CHINA: Better off without it

We are all witnesses to an ongoing crime. The people of Hong Kong are having their freedoms stolen, their human rights stripped away. The Big Brother surveillance state, built by American tech companies, has already identified its future victims. With the new policy of extradition to mainland China, anyone who exercises their freedom of conscience can be sent to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) experienced torturers, brainwashers, and organ harvesters.

Hong Kong is unique. Along with the legitimate Republic of China in independent Taiwan, Hong Kong never had its ancient mix of Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist culture targeted for destruction by the bloodiest mass-murderer in human history, Mao Zedong. Unlike Taiwan, thanks to the British legacy, Hong Kong evolved a fusion of the best in both West and East.

While we might not be able to intervene to prevent a greater Tiananmen Square Massacre in Hong Kong, Americans can wake up to the existential threat to the future of a free humanity posed by the CCP. Their greatest victim has thus far been the people of China, but if unchecked this will change.

We can divest ourselves from investment in Red China and find alternatives to doing business with them. No profit margin is worth the corrupting effects of partnering with the CCP. We should divest because its victims are human beings, worthy of dignity and basic rights just as we ourselves are. When one person has these basic qualities stripped away by raw force, all of us are diminished.

RALPH K. GINORIO

Coeur d’Alene