We Americans have a peculiar love of freedom. In fact, since President Woodrow Wilson delivered his noted speech promising to "make the world safe for democracy", our government has pursued an idealistic mission to grant free time to all the captive peoples of the world. But not even a superpower has the capability to set all captives free, much less police the world to ensure that all human beings are free. So we rightly narrow our focus to what we think the worst examples of tyranny.
The Us State branch publicly issues a semiannual list of about fifteen such regimes titled Countries of particular Concern. In 2006, Iran topped the list due to its anti-Western government, its alleged sponsorship of terrorism, its persecution of religious minorities, its nuclear program, and its harsh annotation of Israel. Syria came next for similar reasons. North Korea ranked third for the cruel Communist dictatorship of Kim Jong Il, the mass imprisonment and torture of political opponents, and the found and deployment of nuclear weapons. In addition, our government ostracized Myanmar (Burma) for the violence of its unelected troops junta and Sudan and Zimbabwe for the authoritarianism, rampant violence and corruption of their dictators, Omar al-Bashir and Robert Mugabe respectively. Our ally Saudi Arabia also made the list as free time of religion is nonexistent and free time of speech is restricted there.
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The Countries of particular Concern list released in July 2007 included all of these nations, although the order was shuffled and some new additions were present. Oddly, Myanmar-a small, relatively unknown Southeast Asian state-was moved from the middle of the list to the very top. Sadly, Iraq appeared on the list for the first time since 2003 as a result of the turbulent, anarchic state of affairs in that country, which has allowed a variety of human proprietary violations and abuses to flourish.
But one major country is disturbingly absent from the Bush administration's list. Since the cessation of the Cold War, this giant nation has been thoroughly neglected yet it still groans under a Communist regime. Its absence from the American radar screen is becoming more and more conspicuous. The dramatic shift in American foreign course thinking after the collapse of the Ussr, preoccupation with the "War on Terrorism", and most significantly the narrow bias of Western media are together largely responsible for this state's omission. Straight through what they cover and what they ignore, the news executives of the Beltway have the power to shape the American view of the world. Fox News, Cnn and Msnbc have steadily ignored the situation in China, creating the popular American perception that the Chinese regime is no longer a threat to its people. In any event, the Chinese have attained economic independence Straight through the globalization system. The Cold War ended in 1991; Communism is now a thing of the past which lies utterly discredited.
Such a perception couldn't be more misleading. Communism has in effect been discredited, but it is far from banished. The second largest country on earth, claiming one fifth the world's habitancy and now the second largest economic power in world history, is still ruled by a Communist dictatorship. In China, free time of religion does not exist. Clerics who bind to a spiritual authority above the government continue to spend years in prison, with some even dying there. Political opponents and journalists are incarcerated for lively the Communist party and reporting the hideous methods the regime uses to keep control, respectively. With the habit institution of censorship, free time of the press is still a mere dream. Indigenous separatist movements are brutally repressed with troops force, torture, and murder. No, Red China is not a free country like the United States.
Nor has it become truly prosperous. Internationalization of the Chinese regime-controlled cheaper has made itsybitsy dent in the glaring extensive poverty afflicting a amount of habitancy larger than the whole Us population. As many as 325 million Chinese citizens subsist without clean drinking water, and a incredible 780 million lack contemporary sanitation. (1) American trade with China has in effect been booming for more than a decade and a half, and investors from Wall street to Hong Kong to Tokyo have catapulted the huge Asian country into the status of an primary link in the global economic chain. But with such a small measure of the Chinese habitancy enjoying the benefits of financial globalization, China cannot be called a wealthy nation. The mean Chinese habitancy (that is, about three in five) (2) possesses a small farm and tries to cope with heavy taxes; 350 million others accept a grueling, 100 hour per week "sweatshop" factory job that provides less than 1 dollar an hour (adjusted for purchasing power parity). (3) For the latter group, independent labor unions are illegal, stifling hope for improved working conditions and wages. Participation in the privatized Chinese shop for these 1.1 billion (4) human beings is increasingly a lose-lose situation. Only the foreign investors, their bloated multinational corporations and a relatively few lucky college-grad Chinese expatriate businesspeople, about 100 million, draw benefit from this scheme, at the price of hundreds of millions serving against their will-and in violation of their freedom-as sources of cheap labor.
