Chinese take out

It’s a question that should be asked of every relationship: “Just what are we getting out of this, anyway?” It is a question that the U. S. should have asked long ago of its relationship with China. On its face, the relationship between these two countries has very little on which to be based. It’s not like they have a lot in common, after all. The U. S. is a leading practitioner of democracy. Chinese can neither spell nor define that foreign word. In the U. S., governmental authority comes from the people. In China, government has authority over the people. In the U. S., everyone has certain unalienable rights. In China, if you are wise, you will try not to alienate the government. Despite all this, there has grown up a relationship between these two that even the wisest man would be hard put to define.

It took an invitation to an American ping-pong team in 1971 to get the Americans and the People’s Republic of China together. Until that time, China was the great unknown, as few Americans had visited there since the takeover by the Communists led by the late Mao Zedong. These visits were followed up with an invitation to President Nixon, and his visit to China was followed very closely by the press. In fact, if the President had been taken to another planet, the reaction in this country could not have been much different.

A lot of water has gone over the dam, since. China is no longer that far-off exotic land it once was. Today, it is a common destination for Americans of all stripes. Since the death of Mao, China has, in many ways, undergone great changes. It is no longer the backward, agrarian society it once was. It has embraced certain elements of capitalism, transforming itself into an industrial power, and in so doing, grown quite prosperous. And its prosperity is helped a great deal by its economic ties with the U. S. Go over to any of the “Mega-lo Marts” of this country, and you will find a myriad of products all bearing the ubiquitous label “Made in China”. These labels will be found on everything you can buy anymore, even foodstuff.

So, I suppose, one thing that American corporations get from the relationship with China is access to its sweatshops, and instead of manufacturing their goods, they simply purchase them from the Chinese for resale here in the U. S. This frees the only remaining employees from mundane duties, such as ensuring that their workforce is paid adequately, and lets them concentrate on more important matters, such as showing the stockholders the improved bottom line.

Another freedom that American corporations get from doing business with the People’s Republic is not having to deal with federal regulators. This can have its drawbacks under certain circumstances, however. Mattel is one corporation that found this out the hard way. Its corporate leaders got so happy counting up its profits from selling toys made in China that it forgot to tell anyone there that lead paint is not good for children. It’s another one of those amazing differences between the two countries. In the U. S., degrading the environment, or exposing citizens to harmful chemicals is generally frowned on. Not that it isn’t done, its just frowned on. But in China, nobody cares what gets dumped into the rivers, poured on the ground, or gets into the food supply, so long as the profits keep going up. Because of this, Mattel had to issue recall notices for its toys, not once but several times, and the number of toys recalled because of lead paint reached into the millions. Believe it or not, red-faced Mattel execs apologized for this incident, and quite profusely-not to its American customers-but to its Chinese partners. “What we had here” one exec was heard to say, “was a failure to communicate!”

Another thing that any country that has had anything to do with the People’s Republic has found out is that its leaders are quite sensitive to any criticism, implicit or otherwise. And its leaders react to any such criticism quite vehemently. Take the little matter of the Dahlia Lama and the occupied country of Tibet. China has been in possession of this land since the early days of the People’s Republic, and the Dalai Lama, the “god-king”-so-called because Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and the spirit of their leader is said to be reincarnated after his death-felt insecure enough that he was obliged to flee from his native land following its invasion in 1951.

China has tried to take over every aspect of life in that country, including the naming of the second-in-command, as it were. Normally, Buddhist monks are the ones who seek out the reincarnated lamas, but following the death of the Panchen Lama, the People’s Republic rejected the monk’s choice, and anointed their candidate to fulfill this influential post. There are those who fear that this process will be repeated following the death of the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama has been nothing if not optimistic, and he has never ceased in his efforts to see his homeland regain its autonomy from the People’s Republic. He has his supporters world-wide, many of who can be found in the United States Congress. It was in this hallowed institution that the decision to award the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal was made. But again, as was the case with those wayward Mattel corporate execs, the “feelings’ of the People’s Republic governmental officials were ignored. So in the excitement of having a ceremony to honor this man, a past winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, no one took notice of the hurt and confused looks on the faces of the bureaucrats there. And after all, to dishonor them is to dishonor the Chinese people as well.

The angry reaction of the Chinese government officials notwithstanding, this award ceremony will go on, complete with an appearance by President Bush. But not without strong words from those wounded souls, who have tried to derail it, and who have stated that it will seriously damage the relationship between the U. S. and the People’s Republic. Which should again lead the U. S. to ask “Just what are we getting out of this relationship, anyway?”