China's shameful role in Darfur

Taipei Times' Michael Danby looks at China's role in the Darfur genocide and ponders about China's fear of democracy. Meanwhile Harold Meyerson examines another angle in the Washington Post called 'In fear of Chinese democracy'.

Taipei Times: China is Sudan's largest supplier of arms. It is thus a knowing and willing accomplice in the Bashir regime's genocide in Darfur.'...

China is also playing a deeper game, following a longer term geopolitical strategy. What Beijing's authoritarian leadership fear more than anything else is the spread of Western democratic ideals -- what they call "bourgeois liberalism."...

They saw what happened to their old comrades in the Soviet Union, and they are determined that no such thing will happen to them. To curb the spread of liberal democratic politics, they are forming new geopolitical alliances, giving diplomatic and economic aid to other regimes which also fear democratic ideas.

Today any country that is in trouble at the UN over abuses of human rights can always rely on a Chinese veto in the Security Council. China is the best friend of the military regime in Myanmar -- one of the world's most oppressive regimes -- and of President Robert Mugabe's bankrupt dictatorship in Zimbabwe...

On a broader canvas, a la George Orwell, China is trying to form a "Eurasian bloc" with Russia, Iran and the states of former Soviet Central Asia. It has formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with these countries, the goal of which is to control much of the world's energy supplies, and link these to China's huge population and dynamic economy. (more)