Article 1 - "FREEDOM IS THE GOING PRICE" by Jessica Kuzmier August 2008 edition of First Church of The Streets

      If you are ever on the island of Manhattan in New York City, and if you walk west on 42nd Street in Midtown, you will pass many things. The New York Public Library, Bryant Park, Broadway at its best and most competitive. Continue to the end by the West Side Highway, crossing as soon as you can. You will be confronted by a bike path where the riders are just as crazed and hurried as the motorized drivers you have just met. In an age where gas is higher priced and in a city where green means more than money, there are many of these type A cyclists before you, a lowly pedestrian, get to cross. Once you have survived that encounter, there is the Circle Line ready to take you around Manhattan in three hours for a small fee of thirty dollars or so.

     Not as obvious is the Chinese consulate building, a piece of Chinese sovereignty in a mecca that celebrates multiculturism. Maybe you will miss this piece of information completely, and continue somewhere else. But it is there as part of the give and take that make up politics, its own rules in play where the American Constitution makes way for another philosophy. On the brink of the Hudson River, this is China for real, while people seek a little bit of China downtown or indirectly by looking for deals on clothes that would just be too expensive otherwise if it weren't for that famous label, Made In China. In front of this piece of China, there is a lot of noise with people calling China's name. If you don't know anything about the consulate, or maybe even if you do, you sure think that China seems to be getting a lot of attention here.

     Indeed it is, both here on the pier and in the media at large. The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing has once more put China in the forefront of the headlines. From the March 10 crackdown in Barkhor, Lhasa of Tibetan monks protesting, to the hordes of people who accosted the Olympic torch as it made its relay towards the games' temporary home, the question of China's human rights policies found itself directly in the spotlight. To many, the idea of a forum where peace between nations being held in an oppressive and repressive country seemed antithetical. As of this writing, the games themselves have not taken place, and the question of what will happen with this paradox of the Olympics and a Communist nation has yet to take place. Many people have demonstrated against the abuses they have seen. The difference is that in China, one will probably be arrested for demonstration, even though as here, technically they commit have committed no offense.

     Past the West Side Highway, between the Chinese consulate and the Circle Line, you stand on the pier. People who want to partake in the cruise around Manhattan island wait on line to board whatever boat they want to board. It's great for a summer day, especially when it is very hot out. Like in July, when the humidity seems to boil out of the vents and through the windows of the skyscrapers that surround you.

     An insignificant ant you are, shuffling through streets, collectives of people, wending around from here to there. Once in a while, a wind tunnel makes things a little cooler on the streets. From the streets to the pier, a kaleidoscope of life wafts by. Smells are so prolific that they seem to meld into one another. So too, the people, there are so many of them. A group of people gathered on the street meditating, a group chanting by the pier? What's that in a city of eight million. Maybe you hear what the chanters are saying. Get out of Tibet now. Fine, I never thought of going there anyway, you might think. Or, there goes another kook on the streets of New York. Happens all the time. Better ignore them, maybe they'll want money. Take a picture or two; recording the background that they are scenery to. Or maybe you give them a thumbs up sign and go on your way. They can chant all they want, and they do. You hear their cries long after you pass them by. Tibet is far away from here on the water.
copyright 2008

     China's record of human rights abuses, by Western standards, is legion. In addition to the crackdown on Tibetan protesters in March, which to many was only symptomatic of a larger scale of human rights abuse against this nationality, China has appeared to have cracked down on many other groups as well. According to Amnesty International, the British-based human rights group, minority groups such as Uighurs and Mongolians, as well as Tibetans are repressed. Religious minorities such as those who practice Falun Dong are also attacked.

     For those who think that Christianity is a mainstream religion that no longer suffers persecution, think again: according to Voice of the Martyrs and Amnesty International, Christians are arrested when practice their religion outside of state sponsored churches, even when that means preaching the Gospel on their own personal time. Centralized repression of basic freedoms seems to be rampant in this growing tiger. Amnesty International has also said in an official report that China has failed to live up to the core values of the Olympic spirit, detaining human rights activists, using censorship, and removing any element of society that may put the image of stability so carefully crafted in the day leading up to Beijing.

