The Chinese people, who suffer under that regime, need all the friends and advocates that they can get.

Please be one of them, and examine critically any news items you see that suggest that things are going just wonderfully in the PRC.

Our nation should be on the side of those brave Chinese who are fighting for human rights and democracy, and not on the side of those who are persecuting them.

RedRover

I’m not one of those people.

While I still believe that engagement is better than isolation in terms of totalitarian regimes….I would be a fool to not recognize that the items you have cited are deeply disturbing…unacceptable…clear violations of human rights…obvious examples of how much work there is left to do.

They are also strong counterpoints to the Carter items. I most definitely see your point

Consider, for example, The Carter Center China Program
http://www.cartercenter.org/peace/china_elections/index.html

These so-called village elections, because they are carefully and completely controlled, are really a propaganda victory for the Chinese Communist Party.

By promoting these bogus elections, Carter and his Center are really helping to legitimize the CCP and its tyrannical rule.

Meanwhile, on human rights issues of real substance, like the brutal crackdown in Tibet that angered freedom-lovers all over the world, Jimmy Carter defends and shelters his CCP chums.

In an interview on ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos on April 13, 2008, Carter, who led the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, said that he opposes boycotting the Beijing Olympics because China’s 50 years of criminal occupation of Tibet are not as serious as the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Read and puke for yourselves at:
http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/This%20Week%20with%20George%20Stephanopoulos%20Transcript%20041308.pdf

Meanwhile, in beautiful neo-Capitalist China, a massive crackdown is underway. The CCP is rounding up and disappearing every and anyone it suspects of dissident activity or sympathies in order to keep them from contacting foreign journalists during the Games and informing them of the real human rights situation in the glorious PRC.

SEE:
China’s Silencing Season
Activist Journalists and Lawyers Jailed, Harassed in Far-Reaching Pre-Olympic Operation
By Jill Drew, Washington Post Foreign Service
The Washington Post, Thursday, July 10, 2008; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/09/AR2008070902170.html?nav=rss_world/asia

What does Peanut-farmer Jimmy have to say about this? Not a damn thing, friends, cause he knows which side his human rights bread is buttered on.

Local elections in China! There’s a hoot. Vote fore the Communist official of your choice. Hoo boy!

Carter may have been friendly to ChiComs, but the Cheney-Rove administration, (official greeter, George W. Bush,) is positively in love with them!

RedRover is right: Capitalism is simply an economic system, as is socialism.

Capitalism doesn’t guarantee freedom, otherwise China would be a free country, and it certainly isn’t one.

Another thing: Why do we ban trade with Cuba, but fill our Wal-Marts with stuff from China? Hmmmmm.

As a journalist, do you ever question the validity of your sources?

Jimmy Carter is in the human rights business. He also is a member of a political party that has been in the forefront of this nation’s Appease China foreign policy. Take a look at Carter’s report of his latest trip to China and consider all the schmoozing he did with Chinese Communist bigshots:
http://cartercenter.org/news/trip_reports/china_2007.html

And then take a look at the US State Dept.’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for China for 2007 and consider the sorts of human rights atrocities that these bigshots are guilty of:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100518.htm

Is Jimmy ignorant of the horrific abuses described by our own State Dept. or just indifferent to them? Can you really trust anything that this man and his “Center” have to say on real human rights and democracy in China?

Do you actually believe that any candidate who was not approved by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could safely run for office in the so-called village elections in China?

Of course not! That would entail a respect for the rule of law that the CCP despises.

As an example of what the CCP does to a Chinese citizen who attempts to invoke the rule of law in an unapproved manner, consider the case of Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught lawyer who filed a lawsuit in an attempt to protect his neighbors from being illegally forced to undergo sterilizations or to abort pregnancies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Guangcheng

Mr. Chen managed to prove his point but was thereafter set upon by CCP-sponsored thugs who beat him up, then arrested him and tried him on trumped-up charges. He is currently in jail, along with hundreds of other Chinese citizens like himself:
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1395758.php/Number_of_Chinese_political_prisoners_in_2007_&quothighest_since_1999%22

Listen, boys and girls, some of you may be too young to remember, but communists are goddam liars. If you believe for a minute the CCP’s statistics on mortality or on anything else they promote, then I have a bridge in Shanghai that you could buy for a song.

Why are we encouraged by the US corporate media to believe all those Red Chinese lies and ignore their ongoing human rights atrocities?

–> Because US corporations have made huge investments in China and are making huge profits from importing Chinese goods made by slave labor under conditions exposed by Loretta Tofani [see above], and

–> Because US corporations, run by greedy and racist capitalist pigs, control the political system in this country by means of legalized bribery.

Listen, David, what I had to say had NOTHING at all to do with capitalism. Capitalism has in it no guarantees of freedom, NONE!

In a purely capitalist society, free speech would be reserved for three kinds of people: the filthy rich, the sold out, and the brain dead. We are getting close to that point already.

American Capitalists and Chinese Communists have a lot in common. They both value power and profit and despise genuine human rights, civil liberties and democracy. That’s why they get along so well together.

David asks:
”What type of pressure can be applied to China that would work? Force or financial pressure? The threat of an attack or the threat of internal strife from being cut off financially because of human rights practices?”

It would be so simple, in a country not controlled by greedy capitalist corporations, to liberate the people of China from their oppressors.

Put tariffs on imports from China large enough to reduce China’s trade surplus to zero. Inform the Chinese government that these tariffs will be enforced “until political prisoners are freed and fundamental human rights are granted.”

That last is a quote from the Bush Administration’s Capitalist-in-Chief, Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez, in a letter to the Washington Post regarding trade sanctions against Cuba.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060801671.html

Please note that although he supports a trade embargo with Cuba because of its human rights abuses, his Dept. of Commerce actively promotes trade with China:
http://www.export.gov/china/

And you call Capitalism “a wonderfully motivating system for positive change”, David?

I will say this in closing, Capitalism is wonderfully motivating the CCP to do everything it can to steal our national security secrets. Please read:
Spy Cases Raise Concern on China’s Intentions
By Neil A. Lewis
The New York Times, July 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10spy.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

http://www.cartercenter.org/peace/china_elections/index.html

I am not in any way suggesting that China and Vietnam have somehow miraculously become Jeffersonian in their ideals. They remain brutal Communist regimes.

But let me ask you this: If they treat their people in the ways you describe….when the world is watching,…..what do you think they’ll do if they were to be isolated and alone, a la North Korea?