RE: China's Dissidents Urge U.S. to Back Normal Trade With Beijing

I didn't think the article "rang true" at all, and I lived in Hong Kong and
worked with activists there for several years recently.

Activists in Hong Kong, including those from Asian Migrant Centre and Asian
Monitor Resource Centre, focused on the abuse of workers, but certainly did
not call for free trade liberalism.   I believe the article was obviously
(well maybe not obviously) a propaganda piece by and for US and Asian
liberals.  First, consider the one-sidedness of this comment:

> Once a top aide to the purged Communist Party secretary Zhao Ziyang,
> Mr. Bao is one of China's most prominent dissidents. The catalogue of
> indignities he is forced to endure - tapped phones, permanent
> surveillance by the secret police and periodic restrictions on simple
> freedoms - underscore some of the worst allegations about Chinese
> human rights abuses made in the United States.

If this is really the worst, which is not good, it is also well known that
these crimes, and much worse, are what the US government does everyday here
and abroad.  The idea is to make the CCP look worse in the eyes of the US
public to gain support in Congress as part of the bargaining chips between
US and Chinese capital over the exploitation of Chinese workers.  In so
doing, liberals here and in China are legitimizing the state itself (not the
existing form of government) and pursuing national development, via demands
such as the following:

> ''All of the fights - for a better environment, labor rights and
> human rights - these fights we will fight in China tomorrow,'' said
> Dai Qing, perhaps China's most prominent environmentalist and
> independent political thinker, who also served time because she
> opposed the Tiananmen crackdown. ''But first we must break the
> monopoly of the state. To do that, we need a freer market and the
> competition mandated by the WTO.''

This debate over labor rights is in part a false one.  It is partly true
with respect to improving the freedoms and living standards of people in
China.  It is false insofar as that is indeed partial and not the whole
problem.  The point is not for China to catch up to the US.  That may be
good for the Chinese, but what does it do for the rest of the excluded
world?