China’s President Xi Jinping is in America for two days of meetings with President Obama. The timing is diplomatically peculiar, coming on the heels of the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre that squelched Chinese democracy. Given that the stated purpose of the summit is for the two leaders to build bridges, Mr. Obama is in a pickle: If he soft-peddles Beijing’s awful human-rights record, the ostensible leader of the free world once again exposes his weakness in confronting tyranny; if he calls out the Maoists, he rains on the weekend parade. As the candles flicker out from the Tiananmen memorial protests, here are five pressing issues on which Mr. Obama should shine some light while his Chicom counterpart is on free soil:
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Organ black market. Surgical advances in recent years have created a problem: The demand for organs for transplant is far larger than the supply. China has developed a lucrative market solution whereby prisoners are executed and their parts sold to the highest bidders, many of whom are in rich Western countries. Chinese organ salesmen have told buyers the government can “shoot to order” to satisfy organ demand, a chilling prospect given the widespread use of capital punishment for minor crimes in the People’s Republic.
Forced abortion. As Rep. Chris Smith, New Jersey Republican, explains in his June 7 exclusive op-ed for Rare, “Hundreds of millions of pregnant women have been forced to abort their precious babies because of the draconian one-child policy. The result of this forced practice has been gendercide – the violent extermination of unborn baby girls, simply because they are girls.” It’s more prestigious to have a boy than a girl in the Middle Kingdom, and couples are only allowed to have a single baby, leading to awful consequences. Beijing has announced its intent to crack down on women giving birth out of wedlock, which will lead to even more brutality.
Bad food. China exported 4.1 billion pounds of produce to the United States last year. Products include everything from fish, candy, fruit and vegetables to the apple juice in your toddler’s sippy cup. Shoddy Chinese health and safety practices mean dangerous food is on restaurant and dining-room tables across America. “Food safety problems, like melamine deliberately put into pet foods and baby formula as well as unsafe levels of cadmium in rice, have plagued China,” the New York Times reported last week. “The latest episode involved fox, rat and mink meat that was doctored with gelatin, pigment and nitrates and sold as mutton.”
Intellectual property. The U.S. Commission on the Theft of Intellectual Property (IP) estimates that IP bandits cost the U.S. economy a whopping $300 billion annually, and that China is responsible for upwards of 80 percent of the pilfering. This wealth is absconded through cyber attacks as well as by taking advantage of the old five-finger special. For example, Chinese agents have been busted brazenly swiping disks and computer chips out of machines belonging to U.S. competitors at trade shows. Undercover Chinese spies also have sent home valuable blueprints and business plans from unwitting U.S. corporations where they were employed. These business losses are especially costly during tough economic times when the U.S. employment rate is stuck at a 30-year low.
Cyber-security. OK, admittedly, this one might be hard to bring up while the U.S. government is busy snooping on Americans’ phones, email, Facebook pages and other private information. Still, hypocrisy is a lesser evil than relativism, and Mr. Obama needs to at least pretend to protect our nation from the bad guys. The U.S. military maintains a huge advantage over the People’s Liberation Army in land, sea, air and nuclear forces but is constantly on the defensive against Beijing’s army of hi-tech hackers, which could turn the tide. According to Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute, “An internal Defense Department review had concluded that China had used cyber attacks to gather data on more than three dozen key U.S. military programs, including the country’s most advanced missile defense systems, naval warships and even the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – the stealthy, fifth-generation jet that will be the backbone of the American military’s ability to sustain air superiority in the decades ahead.”
Donald Trump tweeted this week that the U.S. president “will get zero deliverables” out of his sessions with the head of the Chinese Communist Party. “China laughs at us,” Mr. Trump rightly concluded. The reality is President Obama doesn’t have much leverage over President Xi because out-of-control White House spending policies keep Washington handcuffed to the Chinese, who buy our debt. Until the U.S. government lives within its means, American leaders like Barack will keep bowing to Beijing with hat in hand while important bilateral issues are ignored.
Brett M. Decker, Editor-in-Chief of Rare, was a foreign correspondent in China from 2000-2003 and is co-author of “Bowing to Beijing” (Regnery, 2011). Follow him on Twitter @BrettMDecker