We leave for Hong Kong this morning by rail. We say goodbye to Claire, our WildChina tour guide, who has been so wonderful to us and become a dear friend to us in the short time that we spent together. We threaten to kidnap her and take her with us. She jokingly holds out her hands to surrender to us, wishing she could. We part with heavy hearts, knowing we will miss her.

Jack, our Guangzhou guide, takes us to the railway station to see us off. He tells us how much he has learned about the plight of the migrant workers visiting the NGOs with us, and that he will try to help them in any way he can. The other guides, Claire and Merri, also said how much they learned with us and from us. There was a lot of intimate sharing of the personal details of our lives. We got a sense of what life is like under Communist Party rule from them, and they learned a lot about Americans and our society.

After two hours, we arrive in Hong Kong and check into our hotel. It is in Kowloon on southeastern tip of the Chinese mainland. Across Victoria Harbor is Hong Kong Island. The greater Hong Kong Area also encompasses the New Territories and many of the outlying islands with a population of around 7 million. In 1997 Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule after 150 years of British control. Most of the people desire Hong Kong to become a genuine democracy but are a minority in the legislature. It is a very special situation, the relationship between Hong Kong and the central government is still evolving. Life seems to have continued here as before. There is greater freedom of speech in Hong Kong compared with the mainland.

We take the Metro, Hong Kong's modern subway system, to Hong Kong Island. The group splits up. Valerie, Darlene and Chris go to a forum on "Improving Labor Rights in China" near the convention center where the WTO Ministerial is being held. Wanda and I take the Metro to Victoria Park, where the many delegations that have come to Hong Kong to protest the WTO have booths and tents. Many of the forums discussing the diverse issues involving the WTO and rallies will be held here. There not much going on at Victoria Park so Wanda and I decide to go the Labor Rights forum. China's economic boom has come at a price. This is the dark side of "the Chinese miracle." As China has become the factory for the world, it has been on the backs of the low-paid workers who are denied the freedom to organize independent trade unions. They work in sweatshop conditions, exploited and expendable, often treated inhumanely. We hear the testimony of a woman worker, who said her employers beat her. Working conditions are often deplorable, with health and safety violations and long working hours. Recently, workers at a factory that produces batteries for export have been diagnosed with high levels of cadmium poisoning. The workers have since stated that they have not received proper treatment and have not been adequately compensated. When they complained, the factory management ordered their security staff to physically attacked them.

One of the speakers at the forum is Han Dong Fang, a well-known dissident and human rights activist banned from returning to the mainland. He says: "Investors are always looking for cheaper labor. In China they find workers who are stripped of all dignity, and they have no bargaining power. That's what makes the labor so cheap. If the workers were able to negotiate with the investors, they could obtain a decent level of pay."

In the evening, I attend a forum on "Militarism and Neo-Liberalism: A Two-headed Monster." The US has military bases all over the world to maintain America's superpower status and empire. Wars have been fought in the name of transnational corporations imposing the neo-liberal agenda - "free trade", privatization, and market access. All we need do is look at the war in Iraq. As soon as the US forces took control, Iraq was opened up to American corporations to work on reconstruction projects, and everything was privatized. To paraphrase a quote by Thomas Friedman, columnist for the NY Times, on how American economic hegemony in the world is maintain by the American military: "there would be no McDonald outlets in the world without McDonald-Douglas."

Day 9 from Hong Kong

The day begins with a rally at Victoria Park, a very large park a mile away from the Hong Kong Convention Center where the WTO trade ministers from 149 countries are meeting. There are rousing speeches. I learn four words in Cantonese: "Kong Yee Sai Mau" -- down with the WTO. There are many contingents of Korean farmers with different colored scarves, probably from different areas of South Korea. At the Cancun WTO Ministerial, a Korean farmer killed himself and galvanized the protesters there -- demonstrating that the WTO policies kill farmers' livelihoods. The police here are preparing for violent encounters with them, remove trash containers and anything that can be thrown along the march route. Many businesses have closed and have been boarded up in anticipation of vandalism.

It reminds me of the Seattle WTO Ministerial in 1999, where a coalition of labor, environmental, and social justice groups came together to derail the talks. The protesters are from all over Asia -- Taiwan, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. They are here to disrupt the talks again. It has been said that no agreement is better than a bad agreement since they impact their lives and livelihoods. The march is festive and vibrant. The sound of drums fills the air and adds drama. I won't spend anytime here describing the march since you can view my photos on my blog.