While the American term "Red China" has fallen into disuse, the state is nevertheless still governed by an authoritarian Communist regime. Yet America is unwilling to confront this gigantic and egregious violator of human rights. Why? Because it is no longer politically accurate or profitable to do so.
America's rising worship of wealth has reached its logical conclusion, where economic considerations trump moral and ethical ones. From Wal-Mart to Microsoft to McDonald's, many major Us businesses have a crucial stake in China. Uniting with the international community to pressure the Chinese rulers for a more just government might rock the boat, producing some "friction" and internal "instability"-words that corporate executives do not like to hear. Furthermore, a change of regime would empower separatist movements in Xinjiang, Tibet and other regions, harming the Us battle against terrorism. Communists, big enterprise magnates, and supporters of the "War on Terrorism" have all discovered that they are bedfellows striving for a weird coarse goal: suppress free time in the name of freedom.
The new worldwide economic structure troops a confident ambivalence-or more precisely, hypocrisy-on those high-level Us policymakers who citation a fortune Straight through it. Globalization has introduced a multitude of new complexities into the world's political scene. Since the chief aim of the mean transnational Ceo is to growth his own profits, globalization leads to rivalries and fragmentation rather than uniting the peoples of the world. This dynamic encourages Washington to confront Beijing as a threat to American interests, and vice versa. Indeed, the rapid modernization and expansion of China's troops apparatus is underway not because Chinese Communists harbor a particular hatred of the United States, but because they intend to compete with the Us for control of the earth's natural resources, especially petroleum. However, at the same time American mega-corporations thrive under repressive foreign governments, which guard and reserve their unjust accumulations of wealth. The corruption and human proprietary violations of many despotic foreign regimes are tolerated by corporate executives as the price of doing business. Thus the greed of American entrepreneurs has diluted American opposition to all forms of tyranny. Only those rulers who oppose unrestricted capitalism (such as Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) are portrayed as vicious tyrants, seriously confronted, and dealt with.
Drunk with the excitement of its headlong dive into the world's oldest continuous civilization, American enterprise to date has left ethical considerations on the diving board. China's repression of religious liberty is convenient for the multinational tycoons who tend to be nonreligious and regard the observance of a weekly day of rest for themselves and their hapless wage slaves as an irksome enemy of profit. In addition, religion makes habitancy think of the coarse good and helping the destitute, with every Yuan given to the poor being a Yuan less for the unrestrained capitalists' bank accounts. At the clamor of American investors, the Red Chinese regime has been slipping closer and closer to total laissez-faire economics. Conversely, in fields covering of economics, the regime has maintained tight control over its people's lives. With its politics, militarism, violations of human rights, and hostility to religion, Red China is a practical demonstration of the wild "free market" at its worst.
Now, I will not deny that capitalism is the ultimate basis for a sound national economic system, or that the worldwide version of it is a real and lively opening for the benefit of the human race. But it is just as true that without civil government based on a foundation of ethics and serving the coarse good, the human race will destroy itself. coarse sense as much as the moral law dictates the necessity of basic system of justice to guide the world market. To shape a truly competing economic system that is both free and fair for all the peoples of the world is a challenge and a responsibility that confronts America more and more each day, with ever-swelling monopolies and repeated acts of international "Islamic" terrorism. If only for the sake of world peace, we must strive to carry out this task with international assistance.
However, the "War on Terrorism" conflicts with our moral duties in regard to Red China because it is a war on political free time and economic fairness. Two hundred thirty years ago, America was born as a result of England's consistent, deliberate failure to remedy the English colonists' economic and political grievances. Having evolved into a unique habitancy and facing a repressive government, the colonists believed that they had a right to form their own country. The nationalist and separatist movements of our own time in northwestern China and Tibet as well as thruout the Middle East, Africa, Europe and South America are all similarly products of grave injustices remaining unresolved for a primary period of time. When grievances lie disregarded by the government for too long, citizens are likely to reject or even overthrow that government. And according to our notification of Independence, such oppressed citizens have not only the right, but the duty to oust a despotic regime.
Yet instead of championing the human free time of all habitancy along with the Chinese, America has severely warped the understanding of free time to suit the interests of big business. The tyrannical Red Chinese regime is the most superior example of this duplicate standard. Repeating the motto that Communism is dead and a thing of the past enables the Us to distract American from this evil course to the benefit of dishonest, voracious multinational corporations.
