Forget the rope, how about a rope factory?
Lenin said that capitalists would sell communists the rope that would be used to hang them. He was wrong. Given the emerging rope market in communist countries and the declining rope market in the West, today’s capitalists are happy to give the communists a rope factory. Their stock price could increase a whole two pennies if their annual report were to mention that they were penetrating the vast rope market of a large country. Never mind that the rope factory technology will be stolen and a local will be the one to sell the rope; no, what matters is at least the appearance that something is being done as that is what drives stock prices. Meanwhile, some theorists proclaim that trading partners never fight and that if one country depends on the other then everything will be just hunky-dory from then on. Others proclaim that free-trade will free a country and that the most rabid and foaming-at-the-mouth country can be tamed and reformed by infecting it with free trade.
Some would protest that China, obviously the subject of this essay, is not really a communist country. They are a little bit correct. They are not communist to the extent that Cuba is, or the Soviet Union was, communist. After the collapse of the Soviet Union (has Cuba ever not been in a state of collapse since Castro liberated his country men from material well-being?) it became abundantly clear that a parasitic system like communism could not last long in isolation. Since the real politick of Nixon and Kissinger, the US tried to balance the USSR with China. They did not want the two to cooperate much, and better to separate the two communist powers. If that meant trading with China, even though Chinese ‘volunteers’ had killed and captured Americans in Korea twenty years earlier, then so be it. China came to the conclusion that using its vast population to man factories that were built by the West would do the following: fill the coffers of China and enable a military modernization, placate the population for a while, and strip the West of manufacturing capability1. China does not subscribe to the economic theory of the Soviet Communists, but it does whole heartedly subscribe to totalitarianism. Hitler, Mussolini, and a dozen tyrants in the Middle East either were or are threats without being communists or while even opposing communists. The effect of such a government not adhering to communist economic theory is mixed: on the one hand it makes it a bit harder to export revolution as it is not exporting the classic communist pipe-dream of a workers’ paradise, but it makes it otherwise more dangerous as it then actually has hard cash with which to prepare for its military endeavors.
Some say that China is not a threat as it depends on the West for trade. The follow up question is what does it depend on trade for? For cash with which to modernize its military to oppose the West? In that case it is more like a college student working a summer job; when enough money has been earned it is off to college. For that matter, Imperial Japan depended on the US for scrap metal with which to build battle ships, not that it prevented war after the ships were built. But the protest is that it would be in the best interest of the Chinese people to stay at peace and trade. And that would be true if the Chinese people knew what was going on and had a say in anything. In reality it is censorship and propaganda that feed the Chinese people and it is the tyrants in power who have the say. What motivates a tyrant? Why not be heroes and usher in democracy? Because tyrants do not do that. They seek glory and power. China has always been a populous country and had early advances in language and science. It is one of the oldest surviving cultures on Earth. However, as far as the affairs of Earth go, it really has not been a significant factor at all. Portugal has had a greater effect on other countries in past history. Little Japan nearly destroyed China. Britain took over bits and pieces when ever it was convenient. Mongolia invaded at will. What colonies did China take in the 1800’s? China did take over Tibet, as though whipping up on some Buddhist monks is a good way of proving one’s manhood. China just sent a man into space, three decades after America landed on the moon, and a few months before a private company funded by some eccentric millionaires in California sent a man into space too. The past history of China is pathetic, and the tyrants want China finally to have its day in the sun and to be the dominant player in Asia and ultimately in the world. After a few thousand years they think it is their turn.
Who is this upstart young little country called America with five percent of the world’s population, on a sparsely populated continent, to be the leader of the world? That country is a hodge podge of other countries. The language is borrowed from England; the culture from a dozen countries; and the system of government was formed by a handful of philosopher-rebels a scant two hundred years ago. Who is this tiny upstart little country compared to China? Churchill said that America always did the right thing, after it tried everything else first. That has some truth to it, but the point is that America at least tries to do the right thing. China has no interest in doing the right thing at all. Just wait until China takes the lead. Then everyone will see what a real super power can do. Then the world will pay tribute to China. Then revenge will be taken to right past wrongs. The prospect of an unopposed Napoleon with modern weapons is not comforting. Meanwhile the economic philosophers will wonder why ballot boxes have not yet spontaneously sprung up out of rice patties after so many trillions of dollars of one-way trade; or why, after manufacturing is completely destroyed in America, China has manufactured everything but freedom of the press.
