If neocons, protectionists, and armageddonites hate something, you can’t be 100% sure it’s great, but almost. China is no exception to the rule. This great nation has made amazing progress towards liberty and property since the horror of Mao.
Pictures of downtown Shanghai–which you will not see in our free press–look like downtown Houston. There are stock markets, private companies, private homes, private schools, and much more religious freedom. Is there a ways to go? Of course, but the direction is heroic.
Thanks to the civilizing and prosperity-generating effects of trade, we get great products at great prices. All hail Wal-Mart and other firms that specialize in pro-peace trade with China.But I have always been bothered by what seemed crazed nationalism over Taiwan. Why the opposition to having it be independent in name as well as fact?
Now, thanks to Teri, an LRC reader in China, I finally understand. She writes:
Last week Dick Cheney was here flexing his mouth (er, muscles). The Yanks want China to raise the value of the Yuan Renminbi in order to destroy their prosperity, but I doubt that they will.
As for Taiwan, China will hold fast there, not so much because of face, but because China does not want the USA having bases in their back yard and rightly so. Now there is an American military buildup on Guam, so wouldnt the USA just love to be in China.
I grew up in Vermont and I must tell you that the US is the most hated and despised country because of the way they go into other peoples’ countries to destroy them and steal their wealth. Travelling around Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos was a real eye opener. What destruction there is there. Now also there is Iraq. Bathed in blood, both Iraqi and American, just for the sake of a group of born-again fanatics who are far, far worse than Saddam ever was. Grab the oil and erase Islam from the earth.
11:34 am on April 24, 2004
