China is a prime sponsor of the regime in Sudan. Therefore, China is -- albeit indirectly -- responsible for a great, great amount of suffering and death.

(Most Americans don't really give a damn about that, of course. To get Americans down on a country, they practically have to poison cats or something.)

Check this out, and notice that the list includes BP (UK), ExxonMobil (US), Royal Dutch/Shell (UK/Netherlands), Total (France), and several other companies from Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, India, and Qatar  Looks like we're going to be boycotting a LOT of Olympics!

You know as well as I do that CNPC is a state owned enterprise unlike BP, ExxonMobil, RDShell, Total, OMV, etc...  And China is the largest foreign investor in Sudan.  They could have enormous impact on the Sudanese government's position if they chose to throw their weight around.  So, let's not be silly.

Otherwise, I agree with you on Frank Wolf's ridiculousness.  This is all song and dance to score political points.  A boycott of the Olympics would just be symbolic and likely just piss off the Chinese, whom we need to work with on a range of diplomatic issues.  If he is frustrated about progress on trade issues, he needs to pick up the phone and call Secretary Paulson. 

when Carter did it.  I thought the Soviets counter-boycott of our Olympics in 1984 was stupid.  And I don't see this idea as getting us anywhere.  Why penalize athletes who have trained for 4 years in order to score political points, if it even accomplishes that?  If Congress is so angry at China over Darfur or whatever, why don't they slap punitive tariffs on Chinese goods or something?  Not that I'm recommending this, it's just a rhetorical point because I know they're full of crap.

to compliment Frank Wolf or usually to disagree with Lowell for that matter, but I think he has a really good point here. This is called putting your money where your mouth is.

Franks allusion to WWII Germany is unfortunate because it's distracting from his larger point. If we stand opposed to how the Chinese treat its citizens or how China treats the United States as a partner in trade, we should actually stand up. Giving China MFN status while its citizens are tortured and oppressed is not global political leadership no matter how you look at it. Sending lord knows how many people as an Olympic delegation, pumping who knows how much money into the country and engaging in what has been traditionally an act of political fraternity between nations is not the message I would send to China right now if I had my choice. This won't pass, but I think it's a good bill.

he's a total hypocrite.  I mean, this guy voted for Bush's torture bill, yet he claims to support human rights!  Riiiiiight.

is one abject reason not to do as Wolf suggests, no matter how self-righteous it might make us feel. China is already dumping some of its 1.3 trillion dollar of reserves; if they stopped buying our Treasuries in retaliation for our boycott, well... not a good idea, especially as our interest rates are lowered to forestall the debacle on Wall Street (in an effort to abort the financial panic and potential recession we are facing right now), and the rest of the world stops buying our Treasuries, too. Then what do we do with Mr. Bush's trillions of federal debt, eh?

The era of American domination of the world economy is rapidly nearing its end, and we can no longer huff and puff at everyone else with impunity. Thank you, Mr. Bush.

The fact is, as bad as China is, we literally can't afford to annoy them too much.  If China stops financing our debt we're in big trouble.  And anyhow, boycotting China won't bring them democracy or freedom.

are nuts, see here. That's right, James Young apparently really thinks that China IS Nazi Germany, is about to invade the world, has extermination camps murdering millions of people, has a racial supremacist ideology, and has a leader analogous to Hitler.  What planet do these people come from?

...I have thought for a LONG time now that China is a nasty, brutal, regime. Among other things - James Young will like this one - it denies its workers the RIGHT TO ORGANIZE! It also abuses human rights and the environment. So no, I don't like them one bit - from a PROGRESSIVE point of view. But do the James Youngs of the world really believe that boycotting an Olympics is going to get China to change its behavior in the world? Puh-leeze. If we're serious, let's stop buying Chinese products. Oh wait, we can't do that because our economy would shut down? Hmmm, now what?

...that we apparently had no problem at all with buying natural gas and selling grain to the evil Soviet Union.  Does he think we shouldn't have done that?  If so, as him to explain why this trade continued even after Reagan became president.

Why don't you go over to his blog and tell him that?  Of course, he'll just call you a "far left wing socialist communist nihilist" or whatever he calls Democrats these days.  Creative, huh?

