The Falun Gong are terrorists. Remember the five subway cars they unleashed poisons on in China? But I guess they get a pass on that, because while they aren't Christians, at least they aren't those EVIL agnostics or atheists and as far as you religious nuts are concerned, they're "good guys".

And after all, if a tiny group of cult members in China are persecuted, however will the 240 million Christians in America (80% of the population) ever avoid persecution by that whole 10% who is agnostic or atheist?

YOU POOR BASTARDS!

I agree with you that we should have more control over our realtionship with China, but how can that be achieved with economic relations the way they are?
The Chinese have singlehandely financed our wars in both Iraq and Adghnistan to the tune of 500 billion and rising. Our trade deficit for this year already runs more than 200 billion.
Our appetite for their goods is equalled only by their appetite for the T-Bonds we sell them to cover the cost for the wars we refuse to
pay for. And the problem is not just an economic one. The Chinese are continuing a military buildup financed in part from the 20 billion a year we pay them for the financing of our debt.
Over the course of 30 years, we will pay the Chinese 600 billion interest, on top of the 500 billion we owe them in principal.
To get out of this debt woulod reqire each US taxpayer to fork over approximately $3,300
apiece (assuming 150 million taxpayers in the US). ARE WE PREPARED TO MAKE THE SACRIFCE TO GET OUT FROM UNDER THE THUMB OF THE CHINESE?
When Bush took office, the national debt was 5.6 trillion. Congress recently approved a debt ceiling of 9 trillion dollars. That Bush will call on the Chinese to help finance this debt is almost certain.
Service on the national debt comprises 10 percent of the national budget.
That's 250 billion dollars scattered to the wind.
When do we get off the credit card and start paying our bills?

Mark,

Wow I actually agree with you here. Why are we promoting democracy on the one hand but sucking up to a Communist regime that uses slave labor and is building a huge military. There is NO fair trade here.

The reason....... Corporations run our country. Walmart should be called ChinaMart. Corporations are getting rich off trade with China but our people and our country are getting poor and in debt. We are selling out to communism...selling them them the rope they will use to hang us (actually we're buying the rope from them and then they'll use it to hang us...that's even worse) and IMO in large part because of corporations setting our policy over the preferences of the American people.....this is an issue both sides should be behind.....but instead we'll argue over homos and abortion much to the corporate leaders pleasure...

OK that's enough agreement for now. Some one call me a moonbat commie lover so I can call you a right wing wacko nutjob and we can proceed with our standard debate while our country sinks.

That lady was exercising her right to free speech in a free country. Why was she arrested?

Canadian,

Probably some rule about how you're supposed to behave in the press area...they don't just allow anyone in, and there are rules of conduct for those who are there...but if she needs money for a legal defense fund, my checkbook is already out.

"The Falun Gong are terrorists. Remember the five subway cars they unleashed poisons on in China?"

You're confusing Aum Shinkiro, a Japanese cult that poisoned a Japanese subway, with something in china.

muirgeo,

Well, you had to blame Wal Mart, the newest Big Whatever that has become a bugaboo on the left...Wal Mart is just a company operating in a free market...they are just doing what is done. How we deal with China is out of Wal Mart's hands - and we can't fault Wal Mart - or any other corporation - for taking advantage of China's slave econmy while we, as a people, don't do anything about it.

There is a terrible error in our dealings with China - and people all up and down the goverment and in both political parties are creating this error: We are treating China as a legimimate member of the family of nations. Its no surprise - and it is only one in a long line of such nations we have so erroneously treated, starting with the USSR back in the 1930's when we extended diplomatic recognition to that abomination.

Everyone is at fault for this, and I really blame no one...but we should change. We should simply not have any relations with unfree nations. It would take a period of adjustment, but I think we should do it - just stop dealing with them.

If we do need cheap consumer goods, I'd rather buy them from the free peoples of India...our standard should be that if a nation is unfree, then we have nothing to do with it. Let them stew in their own juices, these tyrants...they will all fall, by and by, if they don't have access to the wealth and power created by free people.

