EEEUUWWW!

by Charles

Somehow, I don't think this Chinese cosmetics company will fully disclose the ingredients on its jars of face cream.  The Guardian:

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

For those who have issues with animal products in cosmetics, I think some pretty good fussin' can be had.  This incident reminds me of a deeper problem with China.  While they're trying to expand trade across the world, this dictatorship is powerful enough to influence American companies, and those corporations who place profits over morality will toe the line with the Chinese regime and adopt business tactics that aid and abet governmental repression.  Yahoo is the latest example:

Yahoo Inc. chief Jerry Yang said his company was complying with local laws when information on an Internet user was passed to Chinese police in a move leading to the jailing of a mainland journalist.

Yang, speaking at the Alibaba China Internet Summit here, also said he wasn't happy with the 10-year sentence to journalist Shi Tao, jailed for passing on a government censorship order through his Yahoo e-mail account.

"I don't like the outcome of what happened with this thing, we get a lot of these orders, but we have to comply with the law and that's what we need to do."

As Roger Simon noted:

Oh, really? By the exact same logic, were Yahoo a German company in the 1940s and the state had asked it to send all their Jewish, Catholic, gypsy and gay employees to concentration camps for extermination, well, it would have been the local law and they would have had to have done so.

Sorry, Mr. Yang, you may be a billionaire, but you are not even the shadow of a moral human being. I suggest you have a look at Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience. You may have missed it in college.

Simon may have inserted Godwin's Law, but you know what?  I don't care.  What these events also make clear is that Communist Party leader Hu Jintao is another garden-variety authoritarian dictator.  The Economist:

Now, he is said to be holding up Cuba and North Korea as examples of how the party should keep its ideological grip. While Mr Hu has probably changed far less than his mercurial portrayal might suggest, it is increasingly clear that China under his leadership has wavered over economic reform and shunned political liberalisation.

Both politically and economically, China is moving toward command and control, and away from adopting reforms that liberate.  Politically:

This year, for instance, he has ordered millions of party officials to take part in many hours of mind-numbing ideological training designed to tighten party discipline (known as the “education campaign to preserve the advanced nature of Communist Party members”).

In media:

The Chinese government has also recently got tougher on internet users. Bloggers are now supposed to register their real names or face huge fines. In June, Microsoft agreed to ban the word “democracy” from parts of its MSN website in China. And the government is arresting those, like Shi Tao, who send “sensitive” information to Chinese foreign-based websites like Epoch Times and Buxun.

More on Microsoft:

There comes a moment in the history of every great company when an unanticipated event cuts through decades and millions of dollars worth of branding, corporate imaging and PR, and exposes that company's core values for what they really are.

We recently saw such an exposure at Apple Computer, when it successfully crushed some Web sites for pre-announcing company products.

Now, this week, it happened to Microsoft. And if, after all of these years, nobody is surprised that the company is willing to compromise ethical principles for profits and market share, the subsequent press coverage suggests that many people are still surprised by how low the company is willing to go.

It's one thing to use your near-monopoly in a market to play hardball with competitors, it's quite another to be a lickspittle to tyranny to enhance your bottom line.

It's beyond pathetic that words like "freedom" are banned in China, with Microsoft helping the government deny the very same freedoms that permitted it to become the behemoth that it is.  Betrayal is putting it kindly.

Economically:

On the orders of senior officials, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences formed a research team and in June last year published a book of essays that proclaimed on its cover that Latin America and the Soviet Union had been “major disaster areas of neo-liberalism”. It said reforms of state-owned industries should be guided by “Marxist theory”.

We are seeing this in Africa, with Chinese overtures made to countries with oil, including morally bankrupt Sudan.  The point is not to make a big red scare of things, but to be aware of what's going on.  Command-control economies eventually fail, and even those countries like Japan have problems when its government has an "industrial policy", betting on who it thinks the winners and losers are going to be.  However, we shouldn't be letting American corporations do Hu's bidding unchallenged.  Hu's reign doesn't look as bad as some of his predecessors, but that's not saying much.

