Some in U.S. Prefer Communist China over North Carolina

Some in U.S. Prefer Communist China over North Carolina
by Temerity Forthright

U.S. companies, sports teams, musicians, and others have make it clear they prefer Communist China, with its long history of human rights abuses, over the state of North Carolina.

This stems from HB2, the bill passed in North Carolina requiring people to use the bathroom of their birth gender. This caused a firestorm of controversy which led companies, sports teams, musicians, and others to boycott the state. Ironically, many of these same companies and people routinely do business in Communist China, which has a gruesome history of human rights abuses.

On April 5, 2016, the publically traded company PayPal announced its cancelation of a $3.6 billion investment in North Carolina. It continues, however, to do business with Communist China.

Last July, the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced it was cancelling the 2017 All-Star Game that was scheduled to be played in Charlotte, North Carolina. The NBA All-Star Game was played in New Orleans instead. The NBA, however, announced that two more of its teams will play exhibition games this October in Communist China. In fact, 22 NBA games have been played in Communist China since 2004.

My personal congratulations to the National Football League (NFL) owners who refused to move their May 2016 meeting out of Charlotte, North Carolina, despite strong outside pressure.

World-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman cancelled a scheduled concert in North Carolina, but he has performed in Communist China.

A number of companies and organizations that planned to hold conferences in North Carolina moved to another venue out of the state. The ACPA-College Student Educators International, for example, got Holiday Inn to change their annual conference to one of their hotels in Ohio without penalty. Holiday Inn, however, operates several hotels in Communist China.

Pepsi was created in North Carolina. But current Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi wrote a letter asking the North Carolina governor to repeal the bathroom law. Pepsi, with their red, white, and blue cans, has seen an increase in sales and revenue, boosted mainly by the strength of their Chinese market share.

China is well known for its human rights violations. In 1989, student-led demonstrations against the Communist government ended violently when troops and tanks sent into Tiananmen Square fired on peaceful, unarmed protestors. The death toll is unknown because the information was suppressed by the government-run media, but is estimated to be from several hundred to a few thousand people. No freedom to assemble peaceably in China.

Communist Chinese authorities passed a Cybersecurity Law in 2016 directed at further limiting the freedom of expression of the Chinese people. The law also clamped down on media outlets whose reporting does not follow the strict Communist party line. No freedom of speech in China. No freedom of the press.

Since July 2015, 245 human rights lawyers and activists have been detained. Most were held in secret and not allowed to communicate with their families or seek legal counsel. Some are still unaccounted for. Several of the civil rights advocates were sentenced to long terms in prison, forced to confess on TV to “subversion,” or deported. World governments, human rights organizations, and many people in China have requested improvements to the civil rights of the Chinese people. No freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances in China.

The Communist Chinese government recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism. But members of other religions are not allowed to express their faith or have religious activities. The Falun Gong spiritual movement has been banned since 1999. Tibetans, Uighurs, and Mongolians continue to face discrimination from the Chinese government. No freedom of religion in China.

Communist China leads the world with the number of people executed, according to Amnesty International. There are 46 crimes which are eligible for the death penalty. In addition to the obvious crimes of murder and treason, following are some of the crimes that will get you the death penalty in China: robbery; rape; kidnapping; assault; prison escape; embezzlement; smuggling or selling drugs; providing substandard military weapons; illegal possession of firearms; separatism; and cowardice. The exact number of executions is not available because the Communist Chinese government keeps those statistics secret.

In an incredible twist of irony, homosexuality in Communist China was decriminalized only 20 years ago, but it is still classified as a mental illness. There are no laws protecting people in China from discrimination based on their sexual orientation. Neither is there recognition of same-sex partnerships. Chinese clinics still offer conversion therapy to “cure” homosexuality.

In late March, the North Carolina state legislature repealed HB2, the bathroom law. There is no indication, however, that Communist China will repeal any of its severe crackdowns on the rights of the Chinese people. We will wait to see if President Trump addresses the human rights abuses by the Communist Chinese government later this week during his first meeting with President Xi Jinping of China.

To those people who object to the constitutional rights of all states to govern themselves, I suggest they go to the countries where such rights don’t exist and work on changing the laws in those countries.

Note: Voters in Houston, Texas, rejected the same “gender identity” bathroom law four months before North Carolina did, but no one seemed to notice. Maybe they know you don’t mess with Texas.

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