June 4, 2024
Social injustice sparks your activist heart. Or maybe your church has told you that you are to be God’s justice in society. If you are young you probably want to belong. Maybe you truly have a good heart and you want to “change the world”. But from what I see you appear to have your focus misdirected.
You say you care. But maybe not if it is “Made China”
Freedom for Muslims
Vast numbers of young people, particularly students, have decided it is their passion to care about a perceived Muslim genocide in the Middle East, and what they would call Islamophobia. They are destroying campuses, interfering with operations, and threatening fellow students. Even professors and non-students are participating in mass acts of vandalism and disruption.
The social justice warriors seem to have an odd blind spot about inconsistencies with their values regarding women and sexual identities, and those of extreme Islamists who hang gays and flog adulterers. There are no rainbow Pride parades in Gaza.
But the glaring hypocrisy is that while agonizing about Israel’s military response to a massacre, which often involves dropping leaflets to warn civilians, there is not a single word about the actual ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of Muslims, particularly the Uyghurs, in northwestern China.
It is the plan of the Chinese CCP to, as much as possible, eliminate them and replace them with Han Chinese. From Christian Azzolini of Genocide Watch, “Since 2017, between 800,000-2,000,000 Uyghurs have been held in Xinjiang’s concentration prisons, commonly referred to as re-education camps“ [1].
The region is under surveillance at all times. Ethnic Uyghurs are discriminated with regard to use of buses, trains, and airports. The government is intent on suppressing “illegal religious activity”. Mosques are destroyed. Uyghurs are victims of torture and gang rape. Women are also subject to forced sterilization and abortion to eliminate a future minority population [1].
They are forbidden the use of their language and must abandon their faith and culture. Women may be forced to live with or marry Han Chinese. Children are removed from homes and placed in residential schools where they may not speak their language [1].
You say you care. Yet you you have done nothing to address one of the authentic genocides of Muslims taking place in the world, seemingly because it is “Made In CHINA.”
The Environment and “Climate”
You say you care about the environment, about carbon dioxide emissions, about “climate”. You want us to all use electric batteries. So how does that work? Well, outside of the destruction of the environment in the Philippine rain forests for nickel, devastation of water supplies in Latin America’s lithium triangle, and children dying in the Congo while mining cobalt, there is China.
They build the batteries. Then again they build most everything, as we learned during COVID when their factories shut down. It all requires power. They get most of their electricity from coal. So they mine a vast amount of coal and build power plants to generate electricity from coal.
As to the coal burning. In 2022 “the coal power capacity starting construction in China was six times as large as that in all of the rest of the world combined” [2]. In the first half of 2023 China set pace to permit two coal plants per week. Including plants announced, or in the preparation stage (not yet permitted ), “they could produce 392 GW of capacity at 306 different coal power plants” [3].
At least the west will share some small part of the pain. Recent estimates indicate that 29% of San Francisco’s air pollution comes from China [4]. As noted in my home page, air moves, pollutants with it. It is one reason why outsourcing pollution to poorer or less free countries is not only unethical, it only delays the pollution of our nation.
You say you care. Yet you say nothing about banning commerce with the largest producer of air pollution. You don’t seem to care if it is “Made in CHINA.”
Prisoners Rights
It is deemed “progressive” to be concerned about who and how many people end up in prison. Some worry about the identities of those in prison and how they compare with the population at large. The more extremist deem it suitable to simply have no prisons, no police, just security details for the public figures who promote these notions.
In China they are fond of arresting people, convicting, imprisoning, and executing on grand scale. China maintains that executions are a state secret. But organizations who study the death penalty use a lower bound of 1000s for the number of death sentences in 2023, with a possibility of more than 10,000 [5], [6].
Not to let this go to waste the bodies are harvested for organs to be used in transplants. It has been discovered that in some cases the harvesting is not post-execution. The harvesting is the means of execution. Death by loss of major organs. Conveniently this often occurs just as an organ of the prisoner’s type is wanted for a transplant [7].
You say you care. Yet you do not protest the mass incarceration of political prisoners and use of their bodies to provide replacement parts for the more privileged, as long as they are “Made in CHINA.”
Free Speech
For the last decade or more universities that were bastions of free speech have become the epitome of censorship, often by threat of violence. But now students and others trespass, vandalize, intimidate, and promote their preferred cultural genocide as being an exercise in “free speech.”
Thirty five years ago, in 1989, when China was experiencing some opening of its economy, students thought they could also have a more open society. Events led to a massive protest movement. Various student groups convened on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. After being told to evacuate a violent massacre was prosecuted by the Chinese military. Heavily armed tanks and troops killed hundreds to thousands of people. No reference to this incident is made in China. If you search for it on the internet no citation can be found.
When China took over Hong Kong in 1997 they agreed to allow it to have its own social system, That lasted for a while but now the free press is all but gone, an annual event to remember Tiananmen Square has been banned, and democracy activists are jailed.
You say you care. Yet you say nothing of the termination of rights of speech, press, and protest. You complain of a human rights abuse if the institutions you are terrorizing don’t provide you with water, catered food, and even tampons. But you have no qualms if the massacre of students speaking out is “Made in CHINA.”
Workers Rights
You say you care about workers rights and a “living wage”
Yet your concerns and your protest plans are likely communicated on your iPhone and other toys made in China. Often in western China, possibly by forced labor. “In the electronics industry there is evidence of children between the ages of 13 and 15 being forced to work producing electronics” [8].
In a rare display of bipartisanship the United States Congress proposed a bill requiring companies to avoid knowingly using slave labor. Tim Cook, a liberal from Silicon Valley, CEO of Apple Computer, objected [9].
You say you care. Yet you say nothing about forced slave labor or child labor as long as they produce your gadgets “Made in CHINA”
Open Borders and Migrant Rights
You want migrants to have shelter and food and health care and be given everything you would, or might not, give a citizen. You don’t believe anyone, or perhaps anything, is illegal
Try wandering into China and demanding housing, food, health care, and education.
Yes, I too wouldn’t think that illegal migrants would be an issue in China. Who would want to break in? But if you live in North Korea it seems a better deal, or at least the route to one. However China typically turns back migrants to face prison, torture, and possible death as alleged traitors. Female migrants have a chance of being kept and sold as sex slaves or wives because of the dearth of women in China, given their preference for male babies and a historical 1-child restriction [10].
You say you care. Yet you don’t care what happens to migrants, as long as it is a tragedy “Made in CHINA.”
Here, there seems to be no slight so small or issue so remote that won’t inspire you to take to the streets and scream into the night. Yet have you ever partaken, or even seen, a single protest against China? Have you heard a celebrity speak out about China? No. They want to keep them as customers to the point of changing their movies to make them palatable to the CCP. How about sports heroes? They agonize about perceived injustices but censor and fire staff for standing up for democracy efforts in Hong Kong. It might upset the Communist Party. Some claim to not be educated, as if an NBA player can’t afford a computer and internet service. One may as well say, I am unaware of racism, ergo, “Not my problem”. If you are a student or professor at an elite college you have no excuse for not being able to learn about the abuses of China. Is it possible that China is funding your professorship?
In the 1970’s my university paper made a request that students wear jeans on a given day to support gay rights. That of course was a tragically low bar given that most students, particularly the men, wore jeans every day. In our present era it seems that your “sacrifice” is to cut class at your insanely expensive institution and still have your parents, or tax paying plumbers, pay your tuition and loans. But give up your iPhone? AirPods? Mac? and all of the vast array of products made by Chinese labor? Even the scarf you are wearing to pretend to be a Palestinian is likely “Made in China [11].
You say you care. But when it comes to living your values. It seems to be a bridge too far.
REFERENCES
[1] Azzolini, Christian, “Chinese genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang continues“, Genocide Watch, August 25, 2023, https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/chinese-genocide-of-uyghurs-in-xinjiang-continues
[2] “China permits two new coal power plants per week in 2022”, CREA (Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air), 2022, https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-new-coal-power-plants-per-week-in-2022/
[3] “China’s coal power spree could see over 300 coal plants added before emissions peak”, Global Energy Monitor, August 28, 2023, https://globalenergymonitor.org/press-release/chinas-coal-power-spree-could-see-over-300-coal-plants-added-before-emissions-peak/#:~:text=After%20the%20permitting%20spree%20of,306%20different%20coal%20power%20plants
[4] Goal, Nidhi, “Over a Quarter of San Francisco’s Air Pollution “Made in China”, December 10, 2013, https://www.industrytap.com/quarter-san-franciscos-air-pollution-made-china/17328#:~:text=It%20has%20long%20been%20known,Francisco%20is%20’Made%20in%20China
[5] “Executions Around the World”, Death Penalty Information Center, 2023, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/international/executions-around-the-world
[6] “The Status Quo of China’s Death Penalty and the Civil Society Abolitionist Movement”, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, February 15, 2022, https://worldcoalition.org/2022/02/15/china-death-penalty-2022/
[7] Iqbal, Ali and Khan, Aliya, “Analysis: Killing prisoners for transplants: Forced organ harvesting in China“, July 29, 2022, https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/analysis-killing-prisoners-for-transplants-forced-organ-harvesting-in-china/#:~:text=Although%20this%20practice%20occurs%20in,known%20as%20forced%20organ%20harvesting
[8] “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor”, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 2022, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print?items_per_page=10&combine=china&order=name&sort=desc
[10] Yeung, Jesse, and Sea, Yoonjung, “She fled North Korea but was sold to a man in China. Her second escape came nearly 20 years later“, CNN, March 8, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/08/asia/north-korean-refugees-trafficked-china-intl-hnk-dst/index.html#:~:text=China%20considers%20North%20Korean%20refugees,torture%20or%20worse%2C%20activists%20say