By Debasish Roy Chowdhury (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-18 07:31

The gloves are off. Hillary Clinton has thrown her hat into the Olympic ring, urging President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony. She has also urged her two fellow contenders for the top job to do the same. C'mon, be a man, let's see who can trash China the hardest.

But Olympic lovers, don't lose heart. This is not about the Games, this is not about Tibet, actually this is not even about China. It's the economy, stupid - as the other Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan put it.

It is also unfortunate timing. Not that you can time the Olympics, but the Beijing Games coincide with a looming recession and the presidential election in the United States. As home foreclosures increase and the subprime mortgage virus spreads to other parts of the US economy, the resultant credit squeeze is kicking in. Some 80,000 jobs have been lost in March alone, the biggest drop in five years, following 63,000 job losses in February.

Feeding the rising American angst is the growing gap between the rich and the rest. Ten percent of Americans now own 70 percent of the country's assets. The median real income has been stagnating. Out of its 300 million people, some 47 million have no health insurance. And, with the property bubble bursting, houses are no longer a cushion against financial woes. The American public is, understandably, very angry.

And its politicians, very happy. Anger means votes, provided you find something to direct that anger at. International trade and globalization in general, it seems, are the emerging favorites to play the dartboard.

Watching Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the stump - and John Edwards before them - can spook the hell out of a true-blue free marketeer as rally after rally, they rail against the evil forces shipping American jobs abroad. They have threatened to block new trade deals and even force a renegotiation on the existing ones like Nafta. Between the three of them, they have breathed new life into the bogey of free trade.

On the Republican side, John McCain has so far refrained from playing the protectionist card. But given the early successes of another contender, Mike Huckabee, who did, McCain's hand might be forced if the US slips deeper into a recession. Already there are murmurs in the party that there might be a case to ride the anti-globalization wave. And for good reason, too. An opinion poll by Wall Street Journal and NBC recently showed only 28 percent of Americans believe globalization is a good thing.

That is stunning, given the way the US single-handedly pushed the globalization agenda across the world. But thanks to the recession, a mood of isolationism is setting in. Most Americans are convinced that large corporations and countries such as China - especially China - have conspired to steal their jobs and that is why they are in this mess. The entire discourse of free trade has been dumbed down to the level of a game where more exports equal winning. And China's huge bilateral trade surplus makes it a clear winner.

Worse, the subtext of the rising protectionist rhetoric is that China is winning because it is cheating. Which is why the last three years have witnessed 45 legislative measures on Capitol Hill aimed at curbing trade with China, with the last few months witnessing a burst of trade remedies and mounting congressional pressure on the US administration to make China "behave". If the recession gets deeper as the election draws nearer, the demagogy will get shriller and attacks on trade sharper. And, unlike other election years, the eventual winner might be compelled to actually implement the rhetoric once in power because of recession.

So no matter who wins, if the recession continues, it definitely won't be China. Its spoils from globalization make it a natural object of anger and demonization, and target of trade restrictions. An ill wind threatens to snuff out the flame of development and prosperity spawned by a liberal international trading regime. What Beijing Olympics is facing is only its first gust.

E-mail: drc@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/18/2008 page8)