Trade
with China: Laboring to
Prepare Our Own Suicide
June 18, 1999
by Steve
Montgomery
China recently demanded
permanent Normal Trade Relations (NTR) with the United
States.� Formerly known as Most Favored Nation (MFN)
status, NTR permits China to export goods to the United
States without interference from possible high tariffs,
while granting her access to low interest, often US
taxpayer guaranteed and subsidized loans.
President Clinton,�
recently promised to renew this privilege for yet another
year.� But China deserves no such privilege. Here
are a few of the many reasons why.
**� China has engaged
in an incessant, government sponsored, drug war against
America�s youth,�strategically providing hard
cash for China�s nefarious activities and military
buildup, while simultaneously undermining the moral will
and fiber of America�s children, her future
opponents.
**� China, despite
international treaties, formal and informal agreements
with the United States, continues to funnel weapons of
all sorts to sundry "bad" guys and
"rogue" countries, most all of whom are US
enemies.
**� China, in
disregard to the laws of nations and the patent rights of
private inventors and corporations, regularly
participates in both high seas and intellectual piracy.
**� China, has with
its dedication to the clandestine, surpassed the old KGB
in its worldwide espionage, including an intensive 20
year campaign to steal U.S. nuclear weapons secrets, for
which activity she feels no remorse and officially denies
all guilt.
**� And China
exploits "cheap" slave labor to undersell and
rob jobs from legitimate US contenders in the
international marketplace.
That�s why!
And, we shouldn�t
expect them to change, though some free trade advocates
persistently believe they will.� The argument goes,
the more the enemy is tightly involved as a trading
partner, the more he will be convinced your ways are
better than his. Free intercourse breaks down
nationalistic barriers, they say. And this is in some
cases true.
But we make a big mistake
analyzing China from our way of thinking.� To
paraphrase Charles Marshall, "in the language of
game theory, China and the United States are like
opponents playing different games by different rules on
the same board." Their rules, unlike ours, are
extremely complex and flexible, or as Churchill once
observed, �a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an
enigma.� Thus understanding their ideology is
critical if one hopes to comprehend their behavior.
Without this knowledge we are destined to become victims.
China is governed by the
ideology of Marx, Lenin and Mao.� All government
entities, and most, if not all, �private�
companies in the People's Republic of China are
subservient to that ideology.� In the preamble to
China's Constitution it declares that China will be
governed "Under the leadership of the Communist
Party of China and the guidance of Marxism-Leninism and
Mao Zedong Thought.�
That being true, the basic
doctrine of Marxism-Leninism is that a state of war
exists and the Communist Party was created to win this
war. The ultimate enemy in that war is the United States,
and �free� trade has always been recognized as
an important tactic to be used against the United States.
First of all, this is so,
because China has long understood what some free trade
advocates fail to understand, and that is free trade as
interpreted by internationalists is not the same system
favored by libertarians, but a system of planned
economies and partial rules and regulations which favor
underdeveloped and communist states like China and
disfavor free and rich states like the United States.
Second, all advantages
accrued as result of that trade, are in the words of the
China dissident Harry Wu� "used to build the
Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) . . . every penny . . . is
used to build up the military." Or as
Lenin�s strategy suggests, �[the West--lead by
the United States--would["labor to prepare their own
suicide" by "furnish[ing]credits . . . [which]
would rebuild our war industry, which is essential for
our future attacks on our suppliers."� Plain
enough, and their failure of an economic system needs
such aid.
China, admits in their own
official White Paper that it, �suffers from capital
constraint And relatively under-developed scientific and
technological development." All it exports are
�labor-intensive (slave labor) products such as
textiles, garments, shoes, toys, electric home appliances
and luggage." Thus, China is dependent upon the sale
of those goods to acquire hard cash so that they may then
purchase �capital and technology intensive Products
such as aircraft, power generation equipment, machinery,
electronics, telecommunications equipment and machinery.�
Should the United States and a few other major consumers
exercise true freedom and refuse to make purchases or at
least put a more reasonable tariff on these tainted
goods, China�s military would stand dead in the
water. But free trade isn�t free, and China needs
then, that�s not the kind of free trade we are
talking about, we are talking about NTR type free trade.
Third, while enhancing the
infrastructure and industrial base of a determined
adversary, NTR or free trade for China is a key to
maintaining and expanding the international corporate
welfare system. Loans to China and businesses investing
in China are guaranteed and often subsidized by the U.S.
Government--the taxpayer.� Thus, it socializes the
enemy (the United States), helping make international
capitalists (the big corporations) dependent and in bed
with the state, which makes it all the easier to later
make those corporations part of the state. Something
Lenin predicted would happen.
Fourth, �Free�
Trade hastens the long sought Marxist revolution by
intentionally aggravating economic and class conflict. As
noted by Engels in an 1848 speech, free trade would break
"up old� nationalities and push the antagonism
of the Proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme
point."
That is, US corporations,
under this scheme, freely cross national borders
motivated by US government sponsored economic
incentives,� offer wages to the poor masses in those
countries not that far removed from slave labor wages,
flood the goods into US markets (since the average
Chinese citizen could never buy the goods and because the
said corporation has the protected status to so do),
drive American businesses who can�t compete with
this government created advantage out of business, and in
turn foster dependency from a rich country capitalist
country on a poor communist country.
Meanwhile the poor become
poorer as the rich become richer. It all leads to even
more �free� trade to solve the inequalities and
exploitation, and in some cases to violent change, as the
poor realized more and more how much they are being
exploited.
Fifth, as stated above,
NTR would exacerbate the loss of independence and
National Sovereignty. Once a self-reliant Nation with
trade surpluses we now have run trade deficits for the
last 28 years. Since the interdependence of nations is a
communist design, this is a very favorable development
for communists in China and elsewhere.
In the Unites States our
foreign policy is guided by intellectual confusion and
moral lethargy because we fail to understand the Chinese
Marxist Worldview. We make deals with communist agents
and officials as if they represent their peoples. We
engage in diplomacy as if it were an old fashioned power
struggle. We sign treaties and agreements, accept
promises and declarations as if the Chinese were
receptive to our values. We trade with China as if we
were exchanging goods and services with London Merchants.
And while our State Department and business officials
fraternize with Chinese officials in political, economic,
social and cultural matters, thousands of individuals
linger in the LaoGai Slave labor camps.
China needs us more than
we need them. When China abandons (or overthrows)their
ideology and allows� free elections and basic human
rights, then we should grant them� equal status at
the trade table. In the meantime let us labor to prepare
China's ideological suicide by refusing to grant them
privileges which take aim not at their but our suicide.
Steve Montgomery is a
foreign affairs staff writer with Right Magazine
