Fu Manchu electronics and Accountocracy

What would happen, I wonder, if Americans started asking managers at Target, Sears and Wal-Mart, "Why does this stuff have a Made in China label on it? If I have to buy imports, can't you sell more things made in India and other democracies?"

Do you think if enough Americans did that, it would send a message to China and encourage US transnationals to set up more branches in democratic countries?

Those ideas came to me last night while visiting Simon World. Simon has a treasure trove of reports on Taishi Village and issues related to China's forward retreat from an experiment in democracy.

Actually I didn't get very far into Simon's Taishi file because I was so excited to learn that Chinese have created a new system of government. Arthur Anderson of Enron fame is still working out the philosophical underpinnings, so we'll skip the abstract stuff and go right to how Accountocracy works.

First what you do is take away the right to vote -- voting being a socially regressive impolite process. Then, whatever it is that's bothering people enough to make them want to vote, you send in financial specialists to modernize accounting procedures in the trouble spot so the problems go away.

No system of government is perfect so Accountocracy has a few bugs; mainly, you have to be a very advanced human being to practice it. For those Chinese just descending from the trees the Communist Party has worked out an alternate form of government called Socialist Democracy, which is Accountocracy without the accounting part.

Point #3 in the Socialist Democracy credo is sure to appeal to people who still demand bananas for breakfast, lunch and dinner: "China's democracy is a democracy guaranteed by the people's democratic dictatorship."

To strip it down, Socialist Democracy is the system of government already in place in China but with the word "democracy" prominently featured in the pamphlets and with thugs who say, "This is your democratic right" before they beat you to a pulp when you ask for the right to vote.

Now we move to the problem of ensuring Chinese are happy with their new forms of government. Here, technology has the answer because if you can easily check up on how everyone is thinking you can learn whether they're happy.

This is also a good way to ensure foreign journalists aren't responsible for deaths in China by asking probing questions of Chinese.

A European journalist on a recent reporting trip to the central provinces was using her mobile phone to track down a local activist. While she was talking, a voice broke into the conversation and scolded her for sticking her nose into local affairs.

Another journalist tells of how she interviewed a source in a noisy local restaurant one evening. The next day her mobile rang and she heard the last voice she expected: her own. The call was a recording of her conversation in the restaurant.

She has no idea if it was some kind of bounce-back blip in the hi-tech spying game, or whether it was spooks wanting to let her know they were on her case. Either way, it was a jolting reminder of the system's invisible eyes and ears.

The latest technology ... is a chip that can secretly turn a mobile phone into a microphone. Security experts say the phone's software is adjusted so that when the phone is called from a certain number, it will answer automatically without ringing, vibrating or lighting up -- essentially turning it into a bugging device.

Another report in Simon's Taishi Archives gives considerably more information about what went on in Taishi Village. Pundita was particularly interested to learn that the authorities weren't only arresting the elderly who protested. Every household had somebody who was arrested. They were promised that their family members would be released if they signed a document withdrawing from the recall vote. If they refused to sign, the detained family member would go to jail for three to ten years.

So the way I figure it, we can't stop China's government from brutalizing their people; we can take a stronger stand against the brutality by -- dare I use the V word -- voting with our pocketbook.

Come to think of it, Americans could also make a stand by investing more in US companies that have branches only in democratic countries. On paper a democratic country investing business in thugocracies is supposed to move the countries toward democracy. In practice it hasn't worked out that way. And it's only encouraged despots to the idea that democracies don't really have an issue with despotic government. Such has been the case with China.