Imagethief has read with some dismay of American plans to bring a complaint against China in the WTO as a result of China's flagrant piracy problem. This is typically short-sighted of American industrial interests. If the US government knuckles under to business in this case, it will undermine virtually the only pillar it has for influencing Chinese culture and opinion.

Let me explain. Essentially, all foreign media in China is illegal. Oh sure, we get our three or four watchable movies a year, and, if we're lucky, Desperate Housewives dubbed into Mandarin on Chinese television. But after that, it's the black market or long nights spent watching cockroaches march up and down the walls. That's entertainment of a sort, but it doesn't compete with The Daily Show.

But if we don't live in an "international apartment complex" with legal cable channels (and the attendant spooky blackouts of CNN and BBC), we have to get a black market satellite dish that pulls a Philippines or Indian satellite signal. If we exhaust the three or four watchable movies that are legally imported for the big screen each year (of the other sixteen the less said the better), we can certainly go down to the FAB Endless Culture Plaza and buy a legal DVD. If we're lucky, we might find a copy of Captain Blood, One Million Years BC or something similarly contemporary. Otherwise it's off to see the nice man with the suitcase full of disks who sets up outside the convenience store. He'll almost certainly have 300.

If we're lucky enough to have a working broadband connection, we can download or, if we don't mind postage-stamp video, watch Prison Break off of Yoqoo with amateur Chinese subtitles. But for most of us the alternative to legally dubious media is Chinese variety shows and morally uplifting dramas of the type that SARFT is increasingly foisting on Chinese broadcasters. Imagine running a garden hose of Fentanyl up your nose and you'll be coming close to the experience.

There simply is no legal workable alternative. When you combine the import restrictions with utter lack of an effective, legal distribution network for content, the prospects begin to look decidedly bleak. And yet, culture is America's best ambassador to China. And probably its leading export, legal or otherwise, unless you count Buicks. Do you really want America to be legendary in China for Buicks? Is that the image you want for us in the emerging Pacific superpower? Is it?

I didn't think so.

That's why I'd like to recommend an alternative approach to the US government. Instead of trying to stamp out pirated content in China, I think the US government should subsidize it.

You heard me. Subsidize it. In the best Cold War, Voice of America, hearts-and-minds tradition of the great game, America should mainline Hollywood content into China by any means possible. Drown Chinese nationalism in a tidal wave of cheap Hollywood fluff. Cheap Chinese labor stealing our jobs? Turn 'em into couch potatoes too lazy to work the assembly lines. Chinese engineers stealing our R&D? A few seasons of Gray's Anatomy will reduce their frontal lobes to mush. Chinese military build up got you worried? Send 'em 24. Once they see Jack Bauer in action it'll be back to the farm for all those PLA boys.

Culture is the answer, my friends, so keep it coming. Run those fiber optic cables to the border and illuminate us with tingly jolts of entertainment goodness.

That's right: print up millions of pirate DVDs and drop them from stealth aircraft over major cities. Float them out of rafts launched from black submarines at midnight. Start running an American satellite signal into China with good old-fashioned American pr0n so the well-heeled of Shanghai don't have to watch the 70's refugees on Pinoy Kamasutra any more. Give us HBO. Not HBO Asia with its sanitized, family friendly fare, but American HBO, with the Stars and Stipes, tits and naughty words. I want to hear the word "motherfucker" coming out of my television again, the way I used to when I was young.

This is America's big chance to nip the China threat in the bud once and for all. Don't turn off the culture spigot and leave us all awash in a sea of stultifying official Chinese media. Instead, throw the gates open wide. Compensate American media companies with some of the subsidies you currently send to oil companies or corn farmers. They probably won't even notice the difference. And the lives of everyone in China will be that much richer for it.

Think long term. Think strategic. Think pirate media.

Our freedom depends upon it.

 God bless American media!