So what should we do?  First off, stop giving Microsoft and Yahoo more business until they start acting more responsibly.  Second, put a little political heat on those companies.  Third, get ready to challenge the communists in the upcoming 2008 Olympics.  Fourth, expose their concerted efforts to control the world oil supply in their favor (yes, I'm speculating on this, but that's how I see it).  Beyond that, who knows.  In this interview, professor former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew is convincing when sees China as a 21st century economic powerhouse.

Comments

[idook]

I usually disagree with your posts, but I have to admit this one is about spot on... Well, I do have to quibble a bit. Hu cannot be dismissed as just another garden variety dictator; nobody else on the planet runs a country of a billion people. That tends to color the policy options in the outside world.

I agree that the actions of Yahoo and Microsoft are despicable here (and I work for MSFT). So, are there limits to international laissez-faire capitalism? Who will bring the 80's anti-apartheid movement out of storage and start pressuring shareholders?

[bob mcmanus]

No argument on any point, including oil hegemony, except I really don't want to change to Linux/Firefox.

[TonyDismukes]

Good post, Charles.

[Anarch]

What these events also make clear is that Communist Party leader Hu Jintao is another garden-variety authoritarian dictator.

Which is a nice change of pace, since the leader of the CCP is usually anything but a garden-variety dictator.

Third, get ready to challenge the communists in the upcoming 2008 Olympics.

Ouch. Really; ouch. As Orwell (I think) observed, sport is the continuation of politics by other means, and China is lethally serious about international politics. I'm really, really unhappy with politicizing the Olympics in this way, for reasons I find a little hard to articulate at the moment.

In this interview, professor Lee Kuan Yew is convincing when sees China as a 21st century economic powerhouse.

"Professor" nothing. "Former President/pseudo-despot of Singapore" Lee Kuan Yew is more like it.

[BSR]

Great post. China will become the World's primary superpower within our lifetimes, that's my yucky prediction. The question is are they even concerned with us, or are they just happy lording it over their half of the world and having us by the shorthairs economically.

[Francis]

CB: agreed. i'd put it much more strongly, though. China needs to be contained and pressed hard to liberalize. They may be one billion people, but we're their biggest market.

Enforceable environmental and labor requirements need to be folded into their trade agreements.

[hrc]

Charles,

thanks for the eye opener. You make some excellent points.

[radish]

Word.

I have to confess that I found this bit laugh-out-loud funny in a way that I suspect you didn't intend:

Fourth, expose their concerted efforts to control the world oil supply in their favor (yes, I'm speculating on this, but that's how I see it).

...but yeah. What you said.

Francis, I think any chance we had to "contain" China is well and truly gone at this point, both economically and militarily. If our children are really clever, and so inclined, they may be able to sneakily promote Chinese democratization... After they clean up the mess we're leaving them.

[liberal japonicus]

It's going to be interesting if this causes more of a stink that this and this did when it came out in 2001.

Wang told the U.S. House of representatives Subcommittee on Human Rights he had also worked at a crematorium, carving skin off convicts bodies for use on burns victims.

Corneas and other body tissue were also removed for transplant, Wang said.

His hospital, the Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital, then sold the body parts for profit.

Speaking before the subcommittee, Wang described the procedures, saying that often group executions were organized to facilitate the demand for organ transplants.

There's also an intersection here with stem cell research. Much of the trade in organs is fueled by Westerners, and in Korea and Japan, there is a certain amount of resistance to the transplantation of organs from adults because of cultural notions.

Through the brain death controversy, many scholars and journalists attempted to discover why Japanese society continued to reject organ transplantation from brain-dead donors. Some researchers thought that there was a unique feature, specific to Japanese culture, and this unique feature creates a strong cultural barrier against transplantation.
Shohei Yonemoto (1987:14) called this "the cultural factor". He said that the Japanese had accepted almost all of the fruits of modern European medicine, but seemed to refuse technologies concerning human birth and death. He concluded that this is because "modern medicine came into head-on collision with our view of life and death, or with our view of the dead body, notions which were lurking deep within our culture". He wrote that Americans think of organs as replaceable parts, and that this way of thinking is based on traditional Western notions of mind-body dualism. The idea of brain death and transplantation thus matches the Western way of thinking. Contrasting with this, Yonemoto noted that Japanese tend to find in every part of a deceased person's body a fragment of the deceased's mind and spirit (Yonemoto, 1985: 200).

In fact, I believe that the current push to take advantage of stem cells in Japan and Korea is not simply motivated by a profit opportunity, but because such research provides a logical way to incorporate scientific progress in a way that doesn't make cultural waves.

While I realize that stem cell research has a dynamic of its own, the US could still reduce the demand by implementing an opting in system that assumes that people want to donate organs unless they specifically refuse to. The article is subscriber only, but here are is the author's response to issues raised.

More radically, Western countries could move to inverting approval of organ donation, so that it is assumed that you want to donate your organs unless you specifically state otherwise.

There's a lot of ranting space about politicans who demagogue about China but are not willing to take concrete steps to reduce the reasons why China has us over a barrel, but I don't want to suggest that Chas is doing that here and I thank him for the post.

[liberal japonicus]

Sorry, my explanation of the opt in system given in the article was totally screwed up. The article has a much more interesting proposal that incorporates game theory.

[Thad]

Credit where credit is due, Charles -- some very good points. However -- in all sincerity -- I would like to know why you attach so much importance to the Olympic games. Or was that meant tongue-in-cheek? Also, would you go so far as to actually come out in favor of including human rights provisions in our international trade agreements?

[Bruce Baugh]

Right on, Charles. This is evil, awful stuff, and I'm very happy to see attention called to it. It strikes me as precisely the sort of issue that can and should transcend internal lines a lot. One can disagree a bunch about marginal tax rates, the degree of federalism desirable in this or that kind of service, and so on, while stay saying "That's just wrong! And American companies underwriting it need a lot of shame and pressure!"

[Anna in Cairo]

Well, Charles, next time you feel overwhelmed by the liberal commenters on ObWi, do a post on China and feel the love.

I have nothing to add except that given that China holds a lot of our hard currency they really do have the USG over quite a barrel. But that does nto excuse private companies like MSoft and Yahoo from colluding with the Chinese human rights abusers. Perhaps people should organize a consumer boycott of some of their products or something. This worked for Nestle as I remember.

[Dantheman]

Not much to add to Anna in Cairo's comments. China is a horribly repressive country, who also has the ability to damage us considerably due to its vast holdings of T-bonds. Therefore, any plan to deal with China's aggression also needs to consider how we can minimize the impact of the likely retaliation by China.

And the answer to that is to bring our country's finances back in order and reduce the national debt. Unfortunately, a positive fiscal outlook is just another item which the party in charge of all levels of the Federal government has pissed away since 2000.

[toby (a grumpy old man this morning)]

There comes a moment in the history of every great company when an unanticipated event cuts through decades and millions of dollars worth of branding, corporate imaging and PR, and exposes that company's core values for what they really are.

How true that can be. And while point fingers at Yahoo, Apple, and Microsoft may be the trendy thing to do, has enough water passed under the bridge that we may forgive and forget the Mother Theresa like role IBM played in the Holocaust?

Earning profits off of tyranny is about as American as apple pie. As sad as it may be, it takes a hell of a lot more than the brief fuss generated by those who are outraged that Yahoo might turn over, at the request of the Chinese Government, the names of a couple progressive Chinese thinkers so that the Government may force these dissidents to attend reeducation classes to affect postive change in the commercial practices of large multinational corporations.

