About Face by Big Brother on China

Those of us who grew up in the 1980's were told to be very very afraid of the Big Bad Russians who were coming to take away our freedoms and indoctrinate us in the Communist way of life. But it is now the case that some of the same interests who were so hawkish on the Russians now have turned a blind eye on China and their massive abuses of human rights in Tibet. In Orwell's world, this was par for the course. For 3-4 years or so, Eastasia was the enemy. Then, all of a sudden, Eurasia was the enemy. Those who inconveniently remembered that Eastasia was the enemy once upon a time mysteriously disappeared.

We see the same thing with China. Right after the Tinnamen Square Massacre, George H.W. Bush abruptly started pushing for free trade with China -- something we never would have dreamed of doing with the old Soviet Union. This was a policy that was continued by Clinton and subsequent presidents. Of course, certain powerful corporate interests are happy with that arrangement -- they see more and more opportunities to outsource labor and open up markets abroad. So stuff like the Chinese government's religious persecution of Falun Gong or the Tibetans gets swept under the rug by the powerful corporate media.

Of course, inconvenient stories like this one about 70 Tibetans who get arbitrarily arrested get swept underneath the rug by the corporate media. But this sort of thing cannot be ignored forever. The Tibetans simply are not going to go away and it is only a matter of time before dictatorships like China's collapse, as much as certain corporate interests like to pretend otherwise. We learned that from Eastern Europe. And it is only a matter of time, whether it be tomorrow or 100 years down the road, before the Tibet situation comes to a head. The Chinese government, under Chairman Mao, invaded and overran a sovereign nation in the 1950's and there is still a lot of living memory of that incident. No colony can sustain itself without the consent of the governed; we learned that in the Revolutionary War.

We should, of course, cultivate good relations with all countries. But we should not pretend that we have much in common with the Chinese dictatorship, which lacks a basic respect for freedom of speech, thought, and religion. To pretend otherwise amounts to a basic denial of reality.