The march winds through the business areas of Causeway Bay and Wan Chai to the Convention Center. The end of the march is near the Convention Center on the docks overlooking Victoria Harbor and Kowloon on the other side. There the marchers sit down and listen to speeches and youth groups singing. At one point 100 Korean farmers strip, put on bright orange life preservers, and dive into the harbor attempting to swim to the Convention Center. They are met and picked up out of the water by Hong Kong Police patrol boats. At the same time Korean farmers attempt to break through a phalanx of police armed with clubs and protective equipment. They charge the police, and the police push them back, shooting pepper spray on them. Some have carried a platform of wood with a colorful casket and it is set on fire. A few of the Korean get bashed, but no one is seriously injured. They surge back and forth, and it ends in a standoff and eventually the protesters disperse. I have to commend the Hong Police for maintaining their composure in the face of such a volitile situation.

Day 10 from Hong Kong

Wherever the World Trade Organization meets -- Seattle in 1999 and Cancun in 2003 (Doha, Qatar in 2001 did not allow protesters) -- it is met with vigorous protests because of the neo-liberal corporate-driven agenda it promotes. This agenda includes liberalization of trade and privatization of services -- education, water distribution, healthcare, and banking - that impact the lives of millions of peasants, farmers, workers, and urban poor all over the world. They have promised increase growth and decreased poverty. But after 10 years, people can see that it is a failed model -- the gap between rich and poor has widen, jobs and livelihoods have been lost, displacement and hunger the norm in developing countries. Those who benefit the most are those at the top -- the business elites.

At the same time these WTO ministerials are going on, there are forums and teach-ins educating people about what the WTO is up to, and the latest strategies to counter it. When I go to them, I hear inspiring speakers and always learn more about the scope and complexity of the WTO, and its impact on every aspect of our lives. The following is a list of some of the forums that people can attend:

Action and Strategy
Militarism & Neo-Liberalism -- Two Headed Monster?
Tourism & the GATS: Implications for Sustainablility in Developing Countries
Become a Trade Lawyer in One Hour or Less: Learn to Decode Tricky Trade Jargon
The GATS Attack: Mode 4 and its Strategic Implications
Free Trade Agreements & the WTO: Complementary Agents of Neoliberalism
Defending Cultural Diversity From the WTO
Defending Public Services: Creating Jobs and Protecting Communities
Another Future: Alternatives to the WTO and the Bretton Woods Institutions Asian Social Movements Assembly
The Impacts of Neo-Liberal Policy and the Alternative: Food Sovereignty
Making the Links: the Great Unemployment Round
Fish for Sale: How NAMA Negotiations Impact Fishing Communities and the Environment
Impact of 10 Years of WTO: Farmers and the Environment
The WTO and Developing Countries Right to Protect
Alternatives to the WTO and Corporate Globalization
China and Globalization: What to Know about the "New China" and its Importance for Global Social Justice
The Politics of a Future Flu Pandemic: Neo-liberalism, Drug Companies and Corporate Farming
Women take on WTO: Women's Resistance to the Corporate Hijack of Food and Health
Winners and Losers: Big Business Against Women, Workers and the Environment
GATS Without Brakes -- Struggles of People against GATS
Iraq: Ground Zero of Globalization and War
Trade: War By Other Means
Our Challenge & Resistance to Neo-liberal Policy -- Another World is Possible!
Beyond WTO and AoA: Alternative Rules of Agriculture
The Imposition of the Neo-liberal Agenda in the Americas: Free Trade, Militarism and Debt
Building Solidarity Amongst Garment, Farm and Other Migrant Workers from San Francisco to Hong Kong

I decide to attend three forums today.

Asian People's Voices -- Impact of WTO on Asian Communities: A Testimony of Experiences
We hear testimonials from farmers, workers, and women from all over Asia. From farmers, the common theme is they cannot compete with subsidized imports - such rice, corn, sugar, and cotton - from the US and the European Union (EU) dumped into their domestic markets because they are lower than their cost of production. Since they can't make a living on the land, they migrate to the cities in search of work. Many commit suicide. Subsidies are a major bone of contention in the current Hong Kong WTO Ministerial. Developing countries are demanding that the US and the EU cut agricultural subsidies, lower their tariffs and open their markets to their exports. The US and EU have so far refused to do this to any significant degree, so the talks are likely to collapse again as in Cancun in 2003. This would throw the WTO into disarray and question its legitimacy. This might provide space to establish more socially and economically just fair trade alternatives.

