Opaque Lucidity

Still We Trade

From Drudge this morning:

FLASH: Heckler disrupts Chinese President Hu's speech on south lawn at White House: 'President Bush, stop him from killing'... 'Stop persecuting the Falun Gong,' she yelled... She also shouted in Chinese, 'President Hu, your days are numbered'... woman is taken away by uniformed secret service officers... right after Bush urged Hu to allow Chinese to 'speak freely'...

On China TV: As Hu Jintao was speaking, as yells of protesters became audible, the screen went black. Feed then came back and once again went black when woman was once again audible. During CNN International's post-speech commentary, at mention of south lawn heckler, screen went black again... feed returned when topic was no longer being discussed...

This is the kind of thing that does, and should, happen when democratic countries do business with despotic regimes with terrible human rights records. If China did not have over a billion citizens, would US industries be so keen to do business there? Of course not! In this amoral business climate, a country's laws are of no concern as long as they allow profits to be made. Look at Yahoo! and Google--not only do they not speak out against China's human rights record, but they have actually helped the authorities trace people who have spoken out against the government in e-mails.

I'm sure that some people will say that China will be changed by the influx of Western capital and ideas and that democracy will eventually flourish. That's thin reasoning when no one can point to an example in which that has actually occurred. The Soviet Union did not crumble because of Western influence, but rather because their economic system could not be sustained. China learned that lesson and is now experiencing a record-setting economy while still maintaining a centrally-controlled economy and Communist government. They've had it both ways for nearly a generation. Why change now?