Talk or war? The Right in this country would be orgasmic if they could demand the military bomb everybody, right? Peace

Of course you can fault WalMart for taking advantage of the situation in China. You obviously think it's unethical for them to do it, so why not boycott them? Just because a business is following the law doesn't mean it's acting in an ethical manner. WalMart is operating in a free market, as you say, so you should be voting with your wallet if you consider their business practices unethical.

Sorry, folks. The person was wrong for interrupting a speech and saying Hu's "days are numbered". Our President travels to foreign countries, and for safety reasons, nut jobs with issues, no matter how valid, do not belong on the premise. We have condone this. She has a right to free speech, but not a right to be heard. She doesn't need to stop a speech that by someone who is a guest of the United States. As someone who sat on a subway for 4 hours while Al Sharpton exercised his free speech rights by blocking the rails, I realize if you interfer with others ability to hear, than you are violating their free speech rights.

Deleted - Very Weirdly Off Topic

Vole,
The University of California is a public trust; all students, faculity and staff have their names and email addresses published for public consumption. Your ignorance is stunning.

Come on folks. We're CONSERVATIVES. Aren't supposed to be concerned about how much things cost, and whose going to pay for them? We owe the Chinese 500 billion, our trade gap with them is 200 billion this year alone and growing. We're using the credit they've extended to us to pay for our wars. To buy our debt back from the Chinese, taxpayers 'll have to fork over $3,300 apiece.ARE WE PREPARED TO MAKE THE SACRIFICE TO GET OURSELVES OUT FROM UNDER THE THUMB OF THE CHINESE.

Karen,

A man like Hu who denies the rights of his own people to speak their mind deserves to be interrupted every time he opens his mouth...it is to be hoped that some day Hu and the rest of his communist cabal will pay the price for their crime, and that the United States will never, ever invite such criminals into the United States again...

Just,

Not particularly: the US Navy pretty much ensures that they can't forclose on us.

That, of course, was a bit tougue in cheek...but the plain fact of the matter is that China is entirely more dependent upon us than we are on them. The securities of the world's largest economy will always have a buyer...meanwhile, the world can purchase cheap consumer goods from places other than China. If we were to embargo China, then China would swifly collapse, and after an 18 month period while India and Indonesia tooled up for higher production, the world wouldn't even notice that the Chinese economy was gone.

Taxpayer,

As the saying goes:

"Think globally and act locally"

An embargo of Chinese goods starts first with you and the people in your immediate sphere of influence. I encourage you to buy American whenever you can.

Who the hell are we to be judging who has a legitimate government? We have our own human-rights issues in Iraq and Guantanamo.

And it is not slave labor when the laborers are paid. When there's a surplus of labor, this is what the free market does!

Talk or war? The Right in this country would be orgasmic if they could demand the military bomb everybody, right? Peace

steve, I'd be orgasmic if the military bombed you. Pieces.

Talk or war? The Right in this country would be orgasmic if they could demand the military bomb everybody, right? Peace

steve, I'd be orgasmic if the military bombed you. Pieces.

but the plain fact of the matter is that China is entirely more dependent upon us than we are on them. The securities of the world's largest economy will always have a buyer...meanwhile, the world can purchase cheap consumer goods from places other than China. If we were to embargo China, then China would swifly collapse, and after an 18 month period while India and Indonesia tooled up for higher production, the world wouldn't even notice that the Chinese economy was gone.

Sorry, not true at all.
Hu is here for a very specific reason. China has eclipsed the US in the consumption of goods in all areas except oil, and autos, but that is rising extremely fast on the horizon. We're talking about a country that has built and purchased nearly 20 million vehicles in the past decade alone. Most of those built on its own shores. (In 1995, there were an estimated 4 million vehilces in all of China.)