HIV/AIDS is an enormous problem in Asian countries. The life-saving anti-viral drugs that people need are so expensive they cannot afford buy them. The drugs are expensive because huge transnational pharmaceutical corporations own the patents, or intellectual property rights, on them. And under a WTO agreement called "Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights" or TRIPS, countries are required to adopt US-style intellectual property laws, such as granting monopoly sales rights to individual patent holders for extended time periods. Asian countries that have signed on to the WTO are banned from buying generic anti-viral drugs from countries such as, Brazil or Argentina, that have the pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity to produce these drugs at very affordable prices. The WTO TRIPS rules have been the subject of a major international fight regarding poor countries' rights to issue compulsory licenses for these essential medicines. Many of the testimonials complain about public services that are being privatized. The WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), creates rights for foreign corporations to provide services that were formerly public services provided by the government, in other words being privatized for profit. GATS covers all services including health care, education and utilities such as water, data management, energy, banking, transportation and insurance. When these services are privatized, the rates are increased and poor people can no long afford them. At anti-globalization demonstrations, one of the common slogans is "People Before Profits."

A woman from Cambodia testifies that young women are forced into the sex trade because of poverty and need access to HIV/AID treatment drugs. They are forced to earn money by their parents. She said scientific experiments are performed on sex workers like they were animals.

A farmer from Thailand testifies the relationship between the farmer and nature has changed. In order to produce cash crops for exports, they are using chemical inputs, fertilizers and pesticides. They are being pushed to buy genetically modified (GMO) seeds from Monsanto. Because Monsanto has inserted a gene in their seed and has a patent on it, farmers are no longer able to save their own seeds to plant, which they have traditionally done. They are locked into returning each year to buy Monsanto seeds. As chemical inputs and seeds are expensive, farmers are going into debt and bondage.

In India, indigenous forest people who depend on the forest for their livelihoods are being impacted as WTO agreements allow foreign corporations to come and cut down trees. These forest lands were formerly the eminent domain of the government.

A woman from the Philippines says that women bear the brunt of poverty caused by WTO policies. They are most affected and carry the burden of because of gender roles. As education costs become higher and higher, poor families can only send their sons to school, so women are not being educated.

It becomes clear that all these problems are not local, but are global problems. People all over the world now are coming together in solidarity to work together against the neo-liberal agenda and global finance. This forum certainly illustrated that fact.

Become a Trade Lawyer in One Hour or Less: Learn to Decode Tricky Trade Jargon
This workshop designed to help non-lawyers interpret trade agreement language. It is taught by Lori Wallach, Director of Global Trade Watch. These agreements have deep and direct impacts on many facets of the daily lives of people everywhere, but the meaning and implications of their terms are often unintelligible. They are written in a technical trade jargon and have extremely precise legal meanings, which can turn on the slight difference of a verb's tense. They are also only available in English, putting non-native speakers at a disadvantage from the start. The WTO is like an infinitely complex labyrinth, so you need someone with Lori's expertise to guide you through the complexities. As I attend these forums and workshops, I get another piece of the puzzle, make connections, and get a fuller picture of the WTO.

Some background on globalization by Lori Wallach, Director of Global Trade Watch
"Globalization is a defining phenomenon of our time. The current model, corporate economic globalization, is a version of globalization which is being implemented by a new array of international commercial agreements. While these pacts are called "trade" agreements, today's international commercial agreements no longer focus solely on traditional trade matters, such as reducing tariffs and quotas. Instead, the main mechanisms of globalization, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), contain a comprehensive set of one-size-fits-all policies to which signatory countries are required to conform their domestic laws and regulations. These pacts prioritize commerce over other goals and values, in part by setting constraints on what environmental, food or product safety, social justice and other policies our national, state and local governments may implement."

Defending Water Commons
There is a water crisis in the world today. Wars of the future could be over water, as more and more people do not access to water. Water sources are becoming more polluted and undrinkable. Ursula, from Mexico, tells us Mexico could lose up to 65% of its corn growing area due to climate change. Dale Wen reports that China's water pollution victims are mostly rural. As China becomes the world's factory, it becomes the world's dumping ground. 60% of China rivers are polluted. Many people are suffering from cancer and liver problems as a result. Vandana Shiva, one of my anti-globalization heroes, tells the story of how women in India took on Coca Cola because it sucks up the ground water of communities and stop them. There are people's movements to stop the privatization of water for profit in many developing countries. Water is sacred and a human right. It is part of the public commons and should be protected from being privatized.

