COLUMN: An open letter to Jiang Zemin

From Ned Nurick's, "Spare Change," Fall '97 From Ned Nurick's, "Spare Change," Fall '97 Welcome Jiang Zemin. Welcome to the University of Pennsylvania, home of the capitalist front, the Wharton School of Business. Welcome to Philadelphia, the birthplace of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But no, instead you come here to learn about our economics, to seek teachings in a vain attempt to save your doomed system. The problem Mr. Chairman, is neither the lack of economic thought nor the sparse free market legacy of your homeland. It is your system, Maoist socialism, sir, that does not stand a chance in a world of capitalist freedom. Your perverse philosophical conditions will eventually find themselves upon the ash heap of history alongside your Leninist brethren. No economy can overcome a morally bankrupt system where even the vaguest attempt at personal freedom provokes the strongest repression left in our world. No matter how inventive or creative a Wharton professor may be, he can never teach the initiative that is released in truly free people. There is no substitute for freedom. Your repression of religious, as well as progressive, movements within your own country reveals the true state of the "emperor's new clothes," where you and your system stand stark naked in your totalitarian tininess. We know that you and your elite clique assail and persecute dissent without remorse. You have created nothing more than a dictatorship of mass oppression for your utopia, all in the name of the proletariat. Cowardly, you and your cronies hide behind a program of imprisonment, persecution and torture in the name of progress. We wouldn't understand, you say, because things are different in each country and can only be defined as relative. Relative to what? Is forcible Tibetan occupation and mass murder relative to the killing of the Polish Jewry? And is the imprisonment of democratic dissidents relative to Siberian exile? Your charade may have fooled some, including our very own American president. He buys your promises of freer markets and business deals for U.S. companies. He even was willing to bury his devotion to human rights and offer you an official, red-carpet, 21-gun salute welcome to our nation. Your deal with our country reeks of appeasement, sir. In return for allowing us to sell our products, most of which you have already pirated, in your country we "allowed" you to continue to undersell United States producers. Yes, sir, we do understand the realities of international commerce. However, we can no longer allow you to wrest the lifeblood of free workers by selling goods forcibly produced by prisoners. And we are not convinced by the preposterous deal that swapped our nuclear energy technology for your assurance that you would cease selling arms to countries such as Iran. How can we be sure of your compliance? We can never accept the word of one whose oath is sworn upon the blood of his countrymen. Our very own Neville Chamberlain, President Bill Clinton, would grant you your own sphere of influence in return for a smile and a few vacuous promises. Perhaps Neville has been clouded by your shrewd attempt to subvert our electoral process. Or perhaps he is afraid of your saber rattling in a manner becoming of an underappreciated child. Either way, we know you and your comrades represent the final vestiges of an evil system designed to shackle the individual and retard the natural tendencies. You fail to realize the harm inflicted by Marx upon humankind. For God never intended men to be subordinate to inferior idols such as socialism and its trappings. There is no containing the sheer power of the human spirit, Mr. Chairman. Exposing your encumbered people to the treasure of free markets will only make them strain harder at the yoke of socialism. You can oppress, torture and imprison but you and your coterie will die, taking with it the misguided beliefs. The yearning for freedom, however, will never perish. And so Mr. Chairman, as you leave the birthplace of freedom, we hope you remember that the Liberty Bell tolls not just in celebration of our own indefatigable spirit but also in encouragement to others seeking to sever the evil bonds of tyrannical totalitarianism.