John Negroponte and The Real China Threat

"After China's recent announcement of an 18 percent increase in its official military budget for 2007, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte requested that China be more transparent about its true levels of defense spending and its intentions...

There are reasons to worry about China's expanding role on the world stage, but they have less to do with military power than with China's economic influence and the regime's disdain for human rights -- both at home and abroad...

China, as a preeminent investor in Sudan's oil reserves, has been financing that regime's genocidal crimes in Darfur. Beijing also acts as the principal ally of Burma's military dictatorship and as a ruthless overlord in Tibet.

The world's free-market democracies appear indifferent to China's role as enabler to murderous regimes. So it is left to international civil society to challenge Beijing and teach China's leaders that there can be no path to peaceful development that does not lead to respect for human rights. That is the lesson to be taught by human rights groups that plan on branding the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing as the Genocide Olympics."

From The Boston Globe
March 7, 2007

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