This is a continuation of the post I wrote on the SP Sports page in which I looked at what the modern Olympics were about (money driven grandstanding), what that meant about a potential boycott (it wouldn’t happen), and how our generation’s reaction to the Chinese Olympics and all the issues surrounding might compare to what the Greatest Generation’s to such a situation might have been (they would’ve boycotted or at least not avoided the political issues concerning these Olympics and China).

Now I want to look at what the U.S. should do in regards to a policy concerning China, which, as I stated in the post on the SP Sports page, constitutes the greatest threat to, or at least unresolved issue concerning, the U.S. and world security both politically and economically.

The Case for an Economic and Political Scorched Earth Policy toward China

When it comes to the Olympic torch I think Frankenstein said it best with, “fire bad!”

In all honesty, I HATE China. It’s true. Why? Because, like Jack Cafferty of CNN said, “[they] are basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.” Cafferty, by the way, is now being sued for 1.3 billion dollars, or $1 per person in China, for that comment. The only thing crazier that the amount of money he’s being sued for is the fact that he’s being sued for saying something that is absolutely true and my argument for how our policy toward China should be constructed will lend credence to that thought.

The question is: what should we do about China; should we a) continue our current policy toward China (i.e. avoid pissing them off at all costs) or b) really put the pressure on China to change politically by disengaging with them (symbolically initiated by boycotting their Olympics)?

Here’s what I think:

It all starts with the J-Curve, which is explained in Ian Bremmer’s bearing that title. A J-Curve, which is used in a variety of ways, just looks like the Nike swoosh on a graph. For a political interpretation of the J-Curve, Bremmer establishes that as you to the right along the X axis freedom increases, while as you move up on the Y axis stability increases. The left side of the curve, the short fat end of the Nike swoosh, represents a closed society. The right side of the curve, the thin up-swinging part of the swoosh, represents an open society. So if you follow the curve from left to right you’d start with a closed and stable society (North Korea), descend toward a closed and unstable society (Zimbabwe), hit the bottom where you’d have a collapsed state (Somalia), start to move up the right side to an unstable open society (Kenya), continue up to an open and stable society (U.S.). What must be recognized is that on the open society side, you can continue up indefinably as growth on that end is sustainable. Conversely, the closed society side is not sustainable so will ultimately fall down the swoosh to either collapse or reemerge on the right side of the curve. For example, think of communist Russia, which was closed, then collapsed so as to come out as an unstable open society. Russia is also a good example of how to organize foreign policy around the J-Curve. If you can introduce aspects of capitalism and modernity into a closed society, then it gets to ball rolling to bring the country down from the top of the left side of the curve toward the collapse zone as people demand greater freedom. Then, you have to help that country get out of the collapse zone by allowing it so set up a new government that promotes an open society.

Therefore, in general I favor the idea that you deal with closed societies like pre-war Iraq, Zimbabwe, Iran, or China by engaging them economically. What happens is that by introducing capitalism, you set in motion events that allow the local population to develop internally. They set up businesses to sell products to you, they take out loans, and they basically plant the seeds for a capitalist economy because engagement in the global market precipitates the creation of a middle class. Once they have that, they want private property (more freedom, less stability). Then they move on to demanding individual rights that don’t directly have anything to do with business; a free press, freedom of religion, freedom to organize, and so on (more freedom, less stability). Eventually, the closed society is pried open by a middle class that has been created by introducing them to capitalism (so much freedom is demanded that a closed society can’t handle it and collapses). As the society develops economically, it starts to develop socially, and then finally develops politically. That is about as crude a simplification as I can give, but you get the picture.

The difficulty with China is that it’s government and power structure is so big and drummed like a religion into the population’s psyche that the government can fight this natural sequence of events. Most importantly, and related to the torch issue, is the fact that the government in China is not at all squeamish about brutally putting down any slight revolt against its authority. Currently, China has free trade zones and in those zones people do start to question the government and demand reform, which is in line with the natural progression of what happens when capitalism is introduced to a closed society and should push China down the J-Curve towards the collapse zone. However, these people are so quickly and emphatically dealt with that it halts to the social and political progress that should follow from economic progress.

This is why I both hate the Chinese government and want the U.S. and world to deal with them. They’ve found a way to be a closed social and political society, which has a very limited and ultimately unsustainable potential for economic growth, while also reaping the benefits economic liberalism. Because they can stop the momentum pushing them down the J-Curve, they can make their closed society sustainable by allowing enough economic freedom to participate in the global economy. What this means is that they’ve beaten the J-Curve!

No other country has been able to do this in the history of the world and the Chinese are only able to do it through unprecedented state control enacted through an amazingly high level of violence toward any internal threat. They maintain this unprecedented state control by using their liberal economics to fund their closed political and social activities. Moreover, and this feeds into why I hate China, since the government has to be so large to control the population, which requires a great deal of money to be obtained through their limited economic freedom, they proceed into the global market completely devoid of scruples. They sell anything to anyone regardless of how the buyer might use the product. Currently, there is a Chinese ship full of weapons off the South African coast that is trying to get its cargo to Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. China doesn’t care that he’ll use those guns to kill off anyone who voted against him, they just want to make the sale so they’ve got the necessary money to keep their own population in toe. The Chinese continue to give money to the Sudan despite the fact that such money enables the continuation of the genocide there. China has the world’s worst pollution, but make no effort to rectify that because it would mean less profit. They vetoed intervention in Kosovo, they repeatedly protect countries that are violators of human rights, just as they are, and they same country that aided and abeded the Koreans in the 50s and the North Vietnamese in the 60/70s. They are indeed the same old gang of goons and thugs they’ve always been, except now they have found a way to usurp the J-Curve thereby granting them greater power and means to do their unscrupulous business and promote their morally devoid politics.

Thus, although I generally favor engagement as a means to change, I think China’s presented a new problem that can’t be fixed by engagement and must therefore be CUT OFF. Primarily, that means cutting them off economically, which will hurt them because they need our market to sell their goods, and it also means not going to their Olympics. We absolutely have to marginalize the Chinese government economically because that puts them back on the J-Curve in the sense that their closed society would be unsustainable.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that this would drive up prices in the U.S. and we’d also have to undergo a huge diplomatic effort to get other nations to cut off China as well so we won’t do this. Instead, we’ll go to the Olympics and continue to buy their lead infested stuff and let them pollute the world and ignore all the poor Chinese who have the courage that we currently lack, the courage that the Greatest Generation had, to stand up to their evil and are summarily arrested, tortured and murdered.

So if someone handed me the torch I’d put it out. If there wasn’t any water around, I’d pee on it; that’s how strongly I feel. Of course that wouldn’t even begin to measure up to the deeds accomplished by the men and women of the greatest generation or the deeds of the men and women inside China who stand up to their government, but I figure at least it’d be something. At least it’d be a moral stand and symbolic of the potential to do something greater than just put out a torch, something like actually deal with the looming question that is China.