The fact is this happens within our own boarders, though on a less dramatic level. Insert “Some local ISP” for “Yahoo”, “RIAA” for “Chinese Government”, “parents of teenagers abusing file sharing programs” for “progressive Chinese thinkers” and “pay large fines or face jail” for “attend reeducation classes” and you have a shameful situation on your hands. Yet no one is marching on Washington or proposing boycotts of RIAA and the music industry.

[Jeff Eaton]

Toby, while I'm absolutely no fan of the RIAA's tactics, I think it's a gross distortion to compare their work to what's going on in China. They're manipulating fuzzy areas of US law to prosecute people they see as undermining their core business. In the stories Charles cited above, companies are complicit in the jailing of political dissidents and havesting dead humans for use in cosmetics. Intellectual property law is important, but it's not exactly Soylent Green.

[Charles Bird]

"Professor" nothing. "Former President/pseudo-despot of Singapore" Lee Kuan Yew is more like it.

True. Fixed. Got the blogger and the interviewee mixed up, Anarch.

[Phil]

Charles, if it's worth your time to discuss, perhaps in a separate post, I'd enjoy seeing some dialogue on this portion of your post: . . . those corporations who place profits over morality will toe the line with the Chinese regime and adopt business tactics that aid and abet governmental repression. I agree with you on this, but I'd be interested in hearing your feelings on how it applies to companies doing business just here in the US, or to the even wider issue of globalization/outsourcing/etc.

As I'm sure you know, the phrase "corporations who place profits over morality" is like a red flag to some people, particularly in your own party, who would argue that a corporation's only purpose for being is profits. I'm a staunch capitalist, and a libertarian to boot, so I believe strongly in the profit motive and free markets, but I believe corporations do have ethical responsibilities that might necessitate accepting less than the highest possible profits. I'm having a similar discussion in re: Wal-Mart on another blog, and I'm on the minority side for sure.

Anyway, just a thought. Otherwise, great post.

[McDuff]

First off, stop giving Microsoft and Yahoo more business until they start acting more responsibly.

Agreed. And pre-emptively done. It would be nice to see governments dropping their MS contracts and shifting over to Red Hat or similar. The UK is moving towards this, and Deutsche Bahn moved onto open source earlier this year. There's no need to keep giving MS the stacks of dollars.

Second, put a little political heat on those companies.

Could you elaborate a little further on this? Maybe I'm too much of a free market type, but I'm at a loss to see how "political pressure" works if it is not backed up with a hit to the bottom line. If you mean "losing a couple of State Government contracts with this deal with China explicitly mentioned," then I agree.

Third, get ready to challenge the communists in the upcoming 2008 Olympics.

Yeah! That'll show them!

...

What?

Fourth, expose their concerted efforts to control the world oil supply in their favor (yes, I'm speculating on this, but that's how I see it).

Who, Microsoft or China? And, I'm sorry, but what the Pete? That speculation sounds like bullhockey to me. Sometimes rising gas prices might be caused by, y'know, something other than nasty foreign people. (If you really are worried about it, though, send an email to whoever represents you pushing for MT Gov Schweitzer's plan to build plants that refine gasoline from coal. Cutting down your dependence on foreign oil won't be a bad thing, even without Chinese conspiracies.)

I also think we need to bear in mind just how complicated it is to move countries off communism and towards democracy. China may be moving too slowly for our liking, but on the other hand we rushed the USSR, and that didn't work out so well, and we rushed Iraq, and that also didn't work out very well. Although I think that the brute economic weight of America and the EU can be effectivly brought to bear on the Chinese government, I would be wary about relying too much on government intervention and therefore stifling the natural, organic process by which improvements in some kinds of freedom play into the others. If cracking down on the government has the result of pushing back gains made by the people of China in economic terms, it may not be entirely advantageous, to us or to them.

[Charles Bird]

I would like to know why you attach so much importance to the Olympic games.

