China, the Impending Threat

There was a time when American corporations were viewed by the public, perhaps with naiveté, as patriotic organizations that would place national interest first.  Not so today in the age of outsourcing manufacturing and the sourcing of undocumented cheap labor.  American and other Western corporations have pursued both in the endless sea of humanity of China, which also offers a future astronomical market.  The West did not recoil from doing business with China after its massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square but rather rewarded its communist government brutality with the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.  America and the rest of the West would be well advised to remember the anti-communist metaphor used by President John F. Kennedy during his inaugural address in 1961; "those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside."

The Soviet Union collapsed during the Cold War because by aiming to be a military power, it became an economic basket case.  China would have suffered the same faith, except that the West transferred the bulk of its manufacturing base there, flooding the communist-controlled nation with cash.  China's central planners have managed to squander a great deal of its reaches, but the Chinese military is expanding to confront us with another and far more dangerous "cold war."  Their military leaders have taken aim at America's underpinning might by developing aircraft carrier-killer missiles and satellite-killer space vehicles.  Their land forces, with vastly superior numbers, are massing on their neighbors' borders, and they are defying international law by claiming ownership of the China Sea and building artificial islands in it.

Allowing China to grow more powerful will not improve matters.  As Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did, and it never will." Without necessarily starting an all-out trade war, the U.S., in particular, must arrest the transfer of wealth to China by demanding a balanced trade policy and reminding Chinese leaders that becoming an international bully will have consequences.  China must be made to realize that its future development rests on fair international trade and the rule of international law, putting aside for now the conversation on human rights and the dignity of man.

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