Most important, Hong Kong provided the people of China the most convincing argument about why trade with the rest of the world will bring prosperity. It was an argument based on the territory’s actual experience and not on some abstract theory about trade.

By contrast, the argument of the anti-globalization movement runs counter to the facts of experience. It is based on some wooly principle that nations ought to rely only on themselves in order to prosper. That principle runs counter to the evidence.

But evidence does not impress the anti-globalists. And so off they are to mass up at Hong Kong in order to protest open trading borders.

Because of the Philippines’ proximity to Hong Kong, the global anti-globalization coalition is relying on our street-smart activists to provide the warm bodies for the anti-WTO marches we are going to witness over the next few days, until the meeting of trade ministers ends on the 18th.

The global network of anti-trade NGOs must have raised some fabulous amount of money for the Filipino activists. According to reports, our leftist groups are sending their troops in the thousands to Hong Kong. There they will march in the streets against the WTO, test the Hong Kong police’s version of calibrated preemptive response and probably shop.

After all, Christmas is just around the corner. What better place is there to shop a little but in the mecca of free trade.

The level of international funding for Filipino crowds-for-hire must be truly fabulous: imagine sending off our fishermen and farmers in the thousands to Hong Kong, presumably on regular jet fares. While in the territory, they will have to be housed, fed and transported to the rally sites.

The unique advantage of the Filipino activist groups is that they can multiply their numbers once they hit Hong Kong because they could help mobilize tens of thousands of Filipino migrant workers already in the territory. It is an advantage brought about, ironically, by the globalization of the Filipino labor force.

During this year’s meeting of the Economic Freedom Network, our colleagues invited all free trade and open economy advocates to join up with counter-marches they intend to organize to balance off the anti-WTO horde. But only if we happen to be in Hong Kong during the time the WTO will be meeting there. No funds for transporting street marchers were available for the free trade groups.

What an irony, I thought this was.

Those who opposed globalization had a well-funded global network to transport their activists across national boundaries, spending lavishly on plane fares and hotel accommodations so that they could march in the streets to protest the very process that made this activity possible at all. Those who support globalization could not match that.

The irony does not end there.

If our anti-globalization militants had the money to pursue their cause, why did they not instead spend that at home organizing seminars to convince those who might not have a clear opinion on the matter. Why are they, instead, spending the money on some foreign land to try and convince a meeting of trade ministers against the odds.

Spending the money here would have been more consistent with their autarkic ideologies.

But lo and behold: those who say trade impoverishes are off on a junket by the thousands to, well, basically trade their skills at conducting street protests. This extravaganza of traded protest is funded by wealthy organizations from the industrial countries who so easily raise money because of the relative prosperity trade brought to their societies. This money they use to tell poorer societies we should not trade.