From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Apr 10 2002 - 11:42:07 MDT
Wei Dai wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 07:50:21PM -0500, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > It is my personal opinion that both prison labor as practiced in
> > China (where most prisoners are confined without even the most
> > basic rights to a fair trial),
>
> The issue here is the lack of fair trials rather than prison labor
> (which exists in the U.S. as well). Even though it has very far to go, I
> think China is improving on that front. Here's a quote from Amnesty
> International's 2001 report on China:
>
> Although implementation of the law continued to be arbitrary in many
> cases, the government renewed efforts to encourage implementation of 1997
> legal changes, including some aimed at improving the fairness of trials.
> Further legal reform was debated with reference to international human
> rights treaties which China had signed but not yet ratified. In November,
> the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UN High
> Commissioner for Human Rights, designed to set up a program of technical
> cooperation in the field of human rights.
Yes, and the USSR was a signor of the Helsinki Accords while at the same
time they kept 10-20 million of its citizens in labor camps, and left
wing groups like Amnesty International touted it as great progress when
the number dropped to only 9 million, while at the same time reserving
far more press release space for rants against the US government for
minor things like the incarceration of would-be presidental assasin John
Hinckley.
>
> > and widespread child labor by children
> > far too young to give meaningful consent,
>
> Presumably their parents consented because all of the other available
> choices are even worse. I don't see how you can solve this problem except
> by making China wealthier.
People get the government they deserve. The USSR didn't collapse because
we opened trade with them, we didn't and they collapsed under their own
weight. We've coddled China because we needed them against the USSR.
That need is obsolescent now, so we should abandon the kid gloves
treatement of China.
I'm not interested in making the Chinese Government wealthier, I'm
interested in making the average Chinese-on-the-street wealthier.
> > and I further believe that most of the money received from abroad
> > for Chinese goods goes to support the government, not independent
> > businessmen.
>
> Do you really think China's export industry can be competitive if that
> were true?
If it uses its guns and tanks to repress labor unionization activities,
when companies in the west are not able to use such measures, then the
Chinese government holds a more competetive position than industry in
the rest of the world.
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