Chinese Face-Saving

With such a vast population what, after all, is the value of a thousand or so - or more, perhaps - lives lost? A cynical but practical political overview by a country's administration beset with a myriad of problems. Avarice, greed, can close collective minds to the needs of a humane administration. A newborn respect for the profits of unfettered capitalism has dimmed the vision of a ruling elite intent on hauling China into first-place standing in a longed-for new world order.

But oh, the embarrassments visited upon them of late. Resulting, needless to say, from a laissez fair attitude that recognizes no bounds beyond which it will reproach itself. The end game is unfettered trade, increased prosperity, a growing acquiescent middle class, the recognition throughout the world of China as an influential world power. Alas, a world power so wedded to its agenda of prosperity that it ignores its responsibilities at home and abroad.

The allegiances of an energy-hungry nation eager to do business, trading on its newfound wealth with egregious human-rights abusers in Africa and elsewhere, neglecting the need to explain to its eager partners that a little bit of abuse can be countenanced, but overt government-encouraged paramilitaries who assault, rape, murder and displace hundreds of thousands of one's own population is quite simply not on.

But why expect this of China, after all, a country that sees nothing amiss in "re-settling" millions of its own hapless citizens in the name of 'progress', in the building of the world's largest dams, flooding historical agrarian lands and making hopeless migrants of countless thousands of farmers. A China that will turn a blind official eye to the dreadful contamination of water from the manufacture of chemicals, resulting in unpotable water for millions of people.

When sufficient numbers of Chinese become disillusioned and sufficiently outraged at government neglect for the health and well-being of its people, and word gets out to the international community, itself reeling at the effects of contaminated pharmaceuticals and food products emanating from China, its administration suddenly realizes it has a huge problem which may require resolution.

Ah, and the final straw that breaks the camel's back of inaction. That thousands of frantic parents searching for the whereabouts of lost children discover that their children of all ages, along with adults have somehow managed to get themselves kidnapped and retained to be used as slaves in the production of bricks to satisfy an internal economy that cannot keep pace with the demands of 'progress'.

The news that thousands of indigents, farmers, teenagers and younger children had been forced to work in brick kilns, enduring confinement, dreadful beatings, starvation, sickness, fatal accidents, and deliberate murder was arresting in its manifestations of emaciated bodies and festering wounds; defeated, blank stares of incomprehension from those relatively few rescued from the prison-like confines of the kilns.

As social phenomenons go, this illustration of official disinterest and neglect in duty to a country's citizens is unparalleled for an industrious, proud country with a historical past of grand dimensions; a tradition in philosophy and civil service, of medicine and the arts and sciences. Yet modern Chinese history tells us of a societal upheaval of tremendous proportions meant to nullify its ancient past and bring it into a new social order.

One which sacrificed without heed to the consequences, a truly significant proportion of its professionals, academics, artists to a new ideological vision of people-subjugation overseen by an elite of party cadres who cold-bloodily instituted a culture of state enslavement. The new China, enamoured of recalling its brilliant past and hoping to forge itself into an amalgam of the old and its newest incarnation does now care what the world outside thinks of it.

Enough to carefully select a few handy persons said to be responsible for the travesty of sacrifice of human beings to commerce, but not quite enough to implicate others responsible for the heedlessly cruel enslavement of children and adults for the advancement of the state economy, because party membership still counts and protection is still afforded Communist loyalty.