Beijing 2008: July 2007 Archives

By Huang Kaili | clearwisdom.net | The Epoch Times
July 30, 2007

In mid-April 2007, Charles Cai, an American, went to China to visit his 80-year-old mother who lived in Changsha City, Hunan Province, and was hospitalized for a serous illness. During his stay, Mr. Cai was harassed and illegally kidnapped by agents from China's state security bureau, but now he has safely returned to the United States.

Charles Cai is a Falun Gong practitioner and a volunteer for New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV), a New York-based TV station dedicated to air objective views about mainland China. Charles said that while he was detained the communist agents asked him many questions about NTDTV, including the International Chinese Classical Dance Competition and its sponsorship. He pointed out that since NTDTV was founded, the Chinese communist agents have never stopped trying to interfere with and disrupt it. He was kidnapped in China probably because he works for the TV station, he said.

Chinese Communist Agents "Care" About NTDTV

On the seventh night after Mr. Cai returned to China to take care of his mother, he walked a friend to a bus stop. On his way back home, out of nowhere half a dozen agents from the state security bureau swarmed on him and surrounded him on the sidewalk. Right after that, a black Chevrolet drove up to the sidewalk and screamed to a stop. Mr. Cai recognized that it was the car that had been following him in the past few days. One of the agents said to him, "Our boss wanted to talk to you. If you don't cooperate, you may have problems going out of China." With those words, the agents ushered Mr. Cai into the backseat of the car before it sped away.

In the car, Mr. Cai said to the agents, "Tell me what you want, and don't waste my time." One of the agents who appeared to be in charge said, "We'll find a hotel room and then talk."

Charles noted in particular that probably because they knew what they were doing was not something honest, they hardly spoke the whole way. It was only after they entered a hotel room that a man in his fifties who looked like a boss started questioning him.

Mr. Cai recalled that the agent spoke a local dialect and started by asking him a few questions about his family, work, and health, etc. before turning to the subject they were really interested in. Mr. Cai was asked a lot of questions about Falun Gong, such as "Where do you do your practice?", "What kinds of people are doing it?", "Has your Master ever come to your practice site?", "On what occasion are you able to see your Master?", etc.

Mr. Cai said that the agents were especially interested in NTDTV, quick in turning to the subject. They asked, "What departments does NTDTV have?", "Who are the people in charge in those departments?", "Who is the real boss at NTDTV?", and "How is NTDTV in Taiwan related to the one in New York?" They also asked about the dance competition, such as "Why was it held?" They kept asking who the sponsors were. They even asked about NTDTV's future plans and showed concern about truth-clarification tap-ins into China's TV programs.

"I told them my mother was still very ill and asked them to end the questioning soon. The agent in charge couldn't do anything but to have me sent home," said Charles.

Harassment at Home

The following day Mr. Cai took his mother home as she was getting better. Relatives and friends came to see her, and among them were two uninvited guests. Mr. Cai recognized them: one male and one female agent among those who kidnapped him on the sidewalk the night before.

Mr. Cai said that the two agents, with bags of imported milk power and fruits in their hands, claimed that they were from the Office of Overseas Chinese Association in Hunan Province and had come to see his mother. Mr. Cai told everyone that his mother was still weak and needed rest, and asked them to leave. The two agents rose to leave, too. But before they made their way to the door, they whispered to Mr. Cai, "Professor Cai—Specialist Cai, we didn't want your mother in shock, so we came in the name of the Association. Our boss wanted to make friends with you and invited you to dinner."

Mr. Cai relied, "I am neither a professor nor a specialist. I came back to see my mother only, and when she gets better I'll go back as soon as possible. So I haven't time to socialize." When they saw that there was no way to persuade him, they left, disappointed.

Tired of the communist agents' harassment, Mr. Cai quietly left his mother and Changsha for the United States the next day, even though his mother had not recovered from her illness.

Mr. Cai said that among the agents involved in his kidnapping, some have read the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, an editorial series that exposes the wicked nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and documents its atrocities in history. These agents did not deny the facts enumerated in the Nine Commentaries. In fact, they should be able to know that the CCP has lost the hearts and minds of the people. Mr. Cai expressed his hope that those agents who are assisting the CCP in doing evil deeds stop immediately, so that they will not perish along with the CCP when heaven destroys it. The day will come soon, said Mr. Cai.

美国公民揭中共国安特务绑架经过
>> Read the complete article

By REUTERS | iva (uncensored) Yahoo! News
29 July 2007

China has banned AIDS activists from holding a meeting on the rights of people with the disease, one of the organisers said on Sunday, citing official fears over foreign involvement in the sensitive subject.

The conference would have brought together 50 Chinese and foreign experts and activists to discuss how to press the legal rights of people with HIV/AIDS.

But government authorities told the New York-based Asia Catalyst group to cancel the meeting planned for early August in Guangzhou near Hong Kong in the south, said Sara Davis, one of the organisers.

"Authorities informed us that the combination of AIDS, law and foreigners was too sensitive," Davis told Reuters. There were no plans to reschedule the meeting, she said.

Phone calls to government spokesmen in Guangzhou and Beijing were not answered on Sunday.

China has become increasingly open about AIDS in recent years, facing up to an epidemic once stigmatized as a disease of the West.

The nation had 203,527 officially registered cases of HIV/AIDS by the end of April, up from 183,733 at the end of October 2006. Of the latest figure, 52,480 had progressed to full-blown AIDS.

But the United Nations estimates the true number of HIV/AIDS cases in the country to be around 650,000.

>> Read the complete article

by Dan Martin | AFP | via (uncensored) yahoo!news
July 24, 2007

In China, where business chiefs and officials rarely wait for someone to put up a "for sale" sign before taking over the land, property disputes are one of the biggest sources of social unrest.

The issue has leapt to the top of the national agenda in recent years amid a wave of violent land disputes often triggered by rapacious developers and corrupt local government workers snatching land from hapless farmers and city dwellers.

"This is the foremost issue in rural areas and probably the most contentious issue leading to social unrest in China today," Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based China researcher with Human Rights Watch, told AFP.

There were 130,000 cases of illegal land grabs last year, an increase of 17.3 percent from 2005, the land ministry said in March.

But Bequelin said those figures likely represented the tip of the iceberg, with many more going unreported by officials.

He noted past official estimates that 50-60 percent of all land deals in China were illegal, rising to 90 percent in many places.

The issue poses perhaps the greatest risk to social stability in China as angry villagers and farming communities erupt in anger, experts say.

"The crux of the issue is that governments at all levels plunder the land resources, the commoners see little if any of the money and violators get off scot-free," said Hou Guoyan, a retired professor from the China University of Political Science and Law.

In his annual parliamentary address in March, Premier Wen Jiabao specifically warned officials against illegal land grabs.

Beijing has also issued a series of regulations aimed at increasing scrutiny, but experts say the central government does not have enough power to enforce the law in the provinces.

"The (central) government is at a loss to solve the problem," Hou said.

Liu Xiaoying, a rural issues researcher at the China Academy of Social Sciences, said one of the main problems was that the standard compensation to villagers for losing their land was too low.

"The central government wants to raise the compensation levels but local governments oppose this because it will hit their profit margins on land deals," Liu said. "This is very difficult to solve."

One of the most famous land rights cases in recent times was that of a plucky homeowner in southwestern China's Chongqing city who stood firm in a compensation dispute.

Wu Ping gained overnight fame in March, due in part to photographs that were widely circulated on the Internet and later in official media, of her modest two-storey brick dwelling sitting defiantly in the middle of an excavated construction pit.

"If you are right, you must stand up for yourself, otherwise people will bully you," said the charismatