There’s No Business Like…
Google’s ultimatum that they’ll leave China rather than continue to censor their search engine is an interesting case, and one in which I feel we haven’t been told the full story.
Let’s be honest, not many corporations have qualms about doing business in China from a moral standpoint. The global recession has seen to that. Why Google would throw down the gauntlet in this way baffles my business sense—though there was a brou-ha-ha when they set up within the Great Firewall, it soon died down and people went back to pirating images and searching for porn with as much ease as before. We love Google—it makes our work so much easier, why not just turn a blind eye to their toadying to the Chinese government? Yahoo reported human rights activists to the Chinese government, Microsoft happily censored MSN.com, and MySpace ditched politics and religion discussion groups when they set up in China. Ethics are ethics, but a Chinese cash cow is a Chinese cash cow.
Execution of British National
On December 29, 2009, China executed by lethal injection Akmal Shaikh, a British national convicted of smuggling 9 pounds of heroin into the country, despite repeated pleas for clemency due to Shaikh’s history of mental disturbance. Is this due process, or China defiant in the face of Western pressure? Lack of human rights, or cultural imperialism? Added to all this is the historical resonance of Britain, China, and drugs.
Powering the Future
The Obama Administration and Congress must work together to establish a five-year “Bucks for Belchers” Program modeled on “Cash for Clunkers.” Half of our electricity and a third of our carbon dioxide emissions come from coal-fired power plants. “These coal fire plants are going to continue to operate for decades, even as our industry turns to carbon-free electric power generating technologies,” wrote Entergy Corporation CEO Wayne Leonard. “Once built, coal plants are, in most cases, the cheapest source of power generation.” Because our coal-fired power plants will be belching out CO2 for decades, we should implement a “Bucks for Belchers” program that will curb emissions from these plants and jump start our green economy.
Year-end Check Up
Karl Marx famously postulated that capitalism was a step on the road to socialism, but looking at the world today, one gets the impression that the road goes both ways. In America, a country that ostensibly sees life as an unalienable right, the battle over universal health care rages on, framed correctly but maliciously as a step toward socialism. But China, the only major “socialist” power left in the world, has seen the crumbling of its health care system over the last thirty years, coinciding with its slip into “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
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