China's Challenge to Italy

Saturday, Dec. 31, 2005
Dec. 5, 2005
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Our cover story reported how Chinese manufacturers are crafting sophisticated products that allow China to compete in markets historically dominated by European — and especially Italian — firms. Some readers blamed Europe's decline on its economic inefficiencies. Others criticized Asia's unfair labor practices

The article "Twilight In Italy," on the ferocious competition that Italian manufacturers are facing from Chinese firms, hit the nail on the head [Dec. 5]. Italy is going to resemble China before it achieved economic success. In order to compete, Italians will have to give up the buying power and social security they are used to. Italy has been living under the delusion that the manufacture of quality chairs is rocket science. It has failed to invest in research, education and high technology. Now the reality is hitting home, and Italy will go down. The question is how far down.
Diego Amicabile
Munich

Time's cover art is always original and meaningful, but the illustration for " Italy vs. China," depicting Michelangelo's David and a Chinese terracotta soldier arm wrestling, was extraordinary. My congratulations to the artist.
Montano Riva Barbaran
Longare, Italy

The competition between these two countries will serve only to enrich the profiteers and impoverish the rest of us. China pays low wages and has weak environmental standards. Its practices keep the poor poor. That isn't progress; it's modern-day slavery.
Gerd Schönthaler
Remscheid, Germany

Car Trouble
Your article "How GM Can Fix Itself" did a fine job of enumerating the problems created by General Motors' management [Dec. 5]. But it didn't address why advisers say hourly workers should take cuts in pay and benefits when the automaker frequently touts the quality of its products. If assembly-line workers are putting cars together so well, they should not be the ones to suffer so much in a restructuring.
Sandy McLendon
Marietta, Georgia, U.S.

I lived in Flint, Michigan, for 27 years and worked for GM. The company's problem is simple: arrogance of the worst kind. Its management will not listen to others. GM cars are poorly designed. Corporate officials and the outdated, unionized workforce can't get along. The result is a company in which cars are produced by two antagonistic groups — an unhappy union and an overbearing management.
Lou Rife
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.

Exit Strategy
Re The implications of withdrawing U.S. military forces from Iraq [Dec. 5]: American troops need to stay in Iraq until that country can take care of itself. U.S. foreign policy helped shape today's Middle East. If we don't take responsibility for our past actions and remain to clean up the mess we have made, we'll have to go back into Iraq to hunt down the next wave of terrorists. God grant that we lose no more soldiers. But let's not leave before the job is done.
Michael Martinez
Houston

The planning for the war in Iraq was poor and short term. The U.S. may have won some games in Iraq, but it has definitely lost the championship. Yet it dares to speak of win-win withdrawal scenarios.
Christo Christopoulos
Athens

Cash Is King
"Follow The Money," about the billions in cash remittances that migrant workers the world over send to their families back home [Dec. 5], noted that much of that money is sent by unofficial means, appears on no records and is never reported to tax officials. But it isn't only poor migrants and their families who avoid paying host-country taxes. Our two children were born in France, and both times the obstetrician offered a reduced fee if we paid in cash.
Christopher Henze
Neuilly, France

Remembering Hugh Sidey
How very sad to hear of the passing of Time columnist Hugh Sidey [Dec. 5]. Over the years I have always found his writing inspiring. Somehow, as he commented on Presidents and the office they held, he was able to show the significance of the seemingly insignificant in their lives and that the door of history often swings on tiny hinges. Sidey brought the best of what the U.S. stands for to those of us who are not American. We shall miss him deeply.
Derick Bingham
Belfast, Northern Ireland
LinkYou can read a selection of Sidey's columns at time.com/sidey.

Balance of Power
Simon Robinson's essay "Africa's Game of Follow the Leader" [Dec. 5] made the case that Africa needs strong institutions — parliament, the judicial system and the press — to hold leaders in check. African voters must therefore choose good leaders on the basis of competence, not tribal lines, religion or other factors. I'm looking forward to an Africa in which the majority of members of parliament belong to parties that are in opposition to the country's leader. Then we can expect meaningful and healthy discussions before policies are implemented.
Theophilus Quayefio
Accra

Much of what has gone wrong in Africa since independence owes to an institutional approach to government. When the British were decolonizing in the late 1950s, they set up representative institutions broadly modeled on those at Westminster. The assumption was that democratic institutions that worked in one context would automatically work in another. The result has been a failure. Africa has taken a number of detours from the intended democracy, most frequently into dictatorship and kleptocracy. In order to practice democracy successfully, a critical mass of free men and women need to truly grasp its implications and make informed policy choices. In South Africa, it is the lack of political leadership, amid a solid institutional framework, that inhibits the country's decisive response to the hiv/aids pandemic, structural unemployment and abject poverty. What this country, and indeed the continent, needs is probably a well-balanced combination of the two.
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi M.P.
President of the Inkatha Freedom Party
Ulundi, South Africa

Gender Sensitivity for All
In the interview with newly elected Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf [Nov. 28], Time asked, "Is there something extra you bring to the job as a woman?" She responded, "Sensitivity to human needs. Maybe that comes from being a mother and interacting with other women, many of whom carry the biggest burden in times of war and peace." Johnson-Sirleaf should know that there are millions of males on the planet who are raising their families and carrying a burden. Our message should not be that one sex is more sensitive than the other. We must lead by example, not meaningless rhetoric.
Erol Palantekin
Dublin, Ohio, U.S.

The Solar Solution
Your story on the French nuclear-energy industry said that because of the recent spike in oil prices and environmental concerns about fossil-fuel emissions, nuclear power is looking attractive again [Nov. 14]. But the sun is also a proven source of energy, and the technology for tapping into solar power is available. In one of the simplest of several variations, an array of mirrors focuses sunlight on a tank filled with water, heating it and producing steam that can be used to generate electricity. Large numbers of such solar-power plants could be installed in hot deserts and other sunny areas. Iran claims that it needs nuclear power, but Europe and the U.S. are worried that the technology could be diverted to support the building of nuclear weapons. Iran already has a rich source of energy in the sunlight of its deserts. Europe and the U.S. could call Iran's bluff by offering to build enough solar-power plants to supply all the country's needs. It would be an inexpensive way to reduce worries about how to restrict the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Gerry Wolff
Anglesey, Wales