So Mr. Manjoo joins the chorus beating the drums for war with China. He is in good company with Trump. The grand coalition of right-wingers and liberals marching arm in arm against China. This is the nice fuzzy humanitarian upholstery to go with the trade war, the missiles, warships and bombs. The US ruling rich have decided that China is an existential threat to their profits and world domination. But they need to recruit millions to their war against their Chinese rivals, hence we now are showered in torrents of crocodile tears over human and democratic rights in China. It's laughable coming from the US rulers who have supported, armed and directed nearly every bloody dictatorship in the world for the last 100 years. This is akin to the British protestations in the 1880s about human rights in the Congo (which they hoped to seize), while raping millions in India. Yes Farhad the Chinese regime is horrible, and I really look forward to the people of China overthrowing it, and pursuing a just social, political, democratic order, precisely just what Wall St. doesn't want.
1
So the problem of communism is capitalism? The problem is greed, and ummm, communism. Obviously. Greed is universal and doesn’t need capitalism to sustain it. As a matter of fact Xi came to power in a fight against greed, as one of his excuses to rule like the American-funded dictatorship he represents. Roger Cohen in this very paper was bold enough to praise Trump’s policy on China despite his other misgivings. In Trump we have a bully to fight the other bullies. As always there is a corollary that always remains true: “the censors are the fascists.” In this country we also have a socialist- left wing movement. Also interested in “safe spaces,” effectively banning books by “trigger warnings,” and banning actual thought through “de-platforming” culture. The very use of this obfuscating Orwellian language regarding speech should give them away. Trump is likely a complete sociopath. But he’s the bully sociopath needed at this time to fight the true threat to democracy itself. He’s the only one with the guts to do it. Obama allowed Xi to continue building islands in the South China Sea, annexing sovereignty from local nations, if he would only promise to not militarize them. Xi ignored him, added weapons, and Obama did nothing. The big picture is who are the censors. That’s who the enemy is. You are right about China. Do you know who the censors are here? They also believe in a “Great” socialist society. Enough said.
America has 25% of the world's prisoners with 5% of humanity.
And while only 13% of Americans are black like LeBron James and Steph Curry, 40% of the prisoners are black. Because blacks are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences.
Prison is the carefully carved color exception to the 13th Amendment abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude.
By every positive educational health socioeconomic measure black Africans in America are still separate and unequal. While a majority of the NBA players are black African American a majority of the NBA owners are white European American.
I don't know nor care about the people of Hong Kong China. Because unlike the people of San Juan Puerto Rico they are not my fellow American citizens.
1
Thoughts on this: Farhad is nearly totally right about all this. (1) I'd quibble that he implies that we won't need cooperation with China on climate change, but at this point that's a subject for (hopefully) the next Administration. (2) We need to remember and learn from when we are "spectacularly wrong," and yet so certain back when. President Clinton's view that letting China into the WTO, in part, because it would make them a freer society is not the only delusion going around. We need to get much better at learning about such mistaken paradigms (i.e. quicker, deeper, and with more humbleness going forward). (3) It seems to take some CEOs an initial misstep to find their moral bearings, such as the departed one from Cathay Pacific and the NBA Commissioner. I get it. It's a hard issue for them. But their second step (to advance a basketball-like expression) was better. Hey, Farhad likes "small steps for optimism!" Better was South Park. Precedents are important. (4) The Corporate Social Responsibility field, if it hasn't already, must move into this area. This is certainly not going to be one of the easy win: wins, but this is where the company that wants to be seen as responsible, and be taken seriously, move move. (5) Ethics, rescuing democracy, and capitalism must converge, as strange and challenging as that sounds. I mentioned this in a comment on Tuesday.(https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opinion/nba-china-hong-kong.html#commentsContainer&permid=102973654:102973654).
1
Thank you, Farhad. Best thing I’ve read on this subject.
I have a small business that has a natural audience in China and several potential Chinese partners have approached me about expanding there. When the Morey tweet went down, I noticed a Chinese citizen criticizing me for liking posts (not even writing my own tweets) supportive of the Hong Kongers and freedom of speech. I don’t normally tweet about politics so I debated about whether or not to respond to their criticism. Then, a thought entered my mind: oh, if I end up in a spat with a Chinese citizen about the country’s human rights record and censorship, etc., will this harm my prospects for a potential expansion into the Chinese market?
I’m ashamed to say that this gave me pause. My ancestors actually fled from North Korea because of their belief in democracy over communism! Literally, I would not be here (or my life would be radically different) if it weren’t for their courage. By the time I had thought this through and had decided to respond to the Chinese citizen on Twitter and defend freedom of speech and democracy, the algorithm would no longer show me their tweet so I never got to respond.
But still, it was a clarifying moment: I won’t ever hesitate or back down from defending democracy or freedom of speech. If it costs me the ability to expand into the Chinese market so be it. I’d rather defend the ideals that have made my life and career possible than sell my soul. I wish other businesses would do the same.
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@L I admire your actions and decision. If more companies took the same approach -- pause, think, consider the long-term implications to personal and economic freedom, and account for the morality of the parties with which you are engaging -- then we probably wouldn't be so concerned with China's standing in the business world and could concern ourselves more with critical issues, i.e., the hegemony and potential for future atrocities imposed by their government on the people in their country and geo-political sphere.
11
@L A soul with conscience!!! Bravo!!!
5
We didn't take up with China in 1971 to make it capitalist, thus headed for liberal democracy.
Rather, we "played the China card" against the USSR.
For twenty years we stuck with the policy, betraying allies (Taiwan), supporting despicable enemies (Khmer Rouge: Pol Pot, Killing Fields), and covering for unspeakable Chinese acts (Kissinger's excusing the Tienanmen massacre).
The most astounding thing is that when the Russian people overthrew Communism, we still stuck with the Chinese, the last great Stalinist abomination in the world.
We got China into the crucially important WTO. We kept Democratic Russia out for 18 years.
While Russia was struggling in 1993-4 to make democracy and the market work, we started NATO's march toward its border.
In 2002, China declared Uighur resistance to be a terrorist organization. We accommodated the tyrants by putting 22 Uighurs in Guantanamo, our Black Site. Some were kept for 12 years, to 2014.
Russophobic blow-back isn't new.
In 1900 or so, to thwart the Tsar's expansion in the Pacific, Britain created the Japanese Imperial Navy.
In 1926, this paper was relieved to report that Stalin was the new, moderate, Soviet leader, rather than Trotsky.
In the early 30s, many Americans joined Hearst in supporting Hitler as the answer to Stalin.
In 1979, we gave weapons to the mujahedin to start the Afghan war to cause a Soviet Vietnam, giving us 9/11.
China's our baby. Our Rosemary's Baby.
Courtesy of our anti-Russian reflex.
3
What about dealing with Pakistan? Love to hear the authors thoughts on Pakistan and its treatment of minorities.
1
Greed drives America
1
Krushchev famously said that if the Soviets sought to buy a rope to hang the Americans with, the businessmen would try to outbid each other for the contract.
5
I am sad that NYT would allow an opinion full of frauds and misunderstandings like this to be published.
Some points I'd like to point out:
First, to be a columnist, Mr. Manjoo should do some homework in advance. The origin of HK protest is about an extradition law, yet the law is meant to deal extradition problems with many other countries and regions, not merely with China. HK protesters distort it and turn into anti-China violent demonstrations, which makes HK now a paradise for felonies who don't have to worry about deportation even they commit murder in most countries in the world.
Second, the freedom of speech does not equal to you can say whatever you like. Chinese people have much more freedom of speech than US people imagine, but they tend to be modest and don't like to comment on other countries' affairs that makes many people think they are deprived of freedom to express. I just wonder what will NYT and Mr. Manjoo respond if Real Madrid encourages the independence of California or Texas?
Third, though China is a single-party political system, it is not a totalitarian regime. Even in old ancient China, the emperors' power are still balanced by the cabinet and audit officials. All the policies are determined by consensus of departments, and Xi is only the one to announce these policies.
Forth, "We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China. Instead, it corrupted us". Well, even without China, US is corrupted by itself. We have Trump.
5
Everyone who are comparing US to China is just wrong. China is not a democracy, but US is. Trump maybe taking a destructive path towards being a dictator, but the people has the choice to overthrow him. Just last year the Democrats took control of the House, coming 2020, most likely they will gain control over senate as well. As for Trump, its highly unlikely he's going to be re-elected. People get to voice their opinions, just look at Trump's twitter feed replies.
China on the other hand has a Prime minister for life. That alone is dangerous. Millions of Muslim minorities are being locked down, then they stage an interactive re-education school among BBC reporters, but they did not get to visit over the massive block of buildings across the block. People are being tortured, killed and organ harvested. How is it any different than a Nazi camp? People cannot even access internet without facial recognition, most of the internet is censored from being exposed to their citizen, the people are actually being brainwashed. This is not how freedom looks like, u get to speak free if u were a democracy.
One thing I agree though, world fell into populism and nationalism after Trump got elected. he withdrew US from most of the diplomatic ties around the world. So did the countries around the world followed the trend. We really need Trump outsted, and see a democrat president by fall 2020.
If we don't put pressure on China, the world leaders will see this a new normal, can't allow.
1
Who cares what China thinks anyway? Over 1 billion of them believe tea made from a Rhinoceros horn is an aphrodisiac and tiger bone cures arthritis. Their antiquated "hocus pocus" belief system is appalling- If they can't handle free speech then they shouldn't try to stand on the world stage. Better yet- Let them stand I'll be laughing at them.
#SaveTheRhino #SaveTheTiger
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"We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China."
What do you mean we, white man?
It was self-evident to many of us that the rush to do mega business with China was all about making the money first and coming up with a pretext second. Any opportunity for huge profits creates a niche for someone to come up with reasons why chasing those profits will actually serve the higher, nobler goals we can't be bothered to care about directly.
Some of us saw exactly this outcome but of course no one listened to us; you were too deafened by the sounds of cash registers. You wanted to believe.
The routine conflation of capitalism with democracy is just a parallel symptom. Bring the capitalism, the democracy will naturally follow. (Worked great in Russia.)
I remember in 2001, when Beijing was chosen to host the 2008 Olympics, all were aflutter about how this would bring China into the brotherhood of modern, humane nations. (You know, like how the 1936 Olympics made good global citizens of Hitler's Germany.)
The craven, coprophagic dishonesty of America's elite commentariat just blows my mind. You have no right to be surprised by this. It was self-evident. There was just too much money and too much prestige to be foregone by seeing the obvious.
1
Mr. Manjoo: What would you do if you are the president of the U.S.? Cut off diplomatic relations with Communist China? Why so many American newspaper columnists hate China? Always criticizing China? I have been a NYT reader since the end of WWII and I don't remember a single op-ed said nice things about China.
4
Come on Farhad we saw and wanted a bit of the action too. Takes 2 hands to clap as the Chinese will say.
1
The first article Manjoo has written that I can agree with him on most of his points. Some of the same criticisms of China are occurring here in the US with the help of the media.
2
before we could discuss about how to deal with China. could you please tell me if you know Chinese language?where do you learn about China? have you ever come to China? can you point out the location of Tibet and Xinjiang in the map without google's help?
millions of Chinese people ,ranging from 10 years old to 70 years old, know how to read,write and speak in English. nearly 1 in 14 of Chinese population went overseas every year ,see and learn about what is happening in the world, thousands of young students went overseas for further education ,in USA too...... can u believe CCP can fool all Chinese people in this case? and what do american know about China?
So my point is that: Chinese people know the USA better than American people know about China? and one day Chinese people will know the world better than American.
3
Underneath all this ideological slander of China we've missed the plot entirely. A Hong Kong man murdered a woman in China and they understandably wanted him extradited so the government wanted a rational amendment to allow, on a case by case basis, the extradition of criminals such as this murderer.
Whatever larger issues are at play, this is not a reasonable hill to die on for pro-Democracy activists. Sort of reminds me of Ferguson. Of all the examples of alleged police racism, the activists decided to defend a violent criminal caught on tape abusing a store clerk just prior to the shooting, the hands up witness was lying, etc.
A cousin of mine spent years in China and loves it. He tells me their everyday lives are more free than ours, most people mind their own business and just live their lives.
Sometimes I deal with the public and when I do, not a day goes by where I don't encounter people who believe all kinds of insane right wing conspiracies thanks to 30 years of right wing media & talk radio.
Here's just one example out of dozens I routinely heard in 2016. Obama was a Kenyan born Muslim groomed from birth to infiltrate the USA, promote late term infanticide/abortions, fire our generals and replace them with Muslims in anticipation of sharia law.
Until we figure out how to secure Democracy, I honestly can't fault China for hesitating to allow a billion humans to think their leaders are controlled by extraterrestrials or run satanic sex cults on the side, etc.
1
Keep in mind that it is likely that the current human rights situation in China is mostly ginned up by the clever folks in Langley aided & abetted by a White House scared out of its mind about China's economic prowess. The CIA has always used human rights as a stalking horse. They did it in Tibet, trying to cause a revolution, and it was a pretext for Venezuela, Iraq (along with the WMD lies) Syria & Libya. And that's just in this century.
The claim about one million Uyghurs has always been dubious, spouted by a lifelong interventionist who has received huge sums from NED/CIA in her career, one Susan MacDougall. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Rights The leader of the US-based Uighur human rights group World Uighar Congress, a Mr. Kanat, was asked where he got the one million figure. He said - from the American press. https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/ (See also https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/20/inside-americas-meddling-machine-the-us-funded-group-that-interferes-in-elections-around-the-globe/)
Meanwhile China keeps on growing (good for them - they've gotten hundreds of millions out of the worst poverty imaginable), and pundits keep on carping. Nothing can stop China from economic dominance. https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/07/20/timeline-of-china-catching-up/ And they were smart enough to arm up so the US can't steal their wealth, unlike the Middle Eastern countries the US looted & burned.
Anyone who agrees with this article , which I do should respect that fact we have a President who IS Making the Way to Fair Trade with this communist nation and this is Not the time for any more Democrat Pandering to China's desire to overtake us!
2
30 years ago I quit the first ever Peace Corps Program to China after it massacred its citizens in Tiananmen Square. The excuses started pouring out before the blood was dry. Every President since gave them most favored status. (MFN). A few days ago they danced on the blood of their predecessors. And they learned what?
1
HaHa. The NBA got used to China's money and now caves in to their threat. Get outta here.
2
China has weaponized basketball?
Adam Silver says Yao Ming is "hot." Without basketball, Yao Ming would be nothing.
It's the NBA not the China Basketball Association.
2
Moral cost is paid by, people and countries that has morals and and even a sense of what is the meaning of the word morality. Just look at the pictures coming out of Syria today.These people were your friends and allies less than two days ago. They died for you. You did not even had the decency to tell them take cover, we are leaving. Quit preaching you have absolutely no moral capital.
1
Stop worrying.
China like any totalitarian regime will fall, USSR, Nazis...
The brave people of H Kong are showing the way.
US should link strongly to India, S America and Africa.
1
WHAT a hypocrite! Assuming you are right that 1.4 billion chinese citizens are "denied of basic human rights, no freedom of speech, thought, assembly, religion, movement...", then, with your "high" moral standard, shouldn't you try to deal/engage with china/chinese government even MORE to fight for and save those poor suffering 1.4 billion chinese citizens? Instead, you are just here whining, worrying about yourself getting "corrupted", don't want to deal with china anymore to keep your "moral cost", seriously?
1
Which is worse, millionaire basketballers begging to be treated as slaves by the Chinese junta, or Google willing to not only make Big Brother work in China but bringing it HERE, in fits and starts?
Monster governments are the ultimate tar baby from the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris. Get mixed in with them (Hillary) and you'll never have a normal life again.
1
There IS something else that we as concerned, committed individuals could do, which our government and corporations dare not. We can organize an unremitting series of weekly demonstrations--with the press invited, naturally--in front of every Chinese consulate and embassy in the West. At each of these, we highlight one particular abuse by China. Then we read aloud from the UN Declaration of Human Rights. We conclude with cries of "For shame, China!" This gets televised on the news. Becomes a "cool" thing to participate in. The demonstrations spread from city to city.... Here's the thing: SHAME is a primal motivating, emotional factor in Chinese culture. I suggest that it is an Achilles' heal, perhaps the only one, in the Chinese monolith. By means of repeated public shaming, we can change China's conduct!
1
Farhad. Thank you.
If China is using money as a weapon, that should be stopped. We must have a strategy. The following are some thoughts:
-Restrict the inflow of investments into China
-Set up a plan to relocate US businesses, currently in China. Move them back to the US. Or, look for other locations around the world for possible relocation venues.
- Cut down on imports from China. China will react to this by limiting their imports from the US. We should be prepared for this, and seek other markets for our products and services.
2
China will probably be the pre-eminent world power in the next 50 years. Instead of spending constantly on war, China has spent all its spare cash on self improvement and it shows.
Too bad we tossed aside all those allies just when we started to need them.
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@Objectively Subjective I beg to differ. Do you think their cyber army's initiatives, constant hacking, purchasing fake social media accounts and spreading pro-communist whataboutism content, ads placed in newspapers and websites barred from everyday citizens, government censorship, firewall maintenance, prison guards, organ harvesters, all the courts and police to arrest and imprison political dissidents who dare express sympathy for democracy, falun gong members, Uighurs, do you think they cost nothing? You must be naive if you don't think they cost much.
Also, ironically, communist elite still like sending their privileged kids to western democracies for education and real estate purchases. They still prefer US dollars, and western democracies for those privileged enough to buy the opportunity. For a "pre-eminent" power, they sure have a funny way of showing it.
5
It’s no surprise to me how quickly one’s morals fall away in the face of money. In this regard, we humans are all the same. Absolute access to unlimited sums of money corrupts absolutely.
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I don't think we should do business with China and I don't think they should be able to do business here.
I would gladly pay higher prices to avoid buying anything made in China.
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@Mr. Moderate I can't support this. You can't unscramble the egg. We just have to get wiser and less venal. The worm will turn. The US will again become a light unto the world. The Middle Kingdom will see the light.
@Mr. Moderate
You have that right, no one is forcing you to buy anything made in China. But you shouldn’t be able to enforce your preference on hundreds of millions of other Americans.
1
Kills me to read the comments from the 'What Abouters' re: Manjoo's article; knowing from our own recent history during the 2016 elections that a certain percentage of these (on surface) cultural relativists probably are in fact Russian or Chinese trolls.
If everything is only a matter of simple cultural relativism and the situation were reversed, and some brave citizen or journalist tried to publish a similar criticism of the Chinese government in a Chinese controlled area of the globe, I suppose then it would come as a surprise to the cultural apologists to learn that that brave soul by now probably had already been carted off to prison, and his family placed under 24hr surveillance,NO?
BTW, why do you think the protesters in Hong Kong insist on playing the 'Star Spangled Banner' during their protests, instead of the Chinese anthem- 'March of the Volunteers'?
2
Years ago, an editor I knew used a "tool" of a substitution field. If she was editing an older children's book with lines like, the Indian maiden or the Indian brave, she thought what if she used another group - the Italian brave or the Jewish maiden. It brought out the under lying problems of some old language cliches and stereotyping. In this case, would I sell wombats or or doormats to Nazi Germany? Would I sell movies or gromits to China? Do I buy anything from China - that's the difficult one when there is no choice left in the store.
1
There is a precedent for this: Hollywood's self-censorship (with a few exceptions) before World War II to avoid antagonizing Nazi Germany (which was a big importer of American movies).
3
Excellent piece. We will all need to be willing to pay a little more and shareholders accept just rich versus super rich. But we should also insist on a realistic projection of not just climate change related risks, but also how expected defaults from China's global infrastructure loans might affect us as well.
1
The premise is simply incorrect.
Prosperity has made china more liberalized. First, it allows many millions to travel overseas to open societies.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals are students in U.S. universities. millions more across Europe and other parts of the world that are more open than China. A generation ago, most of these people would not have been able to travel for both legal and economic reasons.
Secondly, the technological totalitarianism is playing catch-up with liberalization. Chinese can communicate in real time about anything now. They can organize, spread information, take photos and videos in a way that was impossible 20 years ago.
Is china less liberalized now than it was in the 70s and 80s? I think the answer is no. There are fewer travel restrictions now, people can travel because they can afford to, and the CCP has hardly ever been tolerant of dissent. At least now people within and outside of China can get the word out when someone's been disappeared.
I think the most that can be said is that we hoped it would have toppled Communism altogether and made China a liberal democracy, and this hasn't happened.
But relatively speaking, prosperity and technology has helped make China more liberalized than it was decades ago and more liberalized than it would have been if things had stayed the same. Two steps forward and one and a half steps back is still forward progress.
"Dealing with China Isn't Worth the Moral Cost. We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China. Instead, it corrupted us".
Our businesses, large and small, went into China, relocating the plants from here. The motivation was cheap land and labor which China had to offer. Bottom line - It was money and profits.
The investments going into China, has helped with the country's economic growth. In turn, helping China to invest in technology.
China is not a capitalist country. However, the country is practising capitalism, their way, to be within the framework of their Communist system.
China is not a player or a partner. They are using the capital generated from the outside investments, to expand their technology and military ambitions. One example of this direction is what we see happening in the South China Sea. China's only faith lies in making money and seeking profits. They have no respect for human rights, and all the freedom, people have the rights to.
Do we see China as a threat to the world? Do we go along with how China behaves on the world stage? If we have to counter that, what options do we have? Are our businesses prepared to pull out of China. Stop the inflow of investments going into that country? Can that happen? What would the results be?
4
With all due respect, seems like many people are missing the point.
China's clever use of tech to enable its authoritarian government and furthermore legitimizing it by controlling public opinion can set an effective example for many other governments from Russia to Turkey, Brazil to Poland etc.
It might even lead to this form of 'Capitalism with
Chinese Characteristics' (still promising people some form of material wealth as long as they are not so keen about their private and inalienable human rights) can become an alternative ideology given the majestic failure of liberalism to deliver on its promises to disenfranchised masses in the last two decades, and sustain its hegemony over a longer term thanks to clever use of technology.
Otherwise, if we want to discuss how corrupt the West is to begin with, we will have to go deep and discuss and challenge the idea of progress which legitimizes history (as written and controlled by 'the west') and thus their current (economic, political, cultural and militaristic) hegemony on the World affairs.
2
I agree with the fears Manjoo expresses with China's Orwellian regime combining with corrupt capitalism to spell a catastrophe for democratic values in the near future. His insight is spot on. I would hope a Warren or Sanders administration would lead the fight against this dystopian future.
4
Stop buying Chinese made products.
2
As for our country we shall serve mammon.
2
“It turns out the West’s entire political theory about China has been spectacularly wrong. “
Nonsense.
Glibertarian smugness has proven wrong. Duh.
And the We Are To Sophisticated To Believe Communists Are Communists Even When They Say They Are crowd so dominant in the academic world and the democrat party have been proven wrong. Duh.
Half the Times pieces on China are from this crowd.
Chinese communists are proud to be commies though in fact like the Kim Korean dynasty they are becoming less communist and more feudal emperors using nationalism and threats of war for no reason to keep power.
The Han have a long history of eating their own kind in the name of the empire. There is nothing like it in any other land. That is the likely fate of Hong Kong and of Taiwan.
2
Simply put...
When you lie down with dogs....
5
Like to hear your views on what is brutally going in Syria over 5/6 years. What are people being murdered for??
1
NYT Replies is far better than NYT picks. Keep it up!
In my own view, the US needs to reacquaint itself with its own political principles and challenge itself to live closer to them. Integrity should be the price of our considerable privilege. Not the deep cynicism and slavery to self-concern that, I hope, is at its zenith today.
4
"The People’s Republic of China is the largest, most powerful and arguably most brutal totalitarian state in the world."
Not is is not I know a couple worse. One that beheads people: "Saudi Arabia beheaded 5 men 'proven' to be gay under torture". Not mention the Saudi's are major contributors to the Global Climate Holocaust.
You lost credibility with your opening line. The issue of human rights it is too important to be sallied with hyperventilating exaggerations.
3
This is the reason I continue reading Farhad Manjoo columns, despite the he/she/they feathery distractions.
