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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (75367)	3/1/2000 8:53:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Too many people fail to understand the confederated and devolved nature of modern government. In Washington we find people in Congress who are ready to attack China, and others who are willing to embrace it. In China there are economic reformers, clustered around the Premier, who want economic reform, want to take the PLA out of business, want to raze the bankrupt state enterprizes. There are economic nationalists, grouped around the President, who wish to centralize administration in Beijing, and crush the regional governments in Shanghai, Xiamen, and Gwangzhou. There are petrified generals in the PLA who want to run their old foreign policy, to strike out, to destroy Taiwan. No one in his right mind could be altogether anti-Chinese, or pro-Chinese. The Chinese people are dynamic, ambitious, willing to learn and compete. Many of their leaders are ignorant. parochial, brain dead andtotally off the wall. No one can love them. It is inevitable that trade between the free world and China will strengthen all the separate interests in China. The PLA cannot help but get stronger. But support of economic reformers will make them even stronger and make China necessarily closer to the free world. I want every Chinese kid to have a PC (with an Intel Chip) connected up to the internet (via Cisco routers) with access to EB and ZDNet and all of the learning of the world, so he or she can become educated, trained, and even wise. I want to be grappled together with bonds of quartz and thought. I want us to exchange knowledge and friendship, without generals or diplomats in the loop. I teach a dozen or more Chinese business students every day in class. They are much smarter and more eager than my American students. Many of them want to become American, to work in American firms, to start their own companies. Many of them want to go back to China and start there own companies. They correspond every day over the network with their friends (every Chinese university I know has a web page). They are not interested in politics or revolution. They want to get rich. They will be rich. I think the United States government should help them get rich, especially since they will make us rich too. I think we should be very careful in making the Chinese our enemies. Many of them want to be our friends. I think we should encourage them.

To: Ilaine who wrote (75367)	3/1/2000 9:28:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

There are many business-oriented Chinese, many of them in positions of considerable power, who badly want to establish civilized and profitable relations with the rest of the world. There are others, many of them connected to the communist old guard and the PLA, who are terrified of where those relations could lead. The old guard control the army and the propaganda apparatus; the younger, more business-oriented factions control the money-making apparatus. (For obvious reasons, this is much simplified). Over the past few years, with increases in trade and general street-level liberalization, the balance of power has shifted to a considerable degree toward the internationalists. This is expected to continue, as the old guard, many of whom are well into their 80s, dies off. The point is that excluding China from the WTO and the system of trade in general plays into the hands of the old-guard conservatives, who want an insular, isolated China. Opening up strengthens the hand of the progressives. It is not a matter of punishing or rewarding "China" as a monolithic entity, but of encouraging and increasing the influence of the reform-minded factions within the Chinese power structure. The more influential Chinese are getting rich from trade, the less support there will be for military solutions to any problem. It's a time for pragmatism, not moralizing.