Your stuff is cheap, but many aren’t free, in China

Economically China represents a wonderful opportunity to reduce the costs of goods being developed and a market for new goods. But when it comes to Christianity, it’s not welcome at all. Please read this story about Zhang Rongliang being imprisoned at this link HERE or at Radio Free China at this link HERE.

Is this a commercial market with no soul in China? I’ll be the first to confess I am not an economist. But I do live in a (mostly) free market system in the United States. What do I think makes our system works? A few pieces really but they work together, sometimes painstakingly slowly, but they appear to work together none-the-less. Those pieces are:

• A (mostly) free market (for commerce, thought, social ogranization and communication)
• Democracy of government
• A social system that enforces the rule of law where people won’t behave morally or ethically
• Some ingrained sense that ethics and people matter (imperfectly even; with a chance to change people’s views where they don’t)

I don’t pretend it’s perfect. For example, Morwen posted at Gentilly Girl a report that made me furious regarding the doctoring of a plan to develop Category 5 hurricane protection across the state of Louisiana. The doctoring was done, inexplicably, by the White House! (you can read her post at this link HERE). So no, we aren’t perfect. But what we have does seem to work and has stood, for now at least, the test of time.

But certainly you have to take a pause when you buy that $25 chair at the local shop and it’s been made in China. I love the low cost goods and in my professional work the pressure to “go to China” for manufacturing is very high. Still, reports like the one on Zhang Rongliang have made me pause as I reach for that inexpensive dress. In this country I can usually (though not always) work for change. In China, I fear that may not be possible. A free economy is only part of what it takes to have a free country. You must have freedom of thought too and trust that your people, though they will voice an opinion, love their country enough not to tear it apart but to see it made better.