November 20, 2005
RATTLING THE CAGE:
Bush urges greater China freedoms (BBC, 11/20/05)
US President George Bush has called on China to expand its social, political and religious freedoms.On a visit to Beijing, he also said he and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao had agreed to work together to reduce their trade imbalance.
Earlier, he attended a service at one of the few officially-recognised Christian churches in Beijing.
MORE:
Bush preaches religious freedom: The President uses a pulpit in Beijing to speak up for the persecuted Christian minority in China (Jane Macartney, 11/21/05, Times of London)
FOR his father, Gangwashi church in Beijing was “a home away from home” where he used to head on his bicycle for the Sunday service. For his sister Dorothy, it was the church where she was baptised as a teenager. For President Bush, Gangwashi church offered a pulpit yesterday where he could break with diplomatic nicety to urge China’s Communist leaders to allow freedom of religion.Posted by Orrin Judd at November 20, 2005 6:18 AMThe Sunday service was President Bush’s first public event on a 36-hour visit to China, taking place even before he met China’s Communist Party leaders and sending a loud message about the right to religious freedom. President Bush and the First Lady accepted Bibles from the pastor of one of five Protestant churches in Beijing officially sanctioned by the Chinese authorities. That means the service and the church books must receive a stamp of approval from the official Three-Self Patriot Church that oversees Protestant worship. A previous pastor was forcibly removed in 1994 because he was seen as too independent.
The visit of the younger Bush, whose father lived in Beijing from 1974 to 1975 as head of the US Liaison Office and who visited the church again when he was President, offered an opportunity for a man who describes himself as a born-again Christian to speak up for China’s faithful of all denominations.
Boy, this article proves once again that the old media clearly don't understand the new paradigm. For one, our so-called trade imbalance defines a concept that no longer exists, if it ever did. China is our manufacturing sector now. They make the excellent quality goods we want and we buy them at impossibly low prices. They're happy with that for now and as their economy grows, those low paying jobs will be outsourced to another emerging economy (the EU maybe?).
I can't imagine how embarrassing it must be for the media to purposely block out everything other than the replay of the past going on in their own heads.
erp:
It is probably more terrifying than embarrassing - they are like Canute trying to stop the tide. Just consider all the silliness (and outright deceit) that gets printed or spoken on TV when 60 seconds on Google would show the truth. I know that I sometimes check before making a declarative statement here in the comments - why shouldn't Dowd or Krugman or Scheer or Matthews or Mary Mapes do the same?
But they have the arrogance born only from fear.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 20, 2005 10:46 AMIt's cute how Bush's naivete in telling the Chinese rulers to their face that their people must become free, etc. It's true, but you just CAN'T SAY it to the government. It's not diplomatic!
Reagan did the same thing with the Evil Empire thingy.
Posted by: John J. Coupal at November 20, 2005 11:31 AMThose words had meaning because the Evil Empire wasn't our principal trading partner.
"It's been great doing business with you. But ease up on those Christians, hey?"
Posted by: Al Cornpone at November 20, 2005 2:54 PMWow, Al, how'd you manage to get the dynamic exactly backwards?
Posted by: oj at November 20, 2005 3:45 PMI love reading and writing the straightforward declarative sentences on this blog. If you're wrong, so what, someone will correct you and you'll learn something.
What I can't stand is mealy mouthing spin that contorts itself rather than saying what it wants to say out loud.
Not much of that around here and for that I thank our hosts.
Posted by: erp at November 20, 2005 5:17 PMAl,
Tell any fool that bought land in the Great Plains around the late '70s-early '80s that the Evil Empire was not a "principal trading partner:) Tell him this while he is likely still doing time for attempting to murder his banker when the banker tried to collect on the loan.
Posted by: Brad S at November 20, 2005 9:15 PMThis was the Russian grain deal times, to whose in the Great Plains who still harbor long memories of all the strange stuff that went on:)
Posted by: Brad S at November 20, 2005 9:17 PMBrad;
I have no sympathy for those people. My in-laws are multi-generational farming stock and I myself grew up surrounded by farm land. All of them weathered those decades with only moderate distress because they weren't stupid enough to leverage themselves to buy land during the boom. Very much like a certain economic phenomenon of the late 1990s.
The farmers I knew spent their boom money on new farm buildings and equipment, so when the crash happened (as it always does), they could just ride it out. They did this because their parents and grand parents and great grand parents told them of how this had happened before.
P.S. The whole extended family thing is weird to me, as I come from a very disconnected family. My children go over to play with their third cousins once removed. I see how such things are both confining and gratifying, small and grand at the same time.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 21, 2005 11:53 AM