LIBERAL LOYALTIES TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA
The Communist Party of China is our enemy, not our friend. It is time for Liberals and Democrats to change from upside-down thinking to right-side-up thinking. If only they had done so a generation ago we would not be facing the communist monster.
In 1949, a revolution broke out in China. It was a Communist Revolution against the ruling Qing Dynasty. Little by little, the revolution ate up the country until all but Taiwan and Mongolia were under its control. Was the Communist Revolution a friendly progressive socialist movement that bettered the lives of its impoverished masses? No, it was a mean revolution.
Untold suffering was to follow the establishment of communist rule in China. The Chinese Communist Revolution was followed by the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1958 to 1962). This revolution was an overhauling of the entire country, converting it from an agrarian society to a commune-based economy where there is no private ownership. Such an overhaul involved partly industrializing the economy also and led to a great famine. Those who did not co-operate with the overhaul were brutally crushed. Like in Russia under Stalin, only much greater, the process led to an enormous death toll. Although uncertain the death toll for the Chinese Cultural Revolution is estimated at between 18 to 45 million people. The Chinese Communist Government calls this overhaul “The Great Leap Forward.”
This overhaul involved a system of 1,000 forced labor camps. Approximately 50 million Chinese passed through these camps. It is estimated that twenty million died from the primitive living conditions and 14-hour work days. The communists also felt the need to execute the country's educational elite. Moa boasted of killing 46,000 scholars.
If you were not one of the millions slaughtered in the great leap forward, you could look forward to a communistic life. Impoverished free Chinese workers were now impoverished communist workers working for the socialist state.
In the coming decades Chinese society would evolve. New technologies would keep adding more and more tools for surveillance and suppression of the population.China practices the suppression of religious freedom, the suppression of freedom of speech, the suppression of freedom of the press, suppression of freedom of association, the suppression of freedom of assembly and practices organ harvesting. Christian churches are frequently disrupted and their leaders arrested. Churches are sometimes bulldozed down so that their congregants can't use them. China controls what its citizens can and cannot view on the internet. It practices numerous forms of torture. China requires, for their records, the DNA samples, fingerprints, eye scans and blood types of millions of people. China has a mass surveillance system for monitoring the Chinese population. It includes video cameras, mobile phone tracking surveillance drones, etc. By 2019, it is believed that 200 million monitoring surveillance cameras were in operation in China as part of their skynet system. However, by the end of 2020 it is forecast that they will have 626 million surveillance cameras in operation. Chinese citizens have a “Social Credit” number assigned to them and this number increases and decreases, depending on their behaviour. Your social credit number score determines how many freedoms you are permitted to enjoy. Chinese internment camps are another hot topic on which we have no transparency from Chinese authorities. As of 2018, it was estimated that the Chinese government has detained hundreds of thousands, or perhaps a million, of its people in these camps. For decades it only allowed one child per family, with certain exceptions, and required abortion when mothers became pregnant outside of these parameters. China practices capital punishment, not just for murder but for a number of offenses. It is estimated that over 1000 people are executed every year in China. The iron fist is in full swing and many of us in western nations find China's controls over its people excessive and cruel.
When the Chinese Communist party first came to power the world community was slow to accept them and shake their blood-stained hands. They also were not doing well and China's economic future looked bleak. That is, unless they could receive help from some outside source that believed in them. They would find help and forge a new and crucial friendship that would set them up for success. They were befriended by Liberals and Democrats.
While few western democratic countries were willing to shake their blood-stained hands, Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau reversed Canada's previous position towards China and established relations with the Communist Party of China. Canada was one of the first western countries to embrace the regime. The Liberal Jean Chretien years saw a great deepening of that relationship. His government gave them access to the powers of the Mutual Legal Assistance In Criminal Matters Act. The Chretien administration supported China's accession to the World Trade Organization. Once China received accession in the United Nations World Trade Organization, they were set on a course to economic success. The Chretien government signed numerous agreements with the Chinese Communist Party, too many to list here but if you would like more information visit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93China_relations). Chretien's International Trade Minister, Roy MacLaren said "To get China into the WTO was fundamental to our trade policy....I have no doubt that the China strategy was the right one. In my view, it worked." (For the full, longer quote visit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93China_relations).
Of course, Canada was not alone in promoting China to the World Trade Organization. This was an American Democrat objective also and was strongly pushed for by Democrat, President Bill Clinton. It was thought that this would do a lot for globalism. It was lobbied hard for and pushed through and, on 11 December 2001, China was fully established as a member of the WTO.
What was the result of China being accepted into the WTO? Economic boom for China! The rest of the world's free capitalistic market economies have not been able to compete with China's manufacturing empire which is fully government- owned, government-underwritten and government-regulated.China's government has made colossal profits as Liberal and Democrat administrations have accepted huge trade deficits, favouring China, as being normal.
Today China has the has the second largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and, as of 2017, the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity. China has the world's fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates over 30 years averaging 10%. China has poured much of its wealth into its armed forces. China's army is the world's largest military force and they have the second largest defense budget in the world. China has one of the fastest modernizing militarizes in the world and is a military superpower. China has nuclear weapons. Their arsenal of nuclear weapons is believed to be large, but just how large no one knows. China is highly advanced in cyber technology and is involved in cyber-warfare, stealing much technology.
All of China's success can be credited to its being accepted into the world's international economy. This would never have happened if Liberals and Democrats had not pushed so hard for it. They thought that it was a good idea. They thought that a strong China would help globalism. They though that a strong China would offset American dominance. That a strong China would be grateful and become a good friend. They thought it was a good idea.
In 2020 the watched as China imposed a new law on Hong Kong. The law was made to crush the protest movement for freedom. Some of the fine points of the law are as follows:
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Offenses of subversion, secession and collusion with foreign entities are punishable by a minimum of three years, and a maximum of life.
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Propagating hatred of China Communist Party and Hong Kong's regional government is not allowed.
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Those found guilty will not be permitted to serve in public office.
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Beijing will have a new policing force in Hong Kong, that is not subject to the regional government of Hong Kong.
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Rulings of the national security commission, cannot be appealed.
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Foreign news agencies will not work autonomously.
The law was meant to crush the protest movement that began in 2019. The protests broke out in 2019 over an extradition bill put forward by the Hong Kong government that would have allowed for certain wanted individuals to be extradited to elsewhere in China to be judged by the Chinese communist system. This was a clear violation of the semi-autonomous conditions and Hong Kong residents began protesting. The protests begun in 2019 have continued into 2020. These protests have grown to unprecedented levels in Hong Kong and have been reported on throughout the world.
With the new law in place the Chinese Communist Party has begun its crackdown. One gripping photo on the news showed a young Hong Kong man being handcuffed and on his T-Shirt was labeled the words “COURAGE.” Demonstrators are exhibiting enormous courage. Parents are watching their twenty-year-old children being carried off to what could be life sentences.
The communist government of China is a monster and Canadians don't understand Liberal support. We don't care if commerce with China is good for globalism! Communist China has a long history of brutally suppressing its people. It gives them no freedom. It gives them no privacy. It tells them what to believe. It controls what information they can view. It imposes forced abortions on women who don't obey its one-child, now two-child, policy. It has been involved in organ harvesting. It steals our technology. It engages in intense cyber warfare against us. It has Canadian citizens in its jails. Canadians are outraged!
Canadians are outraged and look to our Liberal government for a response. What do we find? We want change, but our prime minister seems to be on another page. In March of 2020, the Trudeau government (Justin Trudeau) allowed for the sale of the Canadian company, Continental Gold to China's state owned Zing Mining for 1.3 billion dollars. At the time of the writing of this article, the price of gold is $1942.40 an ounce. It has never been this high. The Zing Mining deal was a blockbuster purchase for China. It has secured potentially colossal profits for China.
There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. The United States has been moving in another direction in its relationship with China. U.S. president, Donald Trump, walked the road to the White House vowing to upset the trade imbalance between China and the U.S. He has delivered on that promise with a series of steep tariff increases on Chinese goods. This has evolved into an all out trade war with China. Democrats have criticized these moves. However, the trade war has inflicted serious damage to China's economy and the Chinese are eager to end it. It especially hurts them because almost all of their economy is based on international trade and international investment.During this same time America has been working to establish an Indo-Pacific Alliance made up of a number of South Asian countries to shift trade away from China to the new alliance. This has not gone unnoticed by the government of China. They are concerned. There has already been a shift. Large American companies have already begun diversifying their production away from China and to Indo-Pacific Alliance countries. These American companies include Google and Microsoft. Moves like this spell out serious losses for China. Japan, who is an Indo-Pacific Alliance country is following the U.S. example by paying 87 companies to shift production out of China. This will mean a significant restructuring for China to try to mitigate these losses. Trump is now taking the trade war to the next level.On Aug. 23, Trump twittered, American companies to “immediately start looking for an alternative to China”. He is suggesting that he will use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to make American business, based in China to move. Although there would likely be a legal response to using the Act in that way it could potentially stand due to the threat that covid 19 poses to national security.All of these developments have serious repercussions for the Communist Party of China. A sustained trade war with the U.S., combined with a shift in manufacturing away from China, could potentially fracture the Chinese economy and force the Communist Party of China into making large concessions on issues like human rights. Trump shows no signs of backing down from this hard-knuckled approach to the communist party of China.
Many Canadians, like myself, would like to see our Canadian government show this kind of resistance to the the Communist Party Of China. It would mean a big reversal in our foreign policy. The Chinese government does not represent our values. We don't care if it is good for globalism. China's government is a bully. We don't agree that it was a good idea to establish relations with this communist government in the first place. We don't think that China should be allowed to participate in the WTO as long as it is under its present leadership. We want to see Canada impose heavy tariffs on Chinese trade if its government does not change. How many more protesters have to be arrested? How long will fundamental human rights be denied because China doesn't recognize them? How long do we have to be intertwined in their economy? How long do we have to be exposed to their cyber threat? We want to see change.
Shawn Stevens
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/the-legacy-mao-zedong-mass-murder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/01/trump-ordered-us-firms-to-ditch-china-but-many-already-have.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-helps-87-companies-to-exit-china-after-pandemic-exposed-overreliance/2020/07/21/4889abd2-cb2f-11ea-99b0-8426e26d203b_story.html