Forget Mia Farrow

I’m a tad baffled as to why The Moderate Voice chose to feature this apology for the government of China, except that it disses Hollywood icons Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg.

Apparently Farrow has been critical of China, and Spielberg withdrew as an artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics because China was not doing enough to pressure Sudan to end the ongoing atrocities in Darfur.

Here’s a 2004 Washington Post article explaining the China-Sudan-Darfur connection. Very simply, China is investing heavily in Sudan’s oil industry. Because they need Sudan’s oil, China is helping to prop up a rogue regime in Sudan. As part of their deal, China set up weapons factories in Sudan. The weapons plus revenue from the oil are finding their way into the hands of militia who have been carrying out mass slaughter in Sudan’s western region, Darfur.

This has been going on for five years, so one might have assumed Spielberg ought to have figured things out sooner, but never mind. This is not about Spielberg. It’s about China.

Poor, misunderstood China is also helping to prop up the military junta in Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar). China is not alone; the junta also benefits from association with the U.S. multinational oil giant Chevron, the French oil company Total and a Thai oil firm. Unfortunately for the monks and laypeople of Burma, their country is a rich source of natural gas, much of which is being piped into China. And if you want to know what life is like in Burma today, please read this heartbreaking story in the National Catholic Reporter.

Barbed wire surrounds pagodas, and large numbers of Burma’s monks are either exiled, imprisoned, or “disappeared.” There are rumors of mass slaughter of monks. And then there’s this:

An economic symptom that Peters has seen develop over the past 10 years are “pint-sized monks and nuns” — children not older than 6 or 7 years who are left at Buddhist monasteries by parents unable to care for them. At the monasteries, the children will be educated and “they’ll go on the alms rounds and the public will feed them,” Peters said.

In Myitkyina, a priest who runs an orphanage told Peters that parents will come to Mass and leave a child behind. “Parents have to decide: Which of the seven kids are we leaving in the pew on Sunday?” Peters said. “It’s the mother’s job to pull the kid aside and say, ‘After Mass, when we leave, you stay. Stay in the pew, don’t leave.’ What does that do to a child’s mind, for the rest of his or her life saying, ‘What did I do that you chose me?’ What does that do the woman who made that choice?”

During last year’s “Saffron Revolution,” many nations called on China to apply pressure on the Burmese junta. China was silent.

Basically, China is willing to supply arms to and support any dictatorship, no matter how vile, as long as they’re getting oil and gas in the deal. And why is this sounding familiar?

I’ve been blogging all week at the other blog about the atrocities in Tibet. I’m not sure most westerners really appreciate the situation in Tibet. I have a background article here. I argue here why the government of China, not His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is entirely at fault for the unrest in Tibet.

I don’t know what Mia Farrow said about the government of China, but if anything I bet it wasn’t harsh enough.

Update: See also The Peking Duck.

7 thoughts on “Forget Mia Farrow

  1. I must admit I’m flummoxed as to why any American would willingly bend over these days and become China’s bitch. Twenty years ago, capitalists defended China because they saw it as a huge, available market for American goods. But now we are China’s huge, available market for its lead paint- and antifreeze-tainted crap. The only thing we’ve sent over there in quantity recently is manufacturing jobs.

    And anyone who looks to Mia Farrow (or Richard Gere or George Clooney, for that matter) for anti-Chinese opinion is setting the bar pretty low. There are plenty of international NGOs, Buddhist scholars, experts on Africa, etc., whom they should be reading instead. But that would be too hard, and would involve too many big words.

  2. The Olympics are not supposed to be political; but, when they are awarded to countries like China, it’s hard to keep the politics out. However, when it comes to politicizing the Olympics, I am more sympathetic to the athletes who have trained years to get to the Olympics. We are only 18 once in our lives. We are only in peak physical condition once in our lives. To take that away from a group of young people, I think is not right. And, as Maha asks above, “Why is this sounding familiar?” The U.S. is no angel this particular year. Our government has engaged in illegal and immoral wars, tortures, spies on Americans, why should we deny our athletes their dream for a momentary bit of humanity, which would be too little, too late.

  3. You have to recognize that we have had a ‘deal’ with China, practically from the time Nixon visited. Understand at that time the narrative was inflation (which was so bad Nixon imposed a wage-price-freeze) was caused by the ‘wage-price spiral’ Read between the lines; inflation was caused by unions asking for higher wages which resulted in higher prices which caused the need for higher wages. Bottom line: the Republicans were convinced that organized labor was the cause of the national economic woes.

    Answer: China. A virtually endless supply of labor so cheap, it’s almost free, compared to the American worker. Completely export our manufacturing base. The cost of building the nescessary infrastructure was daunting and it would be for nothing if the Chinese worker ever realized what the American counterpart was able to command for the same work. Enter the deal: China guaranteed they would control labor and wages by whatever means, and America would not interfere. American Business and American Governement would, did and have allowed anything without protest, because it has been profitable for Wall Street.

    Remember Tieneman Square? The US allowed the pro-democracy movement to die a violent death – to protect the multinationals profits.

    We always thought that we would be in control of the situation. China’s economy has grown to the point they are competing with us for energy, and China conducts espionage here to build weapons advanced enough to be a real threat. Their safety and pollution record are global disasters. Wall Street has Congress (of either damn party) on a short leash. So it has the prospect of getting much worse.

  4. Well that’s the thing about The Moderate Voice: all of us authors have different opinions and are free — even encouraged — to express them.

    As for me, I am wondering about the Dalai Lama’s offer to resign. How does one stop being a Bodhisattva?

  5. I must admit I’m flummoxed as to why any American would willingly bend over these days and become China’s bitch.

    Because they own this country. The Junior regime has borrowed billions from them to finance the war against Iraq. We will be in hock to them for the foreseeable future.

  6. The Bush Administration took China off the list of Terrible Human Rights Countries just in time for the Tibet crackdown. The Republican Leadership, having already authorized the US to do similar inhumane things, applauds China for being able to get away with actions the Bush people can only daydream about … for now.

    The US has forgotten about Tibet long ago. US maps all show Tibet and China with no border between them. China owns Tibet, maybe it’s appeasement? Maybe Sec. Rice thinks that if they let China slaughter Tibetans, they’ll leave Taiwan alone?

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