Robert Scheer: Faking Concern for the Chinese Masses!

Let's stop jacking the Chinese around. We do not care a whit now, nor have we ever cared, about their human rights or any other aspect of their lives as long as they satiate our unbridled appetites. To pretend otherwise is to deny centuries of exploitative history in which the West drugged the Middle Kingdom and plundered it for its resources and cheap labor while obliterating any sign of popular resistance to our imperial sway. From the Opium Wars to the contemplation of using nuclear weapons to bomb China back to the Stone Age, because of our differences with it over Korea and Vietnam, the response of the West has been one of brute intimidation. Never have we been willing to acknowledge that China, for all its immense contradictions, upheavals, sufferings and errant ways, represents the most complex and impressive example of national history. Instead we intrude upon China in fitful moments of pique or treat it as a plaything. Who owns China? That was the question that marked the first period of US involvement, when we joined other Western imperialists in carving up China into economic zones. And then came the bitter argument in the US in the late 1940's and the '50s about "Who lost China?" Now Americans find themselves preoccupied with how best to exploit China's amazing economic prowess while feigning interest in the well-being of its people. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton performed the expected diplomatic dance around the latest flare-up of pretend concern, involving a blind lawyer suddenly made world-famous when he escaped from house arrest in rural China. The fact that Chen Guangcheng was targeted by Chinese authorities because of his opposition to his nation's oppressive population control policies added the United States' "pro-life" lobby to the army of morally subjective China watchers.