Illinois Tenth District republican representative, Mark Kirk, met with China's president Hu on Thursday. He told Frank James of the Tribune's
The Swamp site that he was going to discuss intellectual property theft.
Chinese dissident turned American freedom activist, Harry Wu, spent 19 years in a Chinese forced-labor camp during the 1960s and 1970s and was detained yet again in 1995. He wants to know why American wants to do business with China so very badly when we are so critical of other communist regimes like Cuba.
What got Wu into such trouble that he lost 19 years at forced labor? He was in a student group that was interviewed by government officials and said that he did not think that the communist party worked to the benefit of the people.
The force labor from the camp that imprisoned Wu, and others like it, still exists and makes many of the cheap products that we purchase from China today. Kirk wants more of this type of trade, no questions asked.
In an interview with FrontPage.com, Wu had this to say of America's current relationship with China:
The U.S. policy toward China is dominated by interests of cooperation. This short-sighted policy is actually rebuilding another communist superpower. The money and technology from the West may benefit the average Chinese person, but it also largely serves as a blood transfer to a dying communist regime. Why don't we tell the Beijing government that there will be "No Free Lunch?"
I wish people were more aware today that while China is moving toward capitalism, it is state-controlled, and not free capitalism. And that capitalism does not necessarily entail freedom and democracy.
I would prefer to see a free, democratic and prosperous.
My take on Kirk's U.S.-China Working Group is that it seeks to make business deals between the US and China at any human cost. He has said repeatedly that issues of concern about China are not the concern of the U.S.-China Working Group which will focus only on the intellectual property issue. He defends this attitude by saying that the IP issue is the only concern of American exporters in China. He doesn't mention the slave laborers and probably has not asked their opinion.
I also wonder if Hu asked Kirk about Kirk's leader's wish to nuke Iran, an energy provider to China. Wu might take pleasure in the notion that Bush is sort of out-crazy-dictatoring him these days. How would Mark respond to that? He'd probably tell Hu all about teacher background checks, stop signs in Wheeling and the North Central line train schedule. Kirk might suggest to Hu that China develop it's own Suburban Strategy.
You can keep up with conditions in China through these two websites of organizations led by Harry Wu: the Laogai Research Foundation and the China Information Center. You won't hear from Kirk about Chinese forced labor camps and the atrocities that occur therein like child labor and the selling organs from deceased prisoners, but he is working on legislation to fund Chinese language training in the US. Apparently, Kirk has not learned how to say "Human Rights" in Chinese.