4
Among the top global capitalists sucking up to China, Apple just removed its app, HKmap.live, that tracked Hong Kong police from its App Store, after China’s People’s Daily said it was a betrayal.
Is money the root of all immorality? Or is it the path to global harmony, as recognized by the CPC.
6
Alas. Methinks Mr. Manjoo has quaffed the same venomous potion that engendered those "nervous nellies" back in the '60s.
Rather than fretting over Sino-dictators, demagogues & so forth, it should behoove Mr. Manjoo to do his readers and himself a beneficial favor by reflecting on how the genial, regnant socialist Son of Heaven is applying the tenets of Confucian communism to cultivate HARMONY, not only for his subjects but for the whole world, as well.
1
Moral Cost and Corruption are overwrought terms.
Both dealing and fighting with the Chinese is unavoidable. I do not buy that it has "corrupted us". Poor Chinese, you say, corruptly accept their autocratic government. And, American company's and political leaders sold/sell out American workers. What panacea do you offer though to the plain gritty necessity of dealing with an economic competitor the likes of which the US has not seen in recent history?
What is the "smarter and more sustained effort from our leaders" you are calling for?
Michael Pillsbury's excellent book "The Hundred-Year Marathon" makes some of the following points:
1. Western political theory about China might have been correct up until 1989, but not after. After Tiananmen square, reformers were forced out of power and hard liners squashed any chance of democratic reforms taking place.
2. China is “exporting” its ideology, not by persuading other countries to follow its political and economic model, but by attacking its critics abroad and using its economic power to suppressing unfavorable opinion. The NBA is but one example
3. China has a long term (100 year) goal to replace the United States as the global hegemon. They’re expanding their military might and reach, developing cutting edge technologies, and entering into unbalanced economic arrangements with poorer countries.
4. The hegemon, in order to maintain its appearance as hegemon, will do something desperate and foolish.
That last point scares me the most as long as Trump is president. Trump is the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s withdrawing from the world and leaving a vacuum for China to fill. He lacks the skills to pass legislation, rally our allies, and present a vision for remaining the global hegemon. All he can do is send feckless tweets and enact ineffective tariffs. And try to cut a deal that sells out Hong Kong.
4
My question for you Mr Farhad is why do we in the West, especially here in the US, continue to be simply satisfied with a few clucks of the tongue and a few weak kneed boycotts of Chinese products and financial arrangements, and then merrily continue to go about our way mortgaging our future to the Chineses, while watching them engage in the whole scale repression of their subject peoples?
As an example-On the one hand tech savvy nerds throughout the country (many of them self styled 'Liberals') will rush off to purchase the latest and fastest computers or software, which inevitably are made/ designed or are both in China; while on the other hand these same folks will be proud to sport a 'Free Tibet' bumper sticker on their made-in-China hybrid car.
And what about the American farmers-The Ag Boys inevitably make the loudest noises about 'Patriotism' when flush with subsidized sales to China. Just make one move, however, to spread the pain of an effective tariffe against unfair Chinese business practices , and they are the first (and loudest) folks to complain about being asked to sacrifice for the future economic stability of our country, or to halt repressive measures against subject peoples.
So, no Farhad why should the CCC change their ways, when all we do here in the US is shake our heads over their rapaciousness and their immorality against their own citizens?
1
What morals are still held in this government?
This seems like the kettle calling the to black.
Unfortunately, we've lost our moral authority.
Thank you Mr. Manjoo!!
China cry a river for Japanese’ atrocity. Their anger is rightly justified. Who can forget invaders who kill their people in the name of “Building Prosperous Asia”?. likewise, Uyghurs don't forget Chinese atrocity committed against millions of them in the name of “ sovereignty ”.
China’s behavior in Uyghur region has already crossed the line. It is no longer an internal matter of China, but a stain on the conscience of mankind. I don’t expect any sympathy from Muslim countries because China is their ally against the Democracy. I don’t expect any sympathy from general Chinese population, because they’re brainwashed. Relying on powerful security apparatus and monopoly of political power combined with CCP’s 100 years of organizational and propaganda skills, they have effectively branded Uyghurs “as the enemy of China” and propagated “Islamic faith” as the “mental illness”, and made Uyghurs look bad in the eyes of free world by linking Uyghur freedom movement to violent Islamic organizations with the aid of agents ….Basically, they have accomplished their intention of eradicating Uyghurs by “frying the lamb in her own fat”.
Free world should NOT allow China continue abuse, torture and destroy Uyghur and other Non-Han ethnicities living in Uyghur Region.
One must admit that China is a super power and free world should NOT leave Uyghurs for their wanton destruction. It is a moral duty of a neighbor to report the abusive stepmother to the police.
2
‘...most brutal totalitarian state in the world. It denies basic human rights to all of its nearly 1.4 billion citizens. There is no freedom of speech, thought, assembly, religion, movement or any semblance of political liberty in China.”
Farhad, all of these statements are plain wrong. Your country (the US) is actually keeping alive the most brutal totalitarian state in the world - Saudi Arabia. Go and ask any Saudi woman If she would not rather live in China. If people in China have no freedom of expression, how is it that there are protests in Hong Kong for months? I know you wrote this piece because the NYT wanted a piece on China, and you understood their undertone that it must be negative. But you should examine these popular American myths before you believe them.
Anyway, getting to the point. Your basic thesis is wrong. The US is already corrupt and China is nowhere close to being the cause. Israel and Saudi Arabia, both horrific criminal states, control the tenor of US foreign policy. Half a million people in Iraq are dead from Bush. Domestically, money buys elections.
China scares you only because of myths. There are plenty of facts out there corrupting the US for real.
3
The West has historically imposed its religion and business dealings on Africa, India and China as well as the Americas.
China was doing business in Africa for hundreds of years before the Portuguese and their gun boats took over. Today we have Goa India and Macau as remnants of this. Hong Kong is a remnant of the British and their drug dealings.
The Chinese have historically had little to do with politics outside their own country beyond its power over smaller neighbors.
It is the WEST that has the issue with POWER over the GLOBE. See Germany Uber Alles and our President - THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD>
Wake up and realized what you are: WEST
2
This opinion piece published the august pages of the NYTimes reads like a rant of an aggrieved adolescent. When Mr. Manjoo boldly claims that China "denies basic human rights to all of its nearly 1.4 billion citizens," how would he counter the fact that the vast majority of Chinese students studying in the free land of America chose to return home after graduation? Or that the Chinese are the most likely to say their country is going in the right direction?
Mr. Manjoo is worried that China's technocratic authoritarianism would be a template for the world. I ask, why not? Are proteges of American freedom--Iraq, Libya, Ukraine--such resounding successes worthy of emulation of the entire world?
The reality is that China has been wildly successful precisely because it is not democratic. It is time for the NYT to recognize that.
2
How about we in the Land of The Free (old, white, rich men) remove The Beam from our own eyes before we hyperventilate over The Mote in someone else's eyes. China bad? Yeah, probably, but the US has no moral standing to criticize others.
We're the global leader (yep, numero uno) in incarceration of our citizens at 748/100,000 population (go USA!!)! We have more peeps in jail than a whole bunch of other nations that we like to lable "authoritarian" and "human rights violators" like, Russia, Rwanda, Cuba, Ukraine, Chile, Iran, Libya, Turkey, blah and blah.
Oh BTW, China jails only 120 citizens/100k - 16% of our rate.
2
Typically, we take no responsibility, when in fact our American corporations could not wait to move manufacturing and more to China and did so with no compunction* at all.
Compunction: A feeling of guilt or moral scruple that prevents or follows the doing of something wrong.
From Walmart to Lake fan company, to Rubbermaid Americans went whole hog for inexpensive Made in China products, and we still do. Almost all consumer items are now made in China.
After American business leaped at the opportunity to create their product at the lowest cost we now complain that we got a raw deal. And what we once ignored is of great importance. Trumps trade policy is idiotic in light of the facts. The US simply handed China the power it now enjoys. We, the US seem to always fall victim to our own short range maneuvers at every turn of the road. Under Trump we are watching the destruction of our country via our own stupidity and greed.
Anything for a short term dollar.
9
I somehow agree with Mr. Manjoo, but this leaves me with one question: isn't allowing our firms abroad to express freely their opinions over local politicians and parties sort of a foreign interference, if that might destabilize local politics and threaten the current leadership?
I believe that any interference, whether through fake news, foreign financial support, or in this case, through foreign businesses (even though they might be not politically orchestrated) should be considered unlawful.
From an anthropological view it might be also wrong to influence and destabilize another culture.
Just think about if in US Huawei comes out with a slogan such as: "Powerful leaders knows how to connect with people, and we support such strong leadership" under a photo which shows Putin, Trump, Xi Jinping smiling and shaking hands. I mean that could be what Huawei think, and that would be freedom of speech as well.
But wouldn't democrats go nuts and yell, "this is a foreign interference" if it benefit Trump?
I don't know, I am confused, but what I would like is that sport should be free of any political message, to allow all people from all religions, party affiliation, etc. to relax, to be together and enjoy human performance and excellence
1
China a nation of slaves? Try this for counter balance by Bank scholar Ellen Brown: The American Dream Is Alive and Well—in China, https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-american-dream-is-alive-and-well-in-china/; and her conclusion “Meanwhile, the U.S. model has been regressing into feudalism, with workers driven into slave-like conditions through debt. In the 21st century, it is time to upgrade our economic model from one of feudal exploitation to a cooperative democracy that recognizes the needs, contributions and inalienable rights of all participants.”
Yes China does have its attractions for many.
1
I am truly disappointed by the moral equivalency of many of these comments and not for the first time. I think we all understand US is far from perfect but we have ideals as a nation and as individuals. those who can't seem to see the differences between our imperfection and China's intentional suppression of basic human rights as a stated goal are either incredible ignorant or too busy self hating America to see the forest for the trees.
4
To this opinion piece and the comments, I say TPP. Obama’s trade initiative may have been flawed, but it identified the key issue: there must be a an economic counterweight to China, and no country on its own, not even the US, can provide that. Xi is a dangerous man. He has contrived to concentrate the levers of power in his own hands, indefinitely and with the benefit of the latest technology, thus emasculating any opposition, domestic or foreign. Apple’s recent decision to pull an app that allowed users to see the location of police units in Hong Kong is just the latest example of how the “master/slave” relationship has been reversed. Western capitalists thought they could control China; now they are the ones kowtowing. Without a coalition such as the TPP might have provided, the massive inertia of China’s economic weight will drag us, kicking and screaming, down the path to subservience.
2
No freedom of thought? Wow, the Chinese government is more powerful than I realized.
1
I;m not sure we are in a position to export our "values" which are inconsistent and more theoretical than actual. It is abundantly clear, competitive capitalism is not a moral economic system. Controlling by force and controlling economically results in the same outcome. Our attempts at imposing our real "values" on the world have not been successful for a reason. It is best to lead by example. As far as China corrupting us, that's simply capitalism creating a market for it's products. We taught them about technology, it should be no surprise when they expand on what they were taught.
Many Chinese people i know would disagree. They have a recent history of invasion and occupation by nations of Europe and even the US, losses to Japan in WWII that we can barely comprehend, and the terrifying upheavals of civil war, Mao's misbegotten "cultural revolution", and poverty and famine. They feel that if they put a higher priority today on stability and economic growth than on multiparty democracy and human rights, that's their choice.
Almost every developing country that has made the leap to industrialization has gone through an authoritarian period. The US did this in part by oppressing Native Americans and African Americans. Obviously we don't support depriving today's minority groups of human rights, yet many of our allies in the developing world do the same, and our own record is hardly spotless and we no longer accept refugees from even more desperate circumstances.
We still have to choose between engagement and isolation. Fomenting new conflicts will not solve the problem, it will just crates a new Cold War with more generations to cower in the shadow of Armageddon.
4
Actually, what American politicians probably thought when the political system in China changed was that the country would be opened up as a market for American goods and services, as well as ideas about democracy (although the concern of American politicians about democracy in other countries has always been subordinate to our economic interests). However, the Chinese and American capitalists had very different ideas about what trade would do. Manufacturing has been moved to China not only to take advantage of the far lower wages there, but as a means of disabling unions and the labor movement in the US. Aside from big corporations and capital in general, many upper-income people who do not compete with foreign labor have benefited from this, but American wage-earners have been major losers. Lower prices of foreign-made goods do not compensate for lack of wage increases. Trump's bumbling trade war is not likely to change this, especially when the leadership of both parties has been aligned with the interests of big business and not labor. Major changes in economic as well as "moral" policy will be needed to change things.
3
@skeptonomist
Excellent comment. So true that lower prices do not compensate for all the other negative impacts that have been wrought by the transfer of manufacturing and technology to China.
Acknowledging this fact is, alone, justification for much higher taxes on the wealthy who have brought on this transformation while claiming that cheap consumer goods will be worth all the other dislocations.
This is what is called sale of a "Bill of Goods".
2
First, they came for our brain (intellectual property theft) and we hesitated because, you know, the money. Now, they want our souls (failure to support human rights). They will get them because, you know, the money.
3
Most insightful and accurate opinion article I've read in a long time.
2
I predicted years ago in these pages and elsewhere that “engagement” would end up changing us, not China.
That’s what happens when politicians hand over the reins of foreign policy to amoral corporations.
I have discussed this over the years with virtually every NYT columnist as well as the Beijing bureau chief.
If any of them possessed a modicum of grace, they would recognize my prescience.
1
Using either monopoly power like China does, or the corporate power of boycotts, which many U.S. companies employ - to cajole others to tow their line is nothing new.
During the bathroom wars in North Carolina, companies and sports leagues sought to apply pressure on a sovereign state to change policies. Fearful of an exodus, voters narrowly defeated the incumbent party to bring about change. Liberals would probably rejoice that a victory was achieved, but that it was forced upon people through economic blackmail - and not through ballot advocacy - is never mentioned. A "higher purpose" after all merits any tactic.
Although I'm an op-ed columnist for India's second largest financial newspaper - and like Mr. Manjoo, get paid for my views - I don't tweet using my work email address. The Houston Rockets GM had no business to tweet his political views as an employee of the NBA. This is not a matter of free speech.
Besides, what exactly was the tweet meant to accomplish? Mobilize more protests in Hong Kong? Change Chinese behavior in Hong Kong? There have been over a million tweets on this topic, both pro and con. How narcissist of Mr. Morey to think that his 300 characters could help change the world!
What China is doing is no different from U.S. corporate boycotts to achieve PC goals. What is different is that China, unlike North Carolina, seems to currently have the upper hand.
2
No words better describe the arrogance and ignorance of American exceptionalism than “liberate China” and “corrupt us.” Like the (Chinese) proverbial well-dwelling frog who cannot conceptualize the ocean, some Americans cannot see beyond their ideological and racialized confines the full extent of the world as experienced by its peoples.
4
Part 1 - another article written by American who has little understanding of China.
Many people here don’t realize that mainstream voice of Chinese citizens on many issues are on the same side of Government including Tibet, Uighur and HK (TW is more complicated). In fact government was more like responding to the social media backlash on the recent NBA incident. How do I know? I can open wechat (which is the most popular private chat app and the private / group messages are not censored) and vast majority of my 1000+ friends and business partners are against HK protest. More than half of them are western educated and live in US, Europe or HK (so they can access to any info they want).
If you go to major cities in China and poll random people on the street, most likely they will say they are not 100% happy with the government, but in general they feel happy and have hope for the future. Repression is probably the least likely word you would hear.
Don’t get me wrong - most people in China would agree that freedom of speech and democracy are good and censorship is bad. But they put things like economics growth, social stability and sovereignty higher and a lot of precedents in Middle East and South America (forced by US) don’t give them a lot of confidence.
Of course then you can claim that Chinese are brainwashed which is another typical argument Americans use when they see something they don’t understand. Let me ask you this - how do you brainwash Chinese not in China?
4
What's missing here, logically, is Trey Parker and Matt Stone calling out China and Disney and the NBA in their most recent episode of South Park.
Why no mention?
1
Thank you for this piece.
1
The Americans - with their conservative right-wing nationalistic zeal - seem to have forgotten that China is a communist country. As in: totalitarian, oppressive, undemocratic, cutthroat. Money. Well, we all know about money. And we know: "Big."
America under Trump and the Republicans has defaulted on their leadership role in human rights, the moral-ethical traditions of post-war US, the "Light on the Hill." Now the "Light" is a bunch of money-grubbing gangsters and con men who are probably not long for their political world.
And we - the little people in the world, like tiny Uruguay - rely on the US to provide international leadership. The Chinese are dangerous and they are very active in South America.
In business schools in Montevideo, the language to learn used to be English. Now it's Chinese. And from what I understand, the Chinese bought up the total wool production of our country.
The Chinese are buying the world right out from under us. And the Russians are assassinating people, staging coups in Europe, rigging elections, spreading disinformation to destabilize Western governments...and electing your president: El Senor Trump.
2
Let’s correct the subtitle.
First, “we” did not think gaining membership in the WTO World Trade Organization would democratize China. Rather, Bill Clinton and his band of internationalists thought so, and assured us it would happen. Instead, China gained access to Western markets without any quid pro quo to fair trade and respect for basic human rights, while destroying our industrialist middle class in America. China could’ve stopped the export of fentanyl into the US. too, but instead falsely blamed American “demand” tor the existence of Chinese drug dealers.
Second, it is “woke” organizations like the NBA who are being exposed for putting profits before principles. These are the “corrupt” organizations that praise political correctness while muzzling dissent when it affects business profits.
3
While no one in the US should self censor themselves because of China, we should also not hesitate to do business with countries like China. It's an arrogant and elitist attitude to insist that we only trade with countries like Denmark. Also the dig at capitalism suggest a hard left ideology by the writer that colors his view on this topic.
1
Firstly, let me thank you for your insightful article on China. You get it! So many people don't or are afraid to voice an opinion unless they be thought racist or offend China.
After the Jewish genocide in WW2 the world said 'never again'.. I guess they meant as long as it was economically convenient for now world turns a blind eye to the Uyghur genocide and rampant organ harvesting from political prisoners. Whistle blowers have related horror stories of young people being killed for their organs when a match is found. There is only a twelve hour waiting list for an organ there.
They have desecrated the pristine coral reefs in The South China Sea and allowed poaching of endangered species, and lied about the massive military buildup there. They have a loan stranglehold on many small developing Pacific Islands which they will use to their advantage. It is not a racist issue as some will wrongly interpret. It is a human rights issue.
I feel for Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not China. They have not been warped by oppressive communist rule and they should be supported by the world in their struggle for autonomy.
As the saying goes 'Only true evil can exist when good men stand by and do nothing.'
2
Actually when you think about it, China is erring. Regarding the NBA, China should have stayed silent.
There’s a call for freedom and democracy in the far outpost of Hong Kong, but apparently Mainlanders are just fine with the status quo. Seven million people versus 1.4 billion give or take, a ratio of 250-1.
Here comes the popular NBA. Your citizens are looking forward to it. A lone voice Twitters. China, you make a big deal about it. You call attention to it. You make everyone bow before you now. You’re an economic power. You carry a big stick.
But you should have let it go, absorb a portion of American sports for a time, duplicate it, replicate it, make it yours, bigger than the Americans and even more popular.
But you blew it. You’ve now alienated the NBA, and the Americans again.
I get the impression that your lack of humbleness is making you vulnerable. Because you wish to stifle freedom of thought, you do nothing but call attention to it. Probably unwanted attention.
Do your citizens now associate the NBA with freedom of thought?
The Chinese "miracle" was paid for by Western capital on the backs of Western workers. Without the trillions of dollars funneled into the country, China would still be a dirt-poor backwater.
Before the Western Democracies, and our generous trade policies, lifted 200 million Chinese people out of poverty, China had nothing but failures: The Great Famine, The Cultural Revolution, The One Child Policy, to name just a few.
1
As true as it may, China didn't force American corporations to pour their money to China. The American corporations did it on their own and gladly. Kudo, to China that it figured out how to use their greed to its advantage and advantage to Chinese people.
2
It's the love of money that corrupted us, not China.
2
I just wish that the Chinese government took their countries rampant theft of intellectual property as seriously as Daryl Morey's tweet.
1
It's absurd to blame China for corruption in America.
3
It is US's freedom to support Hong Kong riot, just like it is China's freedom to stop NBA cooperation, it is fair.
3
It's not just China but a rather constant theme for US led globalization, which enriched some American businessmen more than America as country and general Americans. American businessmen and companies just outsourced corruption and crime abroad, many times paving ways for local dictators to using economic growth and "patriotism" as their main weapon to grab/remain in power. It's known that businessmen and so-called market love strongmen. Rise of China and its leader Xi is no exception. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/opinion/why-wall-street-loves-strongmen.html
It also affected and continue to affect mainly the poorer developing countries by endangering economic and political instability, encouraging corruption & crime which, in turn, affect US national interest in many ways that include increased immigration of rich but corrupt/criminal businessmen/politicians/bureaucrats etc. besides increased migration of affected people from such countries, along with increasing flow of blood money into US economy. US real estate and growing number of student from rich families from such countries are few good examples.
The Chinese have one thing working against them, their language. It's one thing to learn a phonetic alphabet and quite another to master one where the most basic set of characters numbers 2600. The spoken language also presents its own huge set of difficulties and takes enormous dedication for anyone not born into it. On the other hand with AI, this might all be obviated by a Universal Translator.
It might well happen that Western companies will only have had a limited window for penetrating the Chinese market, since the Chinese are quite capable of producing their own toothpaste, deodorant, and aircraft carriers. As the "economic miracle" itself wanes, the Chinese middle class will enjoy less purchasing power also making Western marketshare problematical. Their exports will become increasing expensive due to an aging labor force.
My greatest fear is the universal avidiity for AI and invasive tech that consumes everyone, even in the West. Phones have already turned us into zombies; and a vacuous popular culture into drooling idiots capable of electing Trump. Anyone who says "enough!" is branded a Luddite, because Luddites hurt the bottom line.
This probably the first piece by Manjoo that I have even agreed with and I agree 100%. This is an issue where Americans whether politically left or right should stand shoulder to shoulder and tell corporate American that being an American company means acting with American values aboard. And the risk of losing Chinese business pales compared to losing domestic business over craven policies which make us embarrassed as Americans and as caring humans for that matter. There as been no cost to date for Disney, Apple, Google, the NBA for kowtowing to Xi and his ilk. Let's decide that it stops today.
2
While we on that, we should tell the American companies to pay more taxes to support struggling American citizens, and also tell them that they should pay the decent salaries to all their workers, salaries which will not require the workers to use the Government programs to survive. We also should tell them to cut the pollution, that threaten all us in long run. Why should we stop with only dealing with China? Let's make exemplary American citizens from American corporation.
1
Apparently the only push back China is experiencing is from South Park.
2
The most powerful force in the world is culture. It would be the greatest of mistakes to underestimate how different Chinese culture is from American culture.
2
And don’t forget that Uighur prisoners in Chinese concentration camps are being forced to make the cheap/toxic clothing/goods that we import from China.
2
Are you saying China, is like the USA, using Slavery in Jails/Detention centres etc. to force, manufacture of goods.
The old mail bag and Rock splitting, often seen in US media, the chain gang.
The morality of a US Journalist, ignoring all that is History while trying to predict History is Staggering.
The British invented the Concentration, Camp the French, Germans, Japanese and US all made use of it.
Yes China is using Evil techniques but no different from the SPANISH inquisition in Europe, it isn’t the Technology which is to blame. it’s the People.
Scapegoating Chinese technologies is a US scam, the US has fallen behind in tech.
The USA is alarmed, blaming Chinas TECH for Chinese oppression. is a ruse to allow action against the Tech, no one really cares about the Ughars.
Using sanctions and or Tariffs, never stopped or really slowed development, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea or any other Country from developing a Technology.
With Google software from the Chinese. Will simply force them to develop their own and the lesson is it will likely be better faster and cheaper.
1
@Janes Moodie
Chinese tech and the Chinese government are one in the same. But whatever you say, apologist for President Xi.
