Myths About Needing China

Most people in the west have no clue about China. Either they see them as a staunch communist power or a new found democracy. It is not surprising that so many are clueless, based upon the garbage that they read in the press. Usually it is based upon kernels of truth but very few writers have lived here long enough to make sense of it all or have lived in Hong Kong or has not seen the realities of China.

In the following report, however, the author has either done their homework or lived here and really understand China. From here

Myth 1: Trade with China benefits Canada

“China is really using Canada almost as a colony,” says Mr. McAdam, “getting raw materials from us and selling them back to us in finished products ranging from furniture and clothes to plastics and high-tech equipment.

“Canada doesn’t need China,” he says. “China needs Canada.”

Myth 2: China has 1.3 billion customers
“It’s a mirage — there are one billion peasants who cannot afford a bottle of Coke,” Mr. McAdam says. The real customer base is 300,000 — people with privileged government positions.
He says that the West’s widespread trade deficits with China spring from low wages and prisoner slave labour, counterfeit products and pirated intellectual property.
While a few Canadian companies make money in China, he says, the fantasy of broad-based beneficial trade has been “created by people to justify” a close relationship with China.

Myth 3: China is becoming a democratic nation
“Trade has not brought democracy to China and never will,” says Mr. McAdam. Nor will it bring China free speech, free media, free worship or free demonstrations — graphically confirmed in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and this year in Tibet.
He quotes Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who said last year that “democracy is probably still 100 years away.”

Myth 4: China has improved human rights
With Olympic visitors gone home, Mr. McAdam predicts, China “will crack down” on its citizens.
Mr. McAdam laments that “nobody is really taking China to task over its human rights violations.” Even in Canada, Chinese émigrés and students are “intimidated by the Chinese government, which leads them to think that they, or their families back home, will be harmed — unless they spy.” This includes some targeted students, scientists, businessmen, foreign delegations and public servants, he says.
Most of the Chinese media in Canada are controlled by the Communist government or its proxies, says Mr. McAdam. “The information that the Chinese population is getting here in Canada — they might as well live in Communist China.”

Myth 5: China is benign
“China is engaged in a stunning espionage effort, buying … its way towards high-tech superpower status as fast as it can,” says Mr. McAdam. “It wants to have the world’s best military.”
Ten months ago, the U.S. government concluded, in a 350-page analysis titled 2007 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission: “China is supplementing the technologies that its defense industry obtains through commercial transfers and direct production partnerships with an aggressive and large-scale industrial campaign. Chinese espionage activities in the United States are so extensive that they comprise the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies.”
(The Sidewinder Report, incidentally, had reached a similar conclusion in Canada: “China remains one of the greatest ongoing threats to Canada’s national security and Canadian industry. There is no longer any doubt that the ChIS [Chinese Intelligence Services] have been able to gain influence in important sectors of the Canadian economy, including education, real estate, high technology, security and many others. In turn, it [influence] gave them access to economic, political and some military intelligence of Canada.”)