A calculated change

Man, I love Asia. \nTaoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, rice, samurai, the Yin Yang, Mongols, seppuku, gunpowder. What more could you want from a continent? Well, there is one thing they could use, I suppose: human rights. \nChina has a booming economy; people generally have enough to eat, and nobody's dying of plague. \nBut other things affect quality of life ... like maybe free speech. Since the Tiananmen Square massacre 15 years ago, the Communist Party has not deviated much from its amazing paranoia about criticism. Outcry against the government is still strictly prohibited and gets you heavily fined, life imprisonment or executed. These restrictions also apply to what you read, which means the Internet has provided plenty of issues for China as it tries to balance a global economy and heavy censorship. CNN.com can be accessed only through heavy filters that remove certain articles. For a brief period of time, the government actually banned Google until enormous business pressure forced it to reverse the ruling just 12 days later. \nChina also seems to have issues with some of its territories having this crazy notion that they aren't part of China. The Associated Press reported the fate of a new video game touting some national issues Dec 9. "Champion Soccer Manager 2005," identifies Taiwan, Tibet, Macau and Hong Kong as independent countries, which, according to the Chinese government, undermines national sovereignty. Consequently, the game has been banned, with fines of more than $1,500. Talk to any member of the Students for a Free Tibet group for information about the abuses going on there. The number of violations is literally too great to try to enumerate here.\nChina is one of the largest human rights violators in the world, yet the United States continues to trade with it. And not just trade, but trade a lot. More than enough money has changed hands between the United States and China during this year, and things look like they'll continue to move upward, with tariffs between the two continuing to fall. The European Union is keeping a straighter face by maintaining its many embargoes against China, even with increasing economic pressure. Still, we've invaded countries for less than what China has done, and here we are buying their sneakers and selling them nukes. How can we possibly justify dealing so intimately with a country that strikes down virtually every tenant of the Bill of Rights?\nCultural invasion. It's a really simple concept, though sophisticated enough to appear on "The West Wing." If we build enough McDonald's and beam in enough episodes of "Full House," then the Chinese will start to think more like America, and then the government will begin to move more toward democracy. While this change conceivably could take multiple generations, it's difficult to resist. The United States is making a calculated trade of human rights now for a relatively bloodless transition from oligarchy to democracy later on. This approach has the added benefit of not dragging U.S. citizens into a long "liberation war" like we've seen recently, but netting them a nice economic package instead. \nIs this a good move? \nYes. War is averted, and it gives China the image of national sovereignty. As bad as the Chinese have it right now, at least they're not in a war. If the United States were to try to do to China what it did to Iraq, things would get really bad, really quickly. Large portions of both populations would end up dead, and we might even start a nuclear war, which is never a good thing. When most people hear about the sort of things I listed about China, they get angry. Luckily for the United States, there's been a history of politicians who've been able to keep their cool, and in the end, I think they should be praised for their good judgment. \nMan, I love America.