1
If God-fearing capitalism TRUMPS communism, why's a broke Trump giving China a free pass on bankrupting our God-fearing Biden? Indeed the very Biden China would LOVE to have succeeded Trump whose "GOOD trade wars EZ to win" ain't so capital an idea, after all.
There never was any moral goal in our relations with China. It was strategic and economic. China was undeveloped but an old and stable civilization. It offered tremendous opportunities for growth and it has been. With strong economic ties comes peaceful diplomatic relations.
1
RE : Dealing With China Isn’t Worth the Moral CosT
Apple would not agree. Tim Cook would beg to differ
Apple now has $245 billion cash on hand - by pocketing most of the wage difference between Zhengzhou where the Iphone is manufactured and US wages - that it would have to pay making it in Cupertiino.
That is $ 245 Billion , not Million
2
China will soon have more gravitational pull, economically, than the U.S., perhaps the West. And the Orwellian nightmare is being played out there to a remarkable degree. Hence, it's hardly alarmist to express concern about China's effect on our values. (Though it's not so much a barbarians at the gate argument--because, frankly, compared to China, we're the barbarians--but a Help, China is coming for our Winnie the Pooh argument.) Meanwhile, what's so astounding is that it's the business sector of our society that's most inclined to overlook, in fact step in line with, the Orwellian dystopia it associates with a communist society, if only to make a buck. What happened to all that Ayn Rand inspired ideology, suddenly?
1
Farhad is writing some of the best Op-Eds at the NYT. And he's gone beyond technology into morality and politics. This was a bold, necessary column. Most companies will quickly sell their souls to gain access to the Chinese market. Late capitalism is amoral and terrifying.
1
You could probably make the same argument about Saudi Arabia.
2
Both Apple and Google removed apps from their stores in the last 24-hours that China demanded be removed. Both were related to the Hong Kong uprising that the US should be supporting.
This makes both Apple and Google (even more) complicit in China's human rights abuses. The government needs to step in, but won't.
1
Can I state a few inconvenient facts?
-NSA surveillance on US citizens is as much a threat to internal democracy as Chinese surveillance on its citizens.
-Political opposition in the US is as difficult as it is in China. The barrier in the US is the paywall barrier: to get your voice out there and make a dent in the political system, you need tons of money. That is why any radical shift in US politics takes ~ 40 years to brew (civil rights, end of neoliberalism, etc.)
-US commitment to human rights should be judged by its achievements in its sphere of influence: South America. It is a disastrous record. It is comparable to the record of Soviet achievements in *its* sphere of influence: Eastern Europe - disastrous. And China's achievements in *its* sphere of influence - Tibet and Hong Kong - again, disastrous.
-The US has a track record of jailing millions of its citizens based n skin color. It can be argued that they have rights (to a lawyer etc.) but I think those rights are often violated.
I think the lesson here is that power structures should be constantly questioned, first and foremost by dissidents of the system. Americans should celebrate Chinese dissident; but they should celebrate *American* dissidents even more, first and foremost.
7
If you American journalists and influencers think are fooling anyone in the rest of the world with this kind of creative, pseudo-philosophic rhetoric, then you better rethink your strategy.
You committed mass murder in Iraq in 2003 in the name of "freedom"; you bailed out the big banks while shooting rubber munition and beating up Occupy Wall Street peaceful protester in 2008; you literally destroyed Libya in 2011; you destroyed Ukraine in 2014. An honest man (Colin Kaepernick) literally had his career destroyed under thunderous applause by the American mob just because he knelled to the national anthem.
The only reason some people from some allied countries still pretend to believe your rhetoric (e.g. UK, Germany, Japan) is because it still serves their own interests at some degree, not because it is believable.
5
What are you talking about? U.S. is corrupted to begin with
4
I love you Farhad Manjoo!
1
Many of these comments seem to miss the point. While I personally find much of what Xi and the Chinese government is doing to be reprehensible, it is their country and considering our country's woes -- well, you know whatthey say about people in glass houses. I especially love Hong Kong and have friends there and I grieve deeply for them because it seems inevitable what Xi will do to them. However, when a rather tepid tweet in support of Hong Kong protesters by an American evokes such a rash overreaction by the Chinese and then results in craven kowtowing by Americans -- that is a problem. That seemed to be the point Mr. Manjoo was making -- China was changing American values for the worse. In my opinion, shame on the NBA and its executives, shame on the NBA players and coaches who purport to be socially conscious but are content to look away when money is at stake. I guess Michael Jordan's philosophy still holds in the NBA: "Republicans buy sneakers, too."
I don’t buy the “China is corrupting the rest of us.” We gave ourselves Donald Trump.
It’s also a little weird for us to decry the plight of the Chinese—who for the moment are strong supporters of that government. Its success in broadly raising living standards puts us to shame.
Xi is definitely a step back for them, but so is Trump for us. Should we be judged by all he stands for?
2
@jerryg; Say what you wish of Trump but he is the first world leader who called out China on its trade policies and did something about it.
@Lane
Obama reduced both IP theft incidents and the balance of payments deficit. Trump has made both worse.
If you are friends with a person who is a bully and bad person but there's some benefit in being friends it may be hard to give up the friendship. At some point the reality of who they are is overwhelming and can no longer be tolerated no matter the benefit.
Most shameful of all is the fact that scholarly journals (Springer Nature among them) agreed to collude with Chinese Censorship.
@Dan That's not the point, the point is that when one uses "corrupted us," instead of "added to our corruption," we are playing a dangerous game by insinuating that we weren't corrupted already. Farhad Manjoo usually goes out of his way to be politically correct, something that should be lauded, but true political correctness is in the subtle, not in the headlines, otherwise he is just another part of the problem.
1
That China is playing dirty, corrupting sports to sustain strict censorship, no question about it. That the U.S. seemed predetermined to play the game, little doubt remains. Are we going to 'kill our messenger'...instead of giving full support on moral grounds, for the profit involved?
Honestly, most of the world could say the same about the US. We contributed more co2 to the atmosphere than any other country, and we are now climate change deniers. We are committing crimes against humanity by the day at our border. Now we have allowed our "allies" to be slaughtered. Our house will need to get in order before we have any moral leverage. Of which we have none today. It has been a long time since we were the "good guys." .
3
Wholeheartedly agreed with this author. The USA should stop doing all kind of business with China, and the national interest of the USA and foreign policy should only be based of human right caused.
The Hong Kong protesters should have waited until the US had a president with a moral code. Not that waiting is always possible. If it's bad now just wait until China learns to manipulate news and social media like Russia does. We need some heroes.
Manjoo makes a good moral argument, but unfortunately, morality hardly matters in international relations. If we were to stop dealing with China (putting aside the minor issue of feasibility for now), it would make so sense to continue dealing with Saudi Arabia, Israel, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, and so on, probably at least two thirds of the world where human rights are routinely violated. In the end, such an idiotic policy would only isolate ourselves.
2
America doesn’t exactly have the moral high ground here. This article whiffs of hypocrisy or maybe even worse, wilful myopia of one’s own condition.
3
Breath-holding not recommended, wisely. China is only the most significant (economically) example of our country's willingness to get into bed with not particularly savory partners for the sake of, well, money. We are at at the moment on the cusp of a decision about whether we prioritize democracy, or prioritize capitalism. It would be naive to think that we would opt for one, but the direction in which we lean, as Mr. Manjoo points out, is a critical test of our character. My money is on money.
Yes, you have finally written something I like. I have been concerned about out trade with China for a couple of decades. I've been equally or more concerned about China's scientific advances and their use/application of science and technology. Genetics is the scary one. I became angry and surprisingly a supporter of something Trump. Not the way Trump is doing his crackdown on trade with out allies and clear goals, but the idea that it is finally time to deal with the China trade problem. These are not nice folks. I became angry when I started seeing modified knockoffs of software a company I am a partner in started showing up on the web and a Hong Kong company called with questions and purchases. They were modifying our software without all the startup work. Lawyer for the company said we were out of luck. The code was different.
2
@hd; A family member worked 20 yrs to develop a low cost magnetometer used for geological research. China bought some of them copied the concept and now makes precise copies of them..the value of 20 yrs of research is gone. Just one small example of harm done, but as with your example there are likely thousands of other small companies so damaged for a significant cumulative effect largely unseen. The worst effect is lack of funding for further research has resulted.
Yes, but do not expect impeachment to deliver everything we need, or we will be greatly disillusioned. The sooner the American public realizes that our problem is larger than Trump the better off we will be. We are witnessing the elite power of multinational corporate interests that are thumbing their noses at America, its' Constitution and any rule of law for that matter. For all this we have no improvements to show for in health, education, infrastructure and public safety. Nothing - except the largest tax breaks in history for the elite, unlimited corporate money for lobbying, and on top of it all - subsidies. We need to clean up this house of corruption - while realizing that the cleaning extends to not only people like Giuliani and Trump (and the other 6 of his associates already in prison), but that it extends into the elite who own Trump and will replace him with other demagogues to do their bidding.
1
It's really quite simple. China has succeeded in " lifting hundreds of millions of its citizens out of miserable poverty". With our abundant resources and incredible head start, we are not close to proportionately matching that. We can turn up our noses all we want, but we need to show that we actually live by our principles, that we embrace freedom, equality and justice, and that our way of life works, for our citizens, for the global community, for our planet. Rather than worrying about other powers wielding and manipulating the internet for evil, we have to ask whether we can be proud if depicts us accurately.
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Good article, I don't think it is inevitable that China's economy will grow larger than the U.S's, however. China's economic growth has been slowing for a while now and their work force is shrinking. They are definitely going to be a big player in the world from now on though.
Yes, we can and should push back against the Chinese government's attempts at influencing Americans. Of course, talk is cheap for me -- my livelihood doesn't depend upon China. And I didn't actually see a single concrete suggestion in Farhad's column, for that matter. But the world is *not* going to simply disengage completely from doing business with China. Any pressure from the outside world will have to be more targeted.
I'll also mention two things -- a strong middle class is probably the key to a more liberal China, but there's no guarantee on the timing of change. South Korea had military dictatorships from the end of WW2 until 1987. The USSR looked invincible for most of my life (b. 1956), until suddenly it wasn't. Economics, more than anything else, was responsible for these changes.
And two, any response to China's internal repression will have to come from a united EU+US position, so nothing will happen until Trump is gone, since Trump has more or less declared the EU his enemy.
1
If American corporations had not built manufacturing plants and transferred factory jobs outside the U.S., we may not be as beholden to China as we are now. I'm not making excuses for Chinese suppression of free speech and their other totalitarian policies, but pointing out that decisions by our corporations -- mainly driven by the search for cheap labor -- has made us so dependent on China that it's hard to extricate ourselves, or even express opinions that upset the Chinese leadership.
1
Democracy First.
Trading with democracies only and thereby not trading with authoritarian-led countries could be encouraged through tax and other policies by the US government. Short-term pain to US companies and consumers, but long-term gain for democracy, hopefully.
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The extent to which the desire for access to the Chinese market exceeds the cost in terms of Chinese censorship of our own discussions in the West, is yet another reflection of how greed is the fundamental flaw in our financial system. Alan Greespan and many others have acknowledged that greed led to the Great Recession and greed is the reason why regulations are essential. Regulations are the enemy of greed, not of our financial system.
According to social science researcher Brene’ Brown, “It’s important to recommit to one thing that can help keep us sane: boundaries…. Setting boundaries may seem harsh, but doing so is necessary in maintaining a healthy relationship…. Nothing is sustainable without boundaries.”
The lines lawmakers draw are boundaries, also known as governmental regulations.
Doesn't the US Government discourage and sometimes punish people and organisation who supports boycott of Israel? How is that different from China to put pressure on individuals and organisations to stop support of Hong Kong protesters? China is an independent country. We may like or dislike it's policies, but it is up to Chinese people to change it or get along. It is American responsibility not to become corrupt. Nobody can make you corrupt if you don't want it. Beside, according to the author, it is not China that makes America corrupt, but rather capitalism that allows to accept 'corrupt' China and its influence on the American organisations. Really, lately America looks not like a strong country, but rather as a toy in hands of other countries. China dictates the conditions to the American organisations, Russia manipulates voters with ease. Maybe, America should do some soul searching, and figure out why it is so easy influenced by other countries.
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I am actually much more hopeful about China. As technology expands in China, knowledge and learning do as well. Students from China came into my classroom wanting to know what answers I wanted them to give. I had to push them to work out the "best" answers themselves. They were shocked, but they learned the American way quickly. And they liked it.
Not incidentally, many of the ways of the Chinese students would make our students better as well. The meld works.
Engagement with China and its ways should continue. Injecting our ways into their thinking will strengthen their sense of individuality and, as a corollary, create dissatisfaction with Xi's authoritarian rule. The Tiananmen Square protests were not a one off.
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This article is fascinating, very concerning, and makes me yearn even more strongly for a future when Trump is no longer in the White House and our country’s leaders are able to focus on the array of serious problems we’re facing.
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I once watched my boss be passed over for a promotion in a hospital, the job being given to someone far less qualified. I should have spoken up. I didn't. In the scheme of the world, it was miniscule. But it has stayed with me for 23 years as a chance I could have shown courage, and I didn't. The fact that the new boss failed was immaterial.
I started to say NO instead of going along, when the matter warranted it. I may or may not have been successful at the time, but I felt better about myself.
Show courage, CEOs. Yes, money will be lost, but courage, like anything truly important in life, can be immeasurable.
1
We need a much larger discussion of what totalitarianism means in a technological age. The West has its own, often more efficient, “jello architects.”
China, as totalitarian, vs. the relatively non-totalitarian West is not the best scaffolding for this discussion. The problem doesn’t boil down to Capitalism and its discontents. Any savvy understanding of capitalism will include an understanding of capitalism’s history. It’s one heck of a lot more complicated.
It would be nice to “talk,” but I don’t twitter.
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Yes, instead of Republican Democracy and the concepts of the First Amendment extending to China, it seems that the opposite has happened, as NBA Executives, and the US political party they often let their players criticize, the GOP, attempt to suppress our First Amendment freedoms.
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Great article. I was kind of perturbed by the many links at the beginning of the article, then realized that the sheer number of links validate the entire point of this piece.
The U.S. should realize that China sways the world purely with money. Yes, we also pour a lot of money around the globe but we represent valuable intangibles that are wanted and respected in the world that money can't buy. These intangibles should not be sold off piece meal to China or any other country. The NBA and other companies that do so are harming our country in extraordinary ways.
Lastly, we have to protect what's good about the U.S. not only from China but also internally. We're currently living in a climate of stifled opinions and conversations. A demise of a culture can come from both internal and external forces.
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@cari924 yeah, I put in all the links because this stuff is rarely spelled out so starkly, and all these reports that human rights/freedom groups do every year documenting the greater repression gets buried. I wanted to put it all up front
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@cari924 The U.S should realize that China is all about money? Now? China has been always about money.
3
@Farhad Manjoo
Your links have a libertarian narrative and bias to them.
Nothing wrong with libertarian views.. in America.... but it is a poor way to prosecute China. China historically, not just as a modern form of democratic socialism... is a collective based society. As such.. collectivism is deeply ingrained in it's culture and it's people. Much of the focus of modern China governance is in fact driven by this collective nature that is the social soul of China.
I encourage you to take a broader and more in context view of China as a society before prosecuting China via libertarian principles.
And.. if you actually walk the streets of China and talk with the people.. you will find that they simply do not view China as you do, nor as most Americans do. As someone with extended family on my wifes side living in multiple different cities inside China... I can tell you that they are not unhappy, not isolated, and not deprived of western sources of "facts". While they think and believe in a more collective manner as a society... they are not ostriches with their heads buried in some Communist sand pile.
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This is actually an issue that our government can directly address. To put simply: You are either with China or you are with the U.S.
U.S. companies or organizations like the NBA that kowtow to China should be relentlessly investigated by law enforcement--as should their CEOs--and their loyalty constantly questioned. They should be banned from any taxpayer funding or support (goodbye taxpayer-supported arenas). Fines, tariffs, and/or special taxes should be slapped onto them until they get the message.
U.S. companies often complain they need profits from the enormous Chinese market. Well if they really want it, they'll need to forgo the even bigger U.S. market. No more eating your cake and having it too.
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@Scott Er ... I disagree. it’s the opposite of freedom when the US government investigates you for supporting this or that thing. The point of all this is liberty, not fealty.
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@Scott Are you really proposing investigating companies for working with China? that's.... not reasonable.
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@Scott
PS was it ProPublica or the Atlantic that ran the article today on how companies beat paying the tariff and have created jobs in Mexico and Canada... thanks to peculiarities of our import laws. Tariffs have turned out to be meaningless in many cases.. and I would guess Fentanyl is still shipped via US mail undetected. NEXT.
2
Yes, the Chinese government is a totalitarian regime that violates human right. But don't pretend for one second that the "liberal democracies" of the west, and especially United States, are any different. Was it Chinese colonizers who spread smallpox on American continent and wipe out the indigenous population? Was the "Heart of Darkness" about Chinese colonialism? Was the "empire upon which sun never sets" established by the Chinese? Did the triangular trade benefit the industrial revolution in northern China and the cotton plantation in southern China? Is it the Chinese Museum that housed countless artifacts Chinese force had looted from the rest of the world for centuries? Did China have some doctrine forbidding the rest of the world from interfering with its own hemisphere? Did China regularly plan covert operations and military coup to supplant democratically elected leaders of other country? Does China have an alliance with Saudi Arabia and Israel who violates human rights every day?
I don't deny the human right violation in China, but don't pretend China has somehow "corrupted" the west and turned the west away from such values as human rights and freedom of speech. The west has always been corrupt, and it has never been the representation of those values you pretend it is.
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@Alex right, the US was a slave nation and oppressed most of our inhabitants for a long time. This article pointing out that 1.4 billion Chinese people live without any rights at all was not meant to absolve the US of anything.
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@Alex Another whataboutism rebuttal. China still treats their own citizens worse than all the first-world countries. Bringing up other country's historic atrocities doesn't excuse, or cancel that fact out, in the least. And I would argue the way the Uyghurs are being treated are comparable to the Nanjing massacre. What's the use of recalling history if not to learn from it? Or is it to repeat it and use it to justify current day atrocities?
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Yes, I'm glad the Chinese were able to choose such a morally superior government and are continuously able to decide who will run their country! One guy or well... the same guy. Bravo!
8
Yes, it is shocking. China uses it's domestic economy power and social media to wield power.
They really should act more like the USA responds if other countries citizens do something we don't like.
When another country does something we don't like we destroy their economy ( Iran, Venezuela).
If that doesn't work, we send in drones (Pakistan).
If we think necessary we organize Death Squads ( Central America).
If that seems insufficient the USA invades ( Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Panama, Granada).
Be careful what you wish for when you ask China to be more like the USA.
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@JMC Personally I think we should both be more like the Denmark.
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@JMC The US tries to learn and, from time to time, corrects its mistakes and many "unintended consequences" (partly through changes in the control of the government between Democrats and Republicans). It aims at times to export democracy and has been able to help depose terrible dictators. And don't forget how it emerged as a major force in freeing the world from the tyranny of WWII. The US (and any other country) is not perfect but I will choose the US over China. It is difficult to see if Chinese imperialism will have any redeeming qualities.
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@JMC In the USA you can express opinions such as yours, and organize opposition to government policies you disapprove- from the local to the congressional level. Try doing that in China- or even just a comment on social media, and see what happens to you. To equate the two is misguided. In any case, past transgressions by USA does not require that we should now be silent about the growing threat of totalitarianism which requires subservience to the Communist party of China and tolerates no dissent.
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I'm writing this in Shanghai and have two observations
first, the Republican party is closely emulating the Chinese government, given their shared dependence on propaganda. second, most of the average people here seen quite content and honestly believe that their government is looking out for their good. I would suggest that the difference between China and the United States is perhaps smaller than we would like to believe. we too have enslaved minorities and gone to war to protect our corporate interests. government surveillance of internal political enemies is a pillar of FBI activity. please tell me again why we are better than them.
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Good points, but the difference is our values. We stray from ours but often try to correct ourselves to get back on course. China simply doesn’t have the same values and priorities and imperatives. Different societies, different cultures, different histories. Do you really want to give up on democracy, human rights, and individual liberties?
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@poins I am not saying that “we” are better than them or even that we are good. I am saying that it is better for the world that I can publish this column and you can read it; it’s better for humanity in the long run that such freedoms are possible. It is terrible that so much of humanity is shut out from these freedoms by the Chinese regime, and the world will be better off if that was not the case.
It’s also totally false to compare “republican propaganda” to the state of media in China. Yes, as I’ve written numerous times, Fox News is propaganda, but Fox is not the only thing one is permitted to read and watch and listen to in the US. That is simply not the case in China.
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@Farhad Manjoo I respect the good intention and I do not disagree with you on the premise. I'd only like to invite you to consider another possibility where China's reign has a potential to not be as tragic for the world as proposed.
In essence, what we are seeing is a conflict between an apt challenger to the reigning superpower. The hidden conflict in ideology has finally been surfaced and it's no longer avoidable.
What China has achieved is remarkable in recent history. Given its position, it has no choice but to sacrifice a bit of political freedom in exchange for unity towards a prosperous future. The CCP has great self-corrective power and within the last thirty years China has finally caught up economically.
A perceived sense of freedom is only in the hands of the rich and powerful. When a state is free economically and can exert much greater soft influence, there will no longer be a need of censoring self-criticism.
The negative narrative on China's walled garden is the exact reason why China needs one. During progress, external criticism is simply no help for unity and only brings instability. The West definitely has a part in causing this.
To claim that China's rise is a tragic for humanity has an element of unfairness and is on the verge of being self-righteous that's hidden behind an unspoken fear of rise of another state other than the speaker themselves. Though I do believe when you speak your mind is truly on the welfare of humanity.
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Southpark did this article first. It is always astounding to me that Matt Stone and Trey Parker seem to often be just ahead of the curve on social commentary.
Everyone should watch the most recent episode for a sage (and humorous) commentary on how American corporations have to abandon American values in order to make business arrangements.
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They are visionaries, I agree, and I am constantly in awe (laughing) at all they do.
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@Farhad Manjoo To contain the spread of Chinese tyranny, I would envision our congressional leaders to shed federal contracts and contacts that has China Communist Party-associated entities or money or people. Then double-down on investment and innovation in the very technological apparatus that CCP mastered to not only counter their threatening encroachment to our democratic values but to also try to gain a competitive edge. Can you imagine if China and Russia form a secret alliance together to infiltrate and influence our upcoming 2020 Presidential Election so authoritarian states could declare their ultimate success over republic/democratic systems?
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@Caleb
American businesses have no values to abandon. Well perhaps a worship of money; blood no problem.
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As a Chinese student having lived in the US for quite some time, I would like share my opinion. Look, I get it freedom of speech and democracy are excellent and I think eventually our people will get it. But from our perspective our culture favor collectivism instead of individualism. We started from a very weak and poor country 70 years ago. But during the last few decades, economy has been booming and hundreds of millions of people are lifted out of poverty, which the world has never seen. There is a hidden social contract between CCP and Chinese people that is CCP promising a bright and prosperous future and asking people to give up a small portion of their rights and leave the politics and country building to the party. And it's have been working pretty well and majority people put economic freedom in a higher priority over political rights. Because essentially poverty is the one of worst human rights violation. I personally grew up in a very poor family and have chance of getting cheap public education and then a scholarship to come to America for graduate school.
There is certainly tighter control under Xi but it's very misleading to extrapolate China to impose our system onto the world. The government and Chinese people are only against westerners pointing fingers to issues related to our country and sovereignty. The fact HK people have been protesting freely and looting legco destorying MTR is proof of how much freedom HK has been enjoying while mainlanders despise.
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@Lynn
What most Chinese people overlook when touting the "hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty" is the fact that it was the Western democracies, with their generous liberal trade policies, that provided the lift.
Absent the trillions of dollars and euros pumped into China, the Beijing government's economic and social record is a horrific failure: The Great Famine. The Cultural Revolution. The One Child Policy. The list goes on.
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@Lynn thanks for your perspective, I found it interesting.
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@Celeste There you go, I like how westerners always believe China's economy success is at the bestow of western countries. So why don't India and many other developing countries rise up like China? Foreign investment and trade are definitely important at the beginning but don't forget how much multinational companies have profited as they reap the majority portion of profits. The whole world benefit from the cheap industrial products. It is sadly true that authoritarian regime that favors meritocracy has imaginable efficiency in building heartless factories but also world-class infrastructure. What you mentioned Great famine and cultural revolution is all history and I think our people have learned the lesson and become more pragmatic instead of worshiping communism. Sometimes I am very awed people still called China communism when in fact it's a hybrid of capitalism and socialism.
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It’s incredibly sad to see all the defense of China in these pages.
First, China is successful at lifting people out of poverty because they created that poverty. That opening to the free markets after 50 years enabled some basic economic growth (their GDP / capita is 1/5 ours) should be considered.
Second, their made up GDP growth numbers are falling and likely inflated well above where they actually are. Assuming a reversion to the mean of global growth they will never achieve western levels of prosperity. My belief is it collapses spectacularly like every other experiment in socialism, sooner rather than later.
Last, we supposedly incarcerate individuals at a higher level. This is a trade-off of freedom that no one would sacrifice. In a society where the outcomes of crime are so punitive and the courts so heavily stacked against you, there is good reason to fall in line.
Many of you are truly abhorrent in your rhetoric and you are the reason we will have Trump for another four years in 2020.
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@Eric
"Last, we supposedly incarcerate individuals at a higher level."
The CCP Chinese courts have a 99% conviction rate. This is one of the main reasons Hong Kong people are out in the streets protesting against extradiction to Chinese courts.
It's just not correct that 1.4billion people in China live without civil rights of any kind. China is not a prison for most people. People can leave, as the line outside the American Embassy every day testifies. Students can study in countries around the world. Businesses operate successfully in many countries, many of them private and expanding on Wall Street capital. Chinese people travel widely. I'm not a panda hugger or believer that everything in China is fine and getting better every day in every way. But this article overstates the case in several places. Most people seem to be getting on ok. The country has a long history of centralized controlling governments. Many people here seem to be ok with that, or if not ok, accept that their lives are pretty good at the moment. The country is broadly stable, and Xinxiang is an own goal, which I think is becoming recognized as such. And it leads in climate issues while America, even as the youth of the world protests, refuses to take a positive role under the current administration, which is a great shame because as a country we have so much to offer when we lead.
3
I'am Chinese. I cant't agree with you. We feel free in our country, especially safe. I love my country. I choose to live in here. And millions of people go to study overseas every year. Then almost all of them tell that the one who lives abroad for more time will love China more deeply. We have different political systems. However Chinese culture always uphold "seek common ground while shelving differences and move forward hand in hand". Welcome to China; put aside prejudice then listen to voices from the majority of Chinese population.
4
Thank you for this column, Mr. Manjoo. Two points. One is that China's "economic miracle" isn't at all miraculous. It merely represents the results of the end of invasions and civil war on the one hand, and of the disastrous internal policies of Mao on the other. The government and Party management of the economy hasn't been good, but it no longer has been sufficiently bad to prevent the sort of growth that ought to have happened long ago. The easy part is over, and the Chinese economy is in considerable danger from doubtful decision making on high, among other things. The second point is that it's time to recognize that Xi Jinping is part of the worldwide trend toward illiberalism, but "with Chinese characteristics". There was an informal system for managing power and succession that functioned in the absence of a meaningful constitution. Xi Jinping has run roughshod over that system, and so ranked himself with recent leaders in places as diverse as Hungary and Saudi Arabia, while we see similar tendencies at an earlier stage in more robust states such as the U.S. and Britain. And, yes, why should we cooperate with this?
1
The Western world includes Europe, US, Japan, South Korea, and Australia and at time Israel. That total population is still less than the population of China. As Lynn points out China has found a technique of survival that has taken 850 million people out of extreme poverty. Those 1.4 billion people, larger than our collective, may not evolve into the ethic of the West, and if that suits them, who are we to judge, or who are you, Mr. Manjoo to judge? Nonetheless, there is much about Western life and "culture" that has seeped into China and if that merges with the "culture" of China, we will all be better off. Otherwise, when China reaches the GDP per capital that we enjoy, they will be larger and become a larger influence. Ours is an individualistic culture, theirs is collectivist, but those distinctions may be developmental rather than characteristic. If we can nudge them toward accepting our ethic and culture perhaps they can come to embrace it as well. We are making a huge strategic error in engaging China as an enemy.
2
I want to see this topic directed as a question to the democratic candidates at the next debate. It will hone my opinion of them.
2
Yet America still has more people locked up in prisons and jails than China and our incarceration rate is nearly 3 times China's. Do we have any moral argument that locking up people on minor drug and other charges overwhelmingly biased towards minorities and poor Americans is any less heinous than arresting people based on their religion or speech? I would say no, we are just as bad, we just have a different cultural view on what justifies imprisoning a person.
6
Maybe I'm just different to most posters here, but to me, no freedom of speech is the worst offense a country can inflict on its people. From that most basic of freedoms all else flows, so China seems to be a sad place for its people to inhabit.
The reason that so many mainland Chinese are annoyed by Hong Kong's defiance is because they know they dare not do the same and it reminds them of their collective weakness. It's one thing to be powerless; it's quite another to be publicly shown to be impotent.
As ever, the greed of the business class overshadows any semblance of decency or principles - always has been so and seemingly always will. Even the ones I held out hope for capitulated. Especially Google and the other tech titans.
The more successful Chinese have all the shiny toys they want, but utter one word out of place and it can all be gone.
Their courts are just another branch of government. It makes our USA governance look rosy, even headed by its current president and that's a very low bar to clear.
2
I have done business in China for 30 years. I will not go back as long as Xi is dictator for life. This beautiful country that finally fed, clothed and housed its citizens and was quickly liberalizing is backtracking just as fast.
I still feel our fear of China is unfounded. Their 1 child policy while effectively reversing their population growth has created an upside down pyramid of aging, sick people who can no longer work or produce goods and services. The burden on the young is going to overwhelm them.
Sadly, nationalism on both sides will only fuel citizen hate toward each other with terrible consequences for both the east and the west.
The Chinese people, like citizens in the USA are not the leadership. China is not the boogeymen. Nationalism is on the rise globally and the US government is not pushing back on it, they are embracing it and encouraging it. The trade war is all about hegemony not freedom.
The major problems in the world, nuclear war, pandemic and environment can only be solved through cooperation. We can no longer afford another cold war.
7
What's been striking since Nixon went to China in 1972 is how our two nations have adopted each other's worst practices.
The United States has become more repressive and authoritarian. China has become more rapaciously greedy and materialistic.
It is a shame that we did not instead get the best from each other. The United States could use more of China's focus on improving communal infrastructure, and China could use more of the United State's focus on human freedom and individual growth.
Why, I wonder, did only the worst rub off?
2
"We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China. Instead, it corrupted us."
Speak for yourself. No one had any reason to expect China to become more "liberated" due to increased interaction with the rest of the world - none.
At one time perhaps something could have been done to change the trajectory that China is currently on but that ship has long since sailed - about 70 years ago.
It's part of the Non-aligned Movement. One of its Five Principles is: Mutual non-interference in domestic affairs. I think Manjoo is familiar with this. No?
Hard for America to point fingers at other country's Civil Rights - given the huge percentage of our citizens that we incarcerate.
2
All the things you have said about China are basically true, but I have a basic, fundamental disagreement with you about what is of value to the vast majority of people (not counting intellectuals): economic freedom and lifting people out of poverty. China has been 10x as successful as the US. We have a "democracy" but about half the population doesn't participate and a whole lot of the ones that do, are really too stupid to help the system or themselves by their participation. It is not at all clear to me that we have a better political system. YES we absolutely have more freedom for intellectuals, we have better rule of law (at least until very recently, let's see how impeachment goes), and better intellectual infrastructure insofar as the top 5-10% (because free thinkers are more creative when they aren't afraid of going to the gulag). As far as the rest of the people, what do they spend their freedom of speech on - instagram and Facebook? An average citizen may actually be better off trading economic freedom and a social safety net for the rest, as they really do nothing of true value with their freedom anyway. The ones who miss the things that China doesnt have and the US does, perhaps overrepresented in terms of NYTimes readership, can easily sell out and become top CP members and grease their way to decamillionaire or higher status. What I wonder is this: how different is this selling out REALLY from how the american oligarchy and intellectual class functions?
2
Hi Farhad,
I grew up in Missouri but travel to China frequently for work.
What I think most people fail to understand is that China is the way that it is because America is the way that it is.
Let's not forget that the United States was colonially involved in Asia.
Let's not forget that the CCP arose as a reaction against a corrupt, US-backed puppet government that refused to fight Japanese invasion in a bid to grab power.
Let's not forget that since it's inception, the USA has used propaganda promoting "freedom and democracy" to try to undermine the Chinese government.
Let's let forget that the USA and other western powers have many times used democracy as an excuse to install puppets, often displacing actual democratically installed leaders.
There is more than just "a little" amount of antagonism from the USA that gives China cause to doubt all the good intentions in the world.
We use frequently wave our "huge ships" in their faces in "freedom of navigation" missions right off their shores. Do you think Chinese people feel they will be safe from American influence without a strong military? Look at how militaristic we are about invading anyone who disagrees with us.
China feels a desesparate need to catch up militarily.
Why does China steal American tech? To do that. Because we won't sell it to them. We have laws against that.
Free speech? Maybe if the USA stopped using it as a way to inject propaganda. Maybe if the CIA stopped supporting and funding separatists.
1
Some years ago I attended a dinner to "celebrate" the acquisition of our half billion dollar division ( spun out of a multi billion dollar conglomerate a few years before), by a large Chinese manufacturing company. The top sales execs were needed to sign a new contract for employment. The #1 man in the company from NYC (30 years experience) turned to me and remarked how the Chinese cost structure would make us the #1 product in the world. I suggested that we not be too gleeful, alluding to the shaky culture surrounding their business dealings. The NYC man happily advised me "not to worry,.... the Chinese are going to become,.... more like us", given this merger. i answered: My concern is that we will become more like them." Five years later we were both on the street looking for work.
2
Completely agree with the author ... let’s add most of the middle eastern countries to this list also (eg, Saudi Arabia).
2
It's the obsession that's remarkable. Same in my country. Almost daily media condemnations of China with the same arguments over and over. What right do we have to interfere in China's affairs?
If China where to start illegal wars killing millions of people and flooding Europe with refugees? Yes, because that would be an international crime affecting us all and world peace directly.
If China were to exterminate Muslims within their borders? Yes, because that would be a grave crime against international law and fundamental morality. But what else?
The Chinese are patriots, just like Americans and most of us. Hong Kong has been a part of China since 200 B.C. It was stolen by the British in perhaps the most immoral war the world has seen, a war of aggression to force China to accept opium as payment for valuable goods, making the Chinese into drooling drug addicts.
Do we westerners really have any moral leg to stand on - at all - when we incessantly criticize China for its internal affairs? Shouldn't we at least deal with our own deficiencies first? That would put China far down the list of priorities.
4
let's not get too far ahead of the facts. if you end up corrupted because you made the faustian bargain to profit from a dictatorship selling prole labor, then the corruption comes from the soul that made the bargain -- it comes from the soul of global capitalism. the dictators can't be blamed for selling prole sweat when there are so many corporations eager to buy it.
then there's the electorate. i don't go with won or lost. i go with this: half the people who voted got suckered by a con man. and this empty suit can actually turn our elected officials into quavering, quivering jelly. it's almost like a magus power, able to dance through multiple lawsuits with impunity. but my point is: the electorate is certainly corrupt, the electorate that wants everything from taxes to hardware to burgers to gas to be one thing: cheap.
and who are these people, anyway, these one in five performers of the sacred democratic duty? are they not just cultists? ranting on at each other, ranting at us about what we should think, thinking what talking heads tell them to think. what kind of spirit is that? well, look at the president half of them got elected. that should tell you something.
i'm not finished. is it possible to be corrupted by a machine? what are all those business deals in china building, exactly? why, it's a global system of AI guided, robotically executed, media spewing networks of digital command and control. what kind of soul wants that? the soul of global capitalism.
3
Obviously the people who thought capitalism was going to change China have never spent any amount of time in China.
4
Capitalism corrupts? Don't look to China for examples; Wall Street's capture of our government is straight from the textbook.
3
Marx and Lenin are both credited with having said: "When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for contract to put the noose around their necks."
This creepy prediction tells us as much about capitalism than it does about communism. If we are going to effectively contain the spread of totalitarianism around the world, first our poltical system needs to liberate itself from the campaign contributions from these money-addicted fools who will do anything for a buck.
Until we liberate our own house from unlimited private campaign financing, we will never be able to play an effective role in solving any of the problems in the rest of the world. No candiate who takes money from the high rollers can be trusted to do the right thing, for he who pays the piper picks the tune. It is interesting that the poor understand this better than the educated middle class. But there is a reason for this.
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Mr. Manjoo, love your column today. The question you're raising in asking if it's worth the MORAL cost to Americans in what ways we have to compromise our (purported) values in order to do business in/with China is one we ignore at our peril.
If one reflects, it raises a more pointed question: "What are MY moral values worth TO ME? How easily (i.e., for how little monetary gain) will I compromise on moral standards I'd normally claim to be worth fighting for?"
For all too many American companies and Americans for all too long, we've sold out our own values to do business with a corrupt, totalitarian regime for painfully little. An elevated share price on Wall Street; a cheaper flat screen TV or pair of tube socks at Walmart.
The sorry fact is that we sold out long, long ago. The very idea that the repressive Chinese Communist Party would some how be magically transformed as a result of the cleansing act of participating in "the free market" is an idiocy that only a Chicago School economist would believe in or try to sell to the American people in order for American companies to be allowed to expand their businesses into the Chinese market.
The paradox is that American business is, by definition, amoral at heart. In an environment where MBA thinking dictates that "maximizing shareholder value" is a company's sole concern, the morality of your dealings or the morality of your business partners does not even come up for debate.
3
I rejoice and can’t help but admire the courage of the Hongkongers who dare to stand up to their Beijing master. The world should give them their full support in their struggle.
3
Vast sums of money are corrupting everything everywhere. Apple is cancelling an app at the Chinese government's request in Hong Kong. I pray for the liberty protesters. I know people over there but I haven't been there in two decades but my heart is with them.
香港自由
1
I think china would never have or have had the power to corrupt the moral the world hold dear. It is corrupted by greed, ignorance and apathy that has long existed in our society and it is getting worse thanks to trump like figures and self-serving liberals. The problem is that we made our judgement based on our opinions not facts. We would be naturally biased against people who are different.We trust people we know not strangers. I believe this is the true cause for our decline of moral: embrace the singularity of moral system and isolated communities holding different/opposite value. I can't, we can't and they can't deny that finding a skip goat for all our problems is tempting. To find a skip goat that you don't empathise with is more tempting. Our moral won't stop declining until we accept our difference and reward empathy instead of apathy. We can't deny that china is becoming the hot topics for both left and right. Your perspective can be simplified as china is untrustworthy because they are different from us and they will never be like us. I partially agree with you. The truth is that Chinese culture is all about mental stubbornness and refused to be changed by higher power. Russians know that so well from dealing with china for centuries. They learn how to coexist with china by not changing china and respect the boundaries. China can be changed but it is going to be a long way and patience is the key.
The corporations were so smart. After most of my lifetime being told to fear Communism, The bosses found out how cheaply they would work, pennies on the dollar, so we swiftly gave away the majority of Our jobs, exporting our manufacturing base and ruining the lives of the middle class. Now they’ll soon have us by the throat, stealing the blueprints of our most sensitive defense weapons, as they steal our intellectual property. They can sell DVD’s of our latest movies before they’re premiered here. More Buick’s are made in China than America. We deserve what we got. Labor Day is now a memorial to when we had organized labor
The idea that democracy automatically would follow wealth was always foolish. That is not how things work.
What normally happens is that within a prosperous country interest groups develop. And such internal political struggle opens the way for democracy.
This process can be disturbed when external enemies arise. That is a delicate issue as it can be hard to discern between legitimate grievances and aggression. Anyway, the US has now positioned itself as China's adversary - justifying a centralization of power by Xi.
Great piece, great columnist - maybe the best the NYT has right now. The comment thread with Manjoo's replies is a testament to open dialogue. Having said that, it's incredible to me that people are trying to justify criticism of what is being done to the Uyghurs - not to mention what has already happened to the Tibetans - as always a challenge to sovereignty. This is the playbook used by history's worst leaders and you see a version of it in the US on the right. If you can't meet criticism on its own terms, there is something wrong with what you are doing. Just as the US has much to answer for, China has a a huge moral debt in Tibet, Xinjiang, and to all Chinese people for the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. Less freedom of speech and jingoistic responses won't work over the long term.
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To Matthew: I don’t know where or how often you travelled to China, but I have been over 20 times for extended periods, over ten years. Pretty much every region including near the Muslim populated western borders with Afghanistan and Kazakhstan. The level of government control in China is positively Orwellian. And if you think China provides healthcare and housing for all, you are sadly mistaken. You would absolutely refuse what they “provide” in healthcare! And it is odd that you should use healthcare as an example, given that you are from the nation that spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other, yet has almost the worst health outcomes of any OECD country!
Bottom line: the West’s China strategy has been a huge failure. China is a clear and present danger to freedom loving peoples. We should abandon the pretence that engagement with China will lead to greater freedoms for its people. It would help, of course, if you could find a president with both a backbone and some worldliness. On this issue we need the leadership of the richest and most powerful free economy in the world. Sadly, we have Trump.
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For years, political sociologists debated which came first in modern liberal societies: democracy or capitalism? And related, which was more important to the explosive economic growth of recent centuries?
All of this was built on assumption that these things must be related in some way: that somehow, liberal democracy should produce capitalism or vice versa, and that one of both should produce prosperity.
What appears to be the case is that democracy is not needed for either capitalism or economic growth. True, much of China's massive economic growth in recent decades is due to catch-up; they are not the technological innovator that the US and Japan are. But if they have sufficient capitalism, it appears that they can achieve economic growth without the democracy. Democracy, equality, civil engagement, and human rights do not inevitably flow from capitalism; we must demand them.
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Thank you Farhad for touching on the many facets of this issue in such a clear-eyed, straight-forward way. Refreshing and encouraging. I was becoming concerned that all of us had lost our way after the NBA/Blizzard events. Glad to see otherwise, from you and many others.
2
Good for Mr. Manjoo for stating the problem of an authoritarian super power so clearly. Once upon a time (the late 1990s), there was a debate about giving China most favored trading status. Business people argued, and still do, that we couldn’t afford not to do it. Nancy Pelosi fought very hard to put human rights contingencies on trade. She (and we) lost. The world would have been an utterly different place had she succeeded. I believe it was the most significant vote in the last 20 years. A government that governs through force, and therefore fear, should have been relegated to the past. I hope that Pelosi will again protest, but now with the power of the Speaker’s seat, and create a trading order that puts human rights at the top, that would absolutely include US companies and corporations operating in China and other parts of the world.
1
Why are we so concerned with what NBA thinks? Why can’t they just do what they are paid to do well – play ball? More broadly, I wish people will just stick to what their good at: football players to football, actors to acting, musicians to music, and chefs to cooking. After all they are simply paid performers.
I can't help but wonder if this person has ever actually been to mainland China and to Hong Kong. I have been to both. As a native-born American and lifelong capitalist I did not notice any limitations on my freedom of thought or speech.
Make no mistake about it, unlike many on the Left, I love every part of America and truly believe we are the greatest nation ever. What I find fascinating is China essentially does what many on the Left want done in America. How many on the Left assert that certain things can't be said or done?
I don't believe in socialism or the collective mentality espoused by the Left. It does not take a village, but an individual. Yet, who says the government should provide healthcare? Who says that there should be housing for all? China provides this for its citizens. Whether we are talking about Russia, Venezuela or China, the eventual elimination of individual freedom is a prerequisite for socialism. Remember, even Great Britain does not guarantee free speech. We must choose whether we desire our freedoms more or government largesse (which we pay for one way or the other).
Thus, if you are going to condemn China, you should also condemn the Democratic Party in the U.S.
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@Matthew I have been, though not in a while, because it’s become extremely difficult for journalists to get in. I’ll just have to take your word for it that it’s really super chill there, but just for kicks look at some of the links in my first paragraph from human rights organizations documenting the scale of infringements on liberty.
4
@Matthew I have been, though not in a while, because it’s become extremely difficult for journalists to get in. I’ll just have to take your word for it that it’s really super chill there, but just for kicks look at some of the links in my first paragraph from human rights organizations documenting the scale of infringements on liberty.
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China provides neither free healthcare nor free housing its citizens. Don’t know where you got this idea, but it’s wrong.
7
Is demographics destiny? If so, China has the population edge, and the ability to compare their economic success to the failure of US capitalism to stop the increasing wealth gap in America. Why would middle class Chinese wants to trade their status to become low class Americans?
The real issue that few people want to acknowledge is that so long as the world population continues to grow the more likely that impact on the environment like climate change and loss of bio-diversity will someday lead to human extinction.
Chinese history teaches that China is the center of the world but in the past there were limitations to how much the Chinese world could legitimately expand beyond traditional Chinese national borders. Now, with its international business hegemony, those limitations are disintegrating. When the West discovers that to do business with the vast customer base in China a capitulation to Chinese state control is demanded, most companies capitulate. The West's dependence upon the capitalist bottom line demands capitulation. We had better learn Mandarin so that we can at least communicate with our new masters.
2
Yes, it's time. I believe that the world thought that engagement and ever increasing economic ties would lead to the universal expansion of fundamental human rights in China. This has not happened. Everyone should have the right to eat, have shelter, basic health, education, etc., but without freedom of conscience, a human being simply cannot experience the full dimesions of the life which they are gifted. Freedom of conscience is the predicate and foundation of all human rights. Those who praise China's economic boom even as it becomes more repressive are being cruelly deceived. There is no reason why they could not be made fully whole with universal human rights, beginning with freedom of conscience, and still undergo a miraculous economic miracle. It is a gross lie that mostly serves those in power. It's time stop doing business with China until it changes course. Enough. With regard to Hong Kong and Taiwan, the world should make sure that China doesn't hold sway over one single more human life until they have liberalized their human rights posture.
Corrupted us? Give me a break.
We are in China for the same reason we are involved in all other countries—huge business opportunity. Our companies sell billions of dollars in produce and services in China—both via exports and with American products produced in China for the China markets. And American companies produce massive amounts of goods and parts in China for the US market both to reduce costs directly and to put pressure on US workers to eliminate unions and higher wage demands
Morals are irrelevant
2
Granting your point that China has become a dictatorial surveillance state, the really scary part is that we know what happens when leaders appoint themselves for life: corruption, that of power if not wealth. Xi thus far may have actually rooted out some local corruption, and he may have pursued policies that are good for Chinese and even global climate. But if there is no open discussion and no chance for orderly promotion and succession even within the CCP, then self-promotion and self-protection will become the sole purpose of the regime and it will behave much worse, especially as the economic "miracle" slows down or falls back into decline.
An excellent piece, but it still sounds like a voice in the wilderness. There should be a world-wide roar of disapproval at China's behaviour. The latest photographs (see yesterday's Daily Mail) are terrifying. Not content with terrorising the living Uighur population, the Communist Party is now attacking their dead and bulldozing the ancestral burial grounds.
6
As an American living on and off (on for now) in Hong Kong for 20 years...here's what I say: Hallelujah. You nailed it...finally. I've been involved with and watching China's progress and its unfettered ability to rip off the West for way too long. This is a culture war and it is time to fight back. In Hong Kong, there is war on the streets. I don't always agree with the protesters and their process, but I welcome these brave people as they rise up against one of the most fearful and powerful regimes that history has recorded. Do not underestimate China. We have allowed their growth and will need to deal with their displeasure. I believe that like the protesters on the streets in Hong Kong, many people around the world support democratic values and will always reject the iron fist of Chinese power. But we need to fight hard and we need to fight now. This is a war of ideas.
