What of China?

Setting aside for a moment the political aspects of China and focusing solely on the economic, what has happened in that country since the days of Nixon’s presidency is nothing short of remarkable. Their economy stands second only to the United States. They have cities with skyscrapers that rival any in the world, airports that are of space-age design, high-speed rail lines that criss-cross from city to city, as well as many other state of the art infrastructure projects. In less than 50 years, China has gone from being a predominantly agrarian nation with most of its people living in poverty, to being a nation that uses so much cement and steel, it can move the market in those commodities, depending on its demand for them at any given time. Critics of the United States will sometimes remark how much we use of the world’s resources but China, by comparison, uses half of the world’s coal and 40% of the aluminum and copper.

With all this economic progress, has political progress toward a more liberalized government happened as United States policy makers have hoped? According to Roger W. Robinson Jr., chairman of the Prague Security Studies Institute, it has not. In a speech he gave at Hillsdale College in September of last year, he offered China’s concentration camps, where as many as 2 million Ulghur are held, as an example of their political intolerance and backwardness. The Ulghurs are one of the minority groups in China that are placed in forced labor camps. 

After an article appeared in The New York Times, written by Austin Ramzy, about these camps, the Chinese government profusely denied the characterization of them being “labor camps” and instead labeled them as “vocational education centers.” When I watched the CNN report on Ramzy’s article, where a video was shown of the Communist Chinese official making his denial, I was reminded of similar denials and lies being made by Soviet officials when their regime dominated over Russia and much of Eastern Europe. 

Today, the whole world it seems is sick from a virus that emanated out of Wuhan, China. It has brought a new and extreme focus upon the Chinese government because of their handling of the crises that was first theirs and theirs alone. Had it been handled differently, it may have been limited to the Hubei province, of which Hunan is the capital. If not limited to there, to central China or at least to within the country’s borders. It was not and now the existence of a worldwide crisis raises many questions and concerns. For example, why do so many flulike viruses originate in China and then spread throughout the world every year, infecting and sickening many millions and killing many thousands? For the United States, it has raised concerns about our dependence on China for much of our manufactured and processed goods, including medicines used to fight the very same flulike illnesses. These questions and concerns have caused policy makers in Washington, D.C., including President Trump, to rethink our dependence on China, our trade with them and their manufacturing. Hopefully, changes relative to these questions and concerns, (and more), will be the silver lining to this tragic affair. One can only hope.

A former member of the San Carlos City Council and mayor, Matt Grocott has been involved in political policy on the Peninsula for 17 years. He can be reached by email at mattgrocott@comcast.net.