The Economist in 2018 recognizes U.S. engagement policy with China a failure

"The Economist and politicians of both parties may have gotten China wrong--but we have been reporting and warning of the human and religious rights violations of this regime for more than 20 years. This was obvious to anyone covering Beijing honestly." - Raymond Arroyo, EWTNews 

 Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter meet with Deng Xiaoping in 1979

The Economist, after years of cheer leading the conventional wisdom on economic engagement with the Communist dictatorship in China on March 1, 2018 recognized that they had been mistaken.

China has grown rich beyond anybody’s imagining. Under the leadership of Hu Jintao, you could still picture the bet paying off. When Mr Xi took power five years ago China was rife with speculation that he would move towards constitutional rule. Today the illusion has been shattered. In reality, Mr Xi has steered politics and economics towards repression, state control and confrontation. 

This blog over the past ten years repeatedly warned of the wholesale failure of U.S. policy towards China. Economically engaging and subsidizing the communist dictatorship in China did no lead to the regime liberalizing and incorporating itself into the family of nations as Western engagement changed it for the better.  Instead global human rights standards have been steadily in decline with Western governments, led by the United States, compromised their values for shot term economic gain for narrow interests. The influx of Western investment, technology, and know how assisted in both the wholesale modernization of the totalitarian regime's surveillance apparatus and the Chinese military machine. Considering all of this, this blog asked on September 5, 2009 the following question about U.S. policy on Mainland China: "Are Normalized relations with Totalitarian States Normal?"

Chairman Mao Zedong and President Richard Nixon

Fang Lizhi, a professor of physics at the University of Arizona, a leader of the pro-democracy movement in China before fleeing the country in 1989, published an Op-Ed in the International Herald Tribune on October 11, 2010 warned that the "dangerous notion" that economic development will inevitably lead to democracy in China was a failure: 

"Increasingly, throughout the late 1990s and into the new century, this argument gained sway. Some no doubt believed it; others perhaps found it convenient for their business interests. Many trusted the top Chinese policymakers who sought to persuade foreign investors that if they continued their investments without an embarrassing “linkage” to human rights principles, all would get better at China’s own pace. More than 20 years have passed since Tiananmen. China has officially become the world’s second largest economy. Yet the hardly radical Liu Xiaobo and thousands of other dissidents rot in jail for merely demanding basic rights enshrined by the United Nations and taken for granted by Western investors in their own countries. Human rights have not improved despite a soaring economy. ... As the unfortunate history of Japan during the first half of the 20th century illustrates, a rising economic power that violates human rights is a threat to peace."

On December 12, 2014 this blog took a closer look at engagement and consequences during the Clinton Administration. Apologists for de-linking human rights concerns often cite national interests and strategic concerns trumping human rights. President Clinton took this line of argument to a new level in 1998 justifying a second waiver to the Loral Corporation providing technical information to the People's Republic of China at the time saying: "I believe it was in the national interest and I can assure you it was handled in the routine course of business, consistent with the 10-year-old policy." However CNN in  1998 reported that "[a] Pentagon office concluded in a still-secret report that 'United States national security has been harmed," according to government officials.' 

President Clinton completely de-linked human rights and trade with China

Further digging done by Edward Bolton in a 2000 report to the National Defense University National War College provided an analysis that points to particular financial and corporate interests, not national interests explaining the de-linking of human rights from MFN and also provides insight into the Clinton Administration's waiver for the Loral corporation to provide sensitive information to the Peoples Republic of China:

Boeing, which donated millions to both Democratic and Republican candidates over the years, is the parent company of Loral Corporation. In 1993, Loral sought and received a waiver to launch Loral/Hughes satellites from China. Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz has personally donated over $1M to both parties. Boeing also owns McDonnell-Douglas which in 1994 made an agreement with China to open a parts factory in Beijing. Boeing, who sold nearly 70% of the airliners China purchased in the 1993 to 1995 time frame, selected former Clinton administration Defense Secretary William Perry for its board of directors shortly after he left the Pentagon. Hughes Electronics Corporation, a subsidiary of General Motors (GM) and co-developer of satellite systems with Loral, also has dealings with China and worked to maintain MFN for the PRC. Hughes Electronics Chairman Michael Smith also serves as vice Chairman of the Aerospace Industries Association, a long time supporter of MFN status for China.

