Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

I talked about my experience of child labour in the hands of Higgins in a previous post, albeit in a comical and light-mannered way. Nonetheless, we can notice that this system alive and kicking today; capitalists still utilize exploitation in developing countries with low labour costs.

As mentioned in Cars, Mountain Bikes, and Wars, the “Made in China” Dell computer that I am using to put my memories into writing was made by low-paid Chinese workers. In other words, American capitalists made large profits by outsourcing jobs to low-cost China. At the same time, they don’t give a toss about American workers who lose their jobs and have to join the soup queue. Such outsourcing policies were supported by the American government. 

When Countries Fight Back

However, we start to notice how the Chinese economy grew stronger in 2020-2022. Voices in America began to express worries about being overtaken in the global fight for supremacy. In other words, as long as American capitalists could make large profits, and people could buy ‘cheap’ Chinese-made products, everyone was ‘happy’. But when China started to have ambitions beyond their subservient global role, worries were expressed within American political circles.

Such worries were already expressed more than a decade ago in the article, “America’s Pacific Century”. This article was written by the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and published in the journal Foreign Policy. It provided a roadmap outlining USA’s future strategic changing global role. This showed an increased aggressive role in the Asia-Pacific region and specifically to limiting the rising China (Clinton, 2011).  The ‘potential threat’ of China was also addressed by the former president Trump, when he launched an aggressive trade war with China.

China at Present

The current American president (2022), Joe Biden, can be said to be following in Trump’s footsteps. He also shows alliance against China, where both the EU and NATO have become alliance partners more or less. As of today, Biden pledges support to Taiwan if China decides to invade (2021). In this context, the Americans can expect British support. To what extent the Americans can enlist NATO is more unsure. We know of the withdrawal of the U.S. from Afghanistan and their limited support of Ukraine after the Russian invasion. Who knows, this may be explained by how US might expect a larger conflict with China in the near future.

In conclusion, it might be said that my Dell computer, according to systemic philosophers, could contribute in its small way to the next world war. Of course, this is not as far-fetched as it seems. Europe, as of today (May, 2022), is financing the invasion of its own countries by Russia.