That said, the President should be capable of finding less dramatic and disruptive methods of achieving his defensible goal of reducing our involvement with China. And while we are on the subject, we believe that President Trump’s boosting of tariffs on Chinese products (and on some from other countries as well) is a means to an end. It is not that he loves tariffs, but that is the most effective way of getting the Chinese to pay attention. For too many years and through too many administrations, America has allowed China to get away with those things listed above, as well as undercutting our costs of production so dramatically as to make it unprofitable for American companies to compete, allowing the Chinese to flood our markets with their goods. It is high time that America acted to turn things around.
nd that is where the President, and the leaders of the free nations, are missing their opportunity. We should be demanding freedom, not only for the people of Hong Kong, but for the people of China as well, and for all of the places forcibly incorporated into China.
There are risks – and if America were to give full-fledged support to the people of Hong Kong, the Chinese almost certainly would claim that Hong Kong was not acting independently, but as a tool of America. But being so stifled and cautious that we take no effective action surely will see the Chinese triumphant over Hong Kong and every bit as intractable on economic and trade issues as it was before, if not more so.
And the people of Hong Kong are not demanding independence (although that is likely what most of them want); but they are demanding that the Chinese government respects their human rights, as it promised when the British government turned Hong Kong back to China in 1997. China has been communist since 1949, and during all that time, Hong Kong has been a speck of freedom, as has Taiwan; but neither of those places ever has been a realistic military threat to China, and they would not be today, even if China allowed Hong Kong the same freedoms that were exercised under British rule. Yet, Hong Kong is a serious threat to communist rule, because freedom for Hong Kong will encourage others in China to demand the same freedoms for themselves, and that could spell the end of the communist regime.
Of course, the Chinese will use the people of Hong Kong as pawns, and will count on “people of good will” in the US and Europe to be careful not to take any steps that would cause harm to Hong Kong – even though the “cause” of that harm is China itself. They know we care about Hong Kong and would not want to see its people slaughtered or jailed. Given the millions of people communist China has imprisoned and murdered over the past 70 years, we suspect that China does not care very much about the people of Hong Kong, except as a means for China to achieve its goals. If making them hostages will achieve those goals, or if shooting them down in the streets will achieve those goals, or what ever other fate they might suffer will achieve those goals, China will not hesitate to take the necessary action – unless the US and the free world speak with a united voice that freedom is the answer, and that crushing Hong Kong will result in painful steps against China. No, not military action, but there are many other ways we could retaliate.
It has been said that China plans for the next century while we plan for the next election, and there is a lot of truth to that saying; but we must start taking the longer view. The moment might not be right for the modern equivalent of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” but the moment might not be very far in the future.