3
Capitalists are uninterested in democracy. They are driven by shareholders' interest and at this juncture shareholders seem to be only interested in profit. The shareholders did not push back when they learned that petroleum companies buried information about global warming. The shareholders did not push back when they found that Big Pharma companies promote drugs that ruin the lives of millions. The shareholders have not pushed back when their corporations have now been given a green light to pollute our streams and the air. As long as profit is all tat matters, we will continue to see a deterioration of our culture, our politics, and our planet.
3
I just left Hong Kong 2 days ago after spending 3 weeks traveling in China. I watched the river of umbrellas after the face mask bans, and gave high fives to the peaceful demonstrators (only a few are doing damage.) One of the events on the mainland was a three day tour boat trip on the Yangtze River. I have also spent months in SE Asia. China is funding dams on the Mekong and its tributaries in Laos, and many more dams on the Yangtze River and other Chinese rivers. I am an environmental biologist. This building of dams is destroying the rivers; the dams on the Mekong Basin will will greatly damage the Lower MekongI has one of the most valuable big river deltas in the world, The Mekong Delta, which is exceedingly important to Vietnam and Cambodia. So, it is simply not just freedoms suppressed in China. China is destroying the environment. And, it is not just Beijing air pollution. Every city visited in China has extreme air pollution. I want to write an essay about China called “A Pact With the Devil.”
7
Adam Silver does not genuflect to anyone.
He is one of the NBA's most effective commissioners.
The liberal democracies of Europe and North America betrayed China in 1919 at Versailles. At which point liberal democracy probably became a lost cause in China.
And now liberal democracy is in retreat in Europe and North America.
It is not at all clear why the future of liberal democracy will be.
I believe liberal democracy is worth defending but I can also understand why China is not adopting it. It has world's biggest population. Just holding it together is an enormous challenge. Any breakdown of central government risks disaster. And credit where credit is due: China has lifted almost one billion people out of poverty since 1976. That is an unprecedented achievement historically.
The real problem is that western observers had expectations of China which were never realistic - and are now disappointed.
1
A quick lesson about China. Xi is a product of the Cultural Revolution.
However, the media have a problem themselves. They see the world as monolithic, even they themselves are working in a factional U.S.. China has hardliners even worse than Xi but also reformers. The same with the Hong Kong situation. A majority of the protesters are peaceful but there are extremists in the mix. They damage Hong Kong as well.
While NBA's Morey story is widely reported, no one seems to be able to explain why his tweet. Did he do that out of the blue? He knows someone in HK? Houston and Hong Kong or China are far apart. Does he know the history of Hong Kong at all? The last actually applies to a lot of media folks. They need to understand 18th Century history to understand the sensitivity.
So many considerations, yet, thinking China corrupts "us" disregards the election of Trump
1
Reductive to make this a freedom of speech issue, when it's really a China threat issue under the guise of free speech.
Freedom of speech should be, and is, protected against government institutions. The same right doesn't hold against private employers, even in the States.
The more specific question, whether or not American businesses should embody a host of American values, including free speech, even to the detriment of profit, is much more nuanced. I would say, no; on a whole host of moral issues, corporations historically, routinely, and consistently err on the side of profit.
Fiduciary duty. Adam Silver adeptly walking a tightrope, but a stronger response could land him out as commissioner. Morey's exercise of free speech was definitely not free--it is objectively (potential four billion dollar loss) a terrible business decision. Unless there are changes to current legal structures, businesses are in the right to make these decisions on dollars and cents.
Multinationals. The NBA, Hollywood (Marvel), Blizzard are global brands. Seems farfetched to tie them to ideals that don't represent a significantly majority, and potential future majority, of their market.
In a nutshell, you don't mind, nor should you mind, businesses profiting from immoral or amoral decisions. You should mind if these decisions benefit China, because China is a threat to Western institutions and way of life. Here, I agree with you. However, Morey's HK tweet is not the hill to die on.
2
At the risk of being accused of whataboutism, the West has been cozying up to repressive regimes for a quite a while now, and meddling as well when things weren't going our way. Success on these fronts hasn't been encouraging.
It's heartening to see that both sides take issue with..., wait a minute, issue with what? Not with what is happening in Hong Kong, not even with what is happening to the the Muslim Uighur minority. What people are getting all hot and bothered about is our good given right to criticise, you know, that freedom of speech thing. But otherwise, it'll be business as usual. And as for "placing eight Chinese surveillance technology companies and several police departments on a blacklist forbidding them from trading with American companies." that's got nothing to do with the oppression China routinely visits on it's citizens, that's about trying to limit their ability to innovate beyond what we can keep up with.
The West is addicted to China, and we aren't coming off that habit any time soon. It's getting close to the point where we need them more than they need us, and when that happens, we won't be reading about it.
2
You are wrong that China denies human rights to its 1.4 billion citizens. From having spent time in China over a 30 year period and having a degree in Chinese history & politics etc., I have seen great improvements in people's way of life and most citizens have no interest in politics.
Most join the CCP only to further their employment possibilities, e,g, a teacher who is a CCP member gets twice the number of teaching hours than one who isn't a member and thus earns more money.
Xi is a great worry but as with all things Chinese the tide will eventually turn and there will be change.
As for the US, it is concerned that China will overtake it as the world superpower, just as they used to fear the old USSR would overcome the USA.
In the last financial crisis the US would have "gone under" if China had requested all its loans be repaid as the debt was huge.
1
@Carole China is perfectly free to put its remaining U.S. - issued bonds for sale on the world market, but no country on the planet promises to pay their gov't-issued debt back before their due date.
A pesky thing about China is the tens of millions of mostly innocent and unarmed Chinese who were murdered as Mao made China into the empire he wanted.
Slaughtered were the educated, those who were religious, those with businesses, and sometimes even people wearing glasses.
Mao LOVED the cattle prod that had just been developed in the West.
But he didn't use them on cattle.
2
@L osservatore I know very well what happened in Mao's time - took up a lot of my studies - and have not mentioned it because I am talking about present times. To raise their past is akin to raising non-fair treatment to Indigenous Americans or many states having prisoners in shackles & irons -not relevant to the conversation.
China has accomplished in 70 years what it took the West nations at least one plus and up to 3 centuries in some cases to achieve. The Western world went through the Great Depression sandwiched in between 2 highly lethal and destructive world wars to get where it's at. That historical sandwich reduced inequality to a manageable level and created a real middle class that owned a % of the nation's wealth that was almost equal to that middle class's % of the population. (Piketty, et al.)
An advancing, stable economy is important to societal happiness (stability) and to political stability. @lynn mentioned collectivism as the favored cultural value (perspective) of China as opposed to the individualism of the West. We could use that collective viewpoint a little more. And China needs greater tolerance for individualism especially in politics, culture, and religion (Uighurs, Tibetans, HK).
"The most important capital in capitalism is human capital." Unfortunately capitalism can't produce the large amount of human capital necessary for a capitalist economy. Therefore, most capitalist economies are mixed economies. China's government intervenes too much in the wrong places. Our government needs to help create more human capital [HC] (help parents, fund Pre-K-12 schools a lot better, eliminate tuition at state universities, etc) and preserve HC (universal health insurance, free day-care, better public health, etc). And our prisons need massive reform so they can actually reclaim HC.
1
I'm concerned about the moral costs of Mr. F's. belligerence towards China. An embargo could lead to war. Any other economic competitor of China to whom we'd shift our trade is just as equally repressive and in the meantime our standard of living would decline. Finally, what do the Chinese people want? That's not at all addressed. I suspect they credit their government with their improved standard of living and increase d world stature. An overthrow of their government could lead to another Russia.
We don't want to fight China. What we are talking about, as far as I can gather, is how best to use trade policy to influence China. We need to determine our goals and then figure out what policies bring us closer, and which farther away.
Our goals should be to limit the spread of oppression in all forms, and spread freedom of speech and religion and bodily autonomy as much as possible. These are not, however, the goals of our current trade dispute. I'm not sure what the goals of our trade dispute are, to be honest, except to raise taxes.
What actions would we take, then, if our goal was to spread peace and freedom? Well, I would check out Mr. Kristof's column today. He presents ideas such as using the WTO to address freedom of speech issues and working on ways to break the great firewall. These are practical, non-violent, ways of achieving our policy goals.
I agree with all the concerns Farhad brings up. I do. I just can't agree to confrontation and Sinophobia.
1
We don't want to fight China. What we are talking about, as far as I can gather, is how best to use trade policy to influence China. We need to determine our goals and then figure out what policies bring us closer, and which farther away.
Our goals should be to limit the spread of oppression in all forms, and spread freedom of speech and religion and bodily autonomy as much as possible. These are not, however, the goals of our current trade dispute. I'm not sure what the goals of our trade dispute are, to be honest, except to raise taxes.
What actions would we take, then, if our goal was to spread peace and freedom? Well, I would check out Mr. Kristof's column today. He presents ideas such as using the WTO to address freedom of speech issues and working on ways to break the great firewall. These are practical, non-violent, ways of achieving our policy goals.
I agree with all the concerns Farhad brings up. I do. I just can't agree to confrontation and Sinophobia.
I don't think it's our (or our leaders') responsibility necessarily to see to it that the Chinese becomes more concerned with human rights. I think the Chinese will get there eventually - as more and more people get more wealthy, and the gap between the rich and poor goes up as it has in some western nations, there will definitely be more class conflict that the CPC cannot keep the lid on.
To an extent, the rise of Xi is a sign of the above, since the CPC has sought to use the previous agreement with the population (economic growth for security) and cement it. But this will only provoke backlash - right now, the Chinese are the ones keeping quiet and letting everything happen - the great firewall, etc. everything. But one day, they will say "enough!" I don't know when that is, but I don't see how it can not happen one way or the other.
Have you ever been in China yourself, Mr. Manjoo? I do not object your main point: China restricts certain rights of its citizens, and it is getting much worse under Xi. However, your article lacks depth with no historical references, and reads more like political statements.
The majority of Chinese people seem really happy and content with their lives and their trajectories. China is very safe almost everywhere you go, major cities or small towns. Ladies can walk alone at night withour worrying about safety -- no police on streets.
I think that western countries' engagement policies towards China had worked reasonably well until about 2012-2013 when the current leadership decided to take a different direction. The more recent nationalist fever to large degree results from Trump's trade wars that seem not well thought-out nor implemented, leaving Chinese people the impression of bullying China, and giving Chinese leadership more reasons to control the country.
Although I agree that China's current situation is troubling, I am optimistic that China will eventually become a liberal democratic country. However, in the meantime, isolating China is not a wise policy to pursue. Be patient with a long historical view.
2
I could not agree more with Manjoo's analysis. We must break our addiction to China by finding alternative manufacturing locations, reducing Chinese investment in US companies, and increasing our vigilance about Chinese intellectual property theft. Above all, we should not allow China to restrict freedom of expression for any US citizen regardless of whether the company that person works for is somehow dependent on Chinese business. We all lose when we let a company's greed for Chinese riches destroy our basic freedoms.
3
Thank you for writing the article. You brought the issue to the forefront. This need to be debated as part of the ongoing larger trade and political negotiations between America and China.
Freedom of speech is a fundamental right fought by forefathers and foremothers of America. It might be difficult for the current generation who grew up on iPhone and Androids in the insta-age to imagine what life would be like without it. Yet as a student of history, I see the current trend resembling dangerously closer to the world Orwell portrayed, where self-censorship is rife and democratic societies on the brink of hollowing inside out. This isn't the first time China has pulled its economic levers to bring the world's largest corporations to its knees and kao-tow (a Chinese term meaning one bows its head to admit defeat and pledges new allegiance). Several months ago, the Communist party mandated and threatened global airlines to mark Taiwan as a province of its PRC's territory in visual maps and destinations. It's effectively using economic means to bully corporations and capitalistic societies in exchange for market access and operability. Every time the bully wins, the bully believes its strategy is working. We cannot let the bully get away without consequential actions...
1
I live and work in Taiwan. There isn't a word of this I dont agree with.
All of this stuff is history, not future. China will continue to slowdown. History shows it is actually fairly easy to get to $10K per capita GDP, but much harder to get to $50/60k where different rules apply. We should not be too afraid of a nation of selfish ONLY CHILDREN with a very poor demographic outlook. China’s own selfishness and arrogance will settle their fate soon enough.
1
@Geoff Williams: Wait, CHINA is arrogant?
People in China berate each other and the authorities every day for bad behaviour and incompetence. There is enough of that for them to go on for thousands of years to come. They do not feel they lack freedom of speech because they value what they do more than what they say. They do not care about the cameras because they rather have safety over nobody looking out for them. Those who want another way of life can choose to live in another country. By the way, how many migrant children are still caged in the US these days?
3
I'll take the bait.
The answer is far far far fewer than the Muslims and Tibetans caged in reeducation camps in China.
I'm assuming you're outside China and hence able to access this news article. So let me introduce you to a thing called Wikipedia. it's a great resource on just about anything.
It is sheer hubris to assume that the western way of thinking is the right way, always. While I agree that sending a million Uighurs to re-education camps as a way to stamp out terrorist Uighur separatists in China may be extreme, the US doesn't exactly have clean hands on this front. Remember Guantanamo? The US invasion of Iraq post 9/11 was even more extreme and unreasonable. Why do we vilify China when the US is just as guilty of extreme behavior in the face of terrorism against innocent citizens. Some self-reflection might do us some good. We might make fewer foreign policy mistakes if we understood other countries better, and indulged in less hubris.
6
@Donna Meyer It isn't terrorism China worries about with the Uighurs. Rather, they cannot tolerate a minority group with a religion and culture that is different than majority Han Chinese. China cannot tolerate a minority group that asks for freedom to express its values and way of life. Most especially, the CCP cannot brook the possibility that ideas such as freedom of expression or religion might seep into the larger population. Terrorism is what they would have you believe rather than the hard truth.
My view for the last 30 years. Well articulated.
This article does not have its priorities straight. Chinese economic development has been extremely good as it lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and made them freer. Poor people cannot be free, even if their country is a democracy—how free do you think the people from the democracy of Guatemala begging for scraps at our border feel? Even the Uighurs are better off today than back when China was poor—many Uighurs left China fleeing poverty in the 60s, but you don’t see much emigration today.
On the economic leverage point, China is not the worst offender. Israel has lobbied our government to make it illegal to boycott Israel. Whereas it is perfectly legal to boycott China and people will even think its some kind of moral stance, when really it’s just discrimination against 1.4 billion people most of whom have nothing to do with any human rights abuses. And the US is also far more aggressive than China about this kind of thing; just see the Chinese executive we arrested for doing business with Iran. I’ve never heard of China arresting US executives for doing business with Taiwan. It will be good for global freedom if China’s rise weakens the leverage of US sanctions.
And I wouldn’t mind if other third-world countries try to copy China’s development model, because it works. If the entire third world grew at Chinese rates, we wouldn’t have the refugee crises of the last few years (which rocked Western democracies far more than anything China has done).
1
@HO
Chinese economic development has been a product of trillions of dollars of foreign money... Supplied mostly by the world's Liberal Democracies.
Prior to the flood of dollars, euros, yen, etc, mainland China was one economic and/or social disaster after another: The Great Famine, The Cultural Revolution, The One Child Policy, and so on.
The present Chinese economy is a bubble, inflated by foreign markets. Absent the foreign cash, China's future will be at the mercy of the corruption, totalitarianism and rigidity of its leadership, which will doom it to once again become an overpopulated, dirt-poor backwater.
Conversely, if China can forge a path to adopt liberal values such as universal suffrage, respect for the rule of law and freedom of dissent, it will enable the human capital of its people to be fully realized and can become a truly great nation.
What I find interesting is the lack of evidence in any Western article, primarily on topics surronding China.
Hundreds of articles has been posted recently on China's so called "oppresion" on the Uighurs, almost all are based under news networks from the US (nothing suspicious). The sole evidence is a few images of buildings, yet writers are willing to pay in data of up to 2 million prisoners.
Images of surveialance camera proves nothing. The number of CCTVs are same throughout China, and what purpose do they serve? Obviously, its for security. Nothing suprising.
The use of "brutal totalitarian state" to describe a nation housing 1.4 billion citizens is way too inappripriate. Have you ever been to China? And witness the lavish change in lifestyle of Chinese citizens compared to 50 years ago?
3
@Cassidy: I agree. Many of the comments I see here describe a China very different from the China I know. Americans should travel to China and see for themselves. It's a beautiful and interesting country, with friendly people, and airfares are quite low right now.
Is there no end to the China-bashing appearing in these pages? Yes, China has a repressive authoritarian government. There are groups in China targeted because their activities are interpreted as separatist. China tolerates separatism about as much as the US did in 1861. But, people in China are quite happy about the improvements in their standard of living. It is NOT the China of Mao.
Chinese mainlanders do NOT like what the protesters in Hong Kong are doing. They see these people as elitists who don't want to live by laws that apply to the rest of China.
Chinese people love the NBA. I was amazed to find so many people gathered around the television to watch NBA games during Spring Festival... and even the smallest villages have courts. So, when Chinese people see the NBA siding with the Hong Kong protesters, it is understandable that they are angry. This isn't some show by the government, it's individual Chinese people who are upset that an institution they revere is taking sides against them.
The US sides with authoritarian governments all over the world, including countries that treat their citizens a lot worse than China does. It demolishes countries on a whim (WMD's anyone?). The US has a history of military interventions all over the world. China does not. Maybe Mr. Manjoo could step back for a moment and consider how things look from the point of view of 1.4 Billion Chinese citizens. Enough China bashing.
3
And anyone paying attention has known this, and seen it coming, forever. But it's just too hard for our corporations to resist the low costs of labor, lining their pockets (and those of politicians) while hollowing out their middle class at home.
Corporations don't believe in freedom of speech. Their cozying up to China is only natural. They would like to dictate a little more as well. Perhaps more like Putin and Russia, but definitely without any rights for average people.
To be fair, the Cultural Revolution was far more repressive and oppressive that anything going on in China today. Chinese society today is vibrant, and open to all sorts of outside influences. China is really not Orwellian the way the writer imagines it. 150 million Chinese tourists travel outside China every year, and they are definitely neither sheltered nor ignorant. Despite the great internet firewall, the wide use of VPNs give the Chinese relatively easy access beyond the firewall. So, the Chinese are also pretty well informed. No country and no government is perfect. We should be careful about using human rights and freedom of speech as a litmus test and speak in absolutes.
4
Yep, China played the long game and used Western Greed against itself, A beautiful lesson in Judo.
4
I think the Chinese government has overplayed its hand. They attempted to bully the Rockets into firing Morey and it is backfiring. Had he been fired, it would have suppressed anyone else from speaking out. Here's the statement from the Chinese consulate in Houston:
“We have lodged representations and expressed strong dissatisfaction with the Houston Rockets, and urged the latter to correct the error and take immediate concrete measures to eliminate the adverse impact.”
1
Very compelling analysis. China shows us how prescient George Orwell was in his work 1984. But, having stated the problem, yo provide no solution. I look forward to your analysis of what we can do. i am at a loss.
2
Both the Chinese political elite and western capitalists seek profits, but there the similarity between the two ends. For capitalists, profits become ends in themselves, devaluing political goals. In the minds of its advocates, this non-political stance of capitalism counts as one of its great virtues, enabling business leaders from different societies to interact effectively, without worrying about differences in political ideology.
For government leaders in Beijing, however, profits primarily serve as a tool to strengthen their dominance of Chinese society and to project the regime's influence overseas. This difference in perspective between the two groups works to the advantage of party leaders. Since their primary objective is a healthier balance sheet, capitalists will often suppress other considerations to that overriding goal. But the communist leadership will sacrifice profits, if necessary, in order to maintain their control of the levers of power.
As is evident by the behavior of the NBA and other business organizations, this is not an equal contest.
2
We enriched a tyrannical government that allowed some of the $ to flow down to the poor masses. Just enough $ to keep them docile. Constantly reinforced with incredible social control tools like the "Social Credit System" which is an abhorrent Orwellian-like strategy.
The NBA missed a great opportunity to draw a line in what is acceptable in a U.S. company's dealings with China. Why?
Because they have a monopoly on the greatest athletic talent in the world and having China as an audience is nice to have, but not necessary.
It's very disappointing that the league did not use this leverage in a way that promotes our values of free speech.
1
Farhad Manjoo says that China's economic growth in the past fifty years "did not come at any cost to the regime’s political chokehold." I am not sure whether he understands what the chokehold was like fifty years ago.
Things are very ugly for the Uighurs, and may be about to get very ugly for Hong Kong. But while freedom has declined significantly in recent years for the great mass of the Chinese population, the repression still is nowhere near as bad as it was fifty years ago. Even under Xi Jinping here is more freedom of thought, more freedom of religion, and far more freedom of movement, for the great majority of the population, than there was under Mao Zedong.
Xi Jinping is willing to use whatever level of brutality is necessary to keep him in power. But he does not appear to think that Maoist levels of brutality are necessary, so he has not been applying them in most of China.
So if Manjoo, when he said there had been no cost to the political chokehold, meant only that the political controls had remained strong enough to keep the regime in power, he was right. But if he meant that the chokehold is not looser than it was fifty years ago, less choking, he is seriously mistaken. The Uighurs, and probably some other groups getting less public attention, are in a nightmare today. The proportion of the population enduring nightmare levels of repression was far larger under Mao.
1
It's time for some high-profile basketball players to show how woke they really are. Let's see some very public demonstrations of support for the Uighers, the Tibetans, and others that may cut even closer to home for China than Hong Kong. Forget what the NBA hoi polloi say. How many Chinese (or Americans, for that matter) know their names? It's the players that fans everywhere know and love. C'mon heroes. It's easy to be woke when your fans love it and it boosts your brand. Now's time to step up when it really matters.
2
what do you mean "have no human rights" some rights like the right to eat the right to healthcare the right for shelter are much more protected in china then here in the USA or in Africa or in Latin America or in India.. do yo read Chinese? do you follow the very lively discussion on China's internet? it is as lovely as anywhere in the west despite censorship.. please study Chinese
or go on the Internet with a person who can read it.. and you will see what is really going on the "freedom of speech"
question.. try to manage the economy and culture of 1/7 billion persons without the blatant oppression and poverty of say India.
2
so the baby dragon grew up to be a big dragon
surprise
We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China.
Kindly count me out of "we". Knowing how China, the dominant economic power 500 years ago, was humiliated by the West, and forced to import opium by Britain to balance it balance of payments, I never thought so for one second
Who thought so
1. Bill Clinton
From his talk on admitting China to the WTO
"China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products; it is agreeing to import one of democracy's most cherished values: economic freedom. The more China liberalizes its economy, the more fully it will liberate the potential of its people
2. Free trade economists. From Larry Summers to Paul Krugman
Instead China used the hundred of billions of dollars it yearly earned selling us "made in China " products (The U.S. goods trade deficit with China was $419.2 billion in 2018) to build the worlds largest Navy and to pass the US in A.I, quantum entanglement based communication and other crucial technologies of the future
Quote source
https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/Full_Text_of_Clintons_Speech_on_China_Trade_Bi.htm
propaganda exists in every country. Just whether you agree with that ideology.
2
Just replace XI with "trump" and China with "the United States" and you will see what your country has become.
1
Has Mr. Manjoo ever been to China? Yes, China has huge problems, but we, Americans, are hardly in a position to stand out as a model of virtue. Given our bloody history, whatever China has done, the United States has done worse. We still maintain that we are a democracy. Can Mr. Manjoo spell out "self-righteous hypocrisy"?
5
Thank you for this cogent reminder to people who can’t see the forest for the trees. China’s technocratic pragmatism leads to many economic efficiencies but its political backwardness leads to a soulless society (as well as many economic inefficiencies as well). Just like we must not let Trump mesmerize and dumb us down with his craziness, we must not let China lull us into forgetting our core values.