Imagination, informed by history, led this blog to raise the question on February 6, 2015  "if policy makers today, now that the vast majority of computers used in the United States and the West generally are made in the Peoples Republic of China, who is to say that Communist China will not ... set up the conditions to switch on software, perhaps something hardwired into the computers they manufacture, and cripple the U.S. economy?" 

In August of 2015 this blog explored the consequences of communist China hosting the olympics.
The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing were a human rights disaster for China with scenes of Tibetan demonstrators gunned down by Chinese soldiers. Despite this the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has chosen China to once again to host the Olympics in 2022 in the midst of an ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers and defenders in the country.  As was the case in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics friends of a free China need to increase scrutiny on the Chinese regime with an Olympic Watch. The consequences of  the IOC legitimizing such a regime cannot be overstated. The 1936 Olympics held in Berlin and hosted by the Nazi Third Reich with the ceremonies formally opened by Adolph Hitler should serve as a cautionary example. The 1936 Olympics whitewashed the brutality of the Nazi regime in Germany and led to acceptance of Hitler's criminal regime. The 2008 Olympics whitewashed the brutality of the Communist regime in China further legitimizing that criminal regime. In 2022 it will add insult to injury by returning to China and making this decision amidst a human rights crackdown where more than 200 lawyers and human rights activists have been detained with some facing 15 year prison sentences.

Olympics legitimized totalitarians in 1936 and 2008

This legitimization, despite a horrible record, is still found in mass media, including in The New York Times, America's paper of record, and this blog called them on it on September 28, 2017.  A  British diplomatic cable declassified in December of 2017 revealed that "at least 10,000 people were killed in the Chinese army's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989."

History has demonstrated that appeasing tyrants, rather than confront them early on, has terrible and bloody consequences. This isn't a choice but a historical reality. Paying lip service to human rights, while abandoning them in practice, shaped the process of globalization that is leading to an emerging world order that is the stuff of dystopian nightmares.

History Rebukes Getting into Bed with Dictatorship

Appeasement Strategy with Cuba Has Been Tried, Already Proved a Failure

Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter meet with Deng Xiaoping in 1979

Originally published in The Canal

History demonstrates that biology does not necessarily take care of totalitarian regimes that have enslaved entire peoples. The Soviet Union founded in 1917 did not implode until 1991 when three generations had passed through that brutal system and finally brought it down nonviolently.

Likewise, China has been gripped by Mao’s totalitarian regime for 66 years and shows no signs of liberalizing, quite the contrary. Maoism is being reintroduced in the education system, and the dictatorship is flexing its economic and political muscle around the world. Sadly the US policy of normalized relations, since Richard Nixon and  Henry Kissinger went to China, has empowered the dictatorship more than the people.

When Chinese students rose up in 1989, demanding democratic reforms and an end to corruption, the United States and much of the West paid lip service in their favor. While they were massacred, western nations privately assured the Chinese communist leadership that relations would not be effected, and business would carry on as usual.

Since then, Chinese nationals have been subjected to new totalitarian controls over there lives with the help of American companies such as Google and Yahoo. Google,to be able to operate in China, censored its search engines and Yahoo went further and actively tracked down dissidents who had been sending out e-mails critical of the government, leading to their imprisonment and torture. A similar process has played out in Vietnam.

Unfortunately it seems that on more than one occasion individuals of good will have confused a people with a particular party and a culture with a particular political ideology and this can be a slippery slope that ends up empowering and prolonging the life of a dictatorship which is the anti-thesis of helping people.

In the current debate over engagement with Cuba, it is important to differentiate between Cubans and the dictatorship that oppresses them. Furthermore, if one wants to be a force for real and lasting change, then one should remember that truth, memory, and justice are necessary elements for a real and lasting national reconciliation that involves forgiveness.

Pope John Paul II understood firsthand what Cubans had suffered, and in his World Day of Peace message on January 1, 2002, he offered a solution to situations such as Cuba’s:

"How do we restore the moral and social order subjected to such horrific violence? My reasoned conviction, confirmed in turn by biblical revelation, is that the shattered order cannot be fully restored except by a response that combines justice with forgiveness.… But in the present circumstances, how can we speak of justice and forgiveness as the source and condition of peace? We can and we must, no matter how difficult this may be … In fact, true peace is “the work of justice."

