China: Made In America

by Robert C. Nasir

If you lived in a town, with many people, many businesses, and many places to shop, you what to buy, and where, based on the principle of value offered for value received. That is, you would seek the best price for what you want.

Project further for a moment. Imagine that one of the store owners has arranged to force his workers to work only for him. They have no means to leave - the owner has effectively closed all avenues out of his employ. Imagine that he does not always pay them, often beats or tortures or murders them with little or no reason, and in general forces a series of unbelievable policies on them, including a bizarre maternity policy in which first-born children are supported by all, and any additional pregnancies are forcibly, sometimes bloodily terminated.

Imagine that this store owner, by using the best ideas, as well as stolen technologies, patents and copyrights of the other town business people, is succeeding at providing a wide range of cheap products, some excellent, many quite shoddy, at prices other stores cannot beat. Of course, only the combination of slave labor and modern technology can make this possible.

Lastly, imagine that this store owner has publicly stated his desire to violently take over and destroy every other business and person in the community, as soon as he establishes the means, for the express purpose of establishing his kind of operation across the city, eventually to expand to every community.

Given this set of circumstances, it is easy to see that the principle of trade, of value-for-value, is not so simple as going where you must to get the lowest price. Anyone can see that in this case, the consequences of supporting such an outlaw businessman through buying from his store would, in the long run, be a supreme disvalue, outweighing any simple price considerations.

But the issue become more complicated when many of the other businesses in the community operate by various means similar to, even though not nearly so brutal as, the tyrant, and the tone of their gossip is such as to say, "who are we to judge? Maybe he has his reasons." And more so, when the town commentators, while claiming to abhor specific instances of his brutality, praise the tyrant businessman for his policies and his discipline, and condemn law abiding businessmen for their weakness. Worst of all, when the law and political leaders refuse to take the appropriate action against the renegade, not even to the extent of forbidding the aiding and abetting of the crime, which could be accomplished simply not allowing other businesses to trade with him.

This bizarre example, of course, is only as bizarre as the world today: the renegade is China, the last communist superpower on Earth.

BRUTALITY INC.

The Tiananmen Square Massacre has brought the light of day onto the practices of a country which seeks to make Communism work in the 1990s. "At least several hundred, and possibly thousands, of people were killed in Beijing on June 3-4."⁽¹⁾   More than ten thousand people were arrested during these and the following days. "Many were released, but others languished in custody without charge or trial, held incommunicado, for almost a year ... Severe beatings, assaults with electric cattle prods, handcuffing and suspension by the arms from the ceiling of cells have been reported. Political prisoners have been turned over to ordinary criminal offenders for abuse during their incarceration. ⁽²⁾

PATENTS AND COPYRIGHTS

The U.S. has claimed that it will impose a series of high tariffs on China if China continues its failures to recognize intellectual property rights, and we can only hope the administration does not back down on this issue. Unfortunately, it will take a lot of resolve from a president who clearly is not principled (to say the least). Particularly since the Chinese reaction to this demand has been poor at best. "We believe that this is an expression to exert further pressure on China," said a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade. ⁽³⁾

THE REAL ISSUE: THE MILITARY THREAT

If one understands and accepts the proper role of the government as the protector of individual rights, then the only proper role for government to play in foreign trade is to insure that such trade does not endanger the country. Many are pleading for the U.S. government to regulate trade with Japan as well as several European communities in the interest of protecting American jobs (a purely fallacious notion). However, the only major country about which a case for trade restrictions could be made is instead being considered for "Most Favored Nation" trade status. The only possible justification for regulating trade is in the case of a possible military threat, or other violation of rights (and the patents and copyrights issue can and should be applied here as well). China remains a totalitarian dictatorship, despite the adoption of "open policy" (i.e. policies to take advantage simultaneously of Western capitalism and slave labor). China remains true (as true as any system can be) to Communist ideology, intending to spread the rule of Socialism to the rest of the world as much and as soon as possible. And the threat of military attack comes not only from China.

"China has delivered missiles to Pakistan, contracted to sell missiles to Syria and is cooperating on nuclear technology with Iran and Algeria. Though China says it is supplying items for peaceful nuclear programs, the recipients can use them for any purpose they choose, and their likely intention is to build atom bombs."⁽⁴⁾

As the American market continues to be flooded with the MADE IN CHINA label, it should not be forgotten that slave labor does not produce, without the sanction of those who make production possible: free men. The free men in this case are largely American, and

 while the moral blame for the crimes of China lies with the Chinese leadership, if China and Chinese action threatens America via direct military threat, or military threat from thug countries supported by China, then the blame goes to every man who chose to support the last Communist superpower on Earth, the superpower which should have been left to die as the U.S.S.R. has. Too many Americans support China through purchase of Chinese goods, and by supporting politicians that support China. China cannot survive as a communist dictatorship without that power which Ayn Rand has described so well as the sanction of the victims. It is well past time to stop supporting the tyrant. It is not only the freedom of the millions of the slave state we would be championing: it is ourselves and our own future.

Copyright 1992 The Reality Check.  All rights reserved.