Google (And GoDaddy) Are Fighting Our Fight

GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registration company has become the first new public enlistee in the stand-up-to-Beijing campaign launched by Google. It is to be sincerely hoped that more, many more, US and Western enterprises will join as well. Soon.

Up until now, until finally Google called, "Enough!" all too many businesses in the US and elsewhere have shamelessly kowtowed to the dictates of the Trolls of Beijing. Blinded by the prospects of profits to be made in the Land of A Billion Chinese, companies and the people who run them have been willing not only to ignore the multitude of unpleasant practices engaged in by the Trolls but, in essence, trade with and strengthen an enemy of the United States.

A decade and more ago when Congress was fired up to deny China most-favored-nation status due to its wholesale, recurrent abuses of human rights, the US Chamber of Commerce carried Beijing's water on the Hill, lobbying overtime to prevent the action. The Chamber and its members, all card carrying members of the League of Global Capitalism, made mighty moans about how stripping China of most-favored-nation position would cost American jobs beyond count, plunge the US into recession without end, and be generally icky-poo in the extreme.

Congress maintained its tradition of heeding those who pay and backed down. The Trolls kept on repressing and grinning all the way to the bank.

As had been the case since the days when a man of no brains named McKinley occupied the Oval, American businessmen have deluded themselves with the myth of the China market--the notion of selling widgets beyond counting to hundreds of millions of Chinese. When not chasing the hallucinatory sales of widgets, the capitalists of this and other countries have dreamed of loaning dollars in shipload quantities to China and building projects dwarfing the Great Wall in both size and expense.

American administrations of both parties have acted to facilitate these chimera chases and snipe hunts. From the Open Door policy which held China to be open to all exploiters equally right on to the "opening" of China during the days of Clinton, American leaders have assured themselves and We the People that the only consequences would be beneficial: good for China, great for the American worker and consumer, and, generally, wonderful for the world.

Throughout all, American administrations and businesses have acted as if they were the stereotyped "city slicker" and the Chinese the equally one dimensional rube, a hick ripe for fleecing. In so doing we have overlooked that in story and song alike the rube always outsmarted the slicky boy at the end.

Life has imitated art. China has won. The US and others in the West have lost. We have lost jobs. We have lost money. We have lost global status and influence. We have even lost our values, our principles, our views of what is right.

Insofar as we have lost, the Trolls of Beijing have won. They have won because they understood a basic which seemingly has eluded our political masters.

And, you ask, what might that be, Geek?

Well, bucko, the fundamental reality which has governed our economic relations with China and, all that flows from that relationship is simply this: A corporation has only one responsibility--maximize return on equity to investors. That's it. Nothing else matters unless it is specifically prohibited or required by law.

Ship American jobs offshore? Sure. It's legal. And, profitable. Gut the US manufacturing sector? Sure, why not? Heck, making things is horse and buggy thinking. What about human rights, human costs, even the long term consequences to the US, its security, its national interests? Hell, boy, that ain't in our job description! And, it isn't in the interests of our investors.

Well, what about assuring a hostile government has the ways and means to build a formidable military capacity? Hey, Geek, that isn't in our job description either. That's for the Washington crowd, not us to worry about.

The same can and is said, at least tacitly, implicitly, when the subjects of Chinese espionage or Chinese opposition to foreign policy demarches of the US are raised. Business leaders point out that this sort of matter exists in the bailiwick of government, not private enterprise.

Of course the hyper-focus of business on profits, return on equity, is both proper and justified. It is all that is required. It is what Lenin recognized when he famously said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." It is what the Trolls of Beijing have recognized as well.

The only difference between Lenin (and his successors) and the Trolls of the past twenty or so years is that the Trolls have done an infinitely better job of inveigling our capitalists (and administrations) into selling the rope with which we are being hung. Everything has gone in the best possible way from Beijing's perspective.

They cozened us, played the right sort of mood music as long as they needed more dollars, more investment, more "co-production," more access to our markets. As the need for dollars, for investment, for access decreased as it has over the past few years, so also has the playing of soft music and the saying of happy words. Now the Trolls demand, they yell, "Cold War thinking," when our government calls them out on a particularly egregious offense; they obstruct our foreign policy initiatives.

Until now, no one has stood up to the Trolls.

Google has good, very good--and more then simply sufficient--reason to tell the Trolls, "You have finally overplayed your hand." Google stands to lose a great deal of money by having taken a principled stand against the Trolls' censorship, hacking, and cyberespionage. Google has taken the very real risk that its competitors (including Microsoft which has the corporate ethics of the Mafia at best) will now have an open field in the very lucrative China market.

It is to be hoped (and, the Geek, being a historian, knows full well how faint this hope is) that Google's and, now, GoDaddy's decisions will shame other IT companies into following the new trail of defiance to the Trolls. It may even be hoped (an even fainter hope) that non-IT companies will be similarly embarrassed if they do not tell the Trolls that their conduct is unacceptable to a business possessing even the slightest hint of ethics. Embarrassment might just lead to action--the right sort of action.

While it is not at all in the realm of rationality to expect the Obama administration to back Google's play in the furtherance of our own national security and strategic interests, it is not quite so far over the edge to think that there is some possibility that Google's action will inspire some of us in We the People to do our small bit in slowing the Chinese juggernaut. It is not enough, not by a long way, for We the People to recognize that China is a real and growing threat to our global status as has been indicated in recent opinion polls.

The need is not for mere recognition. The need is for action. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, inaction. The inaction which is necessary is that of not buying any product of Chinese manufacture regardless of the brand and, far more importantly, price. China has seduced us, mulcted us and the businesses which service us, by the flood of cheap priced products.

That's right, bucko, it is time for us to tell Walmart and all the other purveyors of Chinese origin goods, "We aren't buying those any more." To put it bluntly, to use what the Trolls would brand as "Cold War rhetoric," it is time for us to stop trading with the enemy.

Obama Losing Streak Goes On And On....

Coming off of a big, big loss to the Ayatollah Isotopes which once again showed itself poised and ready to rumble, President Obama was handed a second hard right to the chin by the Gnomes of Beijing.

Despite fears that the President's Own Homeboys would not be up for the challenge of Beijing, the Homeboys were set to go and definitely amped to the max for the encounter. Overlooked in the pre-scrimmage chatter was the basic problem--the Homeboys just didn't have the power play.

And, power is the only fact of life the Gnomes of Beijing respect. If you ain't got the juice, you can't stay on the field with the Gnomes. This is a back-to-basics reality which the Obama Homeboys now have to contemplate as they lick the wounds of an all too evident defeat.

The totally scripted, quite stilted, even stylized post-game press conference (without questions) showed that the Captain of the Homeboys understood how badly the game had ended--and been played. This press affair was at a complete variance with the one held by the victorious American capo of the Clinton Stargazers back in 1998.

The upbeat, even ebullient President Clinton, flush with the transitory triumph of the moment, welcomed questions regarding the dangers of open trade with China. In those palmy days of early season play, Mr Clinton poo-poohed the trade deficit with China and minimized the extent of the US-China trade. (Concerning the latter he pointed out that American trade with China was a mere fraction of our trade with Mexico.)

The Geek remembers the sour thought that crossed his usually light and sweet mind, "Yeah, partner--but for how long?"

In this piece of solid negativity the Geek was guided by a memory from thirty more or less years earlier. He was flying over San Francisco's harbor and noticed what looked like acres of identical small Japanese cars parked at dockside. Musing out loud on the fields of rice burners down below, the guy in the next seat set the Geek's thinking straight.

"All those cars down there," a firm thumb with a well trimmed nail gestured in front of the Geek's nose in a general purpose outside-the-airplane way. "They got off the boat a couple of months ago. Customs wouldn't pass them. Don't meet some new federal safety standard or air pollution thing."

The Geek merely nodded as the plane leveled off on its final approach.

"We won't be seeing them again, I'll bet," the guy in the next seat opined.

"Don't bet the ranch on that, bucko." The Geek kept his thoughts to himself. But, he was firmly convinced on the basis of having lived and worked one place or another in Asia for most of the past ten years that the Japanese imports would be back--in full force. Asians learn quickly, and from their mistakes even more quickly.

Later years taught the Geek one additional point. Asians learn most rapidly and completely from the mistakes of others. So, back when President Clinton was singing hosannas onto free, open trade with China and what a great benefit this would be to all Americans as well as the Chinese, the Geek was not willing to sing along with Bill.

While open, "free" trade may have benefited many American consumers somewhat in the very short range, this benefit has been purchased at great cost. Even the benefits which have accrued to major purchasers of Chinese made items such as Walmart will eventually find the costs to the context which created and nurtured them--the United States including its ability to operate freely in the diplomatic context--will outweigh the bottom line successes.

The real winner in this game of open, "free" trade has been China. Not the American corporations, not the Chinese billionaires, not the Chinese workers, none of these has won to the degree attained by the Gnomes of Beijing.

The speed, decisiveness, and totality with which the Gnomes of Beijing cleaned the collective clocks of Obama and his Homeboys were underscored by the soft, soothing mood music played later by Chinese Prime Minister Wen on a matter of trade--specifically the enormous imbalance which exists. His words, as the president must know, were both moot and self-serving.

On the real issues, on Iran, on the value of the yuan, on the growth of China's offensively oriented military forces, there was no movement toward the US position by the Gnomes throughout the many hours of meetings including the one-on-one's with the Chinese president. The Homeboys were, to put it bluntly, dissed.

China will continue its tilt toward Tehran having made the rational decision that the US cannot live without China's continued cooperation on the huge American debt it holds--a trillion bucks and rising. The Gnomes calculated that Obama and the Homeboys now lacked the juice that Clinton had a decade earlier.

Beijing had, it is evident, learned much from our mistakes. The biggest mistake of all from which the Gnomes have learned and profited the most is that of opening our trade door to them without any of the necessary safeguards.

Clinton and his successor, W. Bush, apparently were seduced by the ideology that "free" trade makes for good and permanent friends. They and their fellow ideologues (and the profit at any cost crowd such as Walmart) were wrong. Dead wrong. And, now we will have to live (or die) with the consequences.

As the Geek has posted many times before, buying Chinese origin products whether at Walmart or anywhere else under the conditions which have prevailed since President Clinton embarked on the ill-advised and very poorly thought through policy of "globalization" is trading with the enemy. No mistake must be made about it--China is the enemy. More than Russia today or even the Soviet Union of yore, China is and will continue to be an enemy of the US.

The status of enemy is inherent to the very long standing belief in China of its privileged and unique existence as the "Central Empire." Not the "Middle Kingdom" as the phrase is normally and incorrectly rendered in English--but the "Central Empire." The Big Enchilada. The Honcho Empire.

For a long while after Mao's triumph the Chinese lacked the means to realize its ambitions. Now thanks to "gobalization," thanks to Bill Clinton, thanks to W. Bush, thanks to ideology and the drive for profit without any regard for long term costs, thanks to the American desire to acquire more for less, the Chinese have both the will and the capacity to act without much heed to the US desires and needs anywhere in the world. More than ever, the old saying of the cartoon character Pogo is accurate, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Obama and the Homeboys will put the best possible gloss on the defeat in Beijing. They have no choice. But, We the People can hope that somewhere, someone, somehow, is looking at the loss for lessons.

Lessons on how we can still claw our way back from the looming verge of second class status, of dancing in the Beijing end zone.