Day 11 from Hong Kong

I start the day exploring Yau Ma Tei, the business and residential neighborhood around our hotel. Nathan Road is the major commercial thoroughfare a block away. Strolling off the main drag a few blocks, I find myself in a three-block long wholesale fruit district. Curious, I look at the boxes of fruit to see where they came from. (According to my guide book -- "Hong Kong has a very small agricultural base. Only 2.3 % of the total land area is under cultivation and just over 20,400 people -- a mere 0.3% of the total population -- is engaged in agriculture and fishing. Most food is imported from the mainland.") I find a microcosm of globalization.

Grapes from the USA
Strawberries from New Zealand
Oranges from Australia
Pomelo from Thailand
Dragon Fruit from Vietnam(a most unusual and exotic fruit like a red papaya with green sprouts on top, indeed looking like a dragon)
Oranges from Taiwan
Apples from Washington State
Papaya from Malaysia
Honeydew Melons from Mexico
Mangoes from the Philippines
Papayas and Pineapples from the Philippines

Down past the wholesale fruit district is the hardware and industrial machinery district, hundreds of street-level small storefront shops selling everything from compressors to nuts and bolts. Most of the streets have high-rise apartment buildings, and have restaurants, stores and shops of all sorts at the street level. There are no tract homes in Hong Kong. Everyone lives in an apartment in a high-rise. Yau Ma Tei is a bustling and busy place. I find myself very much at home with my favorite down-home Cantonese cuisine everywhere -- dumplings and noodles shops, dim sum, and congee restaurants.

In the afternoon, I take the metro underground across Victoria Harbor to Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island. The Boys and Girls Club is a major venue for the various workshops and forums being held during the WTO Ministerial. I attend a couple of them.

Impact of 10 Years of WTO: Farmers and the Environment
The moderator opens up the forum stating that in the last 10 years we've witnessed farmers committing suicide, biodiversity erosion, and global warming. She gives us some historical background on the destruction to the environment and the world's peoples by, first of all, colonialism, and the fight for liberation from colonialism.

And then by the US aid program, which led an attempt to bring corporations into post-colonial new countries through these aid programs, which worked to the benefit of the corporations and not to the benefit of the people. This was followed by World Bank projects - dams built in developing countries, and there was a electric power plant built on a fault line in the Philippines. They were built at great cost, not only in terms of the borrowing that had to done, but also in terms of the local development resources used in order to build these projects. No reasonable bank would have funded them because there was no way they could ever be paid back what it cost to build the projects. This created a great deal of debt that brought in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail out the developing countries, which wreaked its own destruction on the world, on the environment, on the farmland, and on the people through its conditionalities. In order to receive these loans, the governments were required to divert funds for reforms and social services, and radically changed the economies of the global south in order to make them match the trade system that the northern powers had created.

All these of things were tremendously destructive to these countries, but then came along the trade agreements -- the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), and then the World Trade Organization (WTO) which is a neo-colonial attempt, through all kinds of skullduggery, to take control of the resources, the labor, and the economies of the global south in order to benefit the corporations of the north. Whose interest is not, and has never been, in the creation of a real community project, but has been in the creation of a world trade system that will favor large corporations. It benefits those corporations that have the capacity and the capital to operate trans-nationally, and to make huge profits out of this new system. All of these have been enormously destructive.

The hope of the panel is "to bring together all that we have experienced, our joint experiences, in an attempt to deal with this destruction in a different way, so we might leave here with some better understanding on what we might be able to do together to stop this destruction to farmers, to farm land, to biological diversity, to the climate, and to the planet itself and the people on it, as a result of these destructive forces."

Dale Wen, a panelist with the International Forum on Globalization, spoke about the rural situation in China, using the example of sugarcane production in Guangxi Province. Within 6 months of China joining the WTO, the price for sugar went down 35%, profits were diminished because of the export subsidies by rich countries depressed world sugar prices. So Chinese farmers cannot compete, and get less and less, as their profit margin declined. Although sugar prices did go up after a while, the farmers did not benefit because of the longer supply chain trading globally, with many middle dealers, between the farmers and consumers, taking a cut. This is also true in the US. The farmers only get a small percentage of the final price to consumers. It the big transnational commodity corporations, such as Cargill and Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), that reap all the profits. And in order to get the same income, Chinese farmers had to put more land into cultivation, which was detrimental to the land.

Mr. Krishan Bir Choudhary, the next panelist from India, told us 700 million people in India depend on agriculture as a way of life. In the ten years that India has been in the WTO, 40,000 farmers have committed suicide because they have lost their livelihoods. Dale says that suicides in China are also a problem. Farmers provide food for society, feeding the world so this is a shame. Through the WTO multinational corporations are trying to control the food supply by having a monopoly in the seed sector. Monsanto has developed genetically modified BT cotton, (BT is a naturally occurring pesticide) and sold the seeds to farmers. But the farmers who planted this seed experienced crop failures, and the company did not pay any compensation.