     China has recently put out an official statement, refuting what this Union Jack organization has to say about its culture, in effect saying, you don't know jack. It's not all that surprising, since denial works well to keep the status quo going. Religious persecution is called something else, and speaking of Brits, one may be reminded of George Orwell and his world of 1984. Up is down, down is up: there are no people being persecuted for their religions or other peaceful beliefs, except when there are.

     It's like this: on the streets somewhere in upstate New York north of Westchester, there is a man standing on the middle of a main street in a quintessential small college city. He tells the people, in booming voice with acoustics that can remind one of the amplification Jesus must have projected to do his sermon of the mount, that the party is over and Jesus is coming back soon People come out of the tattoo parlors, the bars, the diners smoking cigarettes to see what this guy is saying. He sounds like a street performer, says one curious gawker as she takes a digital picture. Someone comes from a gas station a half a mile away to see what the noise is all about. No one arrests them, and they go about their business for Jesus. It's their First Amendment right anyway.

     If you visit their website, they tell you that. They have been arrested arbitrarily, not in this hungover upstate town, but they know their rights. You can visit their website at any time, and on this occasion, they had been the invited guests of a private church to come and tell people to get their act together for God. It's their freedom of expression, freedom of conscience. Good for them. They're right, it is their right. Arresting them when they conform to city noise ordinances would be arbitrarily locking them up. That's what happens to their counterparts in China. At least, that's what the West says, says China. These young American Baptist preachers at least have the option of protesting their wrongful arrests on the Internet without having their website shut down.

     Back down in New York city, there are those people you have seen meditating on 42nd street just before you got to the pier. Like their evangelical Christian brothers upstate, they also enjoying freedom of expression and conscience. Also like their Christian brothers upstate, they are participating in a practice that is now considered subversive under the Communist regime. The practice of Falun Gong, an exercise which is supposed to help a person live a healthier life, is seen to be as much of a threat as journalists exposing human rights abuses. Perhaps it is their nonviolent resistance; once it was outlawed in 1999 as a form of mind control, people still chose to perform the exercise in spite of the ban. As it is mostly a group practice that is most effectively done in public, the forum in which it was demonstrated was naturally deemed to be a subversive activity that flaunted the law. Still, one must be hard pressed to find a reasonable justification for a country that wants to prove itself free of oppression to outlaw such a meek activity as this.

     If one uses the example of, well, why should China care what the West thinks and why should they use Western examples of human rights, the answer is simply this: China is certainly at least appearing to be bending over backwards to join the ranks of the industrialized West through its economy. By not also enjoining the principles of individual rights in this oligarchic capitalism, it is questionable if the results they produce from this mixture will be able to sustain itself. Capitalism has seemingly worked the best when the principles of democracy sustained its bedrock; witness Germany during the Third Reich, during the days when Western Germany flourished and Eastern Germany was deadlocked by Communist principles, and the state of the country today, unified and democratic. Russia minus the Soviet Union, in a sense, allowed the black market to become legitimate, giving the underworld a big head start when things went capitalistic.

     In a similar fashion, it would seem that capitalism under the Chinese Communist Party would only produce thuggery amongst the few who have even the power to speak, with no whistleblower available to curtail the malfeasance because channels of information are blocked, whether restricting sources directly through the internet, or outright jailing anyone who speaks their truth. Under this thinking, which is the current mentality, even Falun Gong is a problem. Imagine a world where tai chi classes in San Francisco were regularly raided, and this probably doesn't even give a good picture of the pervasiveness of this crackdown.

     Those who see globalization as the panacea to what is going on in China seemed to be blinded to what is going on within its ranks. If anything, globalization touts that what is going on in the global marketplace with China is a good thing. After all, the more the markets are opened up, then the living wage of China will go up as well. The world is flat, and free trade will only make it flatter. Western dollars go into the coffers of China's marketplace, and the standard of living will get better. Because of all of the Western currency that is invested in the Chinese marketplace, poverty has a better chance of being eliminated, and democracy is more likely to flourish. One can vote with his dollars, and with more dollars come more opportunity. Or in this case, yuan. There seems to be a blind spot with trying to reconcile the systematic abuse of the Chinese populace while the coffers of the Chinese Communist Party is being filled with Western cash.

