May 23, 2001
Volume 3/ Number 15
Dear Colleague:
Chinese atrocities continue to make headlines worldwide. Yet President Bush is poised to extend “normal trade relations” with the PRC without conditions. Neither the American nor the Chinese people will be helped by a policy of putting profit before principle. Steve Mosher President
Steven W. Mosher
President
All’s Well That Trades Well
The month of May has not been kind to China’s image.
The month began with the publication of a devastating article in the Village Voice reporting on China’s practice of selling the body organs of prisoners, condemning them to death in the harvesting process. [1] The Ides of May were even worse for China. The Committee to Protect Journalists placed Chinese President Jiang Zemin in the top three of its annual list of the world’s worst enemies of the press. [2] That same week the Commission on International Religious Freedom said in their annual report that oppression of religious liberty in China had become worse. [3] Now we learn that a 34 year-old mother of two was beaten to death by birth control police for refusing to submit to sterilization. [4] Yet, according to a recent Reuters’ report, Congress expects Bush to extend “normal trade relations” with China. [5] How bad do things have to get in China before the Bush Administration understands that we cannot blithely ignore human rights violations in the pursuit of profits? How many workers have to be arrested before American retailers like Wal-mart decide it is time to source their products in a country that better reflects our own standards of rights and freedoms? And how many women have to be brutalized in the one-child policy before American consumers decide not to fill up their shopping carts with cheap goods from China? This week the Dalai Lama is scheduled to visit President Bush. Perhaps the Tibetan leader will ask the President why he wants normal trade relations with the country that has occupied and oppressed his own for the past century.
Steven Mosher, president of Population Research Institute, was the first American social scientist to visit post-revolutionary China in 1979-1980. Mosher has authored seven books of China.
[1] Erik Baard and Rebecca Cooney, The Village Voice: Features: Chinas Execution Inc., Week of May 2 – 8, 2001 [2] Enemies of the Press 2001, Committee to Protect Journalists http://www.cpj.org/enemies/enemies_01.html
[3] Report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, May 1, 2001 http://www.uscirf.gov/reports/01May01Report_Index.php3
[4] Chinese woman refusing sterilization beaten to death: relatives http://english.hk.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/asia/afp/article.html’s=hke[5 ] Doug Palmer, House Preparing to Challenge Bush on China Trade http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010521/pl/congresschina
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