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Sunday, December 8, 2024 - 03:42 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

For the business community and those at the very top of America's economic ladder, China has been a godsend. They've made and saved billions and billions of dollars by outsourcing American manufacturing to China and offering goods and services to China's booming consumer market. For many top American companies, growth in China has been seen as essential for success. This is why so many American companies and upper-income American citizens are so thoroughly uninterested in hearing about Chinese atrocities. Remember last year when an NBA general manager made the mistake of tweeting something sympathetic to the freedom (and pro-American) protestors in Hong Kong? He was absolutely crushed by his league and the players, who all knew that China was where their future riches were to be made.

China's behavior has not made it easy for their American apologists. In addition to their repressive actions in Hong Kong, China has carried out a repressive policy against their Uighur Muslim minority, including mass detention, mistreatment and even torture. Opposition activists in China are jailed or sometimes simply disappear.

The media and the internet are under complete state control. In recent years, China has even been rolling out "social credit scores" to rate citizens by their support for the regime and distribute government benefits or punishments accordingly. Even worse, China has been exporting this technology to other repressive regimes.

In the face of this behavior, we would expect the media and the activist community to be screaming about the situation in China. They've been largely silent. There is too much money to be made. For example, The Washington Post has been running a special sponsored news section called "China Watch" for the past three decades -- which is published by a media outlet owned by the Chinese Communist Party.

How much money has The Washington Post made from these advertising supplements? They have been asked many times and have refused to disclose that information. Such a lack of transparency over such an obvious conflict should be shocking, but the Post doesn't have to disclose it. Nobody else in the media wants to call them on it either, because most other large media outlets have their own China conflicts. Could this be affecting the news coverage? That's not a hypothetical question anymore. A story broke just this week showing Bloomberg News editors expressly killing an investigative news story into corruption in China for fear of hurting Bloomberg's China business interests.

Why, besides the obvious corruption of it, does all this matter? Outsourcing our manufacturing and our corporate growth to China has done a lot to drive us to the two-class America we are becoming. The top tier of our country has thrived, in part by the efficiencies of incredibly cheap Chinese labor and access to the booming Chinese consumer market. Go to any private airport, and look at all the planes stacked up. The wealthy are having a good time, and China has been a big part of the reason why. At the same time, the loss of American jobs to China has harmed lower-income Americans. They get back cheaper consumer goods, but I'm not sure how many would trade their jobs for that.

The transfer of American manufacturing and other jobs to China has had a big role in transforming us to the multitiered American society we have today, with so little in common between the tiers. Those in finance and top companies are getting rich by facilitating this transition. Others are suffering with lost jobs and lower wages. Now we all have to join together to fight a disease that started in China and grew, at least in part, due to secrecy and mismanagement in the Chinese government at the earliest stages of the virus -- when the disease could have possibly been contained.

Now as the price of dealing with this disease comes due, it's regular Americans who are paying it. More than 20 million have lost jobs. Most had very little savings coming into this. For those in the upper reaches of our society, including virtually every person making national- and state-level decisions about the way forward, quarantining has been a minor inconvenience. We work from home. We get to see our kids more. We watch a little more Netflix. All in all, it hasn't been that bad. For the people at the other end of the economic spectrum, it's been a nightmare. In other words, the same people who have been hurt by globalization are now paying the highest price for this disease, fueled in large part by our increased globalization.

There are two possible roads ahead. On one hand, we can make plans going forward with the needs of those hardest hit firmly in mind. We can also rethink a lot of huge issues, like the supply chain vulnerabilities we now face due to making very little medicine and other key equipment in our own country. More broadly, we can take a harder look at the loss of American manufacturing and the flight of so many good jobs overseas. If we follow this path, we may look back on this crisis as the birth of some level of much-needed national reconciliation.

The other option is to continue ignoring the plight of those who have not fared so well these past couple of decades. If that happens, this crisis could go down as the final straw that broke this great country. What we need most is for those who hold power in America -- those who have reaped massive financial benefit from our current system and who are not feeling much pinch today -- to try to see the world through the lens of someone really hurting right now, who never saw any of the upside that got us into this mess in the first place.

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Neil Patel co-founded The Daily Caller, one of America's fastest-growing online news outlets, which regularly breaks news and distributes it to over 15 million monthly readers. Patel also co-founded The Daily Caller News Foundation, a nonprofit news company that trains journalists, produces fact-checks and conducts longer-term investigative reporting. The Daily Caller News Foundation licenses its content free of charge to over 300 news outlets, reaching potentially hundreds of millions of people per month. To find out more about Neil Patel and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

 

Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel

Tucker Carlson currently hosts Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (weekdays 8 p.m. ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” features powerful analysis and spirited debates, with guests from across the political and cultural spectrum. Carlson brings his signature style to tackle issues largely uncovered by the media in every corner of the United States, challenging political correctness with a "Campus Craziness" segment and tackling media bias and outrage during "Twitter Storm."

Carlson co-hosted “Fox & Friends Weekend” starting in 2012, until taking on his current role at “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

While at Fox News, Carlson has provided analysis for “America's Election Headquarters” on primary and caucus nights, including in the 2016 and 2012 presidential elections, as well as the 2014 midterm election. He also produced a Fox News special, "Fighting for Our Children's Minds," in 2010.

Prior to working at Fox News, Carlson hosted “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered” on PBS from 2004 to 2005 and “Tucker” on MSNBC from 2005 to 2008. He joined CNN in 2000 as its youngest anchor ever, co-hosting “The Spin Room” and later CNN's “Crossfire,” until its 2005 cancellation. In 2003, he wrote an autobiography about his cable news experience titled "Politicians, Partisans and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News."

Carlson graduated with a B.A. in history from Trinity College in Connecticut.

Neil Patel

In addition to his role as publisher of The Daily Caller, Neil Patel is co-founder and managing director of Bluebird Asset Management, a hedge fund investing in mortgage-backed securities.

Before starting his two companies, Neil served in the White House from 2005 to 2009 as the chief policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. From 2001 to 2004, Neil was staff secretary to Vice President Cheney. Prior to joining the Bush administration, Neil was assistant general counsel at UUNET Technologies. Earlier in his career, Neil practiced law with Dechert Price & Rhoads. He also served as Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China. 

Neil received his B.A. from Trinity College in Connecticut and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as associate editor of the Journal of Law and Policy in International Business.

Neil lives in Washington, D.C., and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with his wife, Amy, their two daughters, Caroline and Bela, and their son, Charlie.

COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM