A Quote by Robert C. O'Brien
For decades, the United States condemned the Chinese Communist Party's coercive population-control policies - too often alone in its criticism, while other nations turned a blind eye as they sought commercial advantages in China.
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As America's nuclear strategic monopoly faded, the United States sought to create advantages elsewhere, notably in the peaceful cooperation between the United States and communist China under Deng Xiaoping.
Chinese president Jiang Zemin met with former Bill Clinton in Hong Kong Wednesday. What a contrast. One is a ruthless communist who gains popularity by damaging the United States, while the other guy runs China.
China has national security laws that compel Chinese companies to provide the government with information and access at their government's request. And virtually all Chinese companies of any size are required to have Communist Party 'cells' inside them, to make sure the companies stay in line with the party's principles and policies.
We've turned a blind eye to Chinese economic activity, the manipulation of the renminbi, the dumping, the unfair trade practices. We've turned a blind eye to intellectual property theft.
With a population of 1.4 billion, China is a lucrative market. But getting into that market isn't cheap. At best, the price of doing business in China is silence; at worst, it's reading talking points straight from the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing is not subtle about it.
When U.S. commercial interests press the Chinese government to do a better job of policing Chinese websites for pirated content, a blind eye is generally turned to the fact that ensuing crackdowns provide a great excuse to tighten mechanisms to censor all content the Chinese government doesn't like.
On the face of it, China has won the Olympics. But it is not China that has won, but the Communist party. The Chinese people have lost.
Irrespective of our foreign policies, for decades, other nations and peoples could see, in the United States, a strong democracy that could maintain social cohesion, welcome immigrants of all backgrounds, and count on stable institutions.
We first became conscious of the plane publicly on a Monday. I thought then by the weekend it would be done. But then the Chinese military, the defense minister made a statement saying that if there was no apology from the United States, the Chinese military and the Chinese people would never understand. No reference to the government or the Communist Party, and that obviously presented an internal problem to the Chinese leadership, which was travelling at that moment.
We must rid this nation of the United Nations, which provides the communist conspiracy with a headquarters here on our own shores, and which actually makes it impossible for the United States to form its own decisions about its conduct and policies in Europe and Asia.
In the short term, it would not have made it possible to resume relations, because in the Chinese mind, the humiliation of China started with the annexation of Taiwan by Japan. If the United States had suddenly declared Taiwan as a separate state - for which we would have had no support among other nations - the consequences would have been giving up our relationship with China and committing ourselves to a long-term conflict with China.
The Chinese military budget today is officially listed as, I think, about $15 billion. But even if you double it, that's only a tenth of ours. So the possibility of China challenging the United States for the next ten years over the Pacific is next to zero. There could be a conflict between us and China over Taiwan, but I think that, too, will not occur with the proper policies on both sides.
But you'll notice, you will notice that Russia and China, invariably at the United Nations, move to block American action, to repress or hem in or punish other kinds of outlaw. Who stands behind Mugabi at the United Nations? Russia and China do. Who tried successfully to prevent the United Nations from speaking with one voice on its most signal violation of its resolutions, Iraq? Russia and China, again. North Korea the same. Burma the same.
China wants Western countries to be timid. Its strategic foreign policy has been to make any criticism of the Communist Party of China seem unreasonable or even Sinophobic.
There are many who criticise the United Nations. And those of us who know this institution well know that it is not immune from criticism. But those who argue against the United Nations advance no credible argument as to what should replace it. Whatever its imperfections, the United Nations represents a necessary democracy of states.
Communist party leadership in China knows that Canada's political and media elite values feeling superior to the United States more than they value standing on principle on the international stage.
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