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Beggars Cannot be Choosers

As noted here. Hillary Clinton is trying to win the votes of blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania who may have lost their manufacturing jobs after American companies decided to relocate to China, by urging Bush not to attned the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games. This idea like the rest of the demands for partial […]

As noted here. Hillary Clinton is trying to win the votes of blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania who may have lost their manufacturing jobs after American companies decided to relocate to China, by urging Bush not to attned the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games. This idea like the rest of the demands for partial or complete boycott of the Olympics are hypocritical and silly.

It should be recalled that it was President Bill Clinton — when he wasn’t answering those 3 a.m. phone calls — who had taken the steps, including by allowing China to join the World Trade Organization, that helped set the conditions for the rise of China as a global economic power that is now flooding the U.S. with cheap products while financing its huge current-account deficit, enabling American comapnies to expand their operations abroad and its consumers to go on a never-ending shopping spreee. This historic transformation in Sino-American relationshp was taking place at a time when Bill and Hillary Clinton and rest of the political and economic elies had full access to information about China’s policies in Tibet and Xinxiang or its ties with the military regime in Myanmar. But both the White House and Congress decided that promoting economic interests should take priority over concerns over human rights.

And now that the great American shopping spree is finally coming to an end, Hillary isn’t suggesting that Washington “punish” China by denying its Sovereign Wealth Funds the opportunity to invest in struggling U.S. financial institutions (who contribute to her campaign) or by forcing it to stop selling cheap products to Americans (whose votes she needs). The costs of such decisions could turn the current U.S. recession into a full-blown depression. That’s the reality of the balance of power between the two nations. Instead she came up with an empty gesture that would make Americans “feel good” that they are “doing something.”

The problem with this feel-good technique is that Hillary and many of the Americans who are so concerned about the Chinese human rights policies in Tibet and elsewhere have been directly or indirectly responsible for many numerous human rights transgressions that have been committed in the name of the “war on terrorism.”

One can only imagine the reactions in Congress and the media if the Chinese would have boycotted an Olympics-like event in the U.S. to “punish” it for Abu Gharib or Guantanamo.

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