Westerners, and US citizens in particular, have come to believe in a simplistic formula: capitalism = "democracy" = unaggressiveness. It's not necessary for me to refute the idea that trade contacts will liberalize mainland China; the situation in that country (as well as that in, for instance, Germany on the eve of World War One) is itself refutation. Beginning three decades ago under Deng Xiaoping (who hinted at both the purpose and the effect of his reforms by saying "I don't care whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice"), the regime's economic policy has changed to such a degree that it is now communist in name only; where, therefore, are the political changes that the advocates of "engaging" Beijing have expected? (It was Deng, once viewed as a hero by Western useful idiots, who ordered the crackdown on dissidents in Tiananmen Square; yet, only a decade after the massacre, the USA's Clinton administration, and even sincere politicians, were invoking "engagement" as a means of liberalizing mainland China.) China didn't loosen the restrictions on its people even for the duration of the Olympiad, but instead intensified them.
This doesn't mean that I agree completely with the other side in the debate. Labor unions were right for the wrong reason: they opposed the expansion of commerce with China because of the mistaken belief that it would lead to a loss of jobs for US workers. Integrating mainland China more truly into the world economy has benefitted the USA; the problem is that it has benefitted the Chinese more, which point I shall elaborate upon below. (Organized labor at least was consistent in its opinions on this sort of issue, unlike Clinton and the leftists who sided with him; earlier in the 1990's, these hypocrites were self-righteously demanding that US capitalists end their investment in South Africa, supposedly for the same reason why they were now professing faith in a "policy" of" engagement.") "Human rights" advocates have more of the truth, but most of them seem to have thought that the regime in Beijing would wither under international censure.
In reality, neither infusing the mainland with Western goods and money nor treating it as a pariah will dramatically affect the way the government behaves toward its people. Had the capitalist-"democratic" states denied China the 2008 Olympic Games, entry into the World Trade Organization, and (specific to the USA) permanent "most-favored nation" trade status, however, they would at least have things to use as leverage in such regard, and the morale of those oppressed would benefit from their knowing that others sympathize with them. For the first six years or so of Clinton's administration, one of his favorite annual flim-flams was to pretend to get tough with the Chinese by threatening not to renew their above-mentioned trade status; after the President executed one of his characteristic flip-flops on that issue, the persecuted Christians and others of that land must have known how empty his, and by extension our, bluster about "human rights" was. My assessment is that "engagement" has nothing to do with improving the lot of the ordinary Chinese, but is rather a delusory rationale for infusing capital into, and thus unintentionally strengthening, a hostile power. I am reminded of a quote from Vladimir Lenin, who predicted that the anti-Communist countries "will sell us the rope for their own hanging."
