Here's
a link to an MSNBC news item about a poet jailed for a poem in China!
CHINA
POET
CHINA'S ECONOMIC DOMINATION
REDUCES U.S. TO A DOMINO
Opinion Piece by David B. Axelrod
(Note: the original of this essay appeared in
2003. Earlier commentary has also appeared in publications, China
Watch, and in India)
Excuse me, but I wonder how it was that we all blinked. How could we
all have missed this? Not only do we have a tremendous trade imbalance with the
People's Republic of China, they basically own our U.S. Treasury. Give or take a few ifs, ands and Thai Bats,
our own Dow Jones could drop like chou sticks and our currency hangs by
a thread, yet we still don't see our future? There are certainly
enough real consequences to nearly the U.S. running up hundreds of
billions dollars of trade deficits to China and yet it seems we didn't
just blink, we put on blinders.
Take the most populous nation in the
world, the fastest expanding market, China. Hand it Hong Kong, which added billions more into the trade imbalance we could previously pretend
was not money going to the PRC. Hong Kong, by the way, is safely among
the top five financial cities of the world.
Soon enough, we may allow PRC to have Taiwan, which already is the
front for vast amounts of more money we actually are sending to PRC! (Taiwan
may
sell us electronics but in fact manufactures the items in PRC. So many
items we've come to expect and need come from PRC we can't keep up with
them all.)
It is worth noting as well that one of the most popular books among
the new generation of Mainland Chinese business practitioners is still How
to Have a Thick Face and a Dark Heart. That "self-help"
business guide--written, ironically, by a Taiwanese woman now living in
the U.S.--applies some wonderfully Machiavellian and ancient Chinese
principles of battle, to the business world. Most prominent among those
tenets is advice to "draw your opponent upstairs with ministrations
of friendship, then take away the stairs."
We have been elevated by promises of great market opportunities in
China though few if any major corporations are running in the black in
China. It is hard to make a profit, given extensive corruption and a
general failure of the rule of law. Now we see our front and back stairs
removed by the drain our trade which China places on our own economy.
Add to all this a growing instability among many of China's banks and
we, in the U.S., are faced with a truly dangerous economic situation.
Of course there is no way to predict a stock market tumble. Nor can
we attribute failing in our economy singly to our dangerous dealings
with PRC. But it would be blind to ignore how great PRC's powers are
over us. We would, for instance, have to ignore the billions the Central
Government in PRC already have placed in reserve on the chance they
might have to "stabilize" their own economy (think, plan,
attack). Those same reserves could also be used to destabilize other
currencies.
We would have to ignore the fact that China, for all the myths about
the democratizing effects engaging with the capitalist economies of the
world, continues to wage capitalism like a war. Since Deng Xiao Ping
declared how sweet and glorious it would be for people to grow rich for
their country, PRC continues to restrict its citizens with draconian
regulations that forbid everything from freedom to associate, to
publish, to speak, to practice religion, to even decide the number of
their progeny. Could it be possible that PRC would like to deny us our
freedoms as well? Short of world domination, it would make sense that
PRC would be happy to hold the power.
China continues to fire not so subtle salvos at us using their newest
weapons, currency manipulation and the balance of trade deficit, and by
all indications, we are raising the white flag of surrender. They own us
now. Just watch how they roll their little rope ladder up and down while
we dash up and down like monkey clowns.
(Note: The U.S. Department of State's official cant on China, not to
mention Tibet, is that we should not impose our standards of freedom on
someone else's nation. Well, excuse me, throw out the U.N. articles on
human rights. A happy slave is still a slave.)