5
The NBA clearly embarra$$ed itself in its craven apology to China. The idea that an American institution would apologize to a totalitarian government, when one of its employees exercises his first Amendment rights is disgraceful. Adam Silver's rectification attempt was simply too late. It's a moral imperative for prominent NBA players to acknowledge the league's initial error, and declare their support for basic human rights, whatever the financial costs to the NBA or themselves. Failure to do so relegates any future statements they may have on domestic social issues to the level of blatant hypocrisy, deserving of the public's ridicule and scorn.
2
Regardless skin color and language we live in one world in which none of us asked to be born whether in poverty or wealth. If the so called best minds in the west cannot figure out the solution to the problems we all face, we might reconsider our definition of best.
The Chinese government is declaredly atheistic which, given the search for clarity, is an admirable step yet we, as well as far too many other nations, deride them while investors know there is no better economy in the world with which to do business.
China, for all its' perceived flaws, is on the right track and the business leaders of the western world who have always sucked out as much profit as they can know this.
If the utterly selfish, who financially control and too often politically lead the western nations do not destroy the planet at some point in the not too distant future, China will become the strongest and most economically sound nation in the world before the end of this century.
No need to hold your breath.
The parallels between Japan of the 1930s and China now are disturbing. A rising economic and military power. A chip-on-the shoulder nationalism that hears only its own voice and nobody else’s. A one party state intent on the tight control of it’s information and populace. A generally resource poor country far from the sources of energy it so strongly relies upon.
We’ve seen this movie before. Let’s hope it’s not as rough this time around.
4
American corporate lust for money has been 100% responsible for the rise of China since 1979, all other factors just follow from our own greed. No hegemon in history has ever been dumb enough to pump trillions and trillions of dollars into building up its successor. Walmart alone has done more for China than anything else on earth. There's no way corporate America is going to stop "dealing" with China. Eventually, China's GDP will so totally dwarf ours, and Europe's, and it's internal market will dwarf both America and Europe in its significance for Chinese corporations, that Walmart and the rest will long for their long gone glory days, when their own growth depended entirely on their "dealings" with the Middle Kingdom, and China's interest in little us will be like our in little Brazil.
@Fred White
Au contraire.... China will be quite interested in the US. They will control much of our agriculture and natural resources. We will wake up to find out that China has exchanged their dollar holdings for real assets in the US.
Australia is already a defacto colony of China in this role.
5
Capitalism is great for the rich and powerful but for the rest of us not so much. Living your values and ideals is almost impossible for many people. Because in capitalism “Greed is good”. Altruism has no value to a capitalist.
Now this argument sounds just like the CCP narrative of Chinese "victimhood", how "American imperialism" corrupts China. By suggesting disengagement, you are playing right into the Party's hands.
One of the little reported facts is, winning "hearts and minds" of Chinese was going well for many years, through the amazing soft power that US of A wields via TVs and films. You wouldn't know this if you only read the Party's portrayal of the Chinese society. The Chinese populace is a lot more complex and sophisticated than what we give them credit for.
Granted that, along with the looming shadow of Xi, our own political leadership has been undermining the powerful argument of liberal democracy. Rather unfortunate. But the same soft power is still working on the younger generations' mindsets and behavioral patterns. The same "patriotic youths" on HK could be social progressives on gay rights and environmental causes, perhaps inspired by EU/US values. Play the long game. Give it time.
2
China is an outlaw nation, both on trade and human rights. But corporate America is willing to sell its soul for some profits.
It seems to me that China is even more deserving of economic sanctions than Iran, or even North Korea. The place is also an environmental disaster zone.
The Houston Rockets are going to have to replace their Nike swish with an embroidered Hammer and Sickle to get back into China's good graces.
3
According to the record in 2017 that more than 131 million Chinese visitors sightseeing and doing business in the world including America every year. And more than 99% will go back to their home despite the author's claim.
If one has not been in China recently, maybe it is time to go there and take a good look of China. It is far from perfect, but it will destroy your idea on how bad China was.
1
We may not like our current Congress or Nancy Pelosi or whomever. We can,however, openly criticize them and vote them out of office. We have no “leaders for life”.
Rather than being cynical and apathetic, we should simply accept that we, the citizenry, get the government we deserve.
Liberty and freedom are easily lost.
4
Excellent article and, unfortunately, spot on. Ultimately, the West (and especially the U.S.) must begin to think long term, rather than to the end of the next business quarter. The Chinese (and especially their leaders) have a much longer view of history. They see the rise of China as a long over-due resurgence of one of the oldest and most powerful cultures. The Chinese also remember the humiliation of the Opium Wars, the forced occupation of their historical lands by the British, others in the West, and then Japan. I fear that, as their power continues to rise, their desire for retribution will lead them to try to use their power to increasingly subjugate the West both economically and politically.
6
I don't think most of the companies trying to do business in China over the past 2-3 decades were concerned with liberating China. I think they recognized one of the largest growth markets in the world. Of course it was rationalized with some sort of Fukayama-esque "end of history" stuff. But that was desired largely to the extent it might create some sort of Chinese middle class. It kinda sorta did. Now they buy things and take vacations even while under the thumb of their hybrid Communist/Confucian system. It'll do for the purposes of global capital.
That may or may not sit well on a moral (or at least emotional) level but that's not the primary consideration for global business. Yes, it probably should be. But it isn't.
This isn't about China corrupting us. It's about our own increasingly globalized upper echelons deciding it's all a great system. Not much force is required to gain compliance.
2
Yeah, I agree with you entirely. That's pretty much my comment.
I support capitalism... but only balanced against other, human values. I don't support capitalism purely for making shareholders richer and trying to make money any way you can. I think the USA has the right to its own culture and values, even if it costs us money. I would prefer it if movies didn't so desperately try to pander to Chinese audiences, as it lowers the quality of the movies. But much more importantly the USA should 110% support Hong Kong right now and oppose oppressive regimes. We should have the courage to stand up to China, not just pander to China like a bunch of sell-outs.
If having an economic relationship with China did spread the idea of freedom and democracy to the Chinese people, how would that even work? Eventually someone will stand up, like is happening in Hong Kong right now, and surely they need us to have their back. If we are more interested in making money from our relationship with China, we can't exactly have protestors' backs. Kind of self-defeating once you think about it. Unless of course you are just rationalizing away the moral cost of being a sell-out.
5
It seems to me that the idea that free trade and capitalism would change China was all based on the mistaken concept that capitalism and personal freedom must go together hand in glove. The fact that this conversation is even happening is clear evidence that the two occurring together is coincidental.
All of that said, the US is building every bit as intrusive of a surveillance society as is China - it's just private entities doing the grunt work and enforcement. From the obvious ones like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, to less obvious instances such as banks raising interest rates when a consumer's card shows a change in shopping habits or Target data-mining purchases to advertise to newly pregnant women.
All it will take is the data brokers refusing to do business with individuals they flag as 'undesirable' for whatever reason and you have a system every bit as repressive as Xi could ever hope to be.
2
@Dur-hamster of Durham, is wrong to conflate the US with China in his refashioning of a deadly repressive dictatorship such as China’s with its complex deadening of real expression of differing opinions and competing ideas, a cultural life akin to a marketplace of dictates.
Sure, in western nations there is a proliferation of follows for shopping, but compare that to people other than Han Chinese, or Hong Kong citizens who fear for their lives. False equivalence.
3
Fine work of stating the obvious, really. Has China knowingly created a Frankenstein hybrid of Capitalism? Is this a modern creation, loosely speaking, of a China state-run economy, Communist Party rule, and a freakishly large free-enterprise able populace? The Chinese economy is so good American CEO's and shareholders are addicted to the hearty investments, future growth and tantilizing profits. I do not see another path of mutual cooperation other than the increasingly tenuous one we have both settled on. Why would China do anything differently? And China's leverage is built in every way for the future. There is one card not yet played, Hong Kong. If China lets Hong Kong revert to the British-like autonomy it had they sacrifice it for the consolidation of the trajectory they are on. If mainland China takes back Hong Kong by old-time, on the ground, face to face force and then enforce it, anything could happen.
This article misses critical points. First, the US has always been corrupt. Capitalism has always been corrupt. The US's goal, from the beginnings of the state, has been to promote capitalism around the world, to the benefit of Americans. Thus, Americans have vastly overconsumed the world's resources and taken vastly disproportionate shares of its wealth. Along the way, American capitalism has been very comfortable in exploiting people and places in order to ensure high standards of living for the people in the US. So, suggesting that dealing with China has led to American moral corruption is simply delusional. Second, the fact that China has pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty is of enormous importance. So is the reality that cooperation with China is absolutely essential to dealing with climate change and ensuring that there is a world tomorrow. What Mr. Manjoo is missing is that other countries will develop in their own ways, taking into account their own history and experiences. The US is built on slavery and genocide; that is at its moral foundation. China today may have enormous problems but in 20 years time, who knows what it will be? Trying to hold it back only makes an enemy where none is necessary. Moreover, I can't help but think that underpinning this is an American fear of losing the ability to set the rules of the world to another power. But the US has proven incompetent and untrustworthy. Why should it remain in a dominant position?
2
The article is not about economic dominance. It’s about upholding our values.
8
I was seduced by China's techno utopianism in the past. I thought we needed to ally with them in order to fight climate change. Boy was I overeager to overlook their growing danger. I think we must avoid war with them, however. That would be devastating and inhumane. You mention capitalism as a cause. The Deng Xiaoping era proved China can make money. The Chinese people are very intelligent, but they are letting their intelligence be wasted through conformity. I believe there is another, more powerful market than mere money. There is the marketplace of ideas.
2
I would like to see Americans increasingly boycott companies that rely too much on revenue in China. These big deals in China mostly just make the billionaire plutocrats in the US even richer. They do little for the everyday hundreds of millions of folks except, apparently, restrict their speech and freedoms in their home country.
If a company wants the Chinese market, let them pursue it -- and leave behind the American market. Let this be so for as long as China remains a brutal dictatorship and as long as Chinese companies are effectively just arms of the Communist Party.
3
We tried a non-engagement policy for many years with Cuba, and it was a complete failure.
Taiwan not safe. Southeast Asia watches military islands being constructed in the seas belonging to the Philippines, Thailand etc. Containment globally is part of any answer. The trade war will not end with China opening markets and welcoming competition while foregoing theft and concessions from foreign companies. A new strategy required based on the sober realization the Chinese Communist Party has a firm grip on 1.4 billion people and will never let go to get a better grip.
1
I couldn’t have said it any better. We ignore mainland China at our peril.
2
The Uighur situation appears to be complicated. The Uighurs had their own territory until many Han Chinese were encouraged to move in. Muslim Uighurs include many terrorists, and a surprisingly large number ended up in Guantanamo. There has been much violence between the Uighurs and the newly-arrived Hans. I do not know enough to judge the Uighurs. But they may be akin to Chechnyans, partially explaining the government’s heavy-handed actions
Why did you ever think we were uncorrupt in the 1st place? I don't think anything has changed.
The saddest scariest article I have recently read.
1
I am old enough to remember all the arguments for trade with the Soviet bloc and other repressive regimes: Trading with us will liberalize them. In reality, we see that craven greed on the West's part was far more powerful and today's capitalists kowtowing to China is the most salient example.
2
I suspect that Xi will not consider the 100 years of humiliation to be dealt with until the humiliation is returned.
2
Another winning piece. You have become my "go to" NYT columnist, Farhad Manjoo. Since we're all about telling the truth as we see it, or rather, however we see it, I appreciate that someone on the media's left page is taking a turn to speak in plain unambiguous terms. Thank you for naming the oppression, the deceit, and the disastrous compromises that established voices and politicians can't bring themselves to state for fear of committing offense. Fear that "we" might lose out on a pocketful of gold in the far east has led us all to buy into a shameful quietude even as we have become completely dependent on cheap imports of stuff we can't make anymore. The Chinese government has always been pretty honest with us if not with their own citizens: they intend to exercise their manifest destiny in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the South China Sea and the newly belted colonial dependencies. Xi has never pretended in his public statements to promise a future of democracy or greater individual freedom.
Keep looking at the world with fresh and honest eyes. We need this kind of sunshine in our paper of record.
8
This all makes good sense indeed, but what can America do about it now?
The USA has no moral standing to admonish the goverments of other countries. Its own rogue ruler has been a godsend to dictators and tyrants the world over, has trashed America's good reputation abroad, and been blasting away at America's civic and diplomatic infrastructure.
Rectifying the disaster that America's federal government has become is the best way for Americans to help people eslewhere, especially in China because America is only other country strong enough to really deal with China.
1
The communists are scared to death. With a single message via Twitter, and no guerrilla warfare, no AK-47s, no ammunitions, no Molotov cocktails, no sabotages, no bombing of oil pipelines, no kidnappings, and none of the usual weapons used by extreme left terrorists, the regime is furious. Freedom of speech? They hate that in addition to umbrellas. The people of China will win.
2
Those touting china as a major world power must be smoking something fierce. Major world powers don't faint at the sight of an offensive tweet. Major world powers don't throw a temper tantrum over winnie-the-pooh cartoons, #freeHongKong displays, or censor vast swaths of the internet. And citizens of means from "major world powers" don't escape to western democracies, parking their families and assets there, while touting that their home country is a "major world power".
6
Could have China's economic accomplishments been achieved without the USA. Japan couldn't have done it without us. Europe today isn't Europe of the twentieth century because of us. At least they killing each other for the most part like they did. I won't bother you with my insane belief about the plans to spread the wealth and to eventually create a world government. Even China's not beyond investing in impoverished countries in Africa and the Americas. Democratic principles take time to evolve. Look at the EU for example is it trying to become an Empire or a world leader? We'll see.
True if you work for a corporation like the NBA you have to put up with them. Corporations always have funny ideas about free speech. They even had Fox news sounding like the ACLU. Yes, really. But the nytimes editorial last week saying free speech was dangerous. Do you really want a Justice Democrat deciding what is hate speech and making it illegal to say the world isn't going to end in a few years. Comrades.
The problem that the authoritarian China government does not provide Universal Suffrage (the right of all adults to vote for the laws and make up of the bodies that govern them) - for their citizens. has been tolerated for too long! Now with China's increasing dominance or just engagament in certain global areas (think remote surveillance, AI and 5G for starters) there is an unacceptable threat to the freedoms citizens of all democracies. Indeed they may well bring Universal Sufferage (note the 'e'!) on all of humanity! ;-)
1
Don’t blame China for our unwillingness to improve ourselves. China and Chinese society gives great deference to leadership and is collectivist in its culture.
The USA problems have NOTHING to do with China. The USA decides not to invest in education. The USA decides not to improve infrastructure or allow social fissures to go unanswered. The USA decided to elect an incompetent President and a GOP whose main issue is ensuring white identity.
We are willingly receding to the background. Most Americans are isolationists that have no clue what is happening beyond their from door, let alone the world.
1
All true, but not the point of the article. The point of the article is about core values.
We know the construct of morality only in the preaching of it, not in the practicing of it. I wonder why we are we so imminently corruptible?
How much can we eat?
For evidence of 'embrace China into immorality and corruption' please see the places/countries where they have spread money in South Asia and Africa. All of S.E. Asia was pivoting toward the US until Trump trashed the TPP because it was an Obama initiative.
Your premise is frighteningly accurate. There are heavy reasons that prevent people from wanting to become Chinese (as people previously had wanted to adopt and affect an American, English, or French culture in the third world).
By accommodating and embracing China, they will not become like us in any way that benefits the planet. We will become like them - immoral, unrelentingly engaged in manipulating populations (locking them up), blind to human rights abuses, tolerant of stealing what others have, belligerent, and dictatorial. I can look around - right here - and see that happening.
1
China simply implemented the Singapore model on an industrial scale. The bet was that a well fed pet wouldn't mind a gilded cage as home.
Of course, they didn't a chance of succeeding without 40 years of incessant help from American corporations eager for that extra dime from outsourcing. Net result in America: a booming yacht industry for the 1%. Opioid addiction, jingoism and xenophobia for the rest.
Net result in the world: increased output but a gigantic democracy deficit.
4
A better argument is that it lifted another veil we hide behind in our quest to project moral superiority. China is definitely a bad actor, but to claim that we needed one other thing to reveal our corruption is a myopic and self-serving way to dismiss all of our already piled up dishonesty. Our government, our companies, and our organizations have been doing the same things that you find corrupting for decades now, just look towards Latin American or the Middle East. Actually, we are the one nation that is directly responsible for the longest occupation of people in modern history, the continued humanitarian disaster in Yemen, and the absolute destruction of a whole nation through a decade-long war in the hope we have better access to cheap oil. If that didn't ignite a sense of shame in us, companies turning a blind eye on China's human right abuses definitely won't.
Our past wrongs don’t make China’s wrongs right.
1
@Dan That's not the point, the point is that when one uses "corrupted us," not "added to our corruption," we are playing a dangerous game by insinuating that we weren't corrupted already. Farhad Manjoo usually goes out of his way to be politically correct, something that should be lauded, but true political correctness is in the subtle, not in the headlines, otherwise he is just another part of the problem.
This is the best single summary statement anyone in the media has published on the reality of what is the People's Republic of China.
2
Ok, tell me something I don't know. Nevertheless, your liberal apocalyptic frenzy forgets that: 1/ Authoritarians in China freaked out about those Hong Kong teenagers (and their very vocal parents) who reject an Orellian future; 2/The EU has not collapsed because populism has no viable policies or program; 3/ Even in the USA, people are fed up with the chaos foisted upon them and are fighting back; 4/ More and more of the young (hello Greta, and the Hong Kong youth) would rather engage in their civic and democratic reponsibilites than be mindless consumers of the cheap babbles and social media infotainment that global capitalism has given us.
Not surprised to find such shallow analysis and pretentiousness from the NYTimes on China. However, being 2019 now and not 1999, can we get real experts to opine on the complex Sino-US relations and Chinese ecomonic reform and how it has impacted the average Chinese and American? To imply that China’s ecomonic reform since the 70s has not resulted in political reform or openness shows a lack of understanding and insight on China. China’s rise is inevitable and US’s decline is also inevitable. Democracy is not an all out solution, look at what the US did to push political and economic reform on South American nations decades ago and look at where they are now.
1
Solid analysis. China is a growing danger to the world.
5
I work in Higher Education in the UK and recall having a conversation a decade or so ago with a colleague about the spineless of the West with respect to China’s shameful human rights record. He mentioned the usual line about China having pulled many millions of people out of poverty; his sense of wonderment when visiting his UK university’s new campus in China; and his indication that I wasn’t being fair when I called the regime out as a police state.
I still think I was right to want to have nothing to do with such thugs.
3
It's stunning and scary how many 'negative responses' this well-reasoned and essentially inarguable piece has received. 'Negative responses' in quotes, because it's highly unlikely any of them are from Americans (of whatever ethnicity.) China has a huge cyber army that, like Russia, spends all day attacking and infecting social media nodes like this with their well-honed talking points to respond to critics: people who say bad things about China are'racist'; America has a colonial history (classic whataboutism, a technique stolen from the Russian chekists), and on and on. Any one reading them should keep in mind the strong likelihood it was written by a paid Chinese troll. And they should also remember that trump has many financial ties to China as well as Russia. They are both the enemy of democracy, and we should disengage economically with both of these authoritarian and dangerous rogue states.
7
Farhad, you've given voice to my very thoughts! That China will become a template for authoritarianism around the globe, with stepped up surveillance and suppression that would rival any episode of "Black Mirror." There are already signs of that in the US, along with our authoritarian president who is currently flouting the Constitution. God help us, I don't see a good ending here unless a plurality of voters wakes up and connects the dots. Or are we all too enthralled by Chinese dollars?
3
Agree. We can not co mingle with China. They are too far authoritarian. It is a disgrace to work with them. They want to annihilate our system of government and freedom.
3
Dealing With China Isn’t Worth the Moral Cost
We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China. Instead, it corrupted us.
[ This is what racism amounts to. We are returned to the Chinese Exclusion Act days. Consorting with the Chinese will corrupt us? Racism. ]
2
China appears to be proof that communism has beat democracy by exploiting the greed of capitalists and the Panglossian fantasy spun by neoliberal economic theory. We may think of companies as being American, European, etc, but any multinational company is not really tied to a country, but to maximizing profits. If that means looking the other way while journalists are butchered and citizens brutalized for marching for basic freedoms, then so be it. That's just the cost of doing business in the modern age. After all, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” Friedman, 1970 https://nyti.ms/1LSi5ZD
While I disagree with Friedman, it is clear that most businesses operate according to his view. When the NBA, Blizzard, and others openly bow down to China, they are clearly following his advice; however, undisclosed changes and limits on products or free speech (e.g,, telling anchors not to discuss issues sensitive to China) are clearly deceptive.
Despite the deception and the fact that these companies are morally bankrupt, I don't see them changing unless consumers change. We need to stop buying products from these companies, stop watching their coverage, etc. Only lost profits will make them listen and change.
Could not agree more with Farhad. Thank you. Same has been the case with Russia (via proxy of its Oligarchs). We are witnessing live, in all its horrific glory, how easy it is to corrupt people (in and out of power) absolutely. Just for a few Dollars more. Sad that despite all our technological and so called civic progress, we remain a primitive species at our core.
4
Well said; well written!
It appears that maybe we (America) may have overplayed our hand in China.
3
Please America, stop trying to spread democracy.
You have misjudged this kind of thing before.
AND quite frankly, right now, the world sort of expects the CCP to outlast American democracy.
1
It’s not about spreading democracy. It’s about living our values.
Wow - great column. It should win the pulitzer prize. And I am not being sarcastic.
I often don't agree with Mr. Manjoo, but he hit a home run with this one. He is 100% right on almost every point.
3
What a terrible take from Farhad. This kind of perspective usually comes from reactionaries that don't know anything about China or Chinese people. The vast majority of China scholars agree that reform and opening has made China better overall -- improved standards of living, a growing middle class, and yes, a more free and open society compared to the Mao Era. Chinese openness and liberalism, much like American liberalism, waxes and wanes. But ever since reform and opening by Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s, the overall trend in China has been towards a more liberal society.
China is not fundamentally opposed to the USA on any true sense. The overall ambition for the Chinese government and people is to become more like the United States, rather than seek to end it. The US should try to lead China towards openness -- for example, the US should punish China's treatment towards Uighurs and Hong Kongers, but always remember that its in the interest of the world that the US and China never become enemies.
If people really want to know what actual China hands think about the current situation, they should refer to Sinica's latest conversation with Ezra Vogel and Orville Schell: https://supchina.com/podcast/is-china-the-enemy-featuring-ezra-vogel-and-orville-schell/
1
Farhad is not suggesting the countries become enemies. He’s suggesting that Americans live their values.
I cancelled my subscription but have renewed because of you, Mr. Manjoo. Your pragmatism and courage are refreshing. People underestimate this threat. We are already seeing US citizens censor themselves so as to not offend China. I wonder how the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy would feel about such a situation? China can oppress far beyond their borders, no bullets required. The Chinese Communists are an existential, amoral threat playing a long and dirty game to undermine us while we can't see past four year election cycles. This won't be pretty. We need more voices like, you!
3
I've read somewhere that democracies boil over occasionally, simmers, boils again, it's recoverable by design. Totalitarian dictatorships however, are like pressure cookers, they explode violently.
1
Capitalism looks to me like the root of many evils.
I enjoyed this column and I agree with most of its contentions. Another way to describe the West's strategic error is to say that its indifference to political circumstances in China allowed the Chinese economy to become far too big to fail at the same time as China's governance turned back in the direction of authoritarianism.
With a president-for-life now strapped in, an unprecedented surveillance and security apparatus at his disposal, and a government unconstrained by the rule of law, China is now only one man's paranoia away from an episode of Terror that would make Robespierre, Stalin and Mao feel queasy.
The West should have made democratization its condition for market access, just as the Chinese demanded technology transfers and much else. The history of powerful, unconstrained presidents-for-life does not suggest that their regimes last long or end well for their citizens. But the Chinese economy is now too big to fail for all of us, in China and around the world.
1
"But if we are to have any hope of countering China’s dictatorial apparatus, we’ll need a smarter and more sustained effort from our leaders. I’m not holding my breath."