     Many in the West justify capital feeding China's coffers as a form of human rights. The burgeoning ranks of Shanghai, Guangdong, and Beijing seem to offer them some proof of how people want the jobs offered to them, and easy to give rise to the rhetoric that Western capitalism has saved these rural people from the brink of collapse, giving them a fighting chance for the middle class. But this kind of thinking forgets a major premise: unlike the West, where even in class-conscious Britain one can go from rags to riches, the only people who really have a chance at any real wealth are those who are members of the Chinese Communist Party. A daunting task for a rural man or woman who may not even be Han Chinese, or have the education or connections to even get started. Even being in the Party means nothing, and freedom of speech doesn't even seem safe when one speaks in Hong Kong and decides to come back to the mainland. The walls are watching, and even party members are not exempt from oppression. Speak the Party line, don't criticize any corruption that you see, let alone any human rights abuses, and you may be allowed to partake in the commercial capital that Western transnationals have flooded the Yellow River with. Those at the bottom will have to make do with scrounging around in garbage heaps to survive, well, that's just how the way it is. This is the state of capitalism in the China that is rising.

     The state of individual rights certainly seems pretty shaky under this regime. Consider this: Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google have conspired with the Chinese government to allow certain words to be filtered, words such as Tiananmen massacre, democracy, Tibet independence, and the Dalai Lama. One can't get certain information in China that you can elsewhere. Want to view the Human Rights Watch in China? Apparently, at least as of August 2006, you couldn't, according to the organization's website. Unless the human rights organization forgot to update the good news, it most likely is still being blocked out. The great equalizer, the Internet, is not even allowed to thrive in a place that those in the West choose to invest their dollars in. Even more disturbing is the fact that the PRC has master lists of ISP accounts, and that these ISPs regularly hand over information regarding their clients.

     Consider the case of Shi Tao. A 39-year-old journalist and poet, Shi Tao and other individuals like him have been imprisoned in China for exercising their right to freedom of expression. This right, one which is cherished in the West, is protected by international law and the Chinese Constitution. Meaning, a Chinese person should in essence have the same rights in the Chinese consulate as he would standing on the Circle Line pier. Shi Tao's crime for which he was arrested in 2004 seems to be nothing more offensive than sending an email to a U.S.-based pro-democracy website, something that I could imagine doing myself in the United States. This email alerted others about a government order which directed the media in China to minimize the impact of the 15th anniversary of the famous 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, where pro-democracy activists were killed by those in authority for their peaceful protests. The sentence for Shi Tao's crime is a 10 year prison sentence in Deshan Prison in Changde, Hunan Province, this for an everyday activity which happens so much in the West that it nearly goes unnoticed.

     There are also those environmental concerns. As industry has increased around the world, the reality of pollution on all levels as well as human-induced climate change has become more and more obvious. Unfortunately for just about anyone on the planet, there is a finite reservoir of resources, and the very lifestyle that many are proud about in the West would completely devastate the planet if the entire world population sustained it. Which, understandably makes those in the West look like a bunch of greedy bullies who hogged up all the candy and then told everyone else that they couldn't have any because it makes you fat. Those in the West, particularly in Western Europe, are issuing clarion calls of the dangers of emissions just as many of the countries they dominated and colonized have gotten a toehold on sustainability, such as the developing countries of China, India, and Brazil. It creates a lopsided dynamic of do as I say, not as I do, and makes it all the more difficult to issue declarations against human rights abuses in places like China when they are just trying to get in the door to begin with.

     All this bandying about does nothing to solve the question of what all of this commercial enterprise is doing to the Chinese environment. Not just in terms of greenhouse emissions, of which it is fast catching up to the profligate United States in totality. Not just in consumption either, although China is number two in oil consumption, burning twice as much as it produces. As a developing nation that is exempt from Kyoto standards, China is focused on rapid development and it seems it is willing to do whatever it can do to get there, or at least, it would appear that way to those who note the lack of regulation in China's economy. Drought is more prevalent, causing water shortages. Perhaps this has nothing to do with China's economic practices in particular, as many countries in Africa have done little to contribute to the global warming crisis, and yet suffer drought as well. Lower water has made some hydropower stations less effective, forcing the switch from this relatively carbon free energy source to the building of new coal-fired plants.

     If one doesn't want to blame China's rampant economic development on its water shortage crisis, citing worldwide changes in climate, then maybe this will cause a person to pause. The World Bank has determined that sixteen of the most polluted cities in the world are in China. This includes Beijing, where the 2008 Olympics will take place. Capital Steel, which has been responsible for much of this pollution, has moved its operations to a different province in light of the Olympics. This is more like the proverbial changing seats on the Titanic, where one was now on the bow and now has a view of the orchestra playing mightily in the face of death. The scene may look prettier, but the destruction is still imminent.