By shamelessly monopolizing the shop and squeezing out all competitors, a cartel of big businesses and multimillionaire investors currently unites with our government in attacking human freedom. The mean Chinese habitancy has no anticipation of beginning a flourishing small enterprise or enhancing his or her life, and lacks the money to attend college or university. While the Red Chinese regime has significantly released the nation's cheaper from the doldrums and merged it with the international economy, the result has not been vibrant financial condition for the nation as a whole. Excessive privatization leads to a wildly insecure shop that negatively affects the greater part of the Chinese, and world, population.
Classic Communism is a mistaken response to such economic travail and injustice which does just as grave damage as unrestrained capitalism. Between the extremes of total central economic planning and ridiculous laissez-faire indifference, only a balanced financial system established on moral and ethical system will succeed. If government does not exercise some degree of regulation over the national economy, if businesspeople can control above the rule of law with impunity, the road is open for wealth to be progressively concentrated in fewer hands at the ever-increasing expense of poorer citizens. Some avaricious entrepreneurs will not restrain themselves from traveling as far down that road as possible. Unfortunately, Red China's speed in traveling down this path does not bode well for its future.
Were it not for the greed of a few American bankers and industrialists, the political correctness of the post-Cold War world, and the shameful compliance of our media, Americans would comprehend that the Communist doctrine which shapes Chinese social life is evil. Moreover, the current hybrid form in which civil and political proprietary are curtailed and big enterprise is allowed to dominate the lowly habitancy is the very antithesis of freedom. Yet America pathetically acquiesces in the first form of repression and actively promotes the latter. What happened to our will to fight Communism? Partly due to our waging of a Cold War and partly to Communism's potential economic and political flaws, Russia, Eastern Europe, and most of South America and Africa are free of it. Transnational executives and investors have bribed our government policymakers into facilitating their way to the lucrative Chinese shop at the price of capitulating to the last major Red power.
Red China tramples our values, yet it has received unstinting praise from President Bush as a firm ally in the "War on Terrorism". This makes no sense and is an inconceivable logic gap.
Although it is beyond the scope of this narrative to discuss American relations with other countries, it should be noted that our corrupt international relationships have not been itsybitsy to China. For a amount of years we have been actively supporting undemocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Morocco, and Colombia as well as acquiescing to them in Guatemala, Sudan, Uganda, and Vietnam. We should be upholding our prestige as a champion of human proprietary and free time by working tirelessly and, as much as possible, peacefully to wipe Communism and all other forms of totalitarian government off the earth.
To its credit, the State branch added the Tibet region of southwestern China to its latest blacklist. But what about the rest of the country? What about the forced abortions and sterilizations occurring thruout the countryside as well as the cities? What about the sweatshops where tens of millions of Chinese work 100 hours per week for less than 1 dollar an hour? What about the brutal repression campaign in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (Xuar)? What about the heavy taxes that are forcing millions upon millions of Chinese peasants off their farms in order to subsidize the ever-wealthier mega-corporate monsters?
Sadly, greed has politicized our moral values and distorted our concern for basic human rights. While America should not be an interventionist that builds a worldwide empire, our foreign course must be guided by the light of our moral values-which are universal moral values. Governments guilty of systematic and serious violations of the human proprietary and free time of their habitancy must be held accountable in the Un and be subject to our polite pressure to change their ways. Red China fits that description. If in spite of these actions it continues to impose Communist dictatorship on its gigantic and helpless population, we do what we did with spectacular success in Soviet Afghanistan in the 1980s: arm and train local separatists for a revolutionary war of independence. Otherwise America's grand notification of commitment to free time and human proprietary will be justly regarded as empty words.
Endnotes
(1) Figures calculated from percentages of the habitancy retrieved from Terrorism Knowledge Base, "Country/Area Overview: China", at http://www.tkb.org/Country.jsp?countryCd=Ch.
(2) Rural habitancy distribution is 60 percent. Retrieved from http://www.tkb.org/Country.jsp?countryCd=Ch.
(3) Sarah Anderson, "Wal-Mart's Pay Gap", found for course Studies, retrieved
from [http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/global_econ/walmart_pay_gap.htm].
(4) Equal to habitancy on farms plus habitancy in sweatshops.
America's Relations With China - Contradicting Our Values?Friends Link : todays world news headlines
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