That's why, in spite of the sclerotic Marxoid ideology that still reins in and retards the natural entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people, China is moving forward by leaps and bounds. That's also why comrade Pelosi and her union boss buddies have launched this odious Sinophobic hate campaign – because "their" jobs and sense of entitlement are going up in smoke. For decades, the U.S. government has preached the virtues of free enterprise and urged formerly Communist nations to adopt the free market – and now that the Chinese have taken them up on their offer, Western politicians are attacking them!
The closer China has moved toward our own system – relaxing totalitarian controls over the economy and allowing a far greater degree of ideological diversity than was possible during the Maoist era – the more hostile the U.S. government has become. Nixon went to China at the height of the Cultural Revolution, where he sat next to Madam Mao during a command performance of
The Red Detachment of Women. These days, however, as China stakes its claim to a proportionate share of the world market – and Chinese investors fund the
U.S. debt – the resentment and growing hostility of the Americans is all too palpable.
Why do politicians of Pelosi's ilk join hands with neoconservatives in a concerted campaign to antagonize China, and even threaten sanctions and possible military action when the occasion gives rise to the opportunity?
To begin with, China's is a success story, and there's nothing that attracts opprobrium like success, unless it's success of the wrong color – in this case, yellow. A crude racist collectivism of a specifically anti-Asian character has long been a tradition of the War Party in this country:
see the
anti-Japanese Dr. Seuss cartoons from the
World War II era for a particularly
vivid example. Yes, he was attacking the "Japs," but to Americans, it's all the same
Yellow Peril. This kind of sentiment is easily invoked in America, and don't tell me Pelosi and her ideological confreres aren't aware of it – yes, even in "liberal" San Francisco, where anti-Asian sentiment is part of the city's
history.
Never mind the first black president, or the first female president – what I'm waiting for is the first chief executive of Asian-American descent. I'm not, however, holding my breath…
Relations with China are cloudy, at best, and those may very well be war clouds gathering on the horizon. The reason is that Sinophobia is a point of unity between the Left and the Right: the union of the
Weekly Standard and the
AFL-CIO, and perhaps even the majority of my paleoconservative friends, who quail before the rising Chinese giant and see it as a potential threat on account of its sheer scale – a third of the world's population, and a land-mass that rivals our own. Surely such a stirring titan will knock us out of the way as he takes his place at the center of the world stage.
This reflects a fundamental error on the part of many conservatives, as well as liberals of the more statist persuasion. They fail to understand that there are no conflicts of interest among nations as long as their relations are governed by the market, that is by mutually beneficial trade agreements voluntarily entered into.
Ludwig von Mises said it far better than I could ever manage, and I'll leave my readers to Mises' ministrations on this abstruse but important subject.
Suffice to say here that our relations with China on the economic front are a benefit to American consumers – that is, to all of us. They enable us to buy inexpensive quality products and keep the cost of living down. Protectionists who argue that "they" are "destroying American jobs" are simply arguing for higher prices – ordinarily not a very popular cause, and especially not
these days.
Free trade is the economic precondition for a peaceful world and the logical corollary of a non-interventionist foreign policy. If goods don't cross borders, then armies soon will – a historical truism noted by
many before me, and with good reason. Let it be a warning to all those anti-free trade, antiwar types of the Right as well as the Left – you'll soon be jumping on the War Party's bandwagon when it comes China's turn to play the role of global bogeyman. The way things are going, that day may come soon enough.
Finally, a word or two about this nonsensical demand, raised by the "Save Darfur" crowd, that China must somehow "extinguish the flames of genocide" supposedly carried out by the government of Sudan. What does China have to do with Sudan and its government? Well, you see, the Chinese have oil interests in the region, that is, they are engaged in competition with Western oil companies in opening up new fields – and, well, that just isn't permissible.
The Chinese, we are told, have a moral responsibility to either pressure the Sudanese to let up on Darfur, or else abandon their Sudanese assets. As if Sudan were a Chinese colony, and the Sudanese authorities mere sock-puppets of Beijing.
A more arrogant and self-serving argument would be hard to imagine. Presumably Western interests will fill the vacuum left by this spontaneous display of Chinese moral rectitude – and that alone should tell us everything we need to know about what's behind the "Save Darfur" bloviators and their high-horse moralizing.
If our professional do-gooders of the "progressive" persuasion are so concerned about the fate of Darfur, let them campaign for the granting of mass asylum to the survivors of this latest African catastrophe. Give them sanctuary and green cards, but keep U.S. troops out of Africa, specifically out of Darfur – and get off Beijing's back.
