Robyn Blumner's editorial far better than usual (Updated)

Titled "Sweatshops over there matter here," Robyn Blumner's latest editorial may well be her best yet once you get past the title.

The link currently leads to a blank page.

Perhaps that will change with a bit more time (it's still early, and the end of Daylight Saving Time may have put a crimp in the St. Petersburg Times' online publishing routine.

Update: I knew it was too good to last. When I tested the link after publishing, it worked.

And then I have to suffer like a worker in a Chinese sweatshop.

Blumner wears her bleeding heart on her sleeve while bewailing the plight of sweatshop workers in places such as India and China.

So what's the alternative? Does Blumner have any suggestions?

If this is China's century, it's getting off to a bleak start for millions of jobless mainlanders. The country has dazzled the world with its remarkable progress since embarking on the capitalist road in 1978. The economy has quadrupled in size in two decades. China is rapidly replacing Asia's tiger economies as a global center of manufacturing, and coastal cities such as Shanghai sparkle with skyscrapers, five-star hotels and modern electronics factories. The streets clog with the private cars of the newly prosperous.

But for every Chinese who has escaped poverty into the emerging middle and upper classes, there are many others, young and old, trapped in hellholes that blight the outskirts of population centers like Zhengzhou. China's headlong rush to join the global economy is creating new jobs in the private sector, but it is simultaneously breeding a gigantic underclass of have-nots—citizens the government fears could one day rise up in open revolt.

(Time Magazine)

We could stop trading with China, their economy would shrink, and the have-not class could grow bigger. And they'll still be under the oppressive communist regime.

Blumner glosses over the one point of real leverage the United States owns with nations like China and India. Companies such as Mattel can economically pressure China into incrementally changing its system. But if Mattel loses its shirt in China the company loses its power to encourage change.

Blumner offers no clue that she's aware of any of these dynamics of foreign policy soft power. She instead does her part to build the stereotype of liberals who do their part in the world by feeling bad on behalf of those who suffer.

There's nothing wrong with empathy and sympathy, but if it isn't conjoined with some type of redeeming action--something that has a reasonable chance of accomplishing something positive (unlike boycotting Chinese goods), then it is an exercise in pathetic futility.

*****