Cuba Is Different: Why the China argument" doesn't hold.

National Review Online ^ | May 24, 2002 | Joel Mowbray

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In defiant opposition to President Bush's firm stance against Fidel Castro, the Cuba Study Group (CSG), a perfectly divided bipartisan network of 42 congressmen — a jump of eight members in just three weeks, is working feverishly to lift the trade embargo to Castro's island prison.

The marketing pitch of the Embrace Castro movement, which is spreading like wildfire on Capitol Hill, is best summed up by its ringleader, Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), who proclaims, "If engagement will work in China, it will work in Cuba as well."

Engagement with Cuba is absolutely necessary, but the real question is how. Do we engage the despot and strengthen his regime, thereby institutionalizing communism? Or do we, as President Bush proposed this week, circumvent Castro and directly engage the Cuban people to foment freedom? The answer should be obvious, yet the CSG inexplicably wants to engage Cuba on the same terms as other foreign companies do now, by cozying up to Castro.

The false premise of CSG's "China" argument is that trading with or investing in communist Cuba is the equivalent of engaging communist China. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that Cuba sits 90 miles off our shores, the parallel just doesn't hold up upon closer inspection.

In one sense, our current policy with China is a matter of sleeping in the bed we've made, but more significantly, trading with China is qualitatively different than with Cuba.

Trade with China has traveled a messy and imperfect course over the past 25 years. Without a doubt, China is a much freer and more open nation than before foreign trade and investment. Sweatshops still flourish on the mainland, particularly in the south, but there are also pockets of free markets scattered throughout urban centers, most notably in Shanghai, where someone can actually open up the want ads and choose a job.

China is really no longer a true communist nation; it is more a market-socialist economy run by the Communist party. The government opened up the economy because it had to for its very survival. As the world now knows from the collapse of the Soviet Union, communism, left to its own devices, will inevitably self-destruct and implode. It's only a matter of time.

By its very nature, communism is parasitic. It feeds off existing wealth, depleting resources without replenishing them. The Soviet Union held on as long as it did because it raped Eastern Europe after World War II, stripping away every last vestige of prosperity.

Capitalism, on the other hand, is dynamic and regenerative. Not only does capitalism not eat away resources, it builds and creates new wealth. Communism must eventually feed off the unique rejuvenating character of capitalism once its own well has run dry. In short, communism needs capitalism in order to survive.

China and later Cuba have both turned to capitalism as a last ditch effort to preserve communism. In China, it has worked. The communist dictatorship across the Pacific is stronger from 25 years of foreign engagement, but it has come at the price of a burgeoning middle class and new freedoms afforded to millions that never existed before Nixon's fateful visit. Without America's trade and investment, however, China's communist dictatorship likely would have already collapsed under its own dead weight.

Knowing that trade has facilitated the continued survival of communism in China, maybe we didn't choose the best path. But hindsight is irrelevant, because you cannot put the baby back in the womb. With China a major trading partner — and growing, a sudden fall of the regime is far from America's interests.

In Cuba, however, we have no existing economic interests, and Castro is an old man. There are a few heir apparents, but Castro's cult of personality is the glue holding the deteriorating machine together. So long as the embargo remains in place, Castro's successor, and with him communism, will fail.

Doing business with Cuba unavoidably props up the regime because of the way Castro has designed the rules of the game. Castro double-dips from joint ventures: first by splitting the profits, and secondly by stealing from the Cuban workers. Foreign companies don't employ Cuban workers; they rent them. Companies must pay Castro for each worker, in cash, and the regime in turn pockets 95 percent, doling out the remaining 5 percent in pesos.

At least in China, those employed by American companies are paid directly by the corporation and usually have the benefit of exposure to American culture and values. Chinese employees of American companies are immediately vaulted into the middle, and often the upper-middle, class. Many of these employees of American corporations make enough money to send their kids to private schools, a freedom that would never be allowed in Castro's brutal society.

More importantly than the different nature of trade with China, though, is the simple geographic fact that Cuba is a stone's throw away from our shores. Our foreign policy has always recognized a distinction between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. Reagan began the push for freedom in Latin America as a move to enhance our national security. Normal trading with Castro, in fact, would be an exception from our policy toward thugs in Latin America.

Nesting 90 miles off the coast of Florida with a seething hatred for America, Castro is not just another tyrant. He's the only living dictator who tried to get the Soviet Union to nuke the United States. Now Castro's developing at least the capability for biological weapons, and he's got the right connections with rogue states to cause us migraine headaches.

Fortunately, the White House fully appreciates the threat posed by engaging Castro. Bush has pledged to veto any bill that would bolster the communist dictatorship, and his new initiative to engage the Cuban people is already finding favor on Capitol Hill. To be sure, Bush is fighting an uphill struggle against the CSG, but in the end, moral clarity should carry the day — even in a place like Congress.

— Joel Mowbray is a columnist for Townhall.com.

[LarryLied]

The trade we do with China benefits millions of people in China. Trade with Cuba goes to Castro and his thugs. That is the difference.