I urge prudence and caution with regards to China. Whereas China may be having an economic growth more than three times the economic growth rates anywhere else, I pose this level of growth to be caused by authoritarian measures, low wages, lawlessness and unfair competition. Free, democratic and transparant societies cannot ever hope to compete with a place such as China, which maintains in effect a slave state.
People who continue to advocate free markets including current China, without any care whatsoever to the conditions in China, cannot be regarded in any other way as being complicit to human rights violations. What happens in China should be categorically unacceptable to people in democratic societies. China’s model, if not resisted, will spread. That in itself is unacceptable.
I demand of my government we pose hard requirements to China and do so on a pan-European level. Europe should say no to being accessory to human rights violations and should politely thank doing business with China, if we do not see some robust democratization there. The argument that the level of atrocious authoritarianism we see in China is somehow needed “to quickly get the country on its feet” is no longer acceptable.
This is a country that harvests organs from religious dissidents.