Chinese Corporate Communist Government Buys Silence from Grieving Parents

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

The Chinese Corporate Communist Government.

The Chinese Corporate Communist Government, who?

The Chinese Corporate Communist Government that wants to give you a check to buy your silence about its own criminal negligence and corruption that caused the earthquake to bury your child in a school made of sand.

From the NYTimes:

By EDWARD WONG

HANWANG, China — The official came for Yu Tingyun in his village one evening last week. He asked Mr. Yu to get into his car. He was clutching the contract and a pen.

Mr. Yu’s daughter had died in a cascade of concrete and bricks, one of at least 240 students at a high school here who lost their lives in the May 12 earthquake. Mr. Yu became a leader of grieving parents demanding to know if the school, like so many others, had crumbled because of poor construction.

The contract had been thrust in Mr. Yu’s face during a long police interrogation the day before. In exchange for his silence and for affirming that the ruling Communist Party “mobilized society to help us,” he would get a cash payment and a pension.

Mr. Yu had resisted then. This time, he took the pen.

“When I saw that most of the parents had signed it, I signed it myself,” Mr. Yu said softly. A wiry 42-year-old driver, he carries a framed portrait of his daughter, Yang, in his shoulder bag.

Local governments in southwest China’s quake-ravaged Sichuan Province have begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake, according to interviews with more than a dozen parents from four collapsed schools. Officials threaten that the parents will get nothing if they refuse to sign, the parents say.

Chinese officials had promised a new era of openness in the wake of the earthquake and in the months before the Olympic Games, which begin in August. But the pressure on parents is one sign that officials here are determined to create a facade of public harmony rather than undertake any real inquiry into accusations that corruption or negligence contributed to the high death toll in the quake.

Officials have come knocking on parents’ doors day and night. They are so intent on getting parents to comply that in one case, a mayor offered to pay the airfare of a mother who left the province so she could return to sign the contract, the mother said.

The payment amounts vary by school but are roughly the same. Parents in Hanwang, a river town at the foot of mist-shrouded mountains, said they were being offered the equivalent of $8,800 in cash and a per-parent pension of nearly $5,600.

Flush with tax revenues after two decades of double-digit economic growth, China has used its financial muscle to make Beijing and Shanghai into architectural showcases and to open diplomatic doors in developing nations. At times, the state also acts like a multinational corporation facing a product liability suit, offering money to people with grievances in hopes of defusing protests. Most people, the government assumes, ultimately put profit before principle. . . .

The Genocide Olympics, Brought to You by Western Corporations Without Scruples

No amount of crimes against nature or humanity by a corrupt government against its own people or the rest of the world could now mute the roar of approval by the multinational corporations lined up at the trough to cash in on the upcoming Genocide Olympics.

Forgotten are the schools made of sand where thousands of children were buried from earthquakes, forgotten is the continuing history of support for African governments that allow genocide within their own countries, forgotten are the worker exploitation and slave labor to produce poisonous products to line the shelves of Walmarts around the world, forgotten are the children of Tianamen Square where tens of thousands were mowed down for their dreams of democracy, and forgotten are the tens of milliions of tons of pollutants spewed into the environment to produce the easy profits for international corporations and the oligarchs who own them.

So even th0ugh all the ads from Macdonald's, Coke, Verizon, Adidas, and the rest or the corporate sharks will be cheering on the Chinese people to win the medals, we may remain assured the billion-dollar Madison Avenue boosterism offers nothing more than a tissue of cover for the naked greed of those who will really take home the gold from the most polished exploitation on Earth.

The story in the NYTimes:

BEIJING — It is becoming increasingly clear which nation global corporations will be rooting for at this summer’s Olympics: China.

Or at least that’s what it looks like from advertisements here. McDonald’s is running a “Cheer for China” television ad. Nike ads feature China’s star hurdler, Liu Xiang, and other Chinese athletes besting foreign competitors. Earlier this year, Pepsi even painted its familiar blue cans red for a limited edition “Go Red for China” promotion.

The campaigns for Western companies are part of an advertising blitz the likes of which this ostensibly communist nation has never seen. Ads are papered over bus shelters, projected on giant outdoor television screens and plastered on billboards. Commercials even flicker at commuters as they zoom through subway tunnels.

China, already the world’s second-largest advertising market, after the United States, is a dream for consumer product companies. “For most international brands here, China is the growth market for the next 10 years,” said Jonathan Chajet, strategic director at Interbrand, which consults on brands.

A record 63 companies have become sponsors or partners of the Beijing Olympics. Olympic-related advertising in China could reach $4 billion to $6 billion this year, according to CSM, a Beijing marketing research firm. . . .