Holding the Castro regime accountable, denouncing new crimes, and pursuing justice is the work of peace and can be judged by its fruits. In the above cited speech, Pope John Paul II also observed that “the guilty must be correctly identified, since criminal culpability is always personal and cannot be extended to the nation.”

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has pursued a  policy of appeasement, that in practice has ignored the above council, since 2009 that has given Castro a green light to murder several opposition leaders including Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero (July 22, 2012) along with rising levels of repression.

The Carter Administration was the first to lift the travel ban and hold high-level negotiations with the Cuban dictatorship, and both sides opened Interest Sections in their respective capitals between 1977 and 1981. Then from 1981 to 1982, the Castro regime executed approximately 80 prisoners, which was a marked escalation when compared to 1976. Furthermore, during the Carter presidency, Fidel Castro took steps that resulted in the violent deaths of US citizens.

During the Mariel crisis of 1980, when over 125,000 Cubans sought to flee the island, the Cuban dictator sought to save face by selectively releasing approximately 12,000 violent criminals or individuals who were insane into the exodus. According to his bodyguard, “with the stroke of a pen,” Fidel Castro personally “designated which ones could go and which ones would stay. ‘Yes’ was for murderers and dangerous criminals; ‘no’ was for those who had attacked the revolution.”

In Latin America, this warming of relations coincided with the arrival of the Sandinistas to power in Nicaragua in 1979 and a widening civil war in Central America, all with Cuban backing.

The second to seek engagement was  the Clinton administration in the 1990s, similarly coinciding with brutal massacres. That included 37 Cubans in the “13 de Marzo” tugboat sinking (1994) and the murder of four in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down (1996). Despite all of this, President Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in 2000 and opened up cash-and-carry trade that formed a pro-Castro lobby in the United States. In Latin America, this warming of relations coincided with the arrival of Hugo Chavez to power in Venezuela in 1999 — with Cuban backing that has had negative consequences throughout the region.

People of good conscience must reject hatred and revenge while embracing justice and forgiveness. At the same time one must be careful not to become frustrated with the slow pace of change, and not to confuse helping an oppressed people with assisting a dictatorship. Otherwise, one could just be contributing to lengthening the life of the Castro regime and the suffering not only of Cubans but also of the peoples of neighboring countries, including the United States.

21 years after Tiananmen Square the Tyrants in China Still Afraid

Even a cartoon frightens the totalitarians in Beijing










On June 1, 2010 just three days shy of the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre Southern Metropolis Daily)—a state-owned but assertive news outlet based in Guangzhou published the above cartoon making reference to June 4, 1989 only to have it pulled from its website. Along with all comments made about the cartoon.



The tyrants in China were terrified by the students and workers demanding democracy and a purge of corrupt officials in 1989. Deng Xiaoping in a May 19 meeting told his comrades that: "The measures for martial law must be steady-handed, and we must minimize harm, but we must prepare to spill some blood." It took a brutal and bloody crackdown in which hundreds perhaps thousands died and in which several hundred were imprisoned some up to today to spread fear and terror throughout China. Despite that the hardliners are still afraid today.



Despite increasing economic prosperity according to Amnesty International, in China, there is no freedom of speech in general nor an investigation or redress for the victims of the June 4, 1989 crackdown. In Hong Kong over a 150,000 went to Victoria Park and held a candlelight vigil in memory of the victims of the massacre and to demand justice for the pro-democracy movement and the release of Chinese prisoners of conscience.



Even in Hong Kong the authorities are trying, in vain, to squelch efforts to remember. Oiwan Lam described in Global Voices how, "Hong Kong police confiscated two statues of the Goddess of Democracy before the annual march to commemorate the Tiananmen incident on 30 of May."



Hong Kong authorities deported the artist who constructed one of the replicas of the Goddess of Democracy. Yet students were able to bring the statues back out on the same day as the deportation. The struggle for freedom goes on, and they tyrants know that they are over the long run on the defensive, and they are afraid.