Web Letters: What Would Mao Think of the Games?

I admire the Chinese people: their courage, tenacity, capacity for work and their humanity. I also admire their culture, art, poetry and theatre. I do not admire their government's record on human rights and the selling of people into human slave labor. I find it even less attractive when American capitalists, like Warren Buffet, continue to take advantage of human labor bondage without even an apparent twinge of conscience. The Chinese have proven that communism works and that repressing people can be profitable, with our help. The great fantasy of Nixon's ping-pong diplomacy has literally failed. our economy is barely growing at 1 percent, while the Chinese economy, thanks to us, is growing at 17 percent. This is hardly a reason for them to change, and Mao would probably be sad that all those people starved for no apparent reason. The wealthy get more wealthy and the peasant is further repressed.

JAMES PINETTE

Caribou, ME