The link is Broken Can you Post the full thing about Zuid Africa?the Original point of my post Don was that though we should bash the PRC over its atrocities, it would be hypocritical for the west to do so if they don't clean up there act. What difference do the Camps in Turkestan have to ours on Christmas Island and Nauru? Apologies for making you waitDangersdan, it's all relative and you have to look to see what steps have been taken to either curtail the behaviour or try and make sure it doesn't happen again. The British in India is unrepeatable for various reasons. Sometimes the path to hell is paved with good intentions: Apartheid was supposedly terrible and repressive for the average black South African yet on nearly every measure they are worse off now under ANC rule than they were under Apartheid. Why don't we discuss the fact that our own hand in unseating the former white regime has actually made things worse there? I'm guessing because it's not racist anymore that we think our job was done...
Nairu is nothing, believe me.
Nothing compares to the genocides perpetrated by the Maoist regime in China and yet we're happy to do (lots) of business with them as though those concentration camps and human rights violations aren't happening. Yet we could protest, we could make noise. We could at the very least protest the routine detention and 're-education' of Muslims in China, a minority whose rights we seem very interested in defending in this country. Why the double standard?
Also, if China can't be honest with its own people about its past then it's doomed to fail and we're potentially being dragged into a moral sewer with it just for the sake of a buck. I say that we have to take the moral high ground at some stage and show that we stand for liberal democracy, particularly when the Chinese government thinks they can operate with impunity in this country to intimidate people of Chinese extraction who are now Australians. If we don't stand up for other Aussies then what DO we stand for?
I stay "stuff that". Call it out for what it is. Our largest trading partner is a repressive, undemocratic Communist government that obtained power illegitimately and will in the future kill as many millions as it takes to stay in power, just like they have in the past.
Like I said, their awful but We cannot Claim the moral high ground. We were happy to do business with Suharto and I doubt I relationship will change with china soon. Were already and have been for a while now in the 'moral sewer' that you describe. I agree with you on the Extradition and Democracy, we won't make noise we never will, were too scared of upsetting either the American and the Chinese.