Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Bloody noses for the Chinese

I do think the Chinese leadership have done well, far better than Yeltsin did in Russia, in leading their country towards a mixed economy. What they fail to understand is that most people outside of China have a much higher regard for human rights than they have. Protests on the Oympic flame's route through London, Paris and San Francisco caught the Chinese government ill-prepared. Now it just sounds like bluster out of Beijing.

They have a bad record on human rights within their present day borders with both political opposition and minorities. Outside China their support for brutal regimes like Burma and Sudan upsets many. One of their problems is they have a tendency towards racism. 91.5% of China's population are ethnic Han according to Wikipedia. The government and many other Chinese often have a superior attitude when dealing with minorities in China and other Asians. It comes across as the elder brother or cousin to the smaller ethnic groups. You can see it going on in Tibet. In fact they behave in a similar way as the Brits did when we were a colonial power.

I wonder if there were no Beijing Olympics how many more Tibetans would be dead?

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