For one thing, the games are taking place in the same city as Tianenmen Square. Second, China is going to be in the spotlight in the run-up and during the games. What better time to challenge China and expose the oppression of its people? Is this politicizing China and the Olympic games? Damn straight it is. The test will be to see how they handle it, and my guess that dictators will do what's in their comfort zone, and that's to clamp down, close off, steer away and lie about how they're implementing all these wonderful reforms. I hope I'm wrong.

One other thing, I didn't bring up the U.S. and its trade/foreign policy with China because that's a whole other can of worms. Since we're sort of an economic pushmepullyou with China, they certainly have influence over us and American corporations, but by the same token we also have unique influence over them, and there's plenty of room to push it.

[J. Michael Neal]

While I deplore the way that our military policy has become consumed with Iraq, containing China isn't as hard as all that. Their increasing aggressiveness, as well as their retreat from reform, has alarmed most of their neighbors. If we feel compelled to retreat to a Cold War stance with China (a step that I feel we are still quite a ways from), building a security alliance with South Korea, Taiwan and Japan wouldn't be very hard. With some work, Vietnam and India wouldn't be hard to add.

Things are certainly very serious, but not critical as some have said.

[ThirdGorchBro]

There were a number of interesting articles on China in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. One of the most disturbing aspects of modern China is the way the government has been able to carefully tread the line between offering greater economic liberalization while maintaining political control. It was also noted that China has the most extensive system of internet monitors and controls in the world.

I guess on a visceral level that isn't quite as disturbing as harvesting human body parts, but in the long run it's much more threatening.

Nevertheless, I feel my inner Henry Kissinger popping up to sound a contrary note to this post. China is a major power and a huge market, but it is not yet a real military threat to the United States or Japan(nuclear weapons aside).

I would hope that we can find a way to encourage reform in China without totally alienating the current political leadership. The fact is, we need China's help to deal with North Korea, and we need them to continue to accept the status quo in the Taiwan Straits. And considering our tangled economic and financial relationship, if tensions led to a trade war with China we would both suffer.

I don't have an easy answer, and I loathe the human rights violations that the Chinese government commits. But I would hate to see a real Cold War (or God forbid a hot war) happen between the US and China.

[hilzoy]

Charles: good post. This is revolting. -- And in general, as far as bioethics is concerned, China is the Wild, Wild West, where rules are only a distant rumor. This is very scary.

I think that if we're serious about using leverage on China, we need to extract ourselves from our current situation, in which we depend on them to finance our debt. The debt is dangerous in its own right, but giving China the power to decide, at will, to tank our economy is imho madness.

[Charles Bird]

Also, would you go so far as to actually come out in favor of including human rights provisions in our international trade agreements?

To some degree, yes, Thad. There are several schools of thought, and I lean toward the one that favors trade agreements with China and like countries because they get our foot in the door and give us better leverage to push for expanding freedoms, provided we actually use that leverage.

[hilzoy]

And 3GB: I agree that it would be really bad for a cold war to develop. I do want us to be in a position to use leverage, when necessary, without being needlessly exposed to extremely serious retaliation, but I'd much rather this happen in a general context of constructive engagement than in one more like the Cold War. For one thing, I suspect China would be more likely to change if it didn't mean: capitulating to a deadly enemy.

[votermom]

NPR business news this morning had a bit on how much money (I think I heard billions) state-controlled Chinese companies have spent in lobbying in DC. Sorry I don't have a cite, but if anyone has a chance, check it out on the NPR website.

[Charles Bird]

I agree with you on this, but I'd be interested in hearing your feelings on how it applies to companies doing business just here in the US, or to the even wider issue of globalization/outsourcing/etc.

See, that's why I'm on the bandwagon for expanding freedom and democracy globally because corporations behave best in free market economies that respect the rule of law, Phil. Just as Yang was trying operate within Chinese rules, so must corporations in America play by our rules. Since our rules emanate from the will of the people and our inherently more fair than those by despotic regimes, the best route is to increase the number of countries that are free and democratic.

