Why aren't Westerners so quick to celebrate Kosovo's independence championing Tibet's cause? How come countries that condemned Myanmar's clampdown on monks last year aren't outraged?
China is different, of course. No one wants to cross the leaders of an economy that today produces many of the world's consumer goods and represents a massive market of tomorrow. That's why the U.S. will invade Iraq to foster democracy, while praying that already democratic Taiwan doesn't rock the boat.
Seriously. Our almost pathological unwillingness to "anger China" is due to the fact that China has become the dirty little secret of Western capitalism. Our companies produce (or order) goods from China that are made by women sleeping eight to a bunk and earning stagnant wages, at factories that dump mountains of toxic sludge into the air and water, on land confiscated at gunpoint from poor farmers. We even pay China to take our trash and dump it on their riverbanks. Trade, as economists say, allows each country to take advantage of what it does best - China's comparative advantage lies in oppressing its people. And that oppression keeps our corporate profits afloat in these troubled times.
It reminds me of a quote by the gangster Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II: "This kind of government knows how to help business, to encourage it...What I'm saying is that we now have what we always needed - real partnership with the government." Of course, he was talking about Batista's Cuba.God forbid we should anger our best partner by complaining about little trivial things like human rights.
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