There is another good reason not to hold your breath: the very same technology China uses to sustain its dictatorial apparatus is exactly what is used by corporations to sustain their dictatorial rule over their employees. Figure out how to subvert the one and the other will fall by the same means. Guess who does not want that.
2050 China will be the biggest economy in the world.
China has the best of all worlds: the best of capitalism and totalitarianism.
China is will not be hindered by a belief in a magical god therefore they will be making pragmatic decisions.
China will control the world's economy.
Pragmatic decisions yes, but a soulless place. Not due to lack of religion but due to lack of individual liberty.
Capitalists (Wall Street) needs to measure future profitability using something other than sales growth. Eventually, companies will have saturated the global markets so one day this will be required however if they can come up with a new metric sooner, then expanding anywhere will become less important and issues like China will become irrelevant.
This never ending need for growth has to be exchanged for something different that still measures future potential.
2
This country needs to decide what it really wants out of its foreign policy and then apply that policy consistently across all of our bilateral and multilateral relationships. If the U.S. to be the leading liberal democracy then we can't discard our principles when it's convenient to achieve some other policy goal.
China's greatest sin is that not that it doesn't embrace Western standards of human rights, but that it dares to do so outside of the Western geopolitical system. How else do you explain the fact that we're loud about criticizing China and Iran but silent when it comes to Saudi Arabia in Yemen? We have two standards: one that applies to our allies, and one for the rest.
That doesn't work when you're trying to claim the moral high ground as justification to place economic and diplomatic sanctions. China is a rising power challenging the U.S.-led framework that has benefited us ever since the end of WWII and tremendously enriched our country. Now, that they are an economic and political threat to the U.S. we will not hesitate to utilize the full arsenal of tools at our disposal to stifle their challenge.
Therefore, the moral argument isn't something our political leaders ever truly subscribe to. Instead, it's trotted out to build public support for actions that we'd take anyways. So is China corrupting us or have we already corrupted ourselves?
6
Great article. However, the opening to China was never about 'liberating' the Chinese; it was driven by the 'profit motive'. That is simply built into how our businesses are structured. The CEO of a corporation who deviates from focusing on returning capital to investors will be punished or removed. We need to create a viable alternative structure is not solely focused on the interests of the investors (at the expense of everything else).
1
The Upshot is that WE brought China along and now China has become a genuine rival on the world stage. China's rise is owing to Trump, but he's not the only one, just the most recent and most annoying -- to China and to his own citizens,US. We may to face up to an uncomfortable truth: We are no longer a valid world leader.
2
There usually is a cost to standing up for what you believe in ...
I respect and agree with Mr. Manjoo's perspective.
China's government and governing system is an anathema to our values. They need and will better respect if we, as Beijing does, stand up for what we believe in and put our money where our mouths are and allow the chips to fall where they may.
It's time to stop allowing ourselves to be overly compromised by greed and gilt which ultimately makes ourselves appear weaker and actually truly be so.
Beijing and more importantly the Chinese citizenry will respect and respond more postively if the United States and it's allies hold ourselves sincerely and entirely to our stated values.
We cannot have it both ways. Appeasement yields contempt and potentially fuels conflict. It is long past time for "the west" to stand up for it's stated values and walk the walk vs. allowing ourselves to be corrupted and so easily cajoled for what ... a few bucks ... digits on a ledger on unfeeling computers.
On so many fronts, it's seems we have lost our way ...
I am optimistic that we as a people can be more honest with ourselves and with others and stand for something more than what we have in recent decades ...
No matter the cost.
1
Time to reverse Nixon’s China policy. Consider it was Nixon’s idea in the first place.
4
Who are "we"? The US government? Individual US companies? The reason "we" deal with China is because of the huge market, not some higher moral purposes. This article somehow shows the arrogance of colonial days.
Are we pretending organizations like NBA is highly moral? Behind the facade of American values, it's an organization that makes money for the elite owners that your articles usually target. Profit maximization is far more important.
Lent's not be naive about this. The NBA "firm stand" has more to do with domestic backlash than standing up to the Chinese government. The calculus is that the US market is still much bigger than Chinese market for NBA.
3
Arrogance of colonial ideas? No, the basic human appeal of individual freedom. Once you taste it, you will understand it and will never want to go again without it.
We should remember this as the final victory of "the opium wars". We stuffed opium down the throats of the chinese.
We should remember this as the outcome of the Boxer Rebellion and the partition of China into economic zones for the Americans, British, French, Russians, Germans and Japanese.
At the start of WW2, American gunboats still patrolled the Yangtze River.
Imagine Chinese gunboats going up and down the Mississippi River.
And we expect the Chinese to forget?
The Chinese communist party has been brutally effective in creating state repression and economic efficiency.
I think the republican party admires how effectively the communists exercise power.
Russia bungled its transition after the cold war and has turned into a brute with tanks and atomic bombs.
You would not buy a toaster made in Russia. You cannot buy a toaster that is NOT made in china. Capitalism in China is brutally efficient and productive. And profitable.
So China makes its own rules. It acts in pure self interest. It cares not a whit about what other nations and peoples think.
Vietnam Vet
12
Individual liberty is superior, not because it can always be relied upon to produce optimal outcomes but because individual decision-making can be free from interference. Decision-making from the tribe, group or collective always has the potential for taint from command, coercion and groupthink inflecting decisioning.
Without protection for the individual, free speech, rule of law and an independent judiciary to defend the marketplace of ideas, there is no reliable way to confirm anything about China today. Journalists writing about China should note their work with the caveat that assertions made below have not been tested in open forum and what follows is little more than an exercise in fiction-making.
Thank you for this, Farhad. This is the clearest, most forceful statement of the China problem I have yet seen. Yes, they are an existential threat to our liberties and institutions. We should not help stregthen them by doing business with them. Thanks again.
14
Two issues.
We are in a trade war, and some say its about copyright and patent protection, neither of which helps Average Joe back at home. Our country gives monopoly power away for free, and the original idea of patents was to bring innovation to the world, and after a few years, it is free to everybody.
The other issue. Any multinational company that does not look for the lowest dollar, but instead takes the high road, is beaten by the race to the bottom. If we had international standards and everybody obliged, then we would have something worth while. If a CEO says he will not go into that market, the CEO will be replaced with somebody who does. Please answer that, because this argument is vapid otherwise. Looking at Hong Kong, where people will be imprisoned for decades for acting out today, do you have no plea Fahrad. Please give solutions, rather than gripe about problems.
3
The Chinese government now offers the world the same bargain it offers its own citizens: get rich and shut up, or stay out. I agree it is not worth the cost to sell out on free expression. On the specific issue of Hong Kong, I believe the issues are quite complex and one needs to understand Chinese history to see why there is so much popular resistance to the HK freedom movement. (Steph Curry, Steve Kerr, and Greg Popovich -- all intelligent and worldly people -- said the same today.) But: just because I may think Morey's statement was overly simplistic does not mean he has no right to make it. The test of free expression is not, do I agree with you? When we sing in our National Anthem " . . . the land of the free . . ." we mean: say what you believe and I'll defend your right to say it and believe it.
5
To the idea that you can ignore economic reality to make a moral point I oppose the words of the old song:
"Money makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around. . . " China sets, or will set, world wage rates, U.S. workers are overpaid and in future will be paid less. In the same way China will set world political and moral standards. Excessive Western political freedom will have to be controlled and reduced in order to compete with China. Get ready, change is coming, and not the sort you want.
1
China played the west. Needing to industrialize, it did so without borrowing. Instead it offered cheap labor to global corporations and they moved their plants to China.
Millions of formerly rural poor moved into cities to staff those plants. Living in dorms and working long hours they were still better off than their parents who starved during the Great Leap Forward.
Meanwhile China's GDP grew and they put the dollars they made to use buying mining companies, long term energy contracts and other tangible assets. Farmland is their latest purchase.
China buys friends and influences people all over the world building infrastructure in Africa and the rest of the third world. The US tries to enforce its will at gunpoint - and makes enemies in the process. The US has wasted trillions on a military spread all over the world. Meanwhile China gets US technology through trade agreements and espionage.
3
It’s depressing how easily American companies sell out their souls to China. In the end they increase their profits, but they are making a world where they have less and less choice on what they can do with it.
Wake up Capitalist Giants, have you forgotten that democracy is more important?
6
We don’t condemn them because many of their domestic policies are exactly what progressives want for the US: suppression of federalism; strong central government that suppresses state and local government; a large central government; centrally managed economy, suppression of speech through political correctness. How can they criticize what they strive for?
3
@Kent Kraus : Have you seen the (progressive) lawsuits by California against the current administration? Have you seen the resistance to localities who declare themselves sanctuary cities? Have you seen calls to have the CIA monitor WhatsApp and Facebook, and to ban Google? If progressive Americans sound like Chinese communists that's not on them. It's your distorted view of the facts, the truth.
Excuse me? The values of insidious American corporate capitalism don't exert just as much hold on the masses here as the venality of Chinese Communist capitalism there? We have known for decades that shopping at Wal-Mart means supporting Chinese manufacturing while this new economy has gutted American factories. Some of us have principles and vote with our wallets but most Americans don't care, as long as they get all that cheap stuff.
2
I still wonder if Nixon's overtures to China were by themselves problematic or if the current situation is due to or mismanagement of the relationship since then.
"A parade of American presidents on the left and the right argued that by cultivating China as a market ... we would inevitably loosen the regime’s hold on its people." But did this parade of presidents really care about loosening the Chinese regime's hold on its people? Or, were they primarily concerned about enhancing the compensation packages of their corporate donors? I find it difficult to discern a left or right among Clinton, Bush, and Obama when it comes placing corporate interests above all else. (I'm still waiting for the Obama administration to prosecute a Wall Street executive for the financial fraud that created the Great Recession.)
3
Yes, the Chinese Billionaire Party is doubling down on totalitarianism and has no intention of letting go of its grip on that nation's citizens anytime soon. And yet the United States cannot feasibly take on China alone and needs to construct a strategic alliance to confront the economic and political threat that they represent.
President Obama thought that alliance was the TPP - and it could have been had he given American labor more direct access to the negotiations, and thus more reason to support its ratification.
Our next Democratic president would certainly be free to revisit participation in the TPP, provided that he or she can bring labor along for the ride.
Given the direction that the GOP appears headed, the time is coming when the people of the United States may be forced to choose between oligarchic capitalism and democracy. China opted for oligarchical capitalism without democracy. Let us here in the US not make that same mistake. Let us get our own house in order so that we will again be fit to lead a global alliance of nations that care about liberty and justice for all.
2
"China has engineered ferocious economic growth in the past half century, lifting hundreds of millions of its citizens out of miserable poverty."
Not to ignore the author's thesis (though I'm not sure what it is, exactly), but this is significant and should not be buried as a throwaway line. Billions want what the West already has. Do we deny them that economic opportunity if they are being ruled by a totalitarian government?
3
All the cheap goods you and I bought from China over the last 30 years filled our living rooms and kitchens (and storage facilities) with a volume and quality our parents would never have believed possible for prices that allowed us not to notice or care too much about our rising medical and college costs (until now).
4
Excellent and timely editorial. The future, if we can refrain from self-destruction, may well be an Orwellian materialism with China the dominant player, as Edgar Cayce foretold. But one can live as if a larger plan is unfolding that rises above a collective materialism, just as the individual evolves yearning for greater understanding.
3
As Farhad points out, we are way past the slippery slope and into free fall mode. The combination of multi-national firms that have no ties to any sort of values and our own companies that have made unacceptable accommodations with China that even puts their own long term survival at risk, you have to wonder if the people running these firms need protection from their own decisions. It appears that has been the case for decades now, so the next question become, outside of this column, how does everyone become educated that economic engagement with China comes with hidden costs that no one should want to bear.
1
If i remember correctly, isn't this what Deng Xaioping expected when he liberalized China's trade and economic policies? He said, paraphrasing: We will use their own system to destroy themselves. A here's a quote: "No matter to what degree China opens up to the outside world and admits foreign capital, its relative magnitude will be small, and it can't effect our system of socialist public ownership of the means of production."
2
The problem in China appears to be that the Communist Party will do almost anything to hold on to power. Their surveillance technology is spreading because it offers leaders a way to control their populations so they can hang on to power. This type of future is clearly not in interest of humanity as a whole. Similar technology is spreading here to obtain personal data to analyze and sell the results to advertisers. Overcoming capitalism's drive for profits and growth certainly creates a conflict in dealing with China. The bottom line should be that Americans stick to their core values such as democracy, freedom, justice for all, etc rather than the corporate bottom line of more money.
Out of the Seven Deadly,avarice is the most destructive. It seems ,also, to be the most respected. With the exception of Afghanistan, all our wars since Viet Nam were justified as being in our "national interests", "our way of life." We have evolved from trying to do the right thing to doing the profitable thing. "SAD".
Wonderful article.
There are two kinds of people in life. Say both are passing each other in a narrow hallway.
One says, "Excuse me" and forces the other to the side, and the other says "Sorry" and makes way for the other.
China is the "Excuse me" nation and America is the "Sorry" nation.
3
I beg to differ. US multinationals have barged their way down that corridor for years and in this case they have bumped heads with an equally belligerent party. Power or dollar? take your pick.
With due respect to the broad validity of your overall argument, Mr. Manjoo, our degradation began long before our broad steps into China's economy. We've relied heavily on China's (and India's) students to keep the scientific programs of our world-class universities for much longer, while our native-born population majors in such essential and cutting-edge subjects as Communications and Sports Management.
The latter major is telling, given that China has imprisoned intellectuals and human rights proponents, the people that build progressive and just societies, for decades with nary a mention. But we can generate headlines when the meatheads of the NBA, who are fun to watch but don't really add the value to society that their paychecks would imply, end up in a hypocritical stance.
Given the centrality of our education system to China's development, a great way to both reassert ourselves with China and improve ourselves within would be to require all students in American higher education to major in both a science and a liberal arts degree. We've spent too long giving China the benefits of our science without the teaching culture. And we've spent too long excusing ourselves from the rigors of the science that has helped defend and advance our culture.
3
I'm not as far to a conclusion as Mr. Manjoo is. This based on years of business experience with colleagues in China.
First, hundreds of millions out of poverty is simply a miracle. The people I worked with were middle class and had aspirations similar to our own. That is definitely a new thing, and it's a complete reversal of Maoist communism.
Second, I think by most measures, freedoms have improved by a lot, even if still deplorable by our western standards. Freedom to travel, speak, to "pursue happiness", have grown over the last 30 years, even though there are plenty of glaring counter-examples.
Third, you can't just pull out of China. Our economies are intertwined from a supply chain point of view. It's easy to say let's not manufacture our phones in China, when the truth is, we don't have the capability to do it, not now or anytime in the foreseeable future.
Fourth, let's at least admit that a command economy can take steps to do important things such as act on global warming, something that seems to be impossible in this country.
Fifth, yes, China is rapidly becoming a surveillance society, but it's not the case that we aren't trying to do the same. It's just that they have seen that AI was strategic before we did, and they're investing more in it. There's no question that our own government wants the same capabilities in the name of security.
It's not as good as we would like it to be, but it's better than it could have been.
13
@Incontinental I ran out of space, but despite concluding that the situation is not as bad as it could have been, it's also important to look forward.
China is focused as a western democracy can never be. Taking the lead in AI is not just about developing a surveillance society. It's also about spying, and warfare.
Owning the means of production puts them in a controlling position.
And last point, to say that they corrupted us with their lures of easy profit is to say that we were not already corrupted with our own greedy visions of profit.
We should not be trying to fool ourselves and blame others. That's the weakest argument of this column.
How do we know “opening up” is good for China? Are we sure if China is “liberated” ... whatever that means...China won’t become another Venezuela, or Argentina, or India, or....?
Chinese are not dumb. They look around and they see voters in democratic countries keep electing people like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. They see high rate of drug addiction in America. They see corruptions in many democratic countries. They see homeless people in so many cities in developed, democratic countries.
The list goes on.
And look at China. Not a rich country still, but in a short 40-year period of time they have changed so much, mostly for the better, I may add.
No political system is perfect. The history of western democracy really is not that long. A philosopher commenter recently even suggested maybe democracy is only for Gods, not for us ordinary people.
Each country has its own unique history and culture. A better way to avoid conflicts is by better understanding of each other.
7
Such an important article because capitalism only "finds" its conscience when the conscience of the public is aroused.
Maybe it's time to go beyond Trump's bumbling "negotiations" and begin a boycott of all Chinese goods- here and in Europe. We need to turn them into a pariah nation.
4
Reading many of the comments, I think many are by Chinese gov. operatives. Or maybe they're freelancers?
We could just take our basketball home. Perhaps the conditions, as the writer argues, won't allow for anything other than sport and empty spectacle.
The difficulty is in communicating with Chinese people, who lack access to views from outside the state propaganda. The idea of "ping pong diplomacy," from Nixon's opening to China, was to bring athletes and then ordinary people from both countries into contact. We, or the NBA, would lose business, but more importantly, we'd lose cultural and social access that might be worse than the lost bucks.
2
leave China alone. they got a system where 1.3 billion folks live. if they wanted to change the system they could and probably even be successful. Let us deal with our problems here in the US and let the Chinese people deal with theirs.
Don't see any problem here. We get lots of cheap goods and money to borrow, the Chinese people get a higher standard of living and a powerful military. Everyone is a winner.
4
Do individual American companies/organizations have a choice? Without U.S. government intervention, any company who doesn't work with China will be at a disadvantage to it's competitors who do. It is not simply a question of "how much profits do we want to make?" Rather, isn't it a question of survival for the company under the current framework?
A great reminder about what is really happening in our world. Just as the Republicans are happy to support Trump if they get something they want, the United States and other countries are happy to ignore China’s human rights abuses and environmental degradation in order to get things they want. It all comes down to people with power willing to go along with anything as long as they can make a quick buck.
It is up to us as citizens to demand better from our elected officials, but we also have to demand more of ourselves. We could cut off all relations, including trade, with countries which behave in these ways. I would rather buy products made in the United States where we are working toward everyone earning a fair wage. I can live without the latest iPhone and throw away clothing. I would rather not buy a product that is shipped halfway around the world wasting energy and polluting the oceans.
I am not an isolationist, but I don’t want to see these regimes profiting from their relationship with us. Their downfall will come much more quickly if we isolate them and develop relationships only with countries who have proven records on human rights and environmental responsibility.
4
Remember: every US corporation that has chosen to do business with China does so for one reason: the Chinese market is too big to ignore if your goal is growth all costs.
All of the complaining about China's theft of intellectual property is true -- but the problem could have been largely avoided if US companies chose to not chase that dragon and instead ignored that market (and of course its profits). Instead, when the Chinese government says, "If you want to do business here you must turn over your IP," corporations say "thank you, may I have another?" Instead, no, we taught the Chinese how to build stuff, and now they do, and they do it well, and we don't.
1
@Andy have you done a lot of work in China? I run an industrial design company in Toronto and have many American clients who makes their products in China. Not ONCE have I been exposed to "you have to turn over your IP" threats. Most of the American business people that go to China or being sent there by their companies are top notch executives. You think they are this dumb when repeatedly having to surrender their best assets and they keep going back? Really? If you want a Chinese to make you a pizza, it's very likely that he/she does not know how to make it. It is just not in their diet so if you want cheap Chinese labor to make pizza cheaply for you to ship around the world, you would have to teach them how to make it and give them the recipe. Is that the stolen IP you are referring to? I've witness many American companies took in factory own creation and take their ideas and given to another factory to make for a lower cost. Is that the stolen IP you are referring to? I travel to China on business close to 10 times a year and spend countless hours interacting with the industries here so I'm not speaking based on the North American bias media coverage. I witness these what I wrote first hand.
1
It is the fundamental weakness of capitalism. Millions of individual decision-makers may choose to forego or ignore moral considerations on the rationale that it's somebody else's problem.
In that way, a monolithic enemy that is efficient and focused can turn capitalism against itself; turn its innate driver of self-interest into a pricing mechanism for freedom. And you find that people systematically undervalue freedom until they no longer have it.
In other words, we've sold our values in exchange for cheap socks and iPhones. We can be better, but we need actual moral leadership, and leadership that won't be corrupted by money, which is unfortunately a characteristic of capitalism.
17
No Farhad, we did not think economic growth and technology would liberate China.
The 1971 Nixon outreach to China was to tear it away form the Soviet Union.
We set up China as countervailing power to the FSU: build cheap things for us to buy from Walmart, we lowered interest rates, drove up asset value so the loss of jobs was balanced by using homes as an ATM.
Bottom line, instead of getting a servile client state against the FSU, we created a new power that now rightly questions why we should set the rules.
We paid the moral cost a long time ago and it was for the shortsightedness of our 'leaders'
2
"American and European lawmakers, Western media and the world’s largest corporations rarely treat China as what it plainly is: a growing and existential threat to human freedom across the world."
Right on target, and should be constantly at the forethought of policymakers, business-people, HR organizations, and citizens. Aside from having the backbone to confront China, we also need to excise, either by impeachment or by defeat in 2020, the existential threat to our own freedom that is represented by Donald Trump.
1
The thesis here bespeaks of the very arrogance we have regarding "dealing" with China. China is a major world power. Its existence and growing economic prowess are not dependent upon our acceptance, investment or "good will".
Frankly, the US policy is repugnant with racism with regards to China. These are not some "little foreign yellow people" in need of our "enlightened white burden leadership". We continue to interact with China in an extremely condescending manner.
To "deal" with China means we have to accept China for what it is; including that its political system is different from ours. It is not going to bend to our system of liberty and individual civil rights because we think that's the natural order of things. And in all frankness, our current political morass is hardly a paragon of virtue to which other should strive.
We can choose to ignore China and attempt to isolate it. But that didn't work out so well when we tried it after 1949 did it?
All these tariffs are accomplishing is incentivizing Chinese corporations to rapidly expand their production capabilities in facilities located in other nations. So in fact, we are financing China's increasing power and influence over both its neighbors and within the global economy.
We're now at a point where China doesn't "need" us. So we simply have to decide whether we want to interrelate with another major world power as it is or move towards confrontation and chaos.
83
@George
The TPP would have been a healthy balance on all concerned. What the guy in the White House doesn't get is that China is playing the long game, not the get rich quick trump university game.
22
@George
China does need America as can be seen from how earnest it has been to negotiate a trade deal - case in pt the vice premier led delegation has arrived at DC for another round of trade talks n it is important to note it is the Chinese delegation flying half way around the world
The CCP regime needs the western technologies, the capital markets to raise n access money (Alibaba Baidu NetEase all listed on American exchanges) n the American consumers for the Chinese made products
It will take truly a great politician to deal with China - Trump is too corrupt to be that one - by leveraging whatever advantages America (still) has to force a change of behavior in the CCP
It should begin by supporting the millions of Hong Kongers in their existential quest to maintain their freedom under the Sina-British treaty.
The Capitalist America should realize there would be much bigger profits to be made if China becomes a less totalitarian regime where there is an open market with a rule of law; no need to push for regime change just push China to become more like Hong Kong rather than the reverse.
9
@George
Spot on.
The tone of this article shows the western condescending view of China. Has the author and others actually spent time there on the ground with the average citizens? Or just the dissidents who beat the drum in NY and SF?
While Beijing is no saint (but neither is Washington), the average China person is living a prosperous life, genuinely patriotic for what its country has achieved and increasingly unhappy with its demonization by the west. He/she also is prepared to accept a strong state for harmony over personal freedom much of the time. We may not agree with that hierarchy of values but it is a fact and shows how little we understand of their mindset and beliefs.
What is most dangerous is how the view of China has become more and more radicalized over the last 3-4 years. Just look at how what is written in these pages has changed. The Cold War view is just pushing China away from integration with the US (which created mutual dependence) to direct competition with us.
We will look back on this moment ten years down the road as the turning point where China doubled down its own Apollo efforts on semicon and whole host of other strategic industries and freed itself from needing the US. Yes it will be painful for them in the short term but we are unleashing the dragon that will come back to haunt us later.
We need to find a better way to engage here vs the high handed ‘China must’ refrain. It is however hard to see that happening.
