Chinese checkmate

"As you can see, Jeff just loves Asian shit."

When I heard this line in the movie Thank You for Smoking, I could really relate. See, I just love Asian shit too. The Zen-ness of it all, the principals of Tao, the serene art work, images of monks crossing babbling brooks over thatch bridges ... I eat that shit up. The Dali Lama totally rules and all that.

Speaking of eating, 70 percent of all the food I consume is Asian. I fell in love with spicy chicken and vegetable dishes as a very early age, which served as a gateway drug to sushi and Pad Thai. I've recently discovered those Vietnamese soup places that serve Ph and I was instantly hooked (just as long as no one serves me tendon and tripe). Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't Asian in a past life.

Come to think of it, there isn't much about Asian culture that I don't like. I had to try really hard to identify something in any Asian civilization towards which I could apply my particular brand of hyper-annoyance. In hindsight, it shouldn't have been that difficult.

Because let's face it: the Chinese government over the last 50 years has been comprised of - and characterized by - complete douchebaggery. So I'd thought I'd take some time off from berating the current US leadership (an oxymoron is there ever was one) and focus my wrath on those pinko communist assholes who've been running China for the last half century. Let's start with the aforementioned Dali Lama, shall we?

The Dali Lama is without a doubt the coolest cat on the planet today. I haven't met all 6.5 billion people (mainly because half of them are in China), but there no way that the Lama can be out-cooled. He's Fonzie in a burgundy robe. He never gets pissed off, he meditates four or five hours a day just to make sure he stays chilled out, and he'll give anyone and everyone the best he has to offer. Want a good piece of advice? The Lama will lay some serious knowledge and serenity on you and you can take it to the bank. The dude is just solid.

In fact, the Tibetans as a whole are some of the most decent people to have ever populated this rock. All they really want is to be left alone to pray and farm. How can you knock that?

Enter the Chinese government, circa 1950. They knocked, and found a peace-loving, primitive people who were willing to acquiesce some of their basic rights and principals in order to live as an autonomous nation. Tibet conceded to let the Chinese to incorporate their country into China, so long as there would be no revision of Tibetan political, cultural and religious structure and organization. A seventeen point agreement. The Chinese government said, "Okay, that works for us."

The Chinese government waited for, oh, about a year before violating the agreement in more ways than I could mention. When the Tibetans said, "Hey, I thought we had an agreement, and now, this doesn't work for us," the Chinese invaded the country and started murdering people wholesale, destroying monasteries and jailing monks - which, quite obviously, was their plan all along. If you've read this far, you know much of the same continues today, so I won't presume to give a lecture here.

You probably also remember the uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or at least you've heard about it. Let's summarize, shall we?

A number of students and intellectuals, and most anyone else who didn't like living in a state of near despotism, began a protest. They marched, peacefully, on Tiananmen Square and demanded that their government allow certain freedoms that most other countries take for granted. The Chinese government responded in typical fashion by murdering their citizens by the thousands.

So then, how shall the US respond to such a country? We should boycott their goods, right? We should surely demand sanctions, shouldn't we?

Er, um, well … actually, let's go ahead and buy their goods by the boatload, thus we indirectly condone their murderous ways and slave labor practices. Because who are we to judge? We do much of the same shit as they; we just do it a little differently.

And here, the irony is rich. Next time you're in one of those mega-stores with incredibly cheap consumer goods, seek out the really inexpensive stuff - the products that seem impossibly inexpensive. Pick up the item and check where it's made. China. It's always China.

Wal-Mart runs on cheap Chinese goods. I'm convinced that over half of everything Wal-Mart sells is made in China. Target is no different. You can walk around in Target for hour, seeking stuff that's made in America, and you might not find a single thing. But in that same hour, you could discover hundreds of items, from a desktop iPod docking station, to a plastic box which emanates soothing sounds from nature, to a nifty set of storage cubes, to a Home Mix DJ Party Kit, to a new mountain bike, all with one thing in common: MADE IN CHINA.

And this really says a lot about Americans.

If asked, we deplore the hideous labor practices that make all this possible. Slave labor which forces the poorest Chinese women to work 90 hours a week for fifty cents an hour is absolutely unacceptable! The human rights violations are despicable! And where's the free speech? The right to religious freedom? Totally non-existent. Citizens murdered for expressing their views? Chinese people jailed and tortured just because they want to be part of Falon Gong? We must not deal with these people!

But Timmy wants a new stereo for Christmas.

"Hey honey, I was at K-Mart last week and I saw a really nice-looking component stereo system. It was only $99! Can you believe it?"

That's correct: the average American is willing sell their principals out for cheap consumer goods. And I don't pretend to be above it. The Dell computer that is allowing this article to be written was made in China. The Linksys wireless router that connects me to the Internet so I can send my articles in to Joel was made in China. The Brother MFC printer that I will use to print out a hard copy and check for grammatical errors and such was - you guessed it - made in China. At least the paper that it will be printed on was made in the USA from real American, clear-cut trees.

Thing is, I'd pay extra for a computer made in the USA, or from some country that didn't kill its citizenry without apology. But you can't find one. I'm telling you, it's all Chinese – not even Taiwanese anymore, but mainland China.

Back to the irony. Capitalist pigs like me and you are being supplied with the vast majority of our consumer electronic goods from communists (please ignore Senator McCarthy turning over in his grave). Think about that for a second. Granted, China isn't exactly Stalinist, and hasn't even really been that way. During the Cold War, Americans didn't bother too much with China, because it was understood that they practiced a "kinder, gentler" version of "Maoist" communism. But nonetheless, the undeniable fact remains that our capitalist economy is largely reliant on slave labor from a murdering, intolerant communist country.

So what can we do about it? Absolutely nothing. China has the largest standing army in the world, with 2.25 million troops. They've had nukes since the 1960's. If we can't even handle the situation in Iraq, what makes you think we can deal with China? We can't, and even if we wanted to, Americas aren't about to give up buying stuff anytime soon. Without China, we're screwed.

So then, what does all this mean? It means that the Chinese government can continue to exploit its citizens and wipe out irritating little countries, and the world at large will sit and watch it happen. The Chinese have been around for a long time, and they think long-term. We think quarterly.

So next time you're at Target, buying your $39 programmable stainless steel crock pot, just remember that you're endorsing communist slave labor while helping mom and pop main street America become extinct.

Enjoy your lunch.

Evan Redmon is a manager of a public golf course in Washington, D.C. and writes a few things about stuff sometimes. Contact him at evanredmon@yahoo.com if you really want.