CHINA CAN NO LONGER HIDE OPRESSIVE WAYS BEHIND FREE TRADE!

As the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same — especially in China.

No question, our relations with the People’s Republic of China has evolved significantly since Richard Nixon and Mao Tse Tung hammered out an unprecedented peace agreement in 1972. Diplomatic relations between the two countries eventually commenced in 1979.

Prior to Nixon’s visit to China, the two nations had been involved in their own cold war since 1949 following Mao’s Communist uprising against the Chiang Kai-shek government.

Since then, the world’s most populous nation with over 1.3 billion people has opened up to and employed modified free-market principals, thus increasing its financial and technological well being . The Chinese Communists have opened the door to free trade with the West and have profited far more than we have, as evidenced by its huge surplus from exports.

Today, Beijing looks more like Hong Kong.. Coca Cola and McDonald's are virtually as prevalent as rice!

China has even relaxed travel restrictions in recent years and has made it possible for many of its citizens to emigrate to the U.S. and other Western democracies.

But totalitarian rule in the Communist stronghold is as prevalent as ever. The Chinese still isn’t strong on human rights, especially when it comes to free speech and public protests.

We first witnessed this during the 1989 Chinese student revolt in Beijing’s Tienanmen Square. According to whose numbers you read, anywhere from hundreds to a couple of thousand students were needlessly slaughtered by military troops with tanks.

Although it has been virtually 19 years since that debacle, nothing has changed, as evidenced by the Communist government’s recent crackdown on Tibetan human rights protests — which turned into riots. According to Tibet’s exiled government, 99 local residents were killed.

While the Chinese have become more astute in business, their human rights ethic has not seen even a microscopic change.Tibet is the home of Buddhist Spiritual Leader Dalia Lama, who for decades has lobbied Beijing for civil rights, only to experience more opression.

China, who is scheduled to host the 2008 Summer Olympics for the first time ever in August, committed a major public relations disaster that could have severe diplomatic consequence.

Beijing has completely lacked accountability. Instead of an apology, it chooses to focus on U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s defense of the victims.

Pelosi, a fierce critic of China, visited the Dalai Lama at his headquarters in India Friday, where she called China’s crackdown “a challenge to the conscience of the world.”

And what was People’s Republic’s response? “Human rights police like Pelosi are habitually bad tempered and ungenerous when it comes to China, refusing to find out the facts of the case,” China’s official news agency Xinhua stated.

Outside of America’s archaic obsession with Capitol Punishment, nothing disgusts me more than human rights violations. For this reason, Pelosi needs to convince the White House and United States Olympic Committee to boycott this summer’s Olympics as we did during the 1980 games in Moscow after Soviet tanks invaded Afghanistan during the height of the Cold War.

A civilized world, led by the U.S. and it’s democratic allies, can no longer tolerate blatant human right’s violations, especially from nations we do business with. As long as we continue to let this occur, the more things change, the more they will stay the same!