4 Violations to the Tiananmen Square Sanctions
After the crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989 America initiated export sanctions that prohibited the export of "any crime control or detection instruments or equipment to China."
Thanks goodness China does NOT get any more handcuffs, helmets, shields, fingerprint powder, lie detectors or tear gas from the US anymore. That’ll teach them.
What China does get however are:
1. Database software – Oracle Corp sold software to the China’s Public Security Ministry which oversees criminal and ideological cases. Sybase Inc. sold database programs to Shanghai police.
2. Computer routers and switches – Cisco sells these to China’s police departments.
3. Two-way radios – Motorola has sold these devices that allow Chinese police to tap into all sorts of data on individuals.
4. Digital ID cards – All Chinese carry paper passports to move about China…when digitized, big brother will KNOW where you are
5. DNA Analysis gear
6. Video Probes
Well at least they don’t get to use US handcuffs.
Is there a double standard here?
What do you think?
I read the original article over at Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_38/b4001067.htm) and am wondering:
* Was the U.S. *ever* a major supplier of handcuffs and etc. to China to start with? Or was that 1989 resolution more of a “token” gesture–about as significant as refusing to export genuine champagne to France. I honestly don’t know, but that info would shed a useful light on the current discussion.
* The question too about not selling software and database apps to China because “Maybe they will use them to persecute dissidents” is a bit weak. Maybe they will…but maybe some great quantity of steel that suppliers in the U.S. have sold to China in the past 17 years has gone into making handcuffs and prison bars and rifles (which, by the way, uh, are used to–gasp!–maintain legitimate order, protect innocent citizens, and round up real honest-to-goodness bad guys). Why not be up in arms over steel suppliers as well?
If there’s evidence that some company knowingly provided technology or tools or other resources that would be used specifically and exclusively to “violate human rights,” yeah, that’s heinous. But the kind of speculation that critics of these sales are using sounds a bit too “Witchhunt” to me–especially if this did start off as some sort of “token” resolution.
Next questions to ask: Does China’s PSB ever use Microsoft Excel to track dissidents…or are they more fond of open source apps? Do they drink Coke or Starbucks while doing their dissident tracking? Eat a Big Mac before heading into the interrogation room? Etc.
Anyway, beyond all that silly speculation, it would really be useful to find out if the U.S. was providing China with amount of handcuffs and riot batons and such before 1989. Anybody know or have time to look it up?
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