Among the leading consumer products, China trails the United States only in automobiles. By 2003, it had 24 million motor vehicles, scarcely one tenth the 226 million on U.S. roads. But with car sales doubling over the last two years, China’s fleet is growing fast.

And the race is far from over. With a per capita annual income in 2004 of $5,300, one seventh the $38,000 in the United States, China has a long way to go to reach U.S. per capita consumption levels. For example, despite China’s wide lead in total meat intake, the meat consumed per person is only 49 kilograms (108 pounds) a year compared with 127 kilograms (279 pounds) in the United States. As Chinese incomes rise at a world record pace, use of foodstuffs, energy, raw materials, and sales of consumer goods are continuing to climb.

China is now importing vast quantities of grain, soybeans, iron ore, aluminum, copper, platinum, potash, oil and natural gas, forest products for lumber and paper, and the cotton needed for its world-dominating textile industry. These massive imports have put China at the center of the world raw materials economy. Its voracious appetite for materials is driving up not only commodity prices but ocean shipping rates as well.

The new industrial giant’s need for access to raw materials and energy is shaping its foreign policy and security planning. Strategic relationships with resource-rich countries such as Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia, Indonesia, and Australia are built around long-term supply contracts for products such as oil, natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, and timber. These strategic ties it is forming are welcomed in countries like Brazil as a counterweight to U.S. influence.

China’s eclipse of the United States as a consumer nation should be seen as another milestone along the path of its evolution as a world economic leader. Its record-high domestic savings and its huge trade surplus with the United States are but two of the more visible manifestations of its economic strength. It is now China, along with Japan, that is buying the U.S. treasury securities that enable the United States to run the largest fiscal deficit in history.

The United States, the world’s leading debtor nation, is now heavily dependent on Chinese capital to underwrite its fast-growing debt. If China ever decides to divert this capital surplus elsewhere, either to internal investment or to the development of oil, gas, and mineral resources elsewhere in the world, the U.S. economy will be in trouble.

China is not a friend to the Unted States. They have been arming themselves to the teeth for one reason. A future war with America.

Mark,

It's amazing you can't see the connection between Wal-Mart and the horrible regime in China. They mutually profit from each other, they are part of the same equation. Wal-Mart is the supply chain between cheap labor factories in China and the U.S. market. Come to think of it, cheap labor in the U.S. market as well. Are you defending Wal-Mart's labor practices Mark?

The real problem? It's all of us who shop at Wal Mart, etc. to save a buck. Do we really care about the working man here? Do we really care abou the working man there? We live in a consumer society so we have a choice where we spend our dollars. Why not invest them with organizations and companies that are worth it? WalMart will only survive as long as U.S. consumers allow it to.

There is no freedom in China. Those who speak out for freedom in China are persecuted relentlessly, tortured, imprisoned, killed. Tibet suffers from relentless occupation and systematic destruction.

Why the hell would we want to support such a country, let alone give them such economic leverage through our gross trade deficit is beyond me.

The Bush answer is simple: it all about corporate profits, period. Human rights, the environment, social justice, labor rights, health care, education, etc. do not factor into the equation, except as an expense to corrupt local politicians and government officials.

Rather than promote true democracy in the world by opposing the totalitarian Chinese regime, Bush slides right into bed with them and makes sure things just keep rolling along for "just companies" like Wal-Mart and others, who just coincidentally happen to be big time Republican contributors.

Let's call the Chinese regime what it is: oppressive, despotic, anti-democratic, anti-human rights. We subsidize this government through our trade policies. In fact, the Chinese are accumulating U.S. debt obligations at an accelerating rate, making us even more dependent on their good will, making us even less able to confront them as a true force of democratic ideals.

Bob,

Heard that back in the 80's, about Japan...sorry, but China's economy is run by corrupt Party hacks who siphon off its profits for their personal use...China's economy is honey-combed with bad debt which is masked by its massive export earnings, but can only be sustained as long as China's export earnings continue to grow at the current pace: a completely impossible thing over the long term.

