The information in this file was recently published in FREEDOM - the fortnightly anarchist journal published by FREEDOM PRESS: FREEDOM PRESS (IN ANGEL ALLEY) 84B WHITECHAPEL HIGH STREET, LONDON E1 7QX GREAT BRITAIN Do write for a sample copy or for a copy of our booklist of publications. We will be putting more of this information out so watch this spot... CHOMSKY ON ASIA As part of the current FOCUSES on different countries in Asia we asked Noam Chomsky to comment on some of the issues we are raising. Below we publish his replies to some questions we posed... Warren Christopher recently on a visit to China raised the Human Rights issue with the Chinese government. How has corporate interest reacted to his 'muddying the waters'? That Christopher raised the human rights issue in China is widely believed (less in the US than outside it), but it is true only in the narrowest sense. He added to the pleas from the Clinton administration that China make some kind of meaningless gesture so that the Clintonites could pretend not to be backtracking on another campaign promise. There was never the slightest chance that they would interfere with profits by bringing up human rights In general terms how do you see China fitting into the 'New World Order'? As fot China and the NWO, the country seems to be splitting into a sector that is part of the Japan-based overseas Chinese investment network, linked to US multinationals and export-import as well, with the usual third world amenities: super-cheap labor, women burned to death locked into toy factories, 15,000 deaths from industrial accidents last year, and all sorts of other wondrous things that never come up in human rights discussions, because profits are involved. About 3/4 of the country seems to be either out of it, or perhaps even declining. Could be an explosion, I think. The US has also lifted the embargo against Vietnam recently. A change of heart? And now that Coca Cola seems to have replaced the napalm who did win the Vietnam war? Lifting the embargo has a very simple explanation. Torturing people is fun, but making money is more important. US business was becoming concerned that it was being cut out of a promising source of cheap labor, markets, resources, so the government 'discovered' that Vietnam has been more forthcoming about POWs (the only moral issue left after aggression that killed millions of people and destroyed three countries - I doubt that Stalinist Russia could have gotten away with what Western commissars have achieved on this one. Who won the Vietnam war? Over 20 years ago I pointed out that the US had already won - as, incidentally, was pretty well understood in the business world. It hadn't yet achieved maximal objectives, but had satisfied its major war aims, to ensure that there would be no demonstration affect of successful development along independent state-directed lines in Indochina. The documentation on this is very clear, but unacceptable in the commissar culture, which insists on total victory, in line with its general totalitarian thrust. There are rumblings throughout the region of discontent with GATT what potential do the people have of winning such struggles in Asia or elsewhere? In Asia, there's plenty of discontent with GATT. In India, they'll probably have to ratify it at gunpoint. No alternative, though. Power has shifted remarkably to absolutist, unaccountable institutions of a scale that would have made any classical liberal shrink in horror. National states are generally overwhelmed, and even rich and powerful ones like the US are fairly restricted in policy planning. A long story.