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Trade is the super-policy. Trade policy beats every other
national concern in these upside down days. Food safety? National security?
Fiscal and economic sanity? They fall like dominoes to the
imperative... the Prime Directive... more trade even if it is imports.
U.S. multinationals are selling spying technology
to the Chinese government. The Chinese government spies on its
citizens, and us. General Electric, Honeywell, United Technologies and
IBM are helping them in this post-Tiananmen Square modification.
The techno-crackdown fueling this U.S. assistance of communist government human rights violation is spurred by the Beijing Olympics.
The Olympics must not embarass the government. So the rabble must
be discovered and swept away so a nice, attractive, placid stage is
preserved.
Here is what Honeywell is doing:
Honeywell
has already started helping the police to set up an elaborate computer
monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in
one of Beijing’s most populated districts, where several Olympic sites
are located.
And how about GE?
General
Electric has sold to Chinese authorities its powerful VisioWave system,
which allows security officers to control thousands of video cameras
simultaneously and automatically alerts them to suspicious or
fast-moving objects, like people running. The system will be deployed
at Beijing’s national convention center, including the Olympics media
center.
And IBM?
Julie Donahue,
I.B.M.’s vice president for security and privacy services, told a
technology news service in early December that by next summer I.B.M.
would install in Beijing its newly developed Smart Surveillance System,
a powerful network that links large numbers of video cameras. Company
officials declined repeated requests to answer questions about the
system or discuss Ms. Donahue’s remarks.
And United Technologies?
United
Technologies flew three engineers from its Lenel security subsidiary in
Rochester to Guangzhou, the biggest metropolis in southeastern China,
to customize a 2,000-camera network in a single large neighborhood, the
first step toward a citywide network of 250,000 cameras to be installed
before the Asian Games in 2010. The company is also seeking contracts
to build that network.
The Commerce Department has rules on
selling surveillance equipment abroad, but that's not stopping the
sales. The department is "reviewing" their rules now.
But there is major pushback:
William
A. Reinsch, the Clinton administration’s under secretary of commerce
for export administration, is now the president of the National Foreign
Trade Council, a Washington group that represents multinationals on
trade issues. Mr. Reinsch said that he was concerned that the new rules
could limit American export opportunities and give new ones to European
and Asian companies.
Can you imagine this argument during the
cold war? Trade trumping the containment policy? I think
not. China is not an enemy, but a geopolitical rival with bad
habits. We should not enable those bad habits.
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