April 21, 2006
Volume 8 / Number 16
Hu Gets the Red Carpet, the Rest Gets Ignored
Dear Colleague:
Yet more congressional testimony about China’s human rights abuses failed to
dampen Chinese dictator Hu Jintao’s American reception, but Congressman
Chris Smith made his point for those willing to listen.
Steven W. Mosher
President
Hu Jintao, dictator of Communist China, received all the trappings of a
state visit this week from President Bush, who ignored China’s systematic
human rights abuses beyond making some vague statements about "respecting
human rights and the freedoms of the Chinese people." As expected, Bush got
nothing from China, which continues to receive all the privileges she
desires-whether it be crushing people of faith at home or flooding the
American market with cheap exports made even cheaper by deliberately
undervaluing her currency in violation of free market principles.
As always, our President and most of our media left out the massive ongoing
human rights abuses that legally take place every day under China’s
population control program. Most Chinese women are allowed a quota of one
or two children, and women are rounded up and forcibly sterilized or aborted
by the thousands to enforce those quotas. Rep. Chris Smith (R.-N.J.) held a
hearing on this issue the day before Hu met with Bush, a hearing most media
ignored. More on the hearing below.
When it comes to China, Bush suspends all his policies about promoting
democracy, human rights, and the free market. Perhaps he thinks China too
small a country for him to worry about such things there, since only 25% of
the world’s population lives under the Communist tyranny’s yoke. Or
perhaps, while saying the opposite, he recognizes that America cannot be
consistent in promoting Western-style freedom and democracy in this
dangerous world.
What especially puzzles many onlookers is the lack of concessions that
America receives in return not for looking the other way as China persecutes
everyone from Christians to Tibetans to parents of two or more children, but
for exporting to China our technology and, now, over $200 billion in hard
currency annually. As of this writing, Hu announced no revaluation of the
yuan to bring it into line with free market reality and no major initiative
to open up the Chinese market to American exports.
Nor has Hu publicly shifted strategy to help keep nuclear weapons out of the
hands of Iran’s mullahs or otherwise assist us in our foreign policy goals.
Indeed, most experts continue to identify China and Russia as the two chief
obstacles to effective United Nations action against Iranian nukes-an issue
the importance of which can hardly be exaggerated.
The rest of the world pays no attention to China’s misdeeds, either.
After all, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded Beijing the
2008 Olympics-a gratuitous and highly prestigious gift from the
international bureaucratic establishment. As Smith understated it, "The
Olympic Committee and the world community missed an opportunity to send a
message to China."
While Bush exchanged pleasantries with Hu and apologized for a woman who
heckled the Chinese autocrat at the White House, the practices described at
Smith’s April 19 hearing continued unhindered. Population Research
Institute President Steven Mosher testified that China’s coercive population
control policy continued and was expected to continue for the foreseeable
future. The Chinese government prefers to stick to fines, job loss, and
other such penalties to force couples to have fewer children than they would
like, yet, Mosher said, "Force is frowned upon but never punished."
Just as China has 30,000 officers censoring the Internet for her population,
China has legions of population control police. "They keep detailed records
of every woman in their jurisdiction," said Mosher.
Women’s menstrual cycles are often monitored at factories or other places
where they work, to detect an unauthorized pregnancy as early as possible.
Mosher traced the origin of China’s population control mania to Western
environmentalist hysteria imported into the Middle Kingdom during the 1970s.
"This attitude has disposed the PRC to view its own citizens as pollution,"
he said.
He noted, too, that some of China’s rising social problems, such as
trafficking in women and child labor, have been caused by population
control, which has led to an imbalance between men and women as girls are
aborted en masse, as well as a labor shortage in Guangdong.
Rebiya Kadeer, President of the International Uyghur Human Rights and
Democracy Foundation, gave chilling testimony about the ongoing genocide
that is currently being committed against the Uyghur people of East
Turkistan. Those with the amusing Whig theory of history, who believe
things keep getting better inexorably, should note that this is just one of
the racial genocides currently being committed around the globe.
"The first issue I wish to bring to your attention is the Chinese
government’s family planning policies," she testified. "In mid-February
this year, a senior official-the Mayor of Urumchi, capital of the XUAR
[Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]-declared that East Turkistan’s rural
area would be the ‘focus’ of future ‘family planning work.’ Generally
speaking, Xinjiang’s rural population is almost exclusively Uyghur, while
the urban population is predominantly Chinese."
As the "family planning"-that is, population control-noose has been
tightened on Uyghurs, the government has been moving ethnic Chinese into
Uyghur areas. "Early last week, the Chinese government announced that East
Turkistan’s population had exceeded 20 million people, having grown 9% over
the past five years-which is one of the highest rates in the whole of the
PRC," said Kadeer. "However, this rapid growth in population is not because
of the high number of births, but because of the high number of people
encouraged to move to East Turkistan from China." Kadeer said that the
Chinese government spares no effort in ensuring that the Uyghur do not
multiply. "I will spare you from hearing the horrific accounts of forced
late-term abortions, of forced sterilizations, and the extreme physical and
psychological traumas inflicted on women as a result of these procedures,"
she said.
Ethan Gutmann, author of Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce,
Desire and Betrayal, discussed the increasing cooperation between American
technology companies and the Communist Chinese government to censor the
Internet and round up Chinese dissidents. Yes, American companies from
Yahoo and Google to Cisco and Microsoft cooperate in Chinese oppression.
Joseph Kung, President of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, testified that 8
Catholic bishops are in jail in China, where Catholics who remain loyal to
Rome are persecuted. Harry Wu of the Laogai Research Foundation described
the Chinese practice of selling prisoners’ organs. Thea Lee of the AFL-CIO
testified to the lack of workers’ rights in China, which gives Chinese
manufacturers an unfair competitive advantage against American business.
And 1989 Tiananmen Square protestor Lu Decheng described his egg-throwing at
that big poster of Mao in Beijing, and the 16-year prison sentence it got
him.
The theme of the hearing was "Human Rights in China: Improving or
Deteriorating Conditions?" No one seemed to think things are improving.
Perhaps Bush could mention that to Hu the next time they get together for a
purely symbolic chat.
Joseph A. D’Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the Population
Research Institute.