India use to be self sufficient in the oil seed sector, and now 60% has to be imported. Sheep died when they ate the BT cotton, and farmers have developed skin allergies. Small farmers can't compete with large mechanized farms. And now Monsanto has a GM seed that self-destructs, so it can't be planted to grow the next generation of crops. It is called the "terminator" gene, so farmers have to come back to Monsanto each year to buy seed, and thereby capturing the market. Every country should protect their food security and water.

Kamal Nath, India's trade minister, is quoted: "The Hong Kong meeting is really about 650 million people who live on less than US$1 a day, versus developed countries which pay US$1 billion a day in agricultural subsidies."

Ursula Oswald, a panelist from Mexico, tells us that after 10 years of signing onto the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), between the US, Canada, and Mexico, the price of corn has gone down 64%, and beans down 46%, because their markets were opened up to subsidized imports. 80% of the rural population lives in poverty. Because women aren't able to get enough nutrition, babies are born with brain damage. This is a kind of "perverse poverty."

Like many other countries experiencing global warming and climate change, more land is becoming desert in Northern Mexico and there is less water. Because everything has been privatized Mexico has lost its food security, having to depend on imported food. Mexico has a population of 102 million people, 25% still are poor farmers. Now because they can't survive by farming, 2 million have left the countryside to live in the cities or go north to attempt to cross the US border illegally. Many have died in the attempt. And now many from Central America and South America also are migrating. There are a lot of slums developing. Mexico City now has a population of 25 million. There are 1.5 million youth who can't get jobs. These are global problems happening all over the world, in China and India, while the global elites are getting richer. 178 billion dollars is being spent to import food, which could have been spent for infrastructure, the environment and development. The WTO is a very perverse system of world trade.

Vandana Shiva, anti-globalization activist from India, says that agriculture will make or break the WTO. Agricultural is the issue. Nothing will move until agriculture moves, but the US only want agriculture to move in the direction of trade liberalization. Europe has rich landlords and small farmers. But Europe doesn't have the giant agribusiness corporations. It does not have the Cargill and the Monsanto. It is Cargill, Monsanto, ConAgra and ADM, who are driving the liberalization in agriculture. And Cargill wrote the WTO agreement on agriculture. So the US wants to make Europe the bad guy who is holding up progress in the talks. Since the small farmers have political clout, Europe is not able to go totally down the road of trade liberalization, because they want to protect their small family farms. The problem is free trade and agriculture. "Agriculture is not the kind of thing that can be subjected to these free trade agreements. There is talk of giving more aid to least developed countries so they can join the free trade system. The issue really is: will development be it counted as sovereignty, food sovereignty of farmers, food sovereignty of country, food sufficiency - the right to be able to provide for yourself, or will it be counted as free trade for Cargill so that they can push more farmers off the edge, and push more consumers into lack of freedom about what they eat?"

Industrialized agriculture is non-sustainable because it required so many chemicals, which is destroying the land. It sucks wealth and is a negative system, taking more than it gives. That is why it needs subsidies. There are surpluses because it promotes monoculture. In India we are now working on developing a more sustainable, ecologically diverse agriculture. Small family farms that grow organically and have direct links with the consumer. They have proven to be 3 to 5 times more productive than industrialized farms, and have higher income since they don't require chemical inputs. This is the way to solve the problem of poverty, not more aid programs.

"We have reached a moment in history where if we join hands for these common principles, the common principle that farming everywhere should be sustainable and ecological - conserving the land, the soil, the water, and the biodiversity - that small farmers everywhere have the right to live, and therefore, all governments, rich or poor, north or south, have a duty to protect small farmers, and trade can only be based on the participation of small farmers as producers, not as destitute, not as beggars, not as dependent which is the way they would like to go with the kind of proposals in WTO. We have reached a moment in history where small farmers of the world can change the world and shape the future. And we should thank the Korean farmers for they have kept the issue clearly stated. And they have carried a huge burden on behalf of all of us. And now is the time to shape agriculture on our terms, and called the bluff on productivity, efficiency, surpluses, income generation and growth. All this work will have to be done on the land, on the ground, in our communities, in our countries. But when we join hands together, there really is a lot we can shape. We are in a moment of deep transformation of our food and agriculture system, and that system has to be based on our own freedom - the right to choose what we grow and how we grow it, the right to choose what we eat, and the ability to say no to genetically modified foods, and the ability to say no to chemicals."