It appears to me that on the issue of trade with China, people see two camps. One is to totally embrace trade and ignore human rights.

The other is to cut off trade with China in a protest of human rights. As someone very much involved in the human-rights movement and as a member of Students For A Free Tibet (SFT), I can say that we support neither.

Trade IS good; it has done a tremendous job of bringing up the standard of living in China, and the last thing we want to do is to hurt the Chinese people.

What SFT and Milarepa support (and I think Mr. Wu supports this, too) is a selective purchase and boycott of Chinese products. Labor-camp products are not acceptable. Products that are used by, or whose profits go to, the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) are not acceptable.

Corporations that hurt the environment of China, discriminate or otherwise hurt minority groups are not acceptable. Corporations that use child labor or don’t pay their workers a living wage are not acceptable.

For these reasons, MFN (most favored nation) must be revoked. We do not condone cutting ties with China because we have no desire to sending it back to the Mao days.

However, we cannot sit by and allow things that are just plain wrong to go on without saying a word in the name of “capitalism.”

It’s not an all-or-nothing situation; there are miles and miles of gray. Some business helps China, some hurts it. As a consumer, I don’t know which products hurt and which ones help, so the only solution is to implement trade sanctions in some areas.

I hope this cleared up the misconception that the human-rights movement wants to somehow “destroy” China. Mao may be dead, but his legacy lives on in the CCP. Political reforms are badly needed; human rights conditions in many parts of China have actually gone down in the past few years.

Don’t be blind to politics in the name of economics. As Mr. Wu said, China is a bird with a political wing and a economic wing, and you can’t fly with just one flapping.

Ryan Bergman

Senior

Community and regional planning

ISU Students For A Free Tibet