     The West, has of course, colluded with this rampant trade since the very beginning. Rome was hungry for her silk, and China was the supplier. From Marco Polo to the normalizing of trade in the twentieth century, China was always a lucrative place to go for business. The United States may tout its commitment to fight communism and all its attendant evils, but boy, the market sure does look good there in China. President Bush's decision to attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics may be nothing more than a decision to play diplomat, but it sure can look as though it is do as I say, do not as I do. Commitment to human rights, but forget any embargoes, let's do even more trade. Don't buy Cuban cigars, but don't worry about going to China to set up business there rather than here.

     In the meantime, China's human rights abuses continue, the government bringing a sharp whip on the people it is ostensibly supposed to serve. Most media in China are state owned. This could be a good thing, it may be argued, if one thinks of public television in democracies such as the United States. One could possibly call a representative and say they want this or that on public television, or rescind private contributions to a station if he or she didn't agree with programming. In China, this is not the case. "Public ownership" means being owned by the Communist party, so media in this case are not free to be vetted by the public.

     Instead, the party acts like a propaganda tool, vetting the stories of individual journalists and bullying them into reporting what they feel makes them look good. An analogy seems to be that in countries where the media have more leeway and freedom, they act as a watchdog against the government. Stories critical of policy, social conditions, and other issues usually are representative of media that feel free to speak their minds.

     In the case of Chinese media, journalists are not able to report on subjects unless it is vetted and approved by local authorities, and in essence, national ones as well. Sources of information are controlled, which is part of the problem when one considers how the Internet is restricted and monitored. Sometimes, outright bullying is done of journalists. In the case of an explosion of a coal mine in Guizhou Province, the deputy provincial governor Liu Changgui had journalists trying to cover the disaster arrested, and confiscated their film. Human rights activists such as Hu Jia is regularly arrested for his outspokenness against AIDS victims and other work criticizing the government.

     One may think things are similar in the United States, with Judith Miller being held for contempt in the Scooter Libby trial for not revealing her sources, or the coverup of NASA scientist James Hansen's findings on global warming. Perhaps intimidation is the way of the world and 1984 is prevalent in the East and the West. But in the United States, one can at least say it looks like George Orwell's 1984 and post it on a blog. In China, one needs a minder to tell him it isn't 1984 and it's all in his head. Just spread the good news of Shanghai's booming economy and how great the Olympics are coming to China.

     This is food for thought in a place where cheap goods flood the market of a population that needs to feed its own family in the competitive world of the United States, where in a recession, every penny counts. It's a free world here in the country surrounding the consulate by the pier, but the decisions made here have an impact over there. China is right in saying that the West were the ones who started this mess, and maybe they think they are doing what the need to do to survive, much like those who don't have the time and energy to vet every purchase that comes over the wire.

     This modern world, it is a hectic one. Rushing past each other on the streets, it is easy to miss the silent protest of a bunch of people meditating, easy to tune out yet another protest. But speak they do, in a place where their counterparts overseas cannot do as they do. Perhaps they hope someone will hear them, and carry their fight further so one day they don't have to do it anymore. Olympians will compete, the Western media will take their pictures. Someone somewhere will close his eyes and meditate in protest. Perhaps it is their prayer that one day that the streets of Beijing will look like their block near 12th Avenue in New York, or their flat in London. The silencing of a voice is more expensive than any amount of free trade could ever purchase. A whole new definition has been written for the phrase: buyer, beware.

SOURCES:

Amnesty International USA
Voice of the Martyrs, www.persecution.com
Human Rights Watch
"Race to the Bottom, Part IV. How Multinational Internet Companies assist Government Censorship in China", August 2006 Human Rights Watch
Axe to the Root
"China rebuffs human rights report", July 29, 2008, CNN.com
Nationmaster
Hom, Sharon K and Stacy Mosher, editors: Challenging China : struggle and hope in an era of change. New York : New Press : distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., 2007
Braasch, Gary: Earth under Fire : how global warming is changing the world. Berkeley : University of California Press, c2007
Bernstein, William J.: A Splendid Exchange : how trade shaped the world. New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008.