In the event i'm run over, don't let 'em say they couldn't see me!

Chinese vs. American Reproductive Policies

Much ado has ben made of China's One Child policy. The BBC AND NY Times have both run tearjerker page one stories about Chinese parents who have lost a child, the only child they will ever have (particularly in the case where the parents are now too old to reproduce--all the more dramatic). A tertiary effect of the One Child policy might be a lack of parentless children for begrieved Chinese parents to adopt. Recall that China recently tightened up its policies regarding foreign adoption of Chinese babies, banning gays and other demos proclaimed undesirable by Beijing following a boom in American adoption of Chinese babies in recent decades).

Add it all up and you have the perfect ingredients for tear soup as mentioned above and yet more damning evidence of the outrageous inhumanity og the barbaric Chinese system of government.

Then you rememer the Katrina debacle. President Bush wrote off the population of an entire American major metropolitan area and has been whistling Dixie ever since.

And if the Chinese quake had hit, say, Cape Girardeau, MO, which is a small town in southwest Missouri built on a fault line potentially more deadly than the San Andreas fault. If it had happened in the Cape, as lokes call it, parents may well have lost an entire brood of children in one fell swoop. Given the same circumstances, kids there would have been in school at that time of day, and Cape's infrastructre and building codes might conceivably be destroyed by a quake of the same magnitude.

When it comes to formulating a differential equation to gauge the suffering of the Chinese parents who lost children in the quake, you have to turn Kant on his head and rock an inverse categorical imperative. The question becomes, which is the worst for the greatest number--the Chinese One Child Policy or the Amercan Crunch All You Want We'll Make More attitude?

Remember the thousands of monks that went apeshit in Lhasa a short while back and the hardcore Chinese police on monk ass beatings that followed? I’ve addressed the political/cultural/economic intricacies of Tibet as a state here before, go have a read if you want to learn the actual facts behind this mess (summary: it’s not as simple as the Beastie Boys and millions of stoned college students seem to think. How about that! And who knew the Beastie Boys weren’t leading world authorities on Tibetan history and culture? Doesn’t that come with an NYU degree?).

But while these monks rot—or more likely get tortured—in Chinese jails, a whirlwind of press coverage of the latest from China, the mega earthquake, has focused on China’s massive sea change with regards to how the government is treating, covering, and reacting to the event. In the past, China strived to conceal these disasters and didn’t provide much info to the outside world—that would show weakness, not something the hard as nails, indomitable Chinese are known for.

Post Tibet revolt/Olympic torch/wheelchaired woman being tipped over, China knew it had a PR problem the size of Mongolia on its hands. But it has taken this earthquake and made lemonade from the rubble with a bright, shiny human interest story that shines a beacon on the Chinese government in a different light—as a caring entity interested in the welfare of its citizens and open enough to share its problems with the world (finally).

The past week, China has been all about showing the world how compassionate and caring the Chinese government is towards its citizens. The US press has eaten up every man/woman/child pulled from the rubble and celebrated it as a miracle. I caught a brief snippet on NPR the other day about a man being pulled out of the rubble after 100 hours of being buried. A miracle!

Or maybe the Chinese government fabricated that particular event—you know, stuck the dude in the rubble and had the Chinese military dig him out. Why? Great fuckin story, wouldn’t you say?

While this reads like a ruse, China may have inadvertently opened a door it won’t be able to shut. Ultimately, a more free and open exchange of information with the outside world will cause change in China. That and economic exegencies. When the Chinese people have enough access to information, when the world has enough access to information about them and when the Chinese government sees that unbridled capitalism yields a population that’s forced to take care of itself in the stead of a welfare state, then change will come to China and Mao will be buried for good.

Until then, like Mike Tyson’s Mao tattoo, the communist ethos will keep on keeping on—but not for long.