When the Berlin wall fell it ended a long and costly cold war. The cold war claimed about a hundred thousand American lives (between Korea, Vietnam, and other third-party conflicts), cost trillions, and brought the whole world close to ruin several times. The wish was to celebrate and get busy with the business of peace. America was like France after WWI: victorious but exhausted. And like the French and their failure to respond in any meaningful way to Hitler, America would rather not have to face down another super power. The USSR had been isolated economically, militarily, and philosophically. America would rather believe some strange ideas before going through that all over again. Strange ideas like “if you give a country that hates you the ability to modernize their military such that they can fight you, then they won’t hate any more and won’t use that military” and “prop up a tyrant with money and the tyrant will free their people.” That is unspeakably foolish idiocy; something akin to schizophrenic babble. A five year old could see through it, but then a five year old does not have stock options on a rope factory and is not tired from decades of cold war.
So what of the future? Whittaker Chambers1 claimed that in the 1930’s communists working at the State Department did all that they could to destabilize the Chinese government in hopes of it turning communist; and he said that if China did become communist that it would seal the fate of the West. China may collapse under its own weight: although it has a semblance of free trade, it is not completely free and all planned economies fail eventually. Perhaps India will provide some balance; if a country will compete will China economically, that portion of the economy will not go the military coffers. One can give up hope on America or the West in general ever standing up to China before it is far too late. Just as the Fascists in the 1930’s proclaimed to anyone who cared to listen precisely what their ambitions were (even while the democracies could have easily put a stop to the nonsense), then got busy preparing their militaries unopposed for years, and then attacked, it is far too easy for democracies to play with wishful thinking. Today China claims that its military build up is for ‘self-defense.’ From who? New Zealand? Fiji? Singapore? China’s military ‘self defense’ capability includes sinking air craft carriers, and there is only one country that has those. If America were a threat to a peaceful China then America would have attacked and won years ago. Who needs self-defense against a country that will not fight unless provoked? When did landing craft become a tool of self defence? A tool in the defence of not invading other countries? Last time no one counted on America to rebound and to end the totalitarian dreams of the Axis powers. This time who will come to the rescue?
One curious aspect of modern China is its horror of religious freedom. Even the most benign movements terrify the tyrants; it would be akin to the FBI sending in a SWAT team to break up a gray-headed Lutheran Church pot luck dinner. Maybe they are on to something. It is said that Roman Catholic Church played a key role in the Solidarity movement that freed Poland, that started a reverse domino effect across Eastern Europe that went all the way to Moscow (granted, a Moscow that was reeling from Thatcher, Reagan, Solzhenitsyn, and its own poisinous system). Although it is unacknowledged by the post-modernists, the fact is that equality before the law, and therefore freedom and the underpinnings of democracy, is supported only by the Bible and Christianity. Materialist philosphy offers no reason for equality, and if people are not equal then what is the basis of democracy? As G.K. Chesterton said, if man evolved then he did not evolve equally. And indeed, in ability and background, people are definitely not equal. But if God created man and woman they have inestimable worth; and Paul proclaimed that there were neither Jews nor Gentiles; male nor female; free nor slave. The tyrants in China do have much to fear, and like the Romans of the first few centuries they too may learn that like steel, hammering on the Church only makes it stronger. Affluence and ease cause it to atrophy, as the West can clearly attest.
In the mean time though, I will go out of my way not to purchase things made in main-land China; that will not matter at all in the grand scheme of things, but if and when the Chinese have a national day of celebration over the sinking of an air craft carrier and the drowning of 4,000 Americans, I at least will not have been a sponsor of that missile.
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1 Witness, 1952; Chambers also thought that the USSR would prevail, so maybe he will not be right on this one either.
2Has anyone has forgotten that American manufacturing might was a deciding factor in WWII? Has anyone forgetten that the allies bombed German factories in WWII? China has out done the Allies…they do not bomb factories, they kidnap them. Furthermore, manufaucturing, along with mining and agriculture is unique in economic activity in that it actually creates value and unlike ‘services’ does not just pass money around. I have a hard time envisioning an economy based solely on call centers, insurance, banking services, and what not…those functions just ‘service’ the money that already exists, they do not add to the pot. Turn something worthles or of little worth into something valuable and an economy will thrive.