China is a deeply impoverished nation with more than half its labor force still engaged in very unproductive agriculture. It has massive internal political, social and economic stresses which could only be addressed by a democratic government - and such is not likely as the crop of corrupt oligarchs who run China don't seem to have the wit to understand that their day has passed.

You should be asking yourself why, if China's economy is so red-hot, that they are buying US securities rather than investing in their own economy. US treasury notes give a solid rate of return, but China absurdly continues to claim 8% or more annual GDP growth - and this brings up the fact that China is still a communist dictatorship...you can believe China's stats about China all you want, but remember that there is no one to check up on them and see if they are accurate; but if China were growing at 8%, it would be plain and simple fiscal idiocy to buy US Treasury notes when much higher rates of return could be got out of the supposedly booming Chinese economy.

China, like Japan in the 1980's, is a giant on spindly legs...it will crash, and crash hard - and therein lies the real danger with China: a collapsing Chinese economy will take away the last thing China's government has to legitimise itself in the eyes of the Chinese people. Essentially, the Chinese government retains power by telling the people that if they'll tolerate continued communist rule, the communists will allow them to get richer - once that is gone, China's government will either have to collapse, or strike out...I'm betting on China getting agrressive, in an attempt to rally the people 'round the government via war.

There is, after all, no other way to explain the massive military build up against Taiwan as other than China's planning for the inevitible need for a distraction from internal problems...to attack Taiwan is to kill the goose that laws the golden eggs...its economic suicide, unless your economy is already gone, and you wouldn't spend all that money on arms for an invasion of Taiwan unless there was no point in not spending it...

To all of you armchair pundits that don't have a clue as to what is really going on in China except from other egg-headed pundits I modestly suggest you write to me and I'll give you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I'm a US Citizen living and working in China and have been doing so the past 7 years of my 20 years in Asia.

1.25 billion people of which 1.1 billion are living in abject poverty no matter what numbers you come up with. I see it with my own eyes every single day.

Mark, given teh fact you consider china, north korea, cuba and of course the old USSR all to be "Communist", would you like to define communism for us? If you cannot do so could you please stop calling them communist.

Cookiecrumb,

The relationship of the US with China predates President Bush by 4 decades. May I remins you that it was your President Clinton who sold them missle technology which is now directed at us. So why are you blaming Bush for something that he is not responsible for?

The purpose of helping China lift itself out of poverty, and grow their middle class, recognizes the potential power that China would eventually gain. Nixon first understood this. Opening the dialogue with China was perhps his greatest achievement. By helping them create a consumer economy, we have succeed in diverting the chinese people's interest in "the little red book of Mao" to materilaism. Materialism is a type of insidious virus, the more ou have the more you want. This things include, better healthcare, better education, better air quality, better water quality, in essence all of the things that improve the basic standard of living including increased freedom. Generally people in a consumer society are not willing to wage war. And they are certainly less likely to do so than a country such as North Korea, where the people have no choice, and no nothing else.

China's rapid growth has been at the expense of their environment. 9 out of 10 of the most polluted cities in the world are within its borders. Lung diseases are grwoing at an ever increasing rate. Fast foods are increasing obesity, and cardiovascular disease, and AIDS is rampant. Healthcare is supposedly provided by the government, but access is severely limited outside the big cities.

China faces severe water shortages as 90% of the water supply is contaminated. China also has an enormous unfunded social liabilty as their population ages and they are forced to care for an increasingly large unproductive percentage of their population.

The smallest downturn in their economy results in millions of discontented unemployed

All of the aforementioned will put the brakes on their future economic growth, and will result in unrest within their borders. It certainly is possible to divert the attention of the people to their own problems by directing the anger toward a foreign enemy. But this will not be as easy in China as it once was. The people are begining to tire of government corruption, they will soon tire of the pollution. The Chinese leadership will have a growing probelm to control their own people who are traveling and begining to see how the rest of the world lives. They will begin to demand a voice in their government, and increase personal freedoms.

