Why do you hate freedom?
This seems more like a rant than a Great Debate. How do we “kiss China’s ass”? They are a major trading partner and have been for quite some time, simply because it is to our economic benefit. Their abudance of cheap labor allows Americans to buy lots of things at a greatly reduced price.
Why should we boycott the Beijing Olympics? Because we don’t agree with some of China’s politics? Jimmy Carter boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow AFTER they invaded Afghanistan it and it was largely regarded as an unpopular idea.
“Most Favored Nation” status isn’t exactly as coveted as you think. Nearly every developed nation in the WTO enjoys MFN status (although the US calls it “Normal Trade Relations” now because people like you get all worked up at the idea of “Most Favored” status being given to totalitarian governments). It really just means that the nation in question gets the same trade benefits as other nations.
We can’t exactly “shut down and sue” China into oblivion. But most of these lead products have been recalled.
But airplanes can also fly, and if you want a plane ticket, you have to tell the airline or travel agent you wish to go to Beijing. Saying or writing Peking, especially in non-English-language countries, where people today may never have heard that word before, will result in much head-scratching and blank stares.
Plus, the ducks in the restaurants are, Alas! no longer flying. No Peking duck takes to the sky. But they sure are delicious. Yummm.
I think many people forget that our relationship with CHina does seem to be working. For allthat they are geopolitical jerks, they have slowly started to move in a positive direction. The leadership is still composed of self-centered autarchs, but the progress has been welcome. Unlike Russia, for example, which privatized its economy (good!) by selling it off peicemeal to the ruler’s bestest buddies (bad 
). Cmpared to the early 70’s, China has really improved, and given that they could easily have gone the route of North Korea, it’s impressive.
I should also point out that our hard-line stance against Korea hasn’t really encouraged them to change anyway.
North Korea made it’s own boat through constant illegal activities, a dead-end economic structure, and total mismanagement. They were only able to have a semblance of sanity through Russian aid (which they lied to themselves about, claiming all kinds of self-sufficiency rubbish). When the Russian aid went south, their ability to feed, power, and clothe themselves was obliterated.
Now, in point of fact, much aid was offered to North Korea, and they spurned it and tried to grab it to feed the (gigantic) army and bolter the power strucure, while beginning currency forging, drug smuggling, and weapons-trading operations. We offered to buy them out of disaster if they dropped the nuke program and they chose to cheat. They were then caught at it (and shown to be incompetant). This has been the case under both Clinton and Bush; Clinton was tripped up by Jimmy “I love hateful leftist dictatorships” Carter.
In any event, the basic situation is shown by the fatc that even China pressured the North Koreans to liberalize, and NK wholly rebuffed them outside of few abysmally failing show projects.
We’ve never had a very hard-line stance with NK, as it was a strategic backwater. We mostly ignored them until they turned into Lower Kleptocratia. And America was never particularly unwilling to deal with NK, but didn’t want to do it mano-a-mano, as we wanted China and Japan to take some responssbility in the matter. And so far it seems to be working.
NK blusters and acts like a wild man, we ignore them, they realize we don’t care and talks resume. Progress is made. NK blusters and acts like a wild man to get concessions, we ignore them, they realie we don’t care and talks resume. More progress is made. It’s slow and halting, but eventually it’s getting there. They’ve pretty much given up on the nuke program it seems. Though there’s the possibility they may have another program hidden away (which would have been ridiculously expensive for them, even more inefficient, etc.) we’re now dismantling their program and their populace is getting a little bit back on its feet.
This will give us more leverage in the future, since they’ll become a dependancy but would have to totally restart their program near from scratch.
The irony of it all is, of course, that Bush’s diplomatic strategy has never been hard-line. It’s designed to look hard-line while quietly making deals. Some things are non-negotiable, but how is that a change?
Looks Like someone in China is willing to make a few other investments away from the US dollar http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/11/07/afx4310367.html
Well, two things. First, you really should re-read that article, because it doesn’t say what you seem to indicate you THINK it says.
Secondly, it makes sense for China too diversify into other currencies than the US Dollar. Especially right now that the dollar is dropping. This, however, has nothing too do with the quote from me you quoted in your post. Whether the Chinese buy Euro’s, pounds or large granite rocks their primary MARKET for their goods is still the US at this time. They may and probably will expand their market into Europe more, but it will still never be the market that the US is for it’s goods and services.
-XT