17
China is 100% on the Republican side
Notice for example how if the market drops a little too much they come back to the bargaining table
They want to give the White House a big trade "victory" just in time for the election, and instigating a cat fight with the NBA ( and yes, Morey is completely in on it - the Rockets are the most China friendly franchise in NBA history ), opens a front against Democrats from the left and the right
You're welcome
1
If America only deals with countries that have strong human rights policies, America would have very few trading partners. The question is how do we get totalitarian regimes to improve human rights. I think engagement is still the best way.
Look at the appalling human rights abuses by Mao. As Chinese become more affluent and educated with many getting their education abroad, I believe a younger generation of Chinese will start making changes for the better. Change does not take place overnight.
3
@Joseph B Change is also slowed down if oppressors are condoned and rewarded, rather than being called out.
1
Manjoo writes: "A parade of American presidents on the left and the right argued that by cultivating China as a market... we would inevitably loosen the regime’s hold on its people."
Not true. The objective of trading with China was not regime change, as implied. We have believed that liberalization of trade with China, strengthening ties in many areas of society, would over time lead the Chinese people to demand more freedom. And despite the Xi crackdowns, keep in mind the demand for liberalization in Tien An Men, and the rise of the people of Hong Kong.
This is not a straight line; there will be setbacks. But the biggest setback to the strategy of liberalization implied by closer ties is Donald Trump. He is a dictator wannabe in the image of Xi and others.
Without support from America for Democratic forces in China and elsewhere, dictators feel relieved of any requirements to hold back.
We will help the Chinese people by impeaching Trump.
1
The China story is one that was enabled by a gross miscalculation of 30 years of US foreign policy. The long term arc of “defeating communism” essentially meant drawing a path to democracy for all communist nations and through such a transformation ensure that said nation remains a staunch ally of the US. Giving the average citizen a better life through jobs brought in by American manufacturers typically resulted in the leadership adopting American political ideals. This worked through force or otherwise all the way from Japan and South Korea to Mexico to Germany. Even the fall of the USSR was an attempt along this arc but failed.
With China, the attempt not only failed, but American political and business leaders failed to see how the size and population of China made it an essentially different beast where the same formula would only work if the American middle class was sacrificed.
And they obliviously made that trade. Together they created a powerful economy that they are not welcome at and will spend the next 30 years fighting against. Meanwhile the American middle class out of desperation votes in clueless populists who are unable to fix it not just because they are totally incapable, but because the entire political apparatus is still oriented towards the arc envisioned during the Cold War.
3
Why are most U.S. media forgotten about how Americans benefited from low Chinese labor in the last 20 years. Raising their own living standard buying cheap goods from WMT and Costco. Rail against China being the bad polluter while U.S. business cutting every single cent possible in their business negotiation with factories so factories have no way but to cut corners to keep cost low. The jeans we wear, the water that uses to rinse the fabric and rid of the excessive dye and chemical, where do you suppose they go? For a $10 item you buy at Walmart, factory in China usually gets $2.5 to make it. Roughly about 70% of it will go to material cost which leaves about $.75 for overhead and profit. If a factory makes 15% of that $2.5 cost, they are pretty lucky already. That's about $.40 potential profit but they are responsible to make the item, pass inspection, ship the item and be liable for it for up to a year for warranty. Retailers like Walmart will charge for shipment that are even a few days late and some will insist on air shipment if the items are late. So who makes the rest of the $7.5 in the cost you pay? Retailer takes $2.5-3, importer or brands takes another $1.5-2 while the rest goes to other middlemen like transportation and insurance. Some of the Chinese workers I know not only work 10-12 hr days but they do it away from their families and only get to see their kids once or twice a year. Disagrees with the Chinese government but do not cast the Chinese people as enemy
7
I have a yuge beautiful perfect bridge to sell you. American CEOs knew darn well that China was a nation with desperate people willing to work at slave wages... and that the state would tolerate pollution so why not move the steel plants there? And the Chinese are meticulous and passive so why not move the clothing industry there and shoes.
And yes rich Chinese will buy luxury products made in France or Italy (where they are beginning in some cases to dominate the leather industry - Prato) … and now there is a rush to buy automobiles.
If you're making yuge profits why worry about details like human rights.. anywhere? And the US citizens who hope they will win the lottery go along with this philosophy.. unwilling to pay an extra quarter for some Walmart junque made in India, that might allow a woman to feed her family meat once a week or some such.
1
Great article. Do we really need to deal with China? Surely there is a limit to economy of scale. There are a billion people in democracies in Europe, Nth America and the Western Pacific. And that doesn't include India, which is still a democracy despite Modi. Why not just trade with each other, or with other countries that play by our rules? The world is big enough to have several independent political-economic blocs.
8
Until the Chinese abandon currency manipulation, unrestricted labor practices, intellectual property theft and a host of other business strategies that are designed to make the playing field slanted only in their favor, we should indeed avoid trade with them. Sacrificing ethics and moral standards to gain access to their markets may seem appealing, but simply lowers business behaviors everywhere for the worst. Let them evolve a bit more and prove they can be good and honest brokers.
7
@Dennis W
Who is the "we" who is going to avoid trade with China?
I don't trade with China. American corporations - Apple, Walmart, Ford, GM, and Chrysler trade with China. Millions of products on the shelves of American stores or for sale online are manufactured in China. Who is going to stop this trade?
@Cornflower Rhys
I just offered an opinion in the NYT on basically unfair trade practices from China. I charge if I have to figure out how to solve the dilemma and need more space than this to explain.
1
I would add that while this is all happening, we have thousands and thousands of Chinese students in our best universities, taking spots away from deserving American students, largely because they are able to pay full freight. These students are very likely to return home after their studies to compete directly against us. Tell me how that makes sense.
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@Father of One I don’t think there’s evidence they’re “taking away spots” that I’ve seen. It makes sense because it’s better for us (and for them and for humanity) to have China’s best minds here rather than there. I don’t see this as a problem. I see it as a potential solution. We want to introduce freedom to the people of China.
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That is not necessarily true. Chinese students are applying to universities the same as American students. Not to mention all of the elite Americans whose children are stealing spots at the top universities from hardworking Americans.
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@Father of One There are two kinds of international students, Chinese or not. The best minds with no resources at home will stay in the US. They tend to flock to elite universities like the Ivies, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Caltech, and other elite research universities, from Washington to Wisconsin to Rutgers. This enriches the US. These colleges need them to sustain their research programs since ... US born students do not go to PhD programs. Sorry to say.
The 2nd and 3rd rate minds with resources back home will go back and continue their family business or work for a large corporation there. They tend to congregate to get their bachelor's at less prestigious colleges who need their money, because the states have decided in the past 30 years to stop funding public education.
It makes sense because our government have gone capitalistic with regards to education.
6
While there's definitely concern in regards to China's totalitarian state and economic demands to fall in line or lose access to their market, there are signs of hope as well. Australia's Parliament is discussing China's influence on the country and instituting laws to limit their international students and home-buyers, aren't they? Hong Kong is in the world's spotlight and holding its own against China, far more effectively than I thought they would. And African and Asian countries that have been beneficiaries of its Belt and Road program have realized the hidden costs behind those programs, not least of which is the staggering debt they're burdened with should those investments fail and the security-sensitive land and assets they have to give up to China.
1
Mr. Manjoo - Many thanks for this clear-eyed column. I have felt this way for a long time and could not fathom why the West did not have a coherent and comprehensive strategy in place to counteract it. We need a containment strategy similar to that we had against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "President-for-life" nations always self-destruct after a time. But we need to constrain the cyberauthoritarian model now before it infects too much of the world. And that means containing China.
14
Excellent article. It should also be mentioned that China's bullying in the South China Sea is not only threatening the sovereignty of several Southeast Asian countries but also the US, Australia and Europe in their freedom to sail through a vital sea lane for trade and security.
15
The Xi ride on the dynastic cycle of authoritarianism is yet another repressive mass movement. alhough not as dramatically awful as the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. The political dynamics in Zongnanhai are beyond our purview, and the cycle will take another turn as it always has. China as an aviary will return, and there will be more rational attempts to bolster what has always been a fragile nationalism, or as Sun Yatsen described as "a heap of loose sand."
2
It is about time to get back to the righteous cause so well expressed by JFK:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
10
A fine and terrifying essay, Mr. Manjoo.
I'd wager, however, most Americans have little idea what's happening in Xinjiang (or Tibet), or how US academics and tech companies sold (gave!, in at least one prominent case) China the tools it needed to survey/control its population with stunning precision.
We are complicit on several levels, as you wisely point out, and we are also at risk, as is every democracy in the world.
11
Excellent op-ed. However, given that most surveillance technology is generated in Silicon Valley, I’m skeptical that technological enslavement will be exported by Chinese overlords.
I’m willing to bet there’s plenty of social engineering and manipulation perpetrated upon Americans daily by fellow citizens. I’m sure this very post will be analyzed by an algorithm or human. We just don’t know about it, and that’s what makes this aspect of technology so chilling.
1
It’s becoming increasingly clear that American companies will sell out American consumers and our dearest, closely-held values as well, all in the name of their bottom lines. Unrestrained capitalism ain’t pretty.
25
All those conservatives who believe government should operate like a business may want to reconsider. This corporate behavior of moral abasement in pursuit of profits is predictable. Is that really how conservatives want their government to work?
1
This should not mean we should abandon the *people* of xi China as we do the vile tyrant who strangles them. On the contrary, the megacorps who so love the profits the Chinese bring them can take a page from some of them and sell their (otherwise legitimate) wares and products bootleg-style—switching fast between trains and street corners and barber shops to sell quickly and avoid both getting jailed under the NOT-Communists' oppressive laws and funding their thuggish army and police forces with taxes.
The black market must be their ONLY market in China, and business must only be conducted with apparent non-government[1] customers. Similarly, services must only be offered for short periods and (especially with NBA and other sports events) in makeshift "pop-up" arenas and fields to avoid oppression-enforcement. Because selling wares that way precludes meaningful support for buyers—3-year warranty coverage is right out—it might even encourage said megacorps to sell *high*-quality offerings to keep the people buying from their fly-by-night shops and preserve reputation.
But it is long, LONG past time for companies to stop any and all white- and even grey-market business in the country, until the regime that claims it substantially falls. To continue to is to fund and approve xi's evil, and fill their own money-lined hands with blood and guilt too.
[1] Because it's hard to conclusively *prove* someone's in no way a spy or undercover for the regime.
1
could it be that many USA companies did not have its secrets STOLEN by china but in fact gave up secrets in order to sell goods to china over the past 30 years?
2
@john boeger um, no.
I don’t fear China nearly as much as four more years of America under Trump as he, along with the tacit endorsement of his party, has diminished our standing along with that of a fair and open democratic system, throughout the world. In the last three years, he has changed, for the worse, what we all used to believe were democratic norms and human decency far more than China has in the past 50 years
11
China is not going to change and suddenly become a bastion of democracy. Have we learned nothing from our misadventures in the Middle East believing we could turn Islamic countries into democracies?
We either accept China the way they are, or refuse to do business with them entirety. Just ask Walmart shoppers if they think that's a good idea.
9
"We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China." We? Certainly not me, ever. I and many others saw this coming over 20 years ago, but were ignored and laughed at by people who were supposedly way smarter than me, and certainly made a lot more money. They certainly knew at least as well as I, about the danger posed to the world by building up China the way they did , but chose to turn a blind eye and pretended otherwise, because there was too much money to make.
18
@walkman "I and many others saw this coming over 20 years ago, but were ignored and laughed at by people who were supposedly way smarter than me, and certainly made a lot more money." Yep, I know 2 lawyers who worked on the TPP. They were both dismissive of my concerns about TPP and one of them even congratulated themselves for "lifting millions out of poverty" even as I pointed out that they'd done it on the backs of US workers. This was before Trump was elected.
1
The assumption underlying this is that we were innocent until the rise of Chinese style capitalism and that we have not played a similarly harmful role throughout the plant. China is playing from the same playbook as Western democracies which are replete with deception and greed for power and control. I think the greatest thing we have to fear is not Chinese dominance and surveillance but these same things which have taken root here. The demise of democracy is not an American problem but a worldwide problem. And currently we have as much to fear from our own leaders as we have from China's.
24
It's not just China but a rather constant theme for US led globalization, which enriched some American businessmen more than America as country and general Americans. American businessmen and companies just outsourced corruption and crime abroad. Many times it paved ways for local dictators to use (mostly short term) economic growth and "patriotism" as their main weapon to grab or remain in power. It's known that businessmen and so-called market love strongmen than democracy, even though innovation and long term sociopolitical stability that they so crave are found mostly in functional (mostly, western) democracies.
Rise of China and its leader Xi is no exception.
It also affected and continue to affect mainly the poorer developing countries by endangering economic and political instability, encouraging corruption & crime which, in turn, affect US national interest in many ways that include increased immigration of rich but corrupt/criminal businessmen/politicians/bureaucrats etc. besides increased migration of affected people from such countries, along with increasing flow of blood money into US economy. US real estate and growing number of student from rich families from such countries are few good examples to have a better idea.
6
I'm afraid it's the American penchant for wanting something for nothing that has enabled China (and others) to fuel its economy whether it's not a nice government or not.
Americans live under their own form of totalitarian control by allowing the business community to keep wages low. Businesses left our shores and moved, voluntarily, to China and elsewhere because of the American brand of "shareholder value" capitalism. This made it easy to move operations to other places where there were no regulations and dirt cheap labor. And, anyone paying attention knows that Americans are addicted to cheap stuff. People on this thread are already bemoaning the fact that millions of jobs and opportunities were lost to the Chinese over the years, but I bet most Americans would revolt if they had to pay real wages to their fellow Americans for the same, higher priced, products. So, perhaps Americans should take a good hard look at themselves as the very enablers that make China possible.
29
@mrfreeze6
This is an out-dated argument. According to McKinsey, global trade based on labor costs (what economists call labor-cost arbitrage) is less than 20 percent of the total goods trade and has been declining over the past decade. China is no longer a low cost manufacturing location when compared to other countries such as Vietnam.
3
@andrew Great, you just proved my argument further: Businesses voluntarily move to those locations with the lowest labor costs and few regulations. Why? The "I've got to have that big screen TV for $50 mentality of most Americans." Why, because their wages have stagnated and they can't afford goods that would cost more were they made here.
@andrew true Andy...but your missing the game of volume...can't compare volume/scale of China's unrivaled magnitude to "lil Vietnam...geographically and supply chain speaking...not ethnic related....its dispicable on .labor wages internationally….you need to start taking in non-Monsanto laced food...
Your article starts with quite a few false assumptions.
Technology does not liberate. It enslaves. Even in the 19th Century, industrialization imposes new requirements on when, where and how one might work, and it is not any different now. Instead of being freed by technology, people are tied to their phones or computers. Although their parents work 9-5 shift, many in the post-industrial World are on call 24/7 and they may even have to provide their own work space, benefits, etc. etc.
In the case of China, there is no question that the general public in China enjoy much greater freedom and have access to information not available decades ago, and I would hardly rank China as the #1 oppressor. I would rank India, Pakistan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries that routinely mistreat the female half of its population as worst offenders of human rights. Not only do women have little to no right to vote or own property, they are routinely killed if they are raped, or if they want to marry someone of their choosing.
Last, China is hardly the only country concerned with the risk of terrorism. The fact that other Muslim countries have remain largely silent on China's policy toward the Uighurs might well be an indication that they want to see if re-education on a grand scale could work.
27
@Elizabeth other Muslim countries haven’t spoken out about Uighur repression because China has silenced them the way it silenced the NBA! This is its whole thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/world/asia/china-xinjiang-muslim-camps.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
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@Elizabeth other Muslim countries haven’t spoken out about Uighur repression because China has silenced them the way it silenced the NBA! This is its whole thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/world/asia/china-xinjiang-muslim-camps.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
As for repression in Muslim countries: I’m not sure how that absolves China.
17
@Elizabeth
Outstanding analysis and rebuttal of the bias inherant in Farhads opinion piece. China in fact empowers women, and has for decades. It is one of the actual benefits of it's current form of government (compared to China under imperial rule in it's history).
China policy has shifted in the last decade, not to some Americans liking either, but anyone who actually talks with and knows Chinese people in mainland China understands that Farhads opinion here is pejorative to Chinese life and the Chinese people as a whole.
3
Our current crop of leaders is two faced. On the one hand they employ weak and ineffective strategies to "control" China while in the background they are embracing and implementing China's authoritarian technologies.
1
There are alot of agnostics and atheists in the world who believe what China is doing is liberating to the Ulgyrs.
As a person who grew up in the stranglehold of evenaglitical culture, my mental health was liberated and stabilised the day I left religion. So when Ulgyrs do interviews and say they 'see the light', I believe them.
I agree it is a difficult thing when people are being reeducated out of their own free will - but nevertheless, there are millions of people around the world who believe they are being liberated and China is giving them a gift.
10
@EC this is nonsense. They’ve turned entire cities into surveillance prisons. It’s not what you experienced in American evangelical culture. It’s state repression. The analogy is badly flawed.
198
@EC Technically speaking this is not true. China is one of the most tolerant countries when it comes to religion, as seen by the administration’s encouraging ethno-religious policies. As such, it is fighting back against the encroaching stranglehold of Wahhabism on Xinjiang, as many had been incited to rebel against modern society and values in the hopes of a never-existed world of purity as defined by contemporary political Islam.
7
@EC Also raised in an evangelical home and became an atheist when I left. That experience isn't remotely close to what's happening with China. Nobody should be oppressed and forced to adopt religious beliefs or be targeted by the government for what they believe. If you had a belief system shoved down your throat, you should be sympathetic to that.
15
Given a number of mounting trends in the so-called "Western capitalist democracies," it seems clear that "our" leaders are increasingly envious of the totalitarian state engineered by the Chinese Communist Party. As real wages continue to fall and as "surveillance capitalism" (a la Facebook, Google, and the NSA) continue to expand into every crevice of society, as education becomes but an apprenticeship for indentured corporate servitude, and a militarized police force wields extra-judicial power -- our resemblance to China increases every day.
20
Why just China? What about US engagements elsewhere that’s primarily for profit? We have been, for quite some time, a nation of shopkeepers, and it shows.
1
Lifting many millions of people out of abject poverty was the noble and correct thing to do. This does not mean it was free of risks and downsides.
Now we must do the noble thing again by expanding our international outreach and influence in all forms to both cooperate with China on global issues and contain China to preserve the democracies of all free peoples until China's people demand a democracy of their own.
7
@Alan This represents the beliefs of Neoliberals. Neolberals thought they could "ride on a tiger". Now we are on the inside of the tiger and the tiger is smiling. China's people cannot blow their nose without the government knowing let alone demand anything at all. Noble? Correct? Nice try. Welcome to the "risks and downsides"
Excellent column filled with accurate and I believe prescient observations. The Chinese Communist Party is a huge threat to democracy, human rights, and the natural environment as none seem to have value unless they reinforce Communist Party rule.
62
It goes back far earlier than 80's and 90's hopes that technology and growth would liberalize China. "Opening up China" is often touted as Richard Nixon's greatest foreign policy achievement. At the time, I think (I was a teenager), Nixon's acts were seen through the lens of the Cold War, in which we saw it to our advantage to separate the Chinese from the Soviets, and we wanted to encourage China to see trade, rather than Soviet style militarism and client-state acquisition, as the avenue toward increased growth and world status.
Was this Nixon's greatest achievement, or his biggest mistake? Arguably, the Chinese figured out what the Soviets never did, that strict adherence to the economic principles of Communism were never the key to maintaining the regime's power. In fact, the harsh medicine of authoritarianism goes down easiest when there are a lot of bright shiny things to distract people.
49
@FJP What the Chinese figured out can be seen as an extension of Lenin's "New Economic Policy" of the 1920s. What the Chinese have figured out is defeating capitalism not by confrontation but by selling us cheap stuff 'till we're hooked.
@FJP No, there is method in the Chinese Communist Party's madness. It still thinks it's faithful to socialism. It's become inclined to see that democracy only leads to far-right authoritarianism, perversely justifying its modified far-left authoritarianism.
1
@Chris Partially true....though there are huge issues with China's product quality...and consequently a years-on shift toward other countries for commoditized minerals, textiles, cement, steel, etc....further, with Americans' anemic wage growth (and waning middle class) since late '90's, China isn't making the $$ it had envisioned ...other countries have supplanted China supply chain for approx. least 6 years..and its growing...China's supply chain/manuf. efforts are exponentially down for past 3 years at least.....not up.
Well Farhad, you are right on the money on this one. The success of a totalitarian regime of this magnitude is a threat to all countries with aspiration of freedoms. I do see war as fairly inevitable, a war of words or bombs or cyber attacks. Unless of course, we cave in. So far, China advances and freedom retreats.
One is tempted to discuss the past, but more useful to discuss the future. I do think China's totalitarian regime will collapse. But I am not sure if a global coalition led by America will be there to see it.
37
Outstanding article... Strategically, it's been a crazy 30 years. The US exported vast swaths of its 200 year-old industrial economy to China. The justification was... "Old industries, labor-intensive, out of date plants; let the Chinese have it." And even... "New industry, tech-intensive, easier to build and operate in China." We exported quite a bit of energy use, along with CO2 emissions from the power plants and factories... We permitted vast levels of IP theft, and/or forced transfers. And what did we get in return? A weak, hollowed-out industrial sector, long term idle & unemployed former workers and lots of fentanyl.
260
@Arctic Fox And desperation among displaced workers leading to the election of demagogues like Trump.
5
Don't forget our smart phones are made in China and we all got use to their affordable price. What would we do without them?
@Arctic Fox And beyond CO2 emissions, comes the far dirtier (to lethal) Artic methane bed leakage that's been happening...and with China encroaching on the ARctic (like Russia) for faster shipping lanes and territorial control... ...more emitted pollutants are creating a chain reaction from the base line of a weak C02...to coal plans and again, artic methane leaks from the #1 world polluter ...china.
Thanks for pointing out the problems we have tolerated and encouraged. And you didn't even mention the loss of untold numbers of American jobs and industries to China, and what that has done to American workers (and our politics). Bill Clinton and the corporate bosses were wrong when they decided to let China into the WTO.
74
@A Realist No, it was just too much, too fast, with not enough support to get the unemployed new employment and not enough sharing of the wealth created through greater public provision of social goods. It was the combination of increased respect for trade and reduced respect for government that was wrong.
3
I have come to the same conclusion as Mr. Manjoo. This latest debacle with the NBA is only the last in a long string of instances in which American values have been tossed aside in favor of money. We trumpet those values as the greatest asset of our country, more so than our vast mineral and material wealth, but the wealth of IDEAS, as to what makes America "great." Our political and business leaders' greed and avarice show how much they cherish those quintessential American ideals of freedom, free speech, and religious liberty.
They value a dollar, or in this case the renminbi, more.
112
@Ken C
"in which American values have been tossed aside in favor of money."
That's to laugh. American values=$. Everybody knows that.
@Ken C
Well said, Ken.
Thank you for this excellent summary. It is bad enough when a country curtails the freedoms of its own citizens, but the ever-more aggressive reach of the Chinese government into other countries of the world is indeed alarming.
99
"We thought economic growth and technology would liberate China. Instead, it corrupted us."
Excellent article. Exactly right.
307
@JustThinkin Excellent article - yes,(great work Farhad), but I think the truth is worse than that:
starry-eyed optimism about China becoming democratic was attended by falling regard and care for it in the United States, both fuelled by too much respect for greater wealth produced by American private enterprise(s). There was too much venality and cynicism to begin with and it's only gotten worse. China has taken note and categorically defied the expressed hopes.
Proper balance must be restored in the US (and elsewhere in the wealthy democratic world influenced by the US) between respect for the public and private, government and business, citizenship and personal liberty, to produce an example China and other authoritarian regimes cannot ignore. The Nordic countries light the way.
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@JustThinkin You are right about one thing economic growth and technology worked in China just about as well as it did in the US.
Who will liberated us from Republicans who have specialized in stealing elections by using every dirty trick ever invented to get people to vote against their interests or not to vote at all?
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@JustThinki
China didnt corrupt us. Capitalism corrupted us.