The most frequent commenter on this blog is Saurkraut, who I respect for her frank thoughts--it's no surprise her blog is popular. But I have to disagree with her hard-nosed foreign policy views, especially in regard to China.
While I'm no fan of the Chinese Communist Party, I don't think boycotting Chinese goods or imposing sanctions is a helpful, or even realistic, way to loosen the regime's grip on power. What I do believe will help is an infiltration of democratic ideas ... a case where the pen is more powerful than the sword, so to speak. That's why I always focus on censorship issues in regard to China (arguments I believe Chinese people can generally sympathize with) and don't call for punitive measures (which I'm pretty sure the Chinese populace would not appreciate).
I think ideas are key to helping China become a truly free and democratic country. Thankfully, the dam has already been breached in China, and the flow of ideas is unstoppable. This is the gist of today's Letter from China report from New York Times correspondent Howard French:
If the Internet is at the center of today's struggle over press freedom, it is only the latest in a series of fights that the government has so far always lost. Under the veneer of resolute state control, one sector after another, including book publishing, newspapers and magazines, has undergone a similar process of de facto liberalization, often in the face of official hostility. The first wave came in book publishing, where beginning in the 1980's censors found themselves unable to suppress books that were critical of state policy or expressed divergent views on ideological matters. A big part of the reason for the weakening of the censors was the introduction of a market economy, where publishers had to seek profits to support their activities. Turgid, politically correct books that delighted the censors sold poorly, so profit-seeking publishers sought to get bolder, often provocative writing into print.The blog in the screenshot above is a great example of how censors simply cannot control everything. It is a blog written by a Chinese and hosted on MSN Spaces, which is available in China, unlike Blogger. The title of the blog is "Non-violent Resistance" and it is very provocative in its content, and while the writer wonders aloud whether his blog will be shut down, you definitely know that he would simply start up again somewhere else.
3 comments:
Very interesting. I understand your point of view. My point is that so far it hasn't worked. We've tried to be a 'friend' to the Chinese gov't for a long time. In the meantime, the American worker suffers and little improves for the Chinese worker, either. I can understand "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But, if it's "broke", why not consider alternatives?
ok, i see we're talking about different things. i'm concerned about freedom in china and you're concerned about jobs in america.
i agree that we should be hard-nosed in terms of international trade relations and seek our own nation's benefit. so if it was in the united states' best interest to boycott china based on economic grounds, i might agree. (i don't think that is the case, however, mostly because the chinese are the second-largest financier of american debt behind japan ... ours is an inter-dependent relationship.)
but if you're going to call for a boycott in order to bring democracy to china, then i think that's a completely wrong-headed approach. the nytimes article i cited shows that increasing trade and interaction has brought tremendous freedom to china, despite efforts of the ccp.
Ahhh, then we're in agreement. You're right that there would be no way to bring democracy to china through snubbing their gov't. alone. They're simply too large for us to hurt them in any significant way, I suspect...
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