It's Chinatown, Jake

Just briefly, because I have a lot of work to do...

A guy named Hu, president or something of Red China, is in Washington DC this week with the Comrade fawning all over him.

Probably not coincidentally, Glenn Beck has had shows about China for the last couple days.

Both of the above, I believe, have overblown China's significance -- or the power it's supposed to have over the USA. And both seem to be overlooking a couple key features about Red China.

OK, for starters, both Donald Trump and apprently Stuart Varney claim that China needs the USA more than we need China because we are such a huge market for Chinese-made goods. I agree with this. I mean, let's look at China.

It's basically sort of a slavery-based economy. I mean, really, China has a huge population -- 1.2 BILLION or so -- and apparently most of them gainfully employed somehow. Glenn Beck is fond of the idea that much of the population lives in a type of slave laber/company store/Pullman Village kind of situation. If this is true, what kind of discretionary funds do these folks have to spend as consumers?

I mean, they might produce 12 trillion tricycles. How many of these are bought by Chinese consumers? How many are sold overseas?

The fact that slave laborers are almost never consumers, except at a rather microcosmic level, was also a feature of the American South under slavery. Similarly, nearly everything the Old South produced was exported to England and France, and a pretty good portion to the Yankee spinning mills. None of the cotton, tobacco, hemp, indigo, etc. produced in the Old South was purchased by slaves. Therefore, the South was hardly an independent economic region. It couldn't stand on its own. It had to be actively involved in trade outside the region or it couldn't survive.

China is in almost exactly the same situation, except that Chinese labor does, perhaps, buy some of what is produced there. But I would guess Chinese consumption represents only a very small part of Chinese production.

And, OK, we owe China tons of money. Being Yankees, with that inerasible Puritan streak, I think we tend to blow this out of proportion. We can't stand the idea of being in debt to a brutal dictatorship. We're horrified by that. It looms very large and terrifying in the American psyche. Actually, it doesn't make any difference if we owe China or owe England or Argentina. We owe. We're a debtor nation. No special reason to kiss Hu's ass anymore than anyone else's. China owns about 11% of our debt. We owe others more.

When Nixon went to China in the early 1970s -- with lots of hoopla about opening up relations and all that -- it made me sick. It makes me even sicker to see the Comrade pandering to Hu when he's blown off England and hardly has time for France or Germany.

China is a predator nation and it almost has to be. It's totally dependent upon foreign trade, and the USA is among its biggest market, if not the biggest market. And American consumers enable China to continue as it is by buying Chinese goods. Though I know it's almost impossible to buy certain things that AREN'T "Made in China." I'm not pointing fingers here.

However, I do suggest we begin turning away from China and rebuilding our own domestic manufacturing capacity. That would require lightening up on stupid EPA regulations, letting the polar bears tend to their own business, and reducing taxes -- especially the corporate tax rate. Then let's see what happens.

As for China itself, with such a huge population, management must be a nightmare for the relative handful of those who retain political power there, floating like little bubbles of fat on a sea of proletariat water. And they face the same thing the slave owners in the Old South faced. For example, in most states, it was illegal to teach slaves to read and write. The thinking was, as slaves became better educated and more aware of the world around them and their place within it, they became less and less content with their condition as slaves. They began to recognize the possibilities that life presents and developed a greater capacity to rebel against the authority that kept a boot on their necks.

Would you like to confront 1.2 BILLION people in rebellion?

On the other hand, as the Chinese population evolves culturally, its leadership may find it necessary to lighten up on political control to maintain the civic peace. This would be a good thing. But history tells us that those in power anywhere are extremely reluctant to ever give it up. So... the outcome of China's development is up for grabs. Just have to wait and see.

But this spectacle of the Comrade falling all over Hu is just disgusting and makes me rather ashamed to be an American. The Comrade appears to be all impressed at Hu's status. Imagine being the Grand Puppeteer pulling the strings of 1.2 BILLION people. Probably the Comrade's fondest dream. Like that silly woman with the silly hair who claimed Mao and Mother Theresa were her "idols," I suspect the Comrade prays at the feet of those who hold the actually very specious and tentative reins of power. The Comrade is just far too impressionable when it comes to pomp and circumstance. He seems to confuse pageantry with governance.

Save the Republic.