Normalizing Relations with Communist Cuba

Anyone who reads or follows the news at all will undoubtedly have heard that Obama wants to relax some of the U.S.'s policies with Cuba. I believe he right now just wants to relax the rules for Cuban American families and their visiting rights. I believe he plans on relaxing more than just that though in the months and years to come. I know many have speculated that by the end of his first term he will have restored all diplomatic relations with Cuba and allow normal trade. According to a poll released today by CNN, 7 out of 10 Americans are in favor of this normalization of relations with Cuba. There are a lot of people in the news and in Congress though that are very unhappy with the prospect of normalizing relations with Cuba. I know Senator Mel Martinez of Florida is a Cuban American and is very opposed to any of this. There are other congressmen and politicians that are also very against this. From what I can gather, and I have been trying very hard to understand this situation, many Cuban Americans (and a vocal minority of politicians, mostly Cuban Americans) are opposed to this because Cuba is a Communist regime and is clearly guilty of gross human rights violations. According to the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, the U.S. continues its embargo against Cuba because of "human rights" and "democratic values." Many Cubans have been jailed unjustly and are treated poorly, probably worse than I can even imagine. Cubans are not free to pursue their interests. You can go to jail for five years for trying to connect to the internet. The organization Reporters Without Borders ranked Cuba the second biggest prison for reporters, second only to none other than....you guessed it...China. I have only scratched the surface of the human rights violations in Cuba and have only barely begun describing its oppressive communist government. But the point of this blog is not to rant against Cuba, it is to ask for someone to please explain to me why we do not hold countries like China to the same standard. Why do we not have an embargo agasint China? Why didn't we boycott the Olympics when they refused to hold up their end of the bargain and stop committing human rights violations? Let me briefly remind anyone reading this blog about how horrible China's oppressive communist government is. First off, many organizations including the U.S. State Department have documented China's human rights violations. For decades China has had a 'one child policy' which has resulted in abortions and infanticide. There is an outrageously unbalanced proportion between males and females in China because the one child policy often times leads the Chinese women to abort the baby if it is not a boy. I cannot even begin to describe how much this disgusts me. China leads the world in executions per year. In 2005, a member of the Chinese Congress announced that China executes around 10,000 people per year. Of course there is not religious freedom. Tax fraud and 67 other crimes are punishable by death in China. You could fill volumes writing about the treatment of rural and factory workers. I will leave it at that though. So why does the U.S. have this completely rigid economic and diplomatic policy with Cuba but nothing of the sort with China. Not only do we do business with China, they practically own us. I am barely exaggerating. China owns 24.07% of our debt which is 739.6 billion dollars. The U.S. would go bankrupt if China did not continue to buy our debt and give us loans. In addition to the national debt, we do import from China. I am guessing most things in my apartment are from China since I do most of my shopping at retail stores. Don't get me wrong, I like the cheap prices at the retail stores, I wouldn't want to change that, I am just trying to illustrate the inconsistency of trading and doing business with China but not Cuba. Both countries are oppressive and guilty of human rights violations. From what I can gather it appears that China is worse. If nothing else China certainly is performing the human rights violations on a much larger scale because of how big of a country they are. Our secretary of state routinely visits China, we do business with them, they own a quarter of our debt and could call on it at any time, we participated in the olympics there, etc etc etc....but we will not have even trade with Cuba or normalize relations? I am genuinely asking for someone to explain to me why. I have found this topic to be very interesting but I still have not found any satisfying answers. The only answers I have found is that 1. Cuba is so close to the US that it is embarrassing that they wont let us influence or change them. 2. Many Cuban Americans living in the U.S. have negative feelings (for obvious reasons) towards Cuba and do not want to normalize relations with Cuba because they hate Cuba so much. This small but vocal minority of Americans located mostly in Florida are represented in Congress by people who keep up the fight to not normalize relations with Cuba to satisfy their constituents, which is their job. 3. We cannot afford to not do business with China but we can hold out (on principle?) on Cuba? That's about the worst reason I can think of...This has been a very long blog and has been somewhat political. I don't like to write about politics in our blog but this topic is something I am genuinely looking for answers to so I thought I'd open it up to others.