Fuck Hu

Chinese President Hu Jintao concluded his Canadian visit with a luncheon hosted by Prime Minister Paul Martin at the Westin Bayshore on Saturday.

Am I alone in asking why our provincial and federal governments bend over backwards to accommodate a regime that denies its own citizens basic human rights, bullies its neighbours, and refuses to abandon an illegal occupation of a sovereign country? Am I also alone in believing that the Beijing-sponsored 'demonstrators' (who were only there to drown out the Tibetan, Falun Gong, and Taiwanese communities) need a serious bitchslap?

To the knee-jerk anti-Americans among you, I realize those sentiments are more than familiar. However, Americans can exercise their inherent right to turn their own government around in congressional elections no later than November of next year. Chinese students tried working towards that same right in the spring of 1989, and were either gunned down or rolled over by tanks. Over the subsequent 16 years, that desire for democracy and freedom was subverted by Beijing's finger-pointing patriotism and bribery through name-brand consumer goods. The only marketplace that isn't open in China is the marketplace of ideas.

Observers/apologists like to qualify The PRC's behaviour by emphasizing the country is still in a period of development. China's development is that of a vicious, unrepentant juvenile delinquent spoiled by its sudden economic wealth and the laissez-faire parenting of the global community. How many times have Western leaders claimed human rights would be on the agenda at a summit with the PRC, and what guarantees of better behaviour did those leaders walk away with? Why is it that since those 'discussions' about human rights, people I know are threatened with arrest for taking a photo in a Beijing Starbucks, or denied visiting rights to the village near Shanghai where they were born and raised out of fear they may be arriving from Taiwan?

At this rate, it will take years before relations with the West and China can be harmonized, so that all of us can enjoy cutthroat capitalism and brutal totalitarianism...