Waking up to what's happening in China
The juxtaposition of three recent events have been very helpful to bring to Americans’ attention the threat that China (specifically their dictatorial government, the CCP) poses to us and most of the rest of the world.
We, me included, didn’t really get the full impact of the threat when the regime brutally put down the dissent in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989. Hundreds if not thousands of protestors were massacred. When I visited the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 2007 along with the “We the People” team from Gig Harbor High School, we adults were skeptical of the embassy spokesman’s positive assertion in response to a student’s question whether China would evolve into a democracy. Yet, I was too timid then to ask a question that I had on my lips: “When you are in charge will you treat us like we do the Brits today?”
Then again, we hardly blinked our eyes when we learned in the 2018 timeframe about the “reeducation camps” for the Muslim Uyghurs of the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang. Credible allegations were made of rape and murder and shoot to kill if you try to leave. Then once more we hardly noticed when millions of young people took to the streets of Hong Kong in 2019 to protest the CCP’s repressive extradition laws. They filled the jails and hopefully are still alive. Then during the pandemic, we were told to be suspicious of the claims that the Covid-19 virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Take heart — those three news events I mentioned are wake-up calls.
First, Covid. The headline to Peggy Noonan’s column in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal says it all: “Common Sense Points to a Lab Leak.” If we called it the China Flu, we were racists. If we, on the other hand, we said we needed to mask up indoors in crowds, we were called Marxists. If we tried to find a helpful middle ground, we were pummeled from both sides. Now that the Energy Department and FBI Director appear to agree that the likely source is the Chinese lab in Wuhan, in my opinion we should do two things: acknowledge that some level a CCP cover up occurred, millions died in part due to that fact, and litigation may well follow; and then recognize that sobering reality and move on — we have lots of other challenges to address, many of which involve China.
Second, likely the most significant news favorable to bringing the threat of the CCP front and center is the recent creation of a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, “United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” Notice the careful wording of the name of the committee. They didn’t word the name broadly to include China as a whole. To me that signals the right balance, get serious about the threat, but also where it came from — not the Chinese people, but their dictatorial government. The Republic of China on Taiwan has evolved into a true democracy while the Peoples Republic has maintained a communist dictatorship on the mainland — yet with both significant capitalist freedoms and a seemingly Maoist return to control and repression.
When the 118th Congress convened recently, with Republicans in a majority in the House, and established that select committee with bi-partisan composition to get at some of those tough issues, I applauded. Hopefully, the committee will help inform the stereotypical American so often shrugging his or her shoulders at the threat. Witnesses have already begun to drill down into what the panel chair, Republican Mike Gallagher, terms the threat of an "existential struggle." We will see what happens, but I am cautiously optimistic — with low expectations!
We have to come to terms with the emerging multipolar world with China ruled by the CCP as our major adversary. We need to ramp up our conventional arms manufacturing, ensure that Taiwan is fully armed, and position forces in the Philippines and Japan to deter CCP aggression. Yet we also need to meet with the CCP, as best as possible, and preserve the remote chance for an evolution toward democracy.
The third news piece about recognizing the CCP threat has an almost sardonic undertone. According to an editorial in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, John Lee, is offering free trips to Hong Kong. That editorial’s concluding words are a warning to me and many others: “Visitors who take the free ticket should be aware that if they’ve ever said or written anything critical of Hong Kong or Beijing, Mr. Lee’s security forces will be watching.”
If I can travel to the region, it will be to Taiwan.
Contact Larry Little at larrylittle46@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Waking up to what's happening in China
