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Why is this even a question?

Probably because China isn't the greatest country in the world when it comes to labor policies and freedom of the people.

FYI – Here is a great big news flash for all of you, so be prepared to receive the all-time humongous shock of your lifetime . . . (drum roll, please) . . . WE HAVE BEEN TRADING WITH COMMUNIST CHINA SINCE THAT EVIL CROOK OF A PRESIDENT NAMED RICHARD MILLHOUSE NIXON SIGNED A TRADE TREATY WITH THEM WAY BACK IN THE 1970's . . .

However I forgive all you young people who were not alive back then to remember that little nondescript event . . .

Note to Jared . . . As a rule, Communist military dictatorships are not fans of free markets, freedom in general, those so-called human rights that all those so-called liberals like to claim that they are for.

As a rule, some kinds of these "so-called liberals" don't care very much what happens in other countries because liberalized, free trade policies tend to do more work than rockets and bombs have at modernizing (ie, westernizing") the political and economic views of other countries. Much less total disengagement through trade embargoes like we have had with DPRK, Cuba, or Myanmar for decades (while each has brutally suppressed its population, sometimes to levels that even the Chinese government as it is presently constituted could scarcely dream of).

China's not perfect, but news flash, neither is the US. It's not our responsibility to try to use US trade policies like embargoes to try to fix internal issues within China, nor to dictate how they should (nor can we back up that lecturing from the diplomatic bully pulpit. While we do have a large and powerful military, it's sort of busy doing other pointless things at the moment and might have a little trouble annoying the Chinese government into behaving). That's ultimately the Chinese population's responsibility. And they actually seem to be doing reasonably well considering what they've been up against.

Let me rephrase. What is there to talk about here? Why does that have anything to do with who we trade with and don't trade with?

It never has.

No, the United States is not perfect, nor is any country for that matter.

However.

No President of the United States has EVER slaughtered 100,000,000 – yes, that is correct, the number is ONE HUNDRED MILLION – of his own people just because they had a difference in political opinion.

Communist China's Mao Tse Tung holds that distinction.

Closely followed by the Soviet Union's (another communist dictatorship) Joseph Stalin.

One more question – this one is on a more personal note – that I have for you; Since when is defending YOUR freedom a pointless thing? (The people who populate Communist China dare not declare – like you have done – openly that their military is off doing pointless things, for if they do they just might disappear from sight forever . . . like one of the folks who just won a Nobel peace prize for speaking out against totalitarian rule)

FYI – I, and many others like me, will defend your right to say those things, with our lives if necessary. That is what our military people actually do. And no, we do not ask anything in return, not even a pat on the back, because that is the kind of people that we are.

Correction; we do ask only one thing. That those who lose their lives doing what we do are treated with honor and respect at their funerals, and those who are severely wounded or disabled be given the proper health care that they will need for the rest of their natural lives.

Awesome. Glad to see we agree Jared. Just don't buy children's toys from them.

I now understand why you seem to like Beck or Palin…. as an aside. Your madlibs method of "argument" mirrors theirs. It would be only natural that you should gravitate in that way politically.

That aside,.. I was stating that China's flaws don't have much of anything to do with our own, and solving theirs is a rather low priority on the list of things America should be doing. Defending our own freedom starts at home, and indeed, begins not with guns which may be used against aggressors, but with words and political action against more subtle actors who might strike out against our liberties. These foes are internal. It becomes instructive to realize that we incarcerate more people and certainly more per capita than even the Chinese for example, and that we too suppress certain kinds of dissent or have developed methods of pervasive surveillance for our own citizenry and to resolve ourselves against these as serious problems, and not as hallmarks of a free society.

More or less, it's not China's business how we resolve our internal disputes anymore than it is ours to resolve theirs when it comes to whether or not we conduct trade and diplomacy with them. All foreign affairs generally come down to matters of convenience. Where we have the luxury of condemning something unsavory, say in Sudan or Myanmar or DPRK, we do. Where we do not, say in China or Egypt or Israel or Pakistan (or the USSR during WW2), we don't. This should tell us that it doesn't matter if a country and its leaders have or are currently butchering its own in numbers so vast and so fast that it should make us tremble. The actual question is what will they do to us. The Chinese don't seem all that interested in fighting us (and they're actually much less interested in killing their own than they have been, though they are still ahead of us on use of the death penalty, the gap is not quite as large as you might think, even without including our extraterritorial assassination programs), hence we do business with them instead of worrying about the plight of Tibet or Falun Gung or the Uighars

BTW I'm also extremely skeptical of claims that it is only the military that gives us the freedom to speak out on whatever we wish. Extremely.

