And The Women Shall Lead
Sometimes it's tough to get your head around a fact or a set of facts that are just so far out there they become difficult to process, let alone comprehend. Whether it's being told that there are 100 THOUSAND MILLION stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way; or that the universe is 13.8 BILLION years old; or that the human brain has TENS OF BILLIONS of neurons! I mean...REALLY? Those facts are cool, but I just can't get my head around the information. I am, no doubt, short a few neurons.
It's the same thing when talking about evil regimes here on Earth, and what those regimes do to their peoples. That hall of fame tyrant Josef Stalin once said “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” Joe sure did have a way with words. And when you're talking about millions and millions of people, it's tough to get your mind around that. But sometimes just one makes a difference. Which brings us to China.
China is a totalitarian regime not unlike Nazi Germany, North Korea, or Russia. The population is just over 1.4 BILLION! No semblance of democracy...actually not a lot of freedom, whatsoever. What they do have, like many nations, are minority peoples. This, from Jim Geraghty of National Review: There are about 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslims, living in Xinjiang, China. About one to two million are currently in “political reeducation” labor camps, where they’re used as forced laborers. There’s a good chance that the construction process for your solar panel or your iPhone used Uyghur slave labor in China. The long-term goal of the Chinese state is for there someday to be no more Uyghurs; Uyghur women are subjected to “forced pregnancy checks, medication that stops their menstruation, forced abortions, and surgical sterilizations.” Dear reader; on those occasions you think you're having a bad day, remember the previous few sentences. Traditionally, we call a systemic effort to kill off an entire ethnic group genocide. And one would hope that even though global business is done with China (here's my hypocrisy...I'm a Mac guy. I love my iPhone, iMac, iPad, everything. And most likely they are all made in China. That said...I can write, bitch and hope), one wishes the International Olympic Committee (IOC) could not vote to have the Olympics there. But...and there's always a but.
A month or so ago a young woman by the name of Peng Shuai accused the former Vice Premier of China, one Zhang Goal, of rape. Ms. Shuai is a really good, highly ranked tennis player who is a member of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA). Ms. Shuai stood up and gave these not so stellar human beings who run China, the middle finger. You know what they did? They made her disappear for a while. Not a clue. Dead...Alive...nobody knew. She might as well have been on Mars. It's what totalitarian regimes do. So what did the WTA do? They got pissed. They not only stood up for one of their own, they threw down a gauntlet.
The WTA does millions of dollars of business with China, just like the NBA and other sporting organizations. It's part of the deal. I get it, I'm a capitalist. You want to expand your product, and maybe you're hoping that stuff like this leads to a more open society. It's what Nixon thought way back in 1972. Hasn't happened, yet.
To make a long story short, not long after the "gauntlet" by the WTA, the Chinese released video of Ms. Shuai walking around shopping, and even had her do a video interview, which everyone assumed was staged. So here's what they did. The head of the association, Steve Simon, has said he is willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business in China if Peng is not fully accounted for and her allegations are not properly investigated.
“We’re definitely willing to pull our business and deal with all the complications that come with it,” Simon said in an interview with CNN. “Because this is certainly, this is bigger than the business,” added Simon. “Women need to be respected and not censored.”
Look, I don't know if what the WTA has done is going to change anything. The meat grinder that is a regime such as China is kind of like the hundred thousand million stars, and the Uyghur population is not the only group in China (including the Chinese themselves) that is having the life sucked out of them. It's tough to comprehend and imagine. We are starting to see a groundswell of support to boycott the Olympic games, but I'm not all that hopeful. It would be nice to see the Intel's, the VISA's, the Coca-Cola's and others who are paying big bucks to advertise in the upcoming Summer Games have the stones the WTA has shown. But as we know, the answer to all of your questions (especially when it comes to sports) is money. In the short term I just hope this young woman is okay. And I applaud the courage of the WTA as opposed to the lapdogs of the National Basketball Association (we'll get to that later), to stand up to China and say, "No more."
But I do know this. Sometimes, just sometimes, the story of one can help shed a light on the evil that nations do.
Write to magtour@icloud.com
Comments
Post a Comment