China Oppressive, Blanchard's Point Elusive

I'm still scratching my head over the erratic tangent on Tibet, Palestine, and the "international left" at SD Politics. Dr. Blanchard seems to be painting with a very broad brush that's still short a few bristles.

His wee-hours Friday post (1:33 a.m. -- perhaps trying to show who's ready to take that international crisis call while our children sleep? ;-) ) starts off well, addressing my accusation of a "logical stretch" in the conflation of the issues of Tibet and Palestine. He says his observation is really quite simple: the "international left" makes great hay of what they perceive as Israel's oppression of Palestine; China's oppression of Tibet is much more real and deadly; the "international left" thus ought to make more hay over Tibet.

To support his claim that the "international left" is dropping the ball on Tibet, Dr. Blanchard offers some interesting media analysis: he searches some American lefty journals (The Nation, The Progressive, and Washington Monthly) and finds a great paucity of articles on Tibet compared to substantial coverage of Israel since 2000. There are many reasons Israel would appear with more frequency in American media than Tibet (more instances of armed conflict, closer relation to big news about terrorism and American military action), but I will grant that Dr. Blanchard's point is made: the liberal media has not paid sufficient attention to the crimes China has been committing for decades in Tibet.

Of course, if we accept Blanchard Search of Media Articles (BS-MA) analysis as a valid instrument, what happens when we apply it to the organs of the "international right"? A search of "Israel" on FoxNews.com produces 6011 stories up to the end of 2007. Search "Tibet" over the same time period, and FoxNews.com spits out 116 stories. Apply BS-MA to National Review, and you get 3515 articles mentioning Israel pre-2008 and 95 mentioning Tibet. Heck, search Dakota Voice and you get 55 articles on Israel and 1 on Tibet, and that 1 is from this week*. Average those three ratios, and you get 48 Israel stories from the right for every 1 on Tibet, versus an Israel:Tibet average ratio from the lefty journals of 24:1. If the "international left" ignores Tibet, the "international right" ignores Tibet twice as much.

One a.m. appears to get the best of Blanchard in his last couple paragraphs. He acknowledges his colleague Dr. Schaff's point that "blame for the West's neglect is widely shared on both sides," but then claims "It is perhaps excusable if I prefer to criticize the other side." Excusable? To ignore the real enablers of the Chinese thugs, the corporations and consumers (including ourselves) who pump China full of money for the guns the People's Army turns on Tibetan monks? No more excusable than Blanchard finds it for the European intellectuals to prefer to criticize Israel and America rather than take a hard look at their own complicity in Chinese oppression.

And then, Blanchard's irresolvably illogical conclusion:

But it is worth noting that the international left spent decades putting pressure on South Africa and Israel. In the former case, this produced a striking achievement. But the fact of the matter is that both these regimes were capable of moral embarrassment, they had/have a conscience. Regimes like China, North Korea, or Syria, do not. I think the right is more capable of dealing with that fact than the left is [Ken Blanchard, "Tibet and the Left II," South Dakota Politics, 2008.03.21].

Try following Blanchard's point:

1. The "international left" has moral power.
   
2. Moral power won't work against China.
3. The right has power that will work against China.
   
4. While neither the right nor the left is doing anything about China, I prefer to criticize the left, which doesn't have the power to produce results in China anyway.
   

Ultimately, Blanchard sounds like he's watching a house burn down and yelling at Grandma for not being able to lift the water bucket he has in the back of his truck.

China is an oppressive regime: we're all clear on that. Almost everyone, left, right, up, and down, has chosen to ignore ideology and human rights in favor of cheap labor and Wal-Mart's Always Low Prices. Helping Tibet -- and China's Christians and bloggers and rural poor -- will take a lot more than pasty-faced professors' kicking Chinese scholars out of their conferences. It will take a lot more than President Bush's shaking hands with President Hu. And it will take a lot more than Dr. Blanchard's and my playing "So's your mother!"

Some closing math: The U.S. buys 25% of China's exports. China's 8% annual economic growth keeps its population mostly docile, keeps China's military plenty strong to quell any stray malcontents or Tibetan monks, and drives up their demand (and our costs) for oil, concrete, and other resources. If we cut our consumption of Chinese goods by half (and given that 30% of consumer spending is discretionary -- i.e., stuff we don't need -- I think we could do it), we could bring the Chinese economy to a screeching halt. The Chinese Communists would be so busy dealing with unrest at home, they wouldn't have time to hammer Tibet. Any takers?

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*The Dakota Voice reprint of the John W. Whitehead article on Tibet opens with a quote from Nancy Pelosi; criticizes the coddling of China by governments, corporations, and the International Olympic Committee; and cites Amnesty International and Dream for Darfur. The essay casts China's oppression of Tibet as in the proper light: a human rights issue, not a right-left issue. (Someone check my blood sugar: I just referred to something on Dakota Voice as reasonable.)