At our March 6 seminar, we discussed how Joe Biden was critical of China's attempts to either steal or coerce U.S. firms into handing over intellectual property or trade secrets in order to gain access to China markets. However, a few months back Biden visited China and refused to criticize their one-child policy. I recently read an article, Biden to China: "Not Second-Guessing" One-Child Policy, by Stephen Ertelt. Ertelt details how many critics say China's one-child policy has led to "massive campaigns of forced abortions and sterilizations, fines for families violating the rule, sentences to prison and forced labor camp for violators and their families who shelter them from government officials, home detention, loss of jobs or government benefits, beatings and other human rights abuses." Biden would only say that he was "not second-guessing" the policy. Rather, he talked about how such a policy may lead to economic pressures on Chinese families down the road when one wage earner is expected to take care of several retired people. Biden stated that such a system is "not sustainable." It's hard to tell where the U.S. is on it's foreign policy objectives with China. It seems almost certain that we are not going to let a few (tongue-in-cheek) human rights violations stand in the way of lucrative trade with the emerging economic superpower China. If that's the case, we should just stop pretending and make it clear that our number one priority is dollars, not human rights.
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