the Kissinger-Mao secret deal, 1971 and thereafter, to build up China was a gigantic folly!

6-8-2018    Throughout the 1980s and 1990s an alliance of economic nationalists, human-rights activists and anti-Communists sought to deny China MostFavoredNation status every year.  And every year that alliance was defeated by those who insisted that by opening the American economy to Chinese imports the United States would gently nudge Beijing towards economic liberalism, multiparty democracy and a rejection of hegemonic designs—predictions that haven’t exactly been borne out.

  One could argue that the final defeat for China trade hawks came not in 2000 when Congress actually passed (favorable economic helps) for China but in 1998 when lawmakers decreed that “most-favored-nation” status would henceforth be known as “normal trade relations.”

  U.S. multinationals have invested billions of dollars in the expectation that trans-Pacific trade will never face serious disruption.  So while China’s corporate sector is invested in Beijing’s success in its latest round of brinksmanship, corporate America’s loyalties are divided. Even if Trump were pursuing a perfectly-crafted strategy for compelling China to end its trade abuses, that would be a difficult obstacle to overcome.

  The second development, which has garnered far less attention, is the spate of recent reports on China’s intensifying repression of its Uighur minority.  For decades China’s central government has sought to strengthen its hold on its western territories by, among other things, encouraging the large-scale settlement of members of its Han ethnic majority in Xinjiang, homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighurs, and Tibet, with its distinctive ethno-religious heritage.  While the fate of Tibet was once a cause célèbre, that of the Uighurs has never garnered much attention in the wider world.  This partly reflects the extraordinary success of China’s repressive apparatus which layers mass surveillance, mass incarceration, outright censorship and artful media manipulation to greatly limit the flow of news and information out of Xinjiang.

  What might the world have looked like had the U.S. never granted (many trade advantages) to China?  One possibility is that China would have pursued an economic strategy built around fostering indigenous entrepreneurship and bettering the lives of its own workers, as it did in the 1980s.  The United States meanwhile would have entered the age of globalization under markedly different terms:  instead of offshoring much of its industrial base to an often-hostile authoritarian power perhaps it would have deepened its economic ties to democratizing states in Latin America, Asia and the wider world.  Trade with China would have proceeded apace, to be sure, but U.S. multinationals wouldn’t have felt quite as secure in locating production facilities in one of the world’s last remaining Communist dictatorships, which sees economic development as a weapon in its struggle for power and influence….

  A bipartisan coalition promised Americans that granting China (abundant trade, capital, tech) would help ensure our prosperity and that China would soon be transformed from foe to friend, and we were foolish enough to believe them.  The question is what we should do now.  For starters I propose admitting that we made a grave mistake.

                                       -Reihan Salam     https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/normalizing-trade-relations-with-china-was-a-mistake/562403/         

     note:  I dropped “PNTR, permanent normal trade relations” right out of this fine perceptive article as impossible language; I hope it is forgivable to use plain English instead.   -this blogger

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Once upon a time there was a gutless mouse
who worshipped ever at the trade altar;
hence he was sure to lose the House,
his shirt, mind, fellows and--falter falter falter