Minority Report
We Like Chinese--For the Moment
Tensions are up between US and Chinese officials following the incident with our EP-3E Aries II spy plane, which was doing what spy planes are meant to do--spying--when it collided with a Chinese F-8 fighter jet and crashed onto Hainan Island. The Chinese immediately boarded the plane and placed its crew into custody, several hours before President Bush, eager to reverse the Clinton-era policies of overt capitulation, declared the plane itself sovereign US territory and thus off-limits to the Red Chinese. Of course, the very fact that his statement was moot well before its composition brings into relief certain aspects of the US-Chinese relationship that have gone largely unscrutinized until now.
Our behavior toward the Chinese exposes the basic fundamental hypocrisy of the "free-market" motif espoused first by the right and later appropriated by Bill Clinton's Democratic party. Appeasing the Chinese while persecuting Cuba for equal crimes (worse, actually, from China), sends the message that human rights aren't really important, and that free markets aren't necessarily tied into freedom itself. Our approach to labor here is, frankly, totalitarian. Workers have no real power to raise their wages, negotiate benefits or save their jobs come time for quarterly earnings reports, besides labor unions already corrupted in the course of maintaining their flimsy connections to power. Do what you're told--the alternative is almost always worse. This is the model we hope to impose upon the Chinese by extending them Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status, setting up what we call Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR).
The acronym soup is mostly symbolic, but oh the symbolism! We want to officially recognize China as America's number-one trade partner without validating the legitimacy of Communism, which holds itself in opposition to a "free"--that is, mostly deregulated, top-down--market economy. Perhaps by approaching China as one large company run by the government, we can evade formal concession of their right to govern themselves however they like. Or else we can convert them, humanize the savages, if you will.
The nature of our economic system is such that it requires corporations to either increase revenue or lower expenses at all times to maintain strong profit margins. China is key to the sustained fulfillment of both criteria. The Chinese need an influx of greenbacks, but we need their bodies more. With over a billion people, China is a massive virgin territory, really the last major one left for American capital. It's loaded with potential consumers who've never seen propaganda like the US marketing machines, with workers who haven't been "tainted" by minimum-wage laws, OSHA regulations or any vague concept of what a union is or does, and a population too busy trying to dry out before the next flood to bother questioning the interlopers' right to reinvent their culture as a tool of commerce. We want them, passionately, and aren't averse to bribery, threats and coercion. After giving them enough missile technology to wipe us out as soon as they can afford more warheads, we set about integrating them into the global swap-meet.
It's widely taken as fact, especially in right-of-center circles, that the Clinton Administration basically handed over the long-range missile technology needed to make their warheads fly closer to us in exchange for surreptitious campaign funding. The question of funding remains unresolved since Bush wants to distance his government from that of Clinton on every level, even if it means missing the chance to put his supposed rival in prison. In fact, Bush and Clinton are more alike than either wants to admit, and may actually be friends. Clinton, as chairman of the National Governors Association prior to his election, often came in direct contact with Bush senior during his run at the top, which started in 1981 and never really ended, if the continuity of policy is any indicator.
Both share the need to to justify unjustifiable behavior. Clinton's allowing of US scientists to share missile technology with the only remaining Communist superpower (not counting Cuba and the three of four Marxists still alive in South America) was excused through commerce: US companies like Loral, Motorolla and Ericsson were sending their satellites up on American rockets, but it's cheaper to use someone else's rockets, and the Chinese were amenable. However, their rockets were shit-something like 75% failed to penetrate the ozone layer, often exploding on the launch pad-costing these companies more through high insurance premiums than it would have cost to continue using their own rockets. So aerospace engineers were dispatched to improve their product, and no one noticed that the same rockets that so easily carry satellites into orbit can be easily modified to accommodate nuclear warheads. By the time conservatives in congress noticed, it was too late, and Clinton labored ever after under the belief that he was soft on China. Indeed: if he was any softer, he'd be cashmere.
Destroying the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1998, which killed many more people than the P-3 incident did, was dismissed as an accident, a failure by the world's most splendid topographical outfit-Rand McNally lacks the benefit of spy satellites. "The maps were outdated," they said, and the media left it at that. Of course, no one involved in the process of designing the maps used for that operation has ever taken responsibility for "my" mistake, and it's been noted by others that the embassy was clearly marked on road maps bought in the area. It's now clear (to some people, mostly obscure journalists) that we knew exactly what was there, and destroyed the embassy because we thought the Chinese were hiding Milosevic there, since that was presumably the last place he could've claimed sanctuary. As for the events of April 1, the timing is perfect, since April 1 is the traditionally best day for lies and obfuscations.
Advocates of "closure" are well-intentioned, except they presume we have some perverse interest in peace with the Chinese. In fact, I feel that creating an atmosphere of palpable tension is vital to the Bush (and that means American) agenda. Since the cold war's demise we've used the threat of Islamic fundamentalism (or nationalism, whichever you prefer) as an excuse to maintain the same levels of military spending and to sustain our incursions in sovereign territory around the world, to the point of neglecting areas of genuinely critical concern. Africa, in particular, is in a state of advanced crisis unseen in modern history-the only comparable situation is that of the indigenous population in North America circa 1800, and we see where that went. Spending upwards of $100 million on a missile defense scheme makes no sense without the Chinese threat, a threat that only exists (to whatever extent it does) because of the Clinton administration, which maybe got all this started so Reagan could finally see the passage of "Star Wars" in Congress before his body follows his brain off the planet. We may all envy his timing if this silliness continues much longer.
Taiwan is a small island of China's coast, long a major manufacturing base for US light industry. Most of the toys you grew up with were produced in Taiwan. In recent years China has moved in the direction of assimilating Taiwan much like it did Hong Kong not long ago--the only significant change being that deals must run through the Chinese government. Taiwanese have resisted, afraid of being tortured for doing yoga or something, and we support their resistance because we don't want to deal with middlemen who'll add Commie tariffs and price control, and maybe shift the Taiwanese economy away from export to industrial agriculture. In times not far from major famine, food's a better product than Pokemon. That would be highly inconvenient, so we're better off arming the Taiwanese to forestall assimilation, even if it alienates the Chinese, who are trying to boost their economy by channelng profits from off-shore businesses.
The implications of the present dispute are convoluted, as all dealings between the two countries are. Any perceived danger from that region is tempered by the fact that, between their manpower and our technological supremacy, any war between the two countries would end as either a savage draw or a double knockout. There's nothing either can do to decisively harm the other except nuclear strike, which carries the usual penalties for now. The Chinese interpret our missile defense plans as tacit admission that a future move into their territory is the plan, which is true. They live on the new frontier, and we must establish a presence one way or another. That's why that EP-3E was working their airspace to begin with. The incident involving the EP-3E and Chinese flyboy Wang Wie must be understood in the context of a very weird decade of Sino/American relations. And weirdness is the status quo in contemporary politics.
Shelton Hull (aka Archibald Bobo) has been writing professionally since 1995. He also does the column "Money Jungle" for FolioWeekly (Jacksonville). His work has appeared in places like Section 8 Magazine, Movement, CounterPunch, Lew Rockwell.com and the Florida Times-Union. He was a 2002 Fellow at the Academy of Alternative Journalism, AAN/Northwestern University. He works for himself.