Remember that Chairman Hu is not the democraticly elected leader of China. He has no mandate from the people to rule, nor does the Chinese communist party.

China is now infected with a western virus which will eventually change its politics.

"Heard that back in the 80's, about Japan...sorry, but China's economy is run by corrupt Party hacks who siphon off its profits for their personal use.."

So they have CEO's? great.

Organ Harvesting (click here) seems worthy of MSM's attention. It's just too grisly to imagine.

China's own condemnation of the Falun Gong sums it up: Read China-UN.org statment

China describes the difference between the Japanese subway attacks and Falun Gong's suicidal bonfires at Tiananmen Square, after which China imprisoned FG members for "disturbing the social order."

How any conservative can back China because they're profitable is astonishing. How anyone can support WalMart when Sam himself is rolling in his grave over the cash flowing to commie totalitarian China is equally astonishing.

phnxbmed

Well that's the point, isn't it. The Chinese were able to BUY! the technology. They didn't have to steel it. (As far as selling things goes, didn't the president just try to palm off six of our busiest ports to Dubai, a move even Sean Hannity couldn't defend.) They've got the money. They are an economic powerhouse. They aren't going to send troops to take over the country when we are willing to sell it to them. ARE WE PREPARED TO MAKE THE ECONOMIC SACRIFICES NECESSARY TO GET OUT FROM UNDER THE THUMB OF THE CHINESE. The cost at this point is $3,300
per US taxpayer and rising with each passing day.

It's a bit offensive to see "Speaking Truth to Power" on a BlogForBush website, given it's a phrase coined by eighteenth century Friends, or "Quakers", describing scathing indictments of presidents like Bush, and a condemnation of all wars.

GA>

drink the propaganda, mmih

kiwi,

As in all things, there is variety...but, at bottom, communism entails the following:

1. Lies - everything is built on lies. They lie to the people, they lie to themselves...they can't have the truth because the slightest bit of truth tends to negate all things communist.

2. Repression - because lies tend to fall flat, it is necessary to have mechanisms in place to torture and kill people.

3. Politically correct rhetoric - all of their lies and murders are masked by speaking of democracy, liberty, justice...China is officially "The People's Republic of China"...even though it hasn't an ounce of republicanism, nor do the people count for anything.

shortz,

Much worse than that, shortz - they have CEO's who don't know that income isn't the same as profit...China's ruling oligarchy is spending the money faster than it is coming in...propping up worn out State-run enterprises which are the private feifs of communist bosses; paying for a massive and un-necessary military build up (China's official defense expenditures aren't even half of what they really spend); buying luxury goods for the ruling class...that sort of thing.

China is fine until a genuine worldwide recession happens...then the whole house of cards will come tumbling down, just as it did for Japan 15 years ago.

phnxbmed-

Re-read my post. I didn't blame Bush for developing our relationship with China, and I won't stoop to insulting your screen name. Grow up.

And I never voted for Clinton, which has nothing whatsoever to do with my post.

I did say that Bush's solution to the problem is to cozy up to the most corrupt and undemocratic regime in the world, exposing his pro-freedom and pro-democracy rhetoric as a bunch of pathetic lies.

Just what evidence do you have to support the notion that consumerism translates into peaceful societies? That strikes me as a really dumb statement. If anything, rampant unrestrained consumerism, which is what we have today in our society, leads us into war in Iraq (for the oil of course), and trade with unscrupulous partners (such as China).

While it may be true that the Chinese are growing tired of their government, it is certainly true of ours. Most people with half a brain realize that our manufacturing sector has been decimated by multinational corporations who find it much cheaper to set up sweatshops in places like China because they are not bound to the same standards that we have in the U.S. for healthcare, environmental controls, worker safety, etc.

The Bush response? Lower the standards in the U.S. as much as possible by giving polluters a break, busting labor unions, and making it easy for multinational corporations to set up shop in China and transfer profits back here.

Seems to me that Bush and President Hu have much in common.