|
Miami Beach
China Syndrome
City Commission ends trade program with People’s Republic
By Ben Torter
 |
|
Miami
Beach Mayor David Dermer during his 2006 visit to China. |
Citing
China’s poor human rights record, a forceful
Miami Beach
commissioner ended further cultural tourism exchanges between
the city of Miami Beach and the People’s Republic of
China.
“Every right that we hold dear as Americans is and has been the
subject of violation by the Chinese government,” Commissioner
Jonah Wolfson said during Wednesday’s meeting. “Where does it
end? Does it continue on with the extremist Iranian government?
Does it continue on with Hugo Chavez’s
Venezuela, or Fidel Castro’s Cuba?”
The commission will further discuss the city’s future relations
with
China
at an upcoming finance committee meeting. Among the suggestions,
commissioners would like future cultural exchanges with China to
occur through the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce or another
private entity.
The cultural-exchange program between
China and Miami Beach has been the baby of Commissioner Jerry
Libbin since he was elected in 2005. In early 2006, he organized
an official
Miami Beach
delegation of 25 to Beijing, China; the party included
then-Miami Beach Mayor David Dermer and members of the hip-hop
dance troupe Scratch and Burn, which performed before a Chinese
audience. Libbin led a second delegation this past November to
Shanghai, and a New World Symphony quintet traveling with the
group performed at the Shanghai International Arts Fair. He also
acted as a guide for Chinese delegates visiting
Miami Beach.
But Wolfson said he had a moral issue with using taxpayer money or
city resources to promote a communist nation with
well-documented human rights abuses.
To make his point, Wolfson read a 2006 State Department report of
China’s abuses that included “arbitrary and lengthy
incommunicado detention, forced confessions, torture and
mistreatment of prisoners as well as severe restrictions on
freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion,
privacy, worker rights and coercive birth limitation.”
Libbin argued that the
United States plans to participate in the Olympics in
Beijing,
that China is the Port of Miami’s biggest trading partner and
that
New York City
and Los Angeles are actively seeking Chinese tourists with their
public money. While Libbin agreed that China has a poor human
rights record, he argued that the country is steadily improving
and that isolating it isn’t the answer.
“In the chilliest of times of the Cold War … arts, culture and
sports, almost always, [have] been viewed as something that
could be positive,” Libbin said. “So I think we have to kind of
separate those issues.”
Libbin’s program does not use taxpayer money per se, but it does
use city resources. City staff coordinated the trips and the
city’s communications department created a 30-minute video about
the city of
Miami Beach’s two trips to China and the Chinese delegation that
visited
Miami Beach.
The video played on Miami Beach’s television access station,
Channel 77, at least 200 times between Aug. 15 and
Nov. 13, 2007.
Libbin’s
China initiative grew out of a promise he made while running for
office in 2005 to promote cultural-based tourism. Libbin
reasoned that Miami Beach cultural institutions such as the New
World Symphony and the Bass Museum were enough of an attraction
to draw new tourists to Miami Beach.
Once in office, he aimed his sights at
China because it has one-fifth of the world’s population and its
booming economy is churning out people with money and time to
travel. U.S. Commerce Department records show that 320,450
Chinese visited the United States in 2006 — a number that’s
expected to reach 579,000 by 2011.
Chinese citizens’ increased ability to travel will be fueled in
part by a Dec. 11 agreement between the
United States and China signed by Commerce Secretary Carlos M.
Gutierrez that allows U.S. companies in China to market group
tourism to this country. Libbin also referenced a Jan. 13
article in New York’s Daily News reporting that Chinese
tourists to
New York City
spend “an average of $2,200 per visit, compared with $1,750 by
travelers from other countries.”
“I wanted to see how we could use culture to get a piece of this
market,” Libbin said.
However, the issue of
China’s human rights record first took center stage in April
when the commission discussed a resolution urging
China
to place a consulate in
Miami-Dade
County. Mayor Dermer added a proviso that he thought would
encourage more freedom of speech in China. Libbin felt the
amendment would insult the Chinese, but he was outnumbered 6-1.
Three people spoke against Libbin’s trade initiative at Wednesday’s
meeting: Commissioner Saul Gross’s wife Jane, Alex Annunziato
(who ran against Libbin for commissioner in 2005) and local
gadfly Harry Cherry.
“All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do
nothing,” Annunziato quoted.
Six people, though, spoke in favor of continuing Libbin’s program,
at least three of whom were from business associations. Among
them was Joe Chi, the executive director of the China Latin
American Trade Center, who criticized the comparison of
China
to Cuba from the viewpoint that his family fled communist China
to Cuba in the early 1950s and then fled Castro. China, he said,
is rapidly moving away from communist ideals and becoming much
freer, whereas Cuba has remained stagnant.
“I’m afraid in doing this that the city of
Miami Beach might be sending the message that maybe the Chinese
aren’t welcome here,” Chi said.
Comments? E-mail
ben@miamisunpost.com |
