[jbrown132]

Originally Posted by MandoMan

I worked in Beijing forty years ago, as a professor, and I’m nearly done writing a book about that. I never want to go back. However, the population of China is not “enslaved,” though some do forced labor for various reasons, and the government is authoritarian and the people much less free than we are. But China is a nation of hardworking capitalists working hard to get rich, by their standards, or at least improve their standard of living. They are ruled by malign and corrupt but pragmatic Communist authoritarians who are torn between helping their country conquer the world and become wealthy while still pretending that they treasure Marx and Mao, though they don’t. Are there lots of human rights abuses? Yes. Is that our business? Not really. If we don’t like it, we shouldn’t buy things from there. But we do. So we are responsible for the abuses, too. Meanwhile, the problems the Chinese government faces in trying to rule 1.4 billion unruly people are much worse than what our government faces. But the people aren’t “enslaved.”

One sure thing: in business negotiations, the Chinese play hardball. I’ve never heard of a western company or country getting the better of China in a trade negotiation. You think you have a deal and may make a profit, and the Chinese call you back to the table and demand more concessions. Countries like Sri Lanka and countries In Africa are discovering that what they thought were good deals offered by Chinese “friends” are actually ways of “establishing Chinese hegemony,” as the Chinese government says.

We essentially gave China our steel industry, our textile industry, our electronics industry, our pharmaceutical industry, and more—all in the name of increasing profits for investors at the expense of the wellbeing of American workers. We threw away American jobs in order to get better prices at WalMart. Bringing those back means much higher prices, which sounds a lot like inflation, doesn’t it? People now are complaining about the entirely predictable inflation that stems from the pandemic and the need to pay welfare to most of the country for a year. (Did you get a check from the government? Nearly everyone did. And many got salary support, rent reductions, free medical care for Covid, unusually cheap gas that led to thousands of oil wells beIng closed. Well, those payments were welfare. So you’ve been on welfare, many of you who proudly claim that you haven’t, and maybe you liked it. Now the bill is coming due, and we don’t like it. Meanwhile, China is angry because we (rightly) put tariffs on steel and other things.

I’d rather pay more than have to learn Chinese at this age.