Posted on 11/19/2003 9:02:01 PM PST by RWR8189
President Bush's speech at last week's 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy made democracy a top foreign policy priority. The president reminded us of the hope our freedom inspires in others and the obligations it imposes on us: "In prison camps, in banned union meetings, in clandestine churches, men and women knew of at least one place -- a bright and hopeful land -- where freedom was valued and secured. And they prayed that America would not forget them."
But with regard to China, the largest dictatorship on Earth and a regime that jails democracy and labor activists, religious believers, journalists and health researchers, the president struck a different note. Only "eventually," he said, will the Chinese people "want their liberty pure and whole." Only "eventually" will they "insist on controlling their lives and their own country." Ironically, the president then rejected the "cultural condescension" that has "questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are 'ready' for democracy."
And so the "China exception" to the Bush administration's democracy agenda was born. In case anyone thinks this unintentional, the day before, at a conference at Texas A&M University, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell left no doubt that the administration subordinates democracy in China to other interests. Instead, Powell advanced "real friendship" as the basis for U.S.-China relations and elevated it to the level of statecraft.
China, according to Powell, acts "in cooperation with us, not in competition with us." Gone is the "strategic competitor" language of the George W. Bush presidential campaign. China's "backsliding" on human rights is a "disappointment," Powell said, but it will be dealt with "candidly, and openly, and sometimes in a critical way." After all, "that is how real friends deal with each other. That is how real partners get along."
Real friends, it seems, gloss over "China's sobering experience with SARS," which "stands as a lesson to all countries on the challenge of infectious diseases." Of course, it was China's deceit about severe acute respiratory syndrome that allowed it to spread inside China and to other countries. Moreover, HIV-AIDS, said the secretary, is a global threat "and yes, it is a danger to China as well." In fact, China's is the "worst medically caused HIV-AIDS epidemic in the world," says one expert who projects a death toll in the millions. Yet the secretary had not a word for the researchers who have gone to jail for investigating the disease's spread.
While there may be "ups and downs" in the friendship, there is "an even greater need to shape a relationship defined by our mutual interests, not by those areas of disagreement," Powell said. What's important is what Washington and Beijing do together, no matter what else is going on. In this view, the fact that the Tiananmen Square massacre "stalled" creation of a "new foundation of trust" between the United States and China rivals the crushing of a nascent democracy movement in importance.
In Powell's view, it was fortuitous that a Chinese fighter pilot "collided" with an American EP-3 reconnaissance plane. "Our teams worked with the Chinese teams over an intensive two-week period to resolve the matter," which, however "tragic" and "disappointing to us both," was actually an opportunity to create better relations.
One improvement, according to Powell, has been the frequency of contacts with Chinese officials. Powell joked that the Chinese foreign minister "tracked me down" at 6 in the morning after Powell shook hands in Panama with the president of Taiwan. Powell gave reassurances that there is "no other agenda but our single policy, our 'one China' [policy], which is clear-cut [and] principled." Of course, it is neither. American policy denies democratic Taiwan recognition, keeping it isolated and vulnerable while China builds up capabilities to achieve unification through force or coercion. Even this, according to the secretary of state, is important not because Taiwan's democracy is threatened but because it will "tell us a great deal about the kind of role China seeks with its neighbors and with us."
Perhaps the Bush administration believes that other interests are served by subordinating democracy to concerns such as cooperation on Iraq, terrorism and North Korea. But that cooperation is usually exaggerated, and in fact China serves its own interests in every case. A real friend would give sanctuary to North Korean refugees and use economic leverage to pressure Pyongyang, the most repressive regime in existence. Let's see how cooperative China is in creating a unified and democratic Korean Peninsula.
Where China's interests diverge from those of the United States, so will its actions. "Real friendship" cannot mask the incompatibility of a democratic government and a dictatorship. Isn't that what the president's speech to the National Endowment for Democracy was all about?
The writer is deputy director of the Project for the New American Century.
Now go take some blood pressure meds.
Unfortunatley, not. He is not. He's a great President in many ways, but in this arena, no. He is doing the opposite of what you say.
And somehow I do not see in scripture where being a Christian means supporting the communist government of China.
But maybe you have a different translation.
Post #106.
Never said it does. Lazamataz supports banning what I mentioned above. That's where I have a problem. (As does GWB.)
But for Third World republics with majority-poor populations, democracy just gives the vote to a majority-poor population, who tend to vote left, that is, for a massive welfare state and anti-capitalist policies. This has been the story of India for over the past 50 years. Even in the U.S., the poor people tend to vote Democratic, so why would you expect different in Third World republics with majority-poor populations?
As we speak, poor people in Latin America have voted in socialist leaders like Chavez and Lula, and in Russia the population (which is 50% poor) supports Putin over the super-rich oligarchs. The Western media dislikes Putin, but he has a 75% approval rating in his own country.
I'll tell you again, it's really hard for democracy to take root in a country and flourish unless it has a majority or near-majority middle-class population. Just look at America's own difficulties in setting up democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's definitely not an overnight process as you imagine but takes decades at least, especially to build up a strong middle-class. East Asia's one-party governments all built up strong middle-class populations over many decades before they made the leap to full multi-party democracy. If you don't understand history, you will never be able to truly understand anything. You will just shout, "Democracy now! Democracy now!" like an unthinking robot. And again foreign investors avoid investing in today's Third World republics like the plague and prefer "communist" China instead for all the reasons I gave above.
By the start of the 18th century, both America and Europe had large middle-class population. I suggest you actually read your old high school history book. These middle-classes came about as a result of the Industrial Revolution and were called the "bourgeoisie." It wasn's peasants who led the American and French Revolutions, introducing modern democracy, but the bourgeoisie/middle-classes. Did you even know that half the signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence were in the business of international trade, i.e. middle-men? And America's biggest complaint with England was excessive, burdensome taxation: "No taxation without representation!" It's not poor peasants who don't have money to tax to begin with that are worried about over-taxation. It's people who have money that can be taxed--i.e., middle-classes--that started Revolutions in America and Europe to escape the burden of taxes!
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