Chinese pleasure-dome for Khartoum

Beijing has a rather different attitude than we do. But Kubla Khan might be proud:

Last week China's leader, Hu Jintao, provided Sudan [during an official visit] with an interest-free loan to build a presidential palace. With that gesture, Hu demonstrated his contempt for the Western understanding of the world -- and for Western policy toward his own country.

Sudan, you will recall, is the scene of the Darfur genocide...

China's diplomats are forever reassuring the world about their country's "peaceful rise," and Hu duly expressed support for an expanded peacekeeping force in Darfur. But everything else about his visit demonstrated the gap between Chinese and Western priorities.

[...]

China is not financing a presidential palace by mistake; it is doing so deliberately. It is not financing just any presidential palace; it has chosen a president so odious that his fellow African leaders hold their noses at him...

...there is an even more disturbing question: What does China's policy toward Sudan say about the West's policy toward China? The West is engaging with China on the theory that economic modernization will bring political modernization as well; otherwise, the West would merely be assisting the development of a communist adversary. China's Sudan policy is an assertion that this link between economic and political modernization is by no means inevitable, even in the extreme case. You can construct oil refineries, educate scientists, build ambitious new railways -- and simultaneously pursue a policy of genocide.

I wonder how many Canadian journalists would write such a piece?

Mark C.

Posted by markc at February 5, 2007 09:31 PM