Doing Unto China

ARGUABLY, the United States has historically had as its overriding concern in its foreign policy towards China a single objective: economic exploitation, and, to that end, if necessary, domination. As early as the eighteen sixties the U.S., in concert with its nascent railroad industry, facilitated the bringing to America thousands of Chinese workers for use as virtual slave laborers in construction of the transcontinental railroad, without regard to their health, safety, quality of life, or prospects for an adequate life beyond their working years. Eventually, and predictably, the number of Chinese living in the American west exceeded acceptable limits in racist America, resulting in discrimination, violence, and culminating with the Chinese Exclusion Act, under which all further Chinese immigration to the U.S. was forbidden. Bring 'em here, use 'em, abuse 'em, then discard them, and ensure that no more of them enter the country for their own purposes. The moral implications of this behavior are evident. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was apparent that China's vastness offered opportunity for economic exploitation by expanding European powers, and by the United States. Under Queen Victoria, the British had long sold opium in China, forcing it upon them at the end of a gun barrel, the queen thus becoming the biggest drug dealer in world history. The western powers avoided conflict by carving china, without its permission, into zones of commerce, spearheaded by the Americans, and their "Open Door" policy, which gave each imperialist nation its own zone of commercial exploitation. President Theodore Roosevelt gave the Japanese his blessings to invade and exploit china, in return for Japanese acquiescence to similar behavior by American interests. Franklin Roosevelt later withdrew American consent, long after the Japanese had already taken full advantage of it in the nineteen thirties. That reversal of American foreign policy led ultimately to war. Now the Americans complain that it is being treated unfairly by China in trade arrangements. The Chinese might respond that turnabout is fair play, and that it is about time. The American complaint is essentially twofold: that the Chinese are buying far fewer commodities from American manufacturers than its own producers are selling in American markets, and that china is imposing unfair trade requirements by requiring that trade concessions be accompanied by the sharing of American intellectual property. All this, of course, is well known, well documented in the media. It could be argued that if one is disgruntled by the insistence on the part of one's potential trade partner on certain requirements imposed by said partner, one's best option is to simply walk away from the trading partnership. It could further be argued that free market capitalism should be allowed to flourish, and that all trade imbalances are merely the result of unequal demand for goods and services. If Americans want more Chinese products that the Chinese want from America, so be it; free market capitalism is the guilty party. Strange complaint coming from a country so intent on defending the free market against government intrusion. It is the Americans who forced the Chinese to open their markets, and the Americans who rapaciously, voluntarily, soak up products of Chinese manufacture. It is the Americans who made the rules of trade, and now, it is the Americans who, when the resulting economic intercourse fails to materialize according to their desires, chose to begin a trade war. One scarcely need wonder why for centuries the Chinese were reluctant to involve themselves with western nations, in any manner whatever.