Would the rebellion in China against COVID rules have taken place if not for exposure to democracies through trade and investment? Read on.
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I mention that only to indicate that my own ignorance of China is at least as profound as late 1950s Soviet knowledge of the United States — and vice versa. I’ve never been to China. I don’t read much about China. I make no special efforts to follow China in the news. A friend of mine was once ambassador to China but that didn’t end very well: he gotSign up to receive the daily top stories from the Financial Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
In any case, what I want to say about China, or at least ask, is whether we are in fact quite sure that trading with it over the last three decades has not had the positive effect many advocates of “constructive engagement” had hoped for but which in most discussions of the subject is now simply dismissed out of hand.Article content
The news out of China over the last month seems very — for want of a better word — “western.” President Xi Jinping got his third term, yes, which isn’t at all western since he seems intent on turning it into president-for-life. We have kings-for-life in the west but frown on presidents-for-life.
Even more surprising: how does the government respond? Not with a mailed fist or by sending in the tanks, as in Tiananmen Square in 1989, but by relaxing the COVID regime and blaming the harsh restrictions on overzealous functionaries at lower levels of government. I’m sure I wasn’t the only Canadian who heard that and thought it sounded exactly like federal and provincial politicians blaming each other for the disgraceful mess in this country’s emergency wards.
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