"Just as the protests are becoming more and more common, so is the use of overwhelming force to put them down."

So says this article about China in today's New York Times.

Advocates of engagement, which would include every presidential administration since that of Richard Nixon, accept the argument of Nixon national security counselor, later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Kissinger and his descendants have believed that by engaging the Chinese government and offering them the baubles of Western material bounty, the government there is bound to become more open and create expectations for economic and political betterment among the Chinese people.

While there is a rising middle class in China and the economy is growing at a robust 8% this year--down from a 10% annual growth rate over the past several years--there is little evidence to suggest that the repressive regime in Beijing is changing its ways.

The question, of course, is how long will it take for engagement to bring about the critical mass needed for democracy to spring forth there?

In the meantime, won't we in the West, seeing visions of dollar signs in our heads, risk complicity not only with the repression of the Beijing government, but also its militarism and desire for domination over other countries, including the United States?

Haven't we got this whole thing backwards? Capitalism sprang from democracy, not the other way around. What happens when we enable a bloodthirsty regime to get us and the rest of the world over an economic and military barrel?

What do we say to a repressive regime with designs for exporting its repression that adopts a modified capitalism in order to buy off a portion of the populace, denies the country real freedom, and buys the complicity of Western corporations with its repressiveness?

One thing we say is, "No!" And we do it a lot more often than we have under Presidents, Republican and Democrat, for the past thirty-four years.