A pointless pounding over China

All the chest-puffing and table-pounding individual lawmakers can muster isn't going to change the reality that this country's government -- the Bush Administration and Congress -- today endorses and encourages open trade with a brutally repressive China. That trade dynamic is a necessary and defensible lesser of evils, in my opinion -- and, moreover, anyone who believes it's going to change substantively any time soon is stuck in the 7th grade.
 
Yet puff and pound lawmakers did yesterday, their victims a bunch of hapless executives from Cisco, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft who obviously drew the short straws after their companies were summoned to appear before Congress.
 
"Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace," bellowed Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.). "I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."
 
I'm going to give Lantos the benefit of the doubt and presume he talks that way to his colleagues in Congress who support trade with China. I presume he's spoken that way to executives from McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Nike.

Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) called the technology companies' dealings with China a "sickening collaboration."
 
Again, I'm presuming Smith has held his Republican leadership and Republican president in similar contempt.
 
And I'm presuming both lawmakers have similarly lectured the companies in their home districts who do business in China.
 
Browbeating technology executives won't help move China so much as an inch closer to freedom. There are better ideas, as was discussed in an earlier post.

• Cisco
• Microsoft
• Google
• Yahoo