"Stop Trading with China"
An extreme response to be sure, but it's not an option that should be excluded out of hand. It's an option being advocated by Lib and Prog. blogger Robert Pavlacic, in response to China's imprisonment of a Canadian citizen.
I likely differ from many of my capitalist Blogging Tory collegues, but I'm actually in favour of re-examining our trade dealings with China... not just for this most recent reason, however. We're losing thousands of jobs, getting tons of cheap throwaway goods filling our landfills, (though the quality has been getting better over the years) and they're getting way more out of our trade dealings than we are. Perhaps some new firewalls may be in order.
I commented on his blog that another option would be to withdraw our athletes from the 2008 Olympic Games in Bejing. (it wouldn't be without precident) Sucks for our athletes, but it would send a message... especially if we did it now, while there is still plenty of time to solve this before the Games.
I likely differ from many of my capitalist Blogging Tory collegues, but I'm actually in favour of re-examining our trade dealings with China... not just for this most recent reason, however. We're losing thousands of jobs, getting tons of cheap throwaway goods filling our landfills, (though the quality has been getting better over the years) and they're getting way more out of our trade dealings than we are. Perhaps some new firewalls may be in order.
I commented on his blog that another option would be to withdraw our athletes from the 2008 Olympic Games in Bejing. (it wouldn't be without precident) Sucks for our athletes, but it would send a message... especially if we did it now, while there is still plenty of time to solve this before the Games.
posted by Christian Conservative @ 2:33 p.m.
5 Comments:
At Fri Apr 20, 06:00:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
Wouldn't a world wide ban of buying Chinese made products also contribute to closing some of their coal driven industry thereby aiding the climate change advocates of Koyoto? Such a simple solution yet no one suggests anything but sending them more money to build more!!!
At Fri Apr 20, 06:34:00 p.m. EDT,
Shawn Abigail said…
If you forbid your athletes from attending an Olympic Games, they are automatically banned from the next Olympics as well. Given the average amount of time an athlete can compete, a whole generation of Canadian athletes would miss the Olympics (and with less competition China would get more medals).
The answer is economic. But China must be given a way to save face, or they'll just put up with the fact that their economy is going down the tubes. In other words, an embargo of Chinese goods must be made for other reasons (e.g. tied to opening up Chinese markets) with the Chinese government assured that some minor trade concessions and some major political concessions will raise the embargo.
At Fri Apr 20, 11:36:00 p.m. EDT,
Christian Conservative said…
I wasn't aware of that "banned from the next Olympics" rule, must be a new rule post-1984 games. (when Russia boycotted the LA Games)
I'm a novice when it comes to China, I freely admit, so I don't know what the best answers are.
At Sat Apr 21, 08:31:00 a.m. EDT,
Luke Coughey said…
Firts off, happy birthday Andrew! If my calendar is correct, your birthday was yesterday.
As to this China challenges...I heard the discussion on CFRB. Someone brought up the fact that this guy knew that he was taking a risk going to visit his in-laws. Should Canada be responsible for his bad choices?
On that note, I honestly think that we should do what it takes to get him home.
At Sun Apr 22, 07:37:00 p.m. EDT,
Anonymous said…
From what I have read about the Melamine contamination starting with pet foods but now extending into our food imports ,I am surprised that anyone would purchase anything from Mao's gulag paradise.Then again those dollar store bargains,cheap human organs ,and cheap slave labour products are hard to resist when there is a buck to be made.Heck we have a liberal opposition party that endorses this trade while pretending to care about human rights.
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