I’m sure that’s how a lot of the communists and anti-free trade types will respond to this article, but the truth at the heart of the story is that an American company is taking the Chinese marketplace by storm.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer and an icon of American capitalism, said local employees have established a branch of the Communist Party at its China headquarters.
The party branch was set up in the office in the southern city of Shenzhen where Wal-Mart runs its fast-growing China business, said Jonathan Dong, the company’s spokesman in China. The latest branch, which was inaugurated Friday, follows the establishment of similar party organizations in five Wal-Mart stores across the country since August, Mr. Dong said.
Other multinational companies operating in China also have party branches, and analysts say they generally don’t interfere with such companies’ management. The party’s constitution requires that any company with more than three party members among its employees set up a branch.
Having the Communist Party starting up branches at American companies (other firms operating in China, like DuPont, have gotten this same treatment) isn’t a wonderful thing, but the fact that we have American companies in China competing for that market is a positive thing. From later in the article:
China, with its double-digit economic growth and potentially huge pool of middle-income consumers, is drawing growing interest from foreign retailers facing tapering growth in their home markets. Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott has repeatedly said China is the only country where it can feasibly duplicate the size and success it has had in the U.S.
Along with French competitor Carrefour SA, Wal-Mart has ramped up its store openings in China following the liberalization of China’s retail regulations at the end of 2004 – the result of pledges China made to join the World Trade Organization in 2001. Over the past two years, the number of Wal-Mart stores in China has shot up by 58% to 68, with one more scheduled to open by the end of this year.
In October, the Bentonville, Ark., retailer signaled its intention to scale up its China operations further, offering $1 billion to buy Trust-Mart, a chain of Taiwanese-owned hypermarkets.
Protectionists and union loudmouths here in America have long complained about our trade relationship with China, yet here we have the quintessentially American Wal-Mart moving in to dominate Chinese retail like it has dominated American retail, all while China’s oppressive communist regime opens up more and more to free trade.
Things aren’t perfect in China yet, but they’re getting better. We should be cheering on Wal-Mart and its efforts across the pacific, yet too often Wal-Mart’s efforts are ignored by political enemies of the company and free trade in general here at home.