Hu advises Bush that more spying, not less, will help the U.S. economy grow like China’s…

China’s exploitation of hundreds of millions of poor Chinese for cheap labor fueled its phenomenal rise to economic superpower status. What’s more, many American corporations conspired and colluded with the Chinese government not only to exploit that cheap labor but also to deny Chinese citizens all manner of basic freedoms.

Indeed, Chinese President Hu Jintao has good reason to shout, yahoo! After all, he got Yahoo!, Microsoft, Intel, and every other American hi-tech firm to check their conscience at the border as a condition of doing business in China. But the viability of the Chinese government depends on its ability to control the minds and manage the freedoms of its 1.3 billion citizens. But this can lead to embarrassing situations abroad: As was the case when President Hu was heckled by a Falun Gong disciple at the White House on Thursday, and as I lamented in this previous article:

…it could not have helped the political atmospherics [of Hu’s dinner with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and the other corporate titans the Chinese have recruited as thought police] when Reporters Without Borders announced – on the eve of Hu’s visit – that the Chinese government’s Internet police (aided and abetted by Yahoo) had arrested and incarcerated even more journalists for promoting a “so-called Western-style democracy” than previously disclosed.

China human rights, Yahoo spying