We have one very significant difference between us and many other nations that precedes the military on this task: a rule of law which enshrines that liberty. It is true that sometimes the military has been needed to defend that rule of law. But it is neither always needed nor the only avenue of defence that one may be called upon to take up as a citizen and patriot.

And I say therefore that they are doing pointless things because what they are doing DOES NOT advance my liberty, nor will do much for that of others who most of us will never meet from places we will never travel to. In point of fact I see more avenues where my liberties are vastly reduced by having troops in Iraq or Afghanistan (for example the fiscal cost of occupying other nations and propping up ineffectual and highly corrupt systems of governance reduces everyone's liberty by imposing a tax and a debt that must be paid, not to mention the cost of caring for injured and battle scarred troops for years to come, which I agree we should pay). And the country placing itself on even a partial war footing, reducing liberty always in the name of "national security" does very little to advance liberty at home.

This is a war that can be fought with bombs and troops, yes. But it is vastly cheaper if we wage it with ideas than with active combat, as we generally did during the Cold War (Vietnam being a significant error and exception to that rule). It will be easier to wage a war of ideas if we are attempting to live up to them rather than trading them aside where it inconveniences people who resemble the people we want to fight against, be they Mexican or Chinese or Islamic.

Where did I state that we Americans must cure any of Communist China's ills?

Your ignorance of the dangers of Communism and Socialism reflects the ignorance of today's youth – something that is completely perpetuated by our dysfunctional and misguided public education system.

I spent my youth fighting Communist aggression throughout the free world, and now I see the free world slowly but surely disappearing before my very eyes all the while to the cheers of the ignorant people who do not realize what it is that they are cheering.

I come from a very long line of military men, dating back to our war for independence. I know what it is that the youth of today is throwing under the bus, and by the time you realize what it is that you have done, it will be way too late to correct without many good men shedding their blood for people who know nothing of what it is they are fighting for.

For those who have fought for it, freedom will have a taste that will never be known to those who are protected.

Did I say that I support communism or communist systems anywhere, no. You have repeatedly asserted this, but you haven't the faintest idea what any of it means. We "defeated" this foe not through force of arms but by having a vastly more effective method of social organisation, namely a relatively free society with a relatively free market. Both of those allowed us to put men in harms way when necessary, yes, but these sacrifices (when made in combat) were, in the whole, largely useless in the actual struggle against communism.

If you don't believe me, explain why Vietnam and North Korea are still there, one in a modestly socialistic state and the other in full blown tyranny.

You did not state that. I did. 1) Because Jared up there seemed to think someone might think it important or relevant regarding trade. 2) Because you took the opportunity to make a big deal out of the China of the 1950-1970 era, which is somewhat distinct from the China of the 21st century, it became necessary to dispense with the aside you put forward.

I have no illusions of the dangers of totalitarianism or communist systems. But I also have no illusions that the wars in Korea or Vietnam somehow defended us from communism or liberated peoples abroad. At best we managed to create a modestly successful country on the Korean peninsula (and one very unsuccessful one), and accomplished nothing of substance whatsoever in Vietnam because we interpreted that as a proxy fight with the Soviet Union (and Mao) when it was really a struggle for national sovereignty which went back several decades, and had nothing to do with the Cold War. As with now, the Cold War was largely a battlefield over ideological positions, which we waged in part with rhetoric and economic productivity far more aggressively, and far more successfully, than we could ever have done with rockets and bombs.

If you want to believe that fighting you did won something valorous and important, go right ahead. But I'm not convinced largely because Vietnam ended up exactly as it would have, only delayed by a decade, and North Korea is still there today. And Afghanistan turned out so well in our favor too I might add for good measure…

I have no misconception that a military serves no purpose or that service to a country is of no value and should not be respected. I'm a hardcore IR realist. What concerns me is that we too often resort to it when we should not (because it advances or defends no vital state interest) or need not (because it might, but would do so at tremendous cost to blood and treasure when other methods would be far cheaper to both and still secure our interests). Fighting simply because we can or because we have sunk costs serves no purpose. Hence, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as we are and have been for many years now serves no purpose. Soldiers deserve not merely treatment of their wounds and time to heal the trauma of war, they also deserve better than to be tossed into battles without proper preparation and knowledge of the enemy they will face and to be advanced into battles that they can and must win rather than battles of futility and waste.