Is "Communist" still being used by those folks?  God, it's almost funny how the consider that to basically be an actual argument.  I mean it's almost funny.  The Cold War's been over for, what, 16 years?

I suppose it would be useless to point out that insults are all good and fun, but that it wouldn't answer my question about if trading with the USSR in the 80s was evil, and if so, why did we do it.

Sometimes conservatives' predictability is funny, but other times it's just depressing.

time warp, their brains having never left the 1950s "Father Knows Best" era.  The world changes, they stay the same.  Is that what the formerly proud, forward-looking, Progressive Republicanism of Teddy Roosevelt has come to?  Sad.

On moral points, I don't disagree with the impulse to boycott China.  I think Wolf, James Young, and other rightwingers are engaging in hyperbole.  China isn't Nazi Germany.

But over the years, it's been pretty close.  Besides their support for and investment in Darfur, they also brutally supressed the Tibetan Buddhists, as well as other religious groups; don't let workers organize (as Lowell already noted) and have let corporations exploit workers horribly; and have contributed to terrible human rights violations across the board.

But, yes, they are major investors in U.S. treasuries.  We can ill afford to have them pull out their investments. 

But even more importantly, our best hope to get them to modify their egregious behavior regarding human right violations is to keep diplomatic and trade ties open and use back channel pressure.

Ultimately, it was more trade and greater contact with the Soviet Union that changed that country, not isolating it.  Let's hope that works to change China eventually.

And no, we shouldn't boycott the Olympics.  We should be there and use every opportunity to demonstrate to the Chinese what true freedom looks like.

China was in some ways as bad as Nazi Germany.  Certainly, the Communists killed millions of people, tortured millions more, repressed an entire nation.  Even after Mao, we had the disgrace of Tiananmen Square.  Today, how much has China changed?  I'd argue a great deal since Mao - when Nixon went to China - but not nearly enough.  I want to see major improvement there on human rights, labor rights, religious freedom and the environment.  But I can guarantee on thing:  China's not going to change its ways because Frank Wolf threatens to pull our athletes out of the Beijing games.  Sorry, but if Wolf were REALLY serious about changing Chinese behavior in Sudan or wherever, he'd advocate taking REAL action, like slapping large tariffs on Chinese imports. But he isn't, and he won't.  Lame.

What a nice way of changing the topic of conversation: make a ridiculous declaration about how we are going to huff and puff against China.

Wolf wants the U.S. to become a Hugo Chavez: use incendiary rhetoric against the country that you economically depend from. Hey, after all it has worked so well for Chavez's image in the U.S., that it becomes imperative for us to do the same great P.R. move in China.

I think that Wolf is going after two things with this bizarre bill.

First, he is trying to win progressive support for 2008. He knows that we don't like China's human rights record. We should not fall for it because...

Wolf doesn't want us to focus on his own lousy human rights record. Funny that a man fortunate enough to be a legislator in the U.S. wants to change the human right policies in a country where he lacks power, yet throws our human rights and civil liberties out the window where he does.

It is a nice try for Wolf to change the topic of conversation, but since he raised the issue of human rights, we may ask him about his own record, starting with his unwavering support for torture.

Sorry, Frank, but 12 years of Republican rule has left China the manufacturer of 80% (yes, 80%) of all the goods we purchase.  It holds more than $500 Billion dollars in Treasuries and other securities... Guess why we have had such wonderfully low mortagage rate?  China, Singapore and Japan holds a trillion or two in bonds. 

I don't remember the massive amount of food we buy from China.  But, you can bet that frozen shrimp you had for dinner was from China, and you baby's toys?  Are they covered with some toxic material?  The Bush Administration let purchasing companies like Mattel police their own products (by the way a European company found the lead covered toys).  Are there still at least 12 people in the government to monitor dangerous imports?

No. Frank.  We can't cut off or humiliate the business partner of choice for the Republican business class...You should have considered the American working class in 1994 and all the years since. 

I say the people who want to try to see the Olympics through China's horrible polution, go for it.  Otherwise, we should be free to spend even more money in China.

Frank, you can stay at home and run harder for office.