I'm also firmly in the globalist camp, firmly opposed to tariffs (except where they collide with national defense) and I don't have a big problem with outsourcing. I'm forgetting the economic term, what is it, "comparative advantages"?

As to the question about corporations and ethical responsibilities, I believe the most successful ones long term are the ones that have a little moral fiber, that integral to maximizing profits is good corporate citizenship (Costco and Starbucks come to mind), but with so much pressure on quarterly earnings by Wall Street, morality can lose its bearings.

[Phil]

I mostly agree with all that, although this is again a key point: " . . . I don't have a big problem with outsourcing, when combined with . . . corporations behave best in free market economies that respect the rule of law. Broadly speaking, a lot of outsourcing is done in ways that allow companies to take advantage of economies where the rules are a little looser, government coercion and strongarming can be used a little more, and less of the will of the people as expressed in regulatory language exists; for the same reasons, that's where much of the opposition to globalization comes from, since as well as outsourcing the actual labor, it also means outsourcing pollution, poor workplace safety, poor worker protection, etc. They can't get away with that stuff here, so they go do it overseas.

So, do we require that American companies doing business overseas -- or making their products overseas -- abide by the same rules they'd have to follow here whenever possible? Or do we restrict American companies' ability to have operations in markets where they can get away with that stuff. I don't even know completely how I feel about those questions, and I'm curious how others feel.

[travis]

Good post. There's also that donkey meat in tiger urine thing to worry about.

[ThirdGorchBro]

I do agree that we should use as much leverage as we can to push China toward becoming more open and democratic. I just believe we should proceed carefully, and avoid needless hostility. So what if they get the Olympics? That's symbolism, not substance (unlike, say, entry to the WTO).

[Anarch]

So what if they get the Olympics? That's symbolism, not substance (unlike, say, entry to the WTO).

1) They've already got the Olympics.

2) Part of the success of Chinese policy, IMO, is that they *cough*liketheBushAdministration*cough* have realized that the imagery and the symbolism can be the substance.

[NeoDude]

It looks like Capitalism doesn't cure all things.

If amoral punks are in control of capital (in the United States or China), they will do everything to expand it and abuse its influence.

[NeoDude]

Oh...and an amen to Bird's post.

[ThirdGorchBro]

Two responses to Anarch:

1) I know, I was just using the Olympics and entry to the WTO as two past examples of leverage. Both of these things were important to China, but only one of them had real substantive import to the US.

2) Imagery and symbolism can be substance for a while, but eventually reality catches up with you. It did with Enron, it looks like it is finally doing so with Bush, and eventually it will with China. Eventually, the Chinese people will demand real political participation. We should continue to encourage change in China, but until the Chinese people are ready to demand it themselves, too much pressure from us (or the wrong kind of pressure) would only be counter-productive.

[NeoDude]

Posted by: liberal japonicus | September 14, 2005

That is fascinating...I've barely touched on Chinese philosophy, in school...but Western metaphysics and Eastern metaphysics are extraordinarily different, that is for sure!

My professor said most American atheists think like Hegelian Christians and the atheists went crazy!

[toby (a grumpy old man)]

I dont pretend that RIAA is on the same level as Yahoo. I just used that example since it's closer to home, affects US citizens and yet it too cannot change people's perceptions enough to influence the way a company or industry operates. admittedly a weak example.

I think that if we're serious about using leverage on China, we need to extract ourselves from our current situation, in which we depend on them to finance our debt. The debt is dangerous in its own right, but giving China the power to decide, at will, to tank our economy is imho madness.

Were China to decide to tank our economy they would tank their own economy in the process. Call it mutually assured financial destruction if you want. China, like Japan, invests in the US to maintain their currency's value. China just maintains a much tighter trade range than Japan so as to ensure their economy's continued strong growth. If China were to dump their US holdings their currency's value would probably shoot thru the roof and choke their economy.

Thats part of the reason why they have decided omove to a "basket" of currencies to determine that trade range and value of the yaun.

In any event - trade is the only avenue which the US can use to persue humanitarian change. It's also one of the reasons why the US Government has struggled for so long when it comes to creating an exception to the Trade Agreement Act for Chinese made end products and services.

[Gary Farber]

Here's a part I don't follow:

Second, China is going to be in the spotlight in the run-up and during the games. What better time to challenge China and expose the oppression of its people? Is this politicizing China and the Olympic games? Damn straight it is.

What does "challenge China and expose the oppression of its people?" mean here? It sounds as if you're saying that if U.S. Olympic contestants beat Chinese contestants, that will do the trick, which makes no sense whatever to me. So far as I could tell, we could to equal effect set up 100 gerbil cages with gerbils on Chinese streets, or in the Olympic stadiums, or whatever, and announce that American gerbils have beaten Chinese gerbils: so what?

On the other hand, given that running around on tracks or leaping over bars, or whatever, has absolutely no effect whatever on either the Chinese economy or degree of political freedom, what means you think we should exert to "challenge China and expose the oppression of its people" remains a mystery. Could you clarify with some specifics, given your criticism of any post without such "constructive" specifics, please?

As for China's future, well, it was no secret long before China">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312860986%3Fv%3Dglance&e=10342">China Mountain Zhang, which has been out for quite a while now.

[Jackmormon]

I'd like to add another plank to the what-to-do-about-China platform.

Shareholders need to move their money out of companies that take advantage of unethical labor conditions and human rights violations in China. Investors in mutual funds that do not have ethical filters should rethink their investment practices, as they've effectively signed away control of their money.

I'm all for political and diplomatic protest, tougher trade regulations, tougher oversight of corporate governance, and boycotting, but the corporate culture of maximizing profits over the short term has been distributed to the general investing public--which then becomes complicit.

(Just a thought, a remnant, perhaps, of more optimistic days of the 1990s.)

[DaveL]

Aha, the ObWi Liberal-Conservative Comity Baseline: using the skin of executed convicts in cosmetics = bad. With this breakthrough, consensus on the Iraq War can't be far behind!

[Gary Farber]

"Aha, the ObWi Liberal-Conservative Comity Baseline: using the skin of executed convicts in cosmetics = bad."

Let's not be hasty: were the convicts allowed to unionize? Is the Chinese government subsidizing the production of convicts? Are these cosmetics taxed? Should Chinese dead-convict-cosmetics be taxed at a lower rate? Should it be a flat tax? Is it okay to use the skin from people already brain-dead? What about stem cells made from dead convicts? Would Captain Kirk wearing these cosmetics beat Captain Picard wearing these cosmetics? Do dead Chinese convicts prefer Macs, Windows, or Linux? Would gun control make for fewer such cosmetics? At what month can we use fetal cells in such cosmetics? What do dead Chinese convicts have to say about Charles Bird? Do they bear some blame for Hurricane Katrina? Why haven't more ObWi bloggers focused on the fault of dead Chinese convicts in the Katrina response?

Clearly there are remaining questions to be settled.

[kenB]

So far as I could tell, we could to equal effect set up 100 gerbil cages with gerbils on Chinese streets, or in the Olympic stadiums, or whatever

Great idea -- the Gerbilimpics! Maybe we could arrange for New York to win the bid to host the first one, as a consolation prize.

[Charles Bird]

What does "challenge China and expose the oppression of its people?" mean here?

That the Olympics provides a handy media forum, Gary. There'll be thousands of credentialed press from across the world, and there'll be opportunities for them to do a little investigative reporting. It would give groups like Amnesty International a larger megaphone for requesting access to Chinese prison camps, and for others to question the government's human rights policies, or for others to question the repression in Tibet or the crackdowns on the Falun Gong, or the unchecked pollution, to provide a few constructive examples.

[robb]

When Beijing got the 2008 games, I really, really wanted to see athletes wear T Shirts saying stuff like "Freedom for Falum Gong" or "Free Tibet". Have them fly in, get off the plane, walk around Beijing and see what the Chinese Army does with that. But, alas, it won't ever happen.

[Thad]

That the Olympics provides a handy media forum, Gary. There'll be thousands of credentialed press from across the world, and there'll be opportunities for them to do a little investigative reporting. It would give groups like Amnesty International a larger megaphone for requesting access to Chinese prison camps, and for others to question the government's human rights policies, or for others to question the repression in Tibet or the crackdowns on the Falun Gong, or the unchecked pollution, to provide a few constructive examples.

Well, okay, all of those things are certainly good ideas, but when you said "get ready to challenge the communists in the upcoming 2008 Olympics," I think most people quite reasonably assumed that you were talking about the actual Olympic events.

[Gary Farber]

"...when you said 'get ready to challenge the communists in the upcoming 2008 Olympics,' I think most people quite reasonably assumed that you were talking about the actual Olympic events."

Which stems from the use of "in the," rather than, say, "during the."

It seems a bit odd to be referring to the government as "the communists," incidentally, despite their pretense. If Jeanne Kirkpatrick's authoritarian/totalitarian distinction applies, the present Chinese government seems to fall considerably more under the former category than the latter.

[Jackmormon]

In the interest of comity and for the sake of principle, I tried to trackback from "Hating on Charles Bird" (see sidebar under "Guests'"), but the effort failed. I used this url--

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/3181504

--and have reloaded both sites many times. Have I screwed something up, used the wrong url, or should I be patient? Anyone?

[Anarch]

Gary --

I've usually heard of the current ideology of the CCP being described as "Nationalist Communism" or, if you're feeling tongue-in-cheek, "National Socialism" (which it is under the individual meanings of the term, though not exactly under the conventional meaning of the phrase). China has been steadily creeping towards controlled capitalism since the end of the Cultural Revolution and the loss of the CCP's moral authority in the wake of the insanity. I still don't know whether this was deliberate on the part of Deng Xiao Ping -- certainly the controlled capitalism part was, viz the cat analogy -- but (resurgent) nationalism has manifestly been part of the CCP's political strategy since the mid-90s. It's sort of Old Mandarin Meets Horatio Alger, and it's terrifying to behold.

[Gary Farber]

"China has been steadily creeping towards controlled capitalism since the end of the Cultural Revolution and the loss of the CCP's moral authority in the wake of the insanity."

I will never forget the moment I was listening to radio news, in New Haven, living with my Yalie girlfriend and our mutual Yalie friend, her former roommate, in late '78, when the newsreader explained that the Chinese announced that the long-time classic Marxist slogan of the Chinese Communist Party was "From each according to their ability, to each according to their work. And I literally fell off my chair.

"...(resurgent) nationalism has manifestly been part of the CCP's political strategy since the mid-90s...."

Nationalism is as long-proven an oft-successful strategy as is the nation-state, and what else does the CCP have left?

In a way, Taiwan is very useful for them; it provides a focus that would otherwise be, I suspect, ah, considerably more diffuse. Though nationalism in general would still be useful, of course, and xenophobia is also a classic. Did everyone notice the large Russian-Chinese military exercise that took place the other week? The very first one ever, after all. And then there's the positioning of five warships this week in territory that Japan disputes and China plans to drill for gas in Real Soon Now.

Not that I want to encourage Undue Viewing Of China With Alarm, mind.

But, don't worry: we'll all wind up in one large Alliance, eventually.

[dr ngo]

I've usually heard of the current ideology of the CCP being described as "Nationalist Communism" or, if you're feeling tongue-in-cheek, "National Socialism" (which it is under the individual meanings of the term, though not exactly under the conventional meaning of the phrase).

I'm partial to the characterization of PRC policy as "Market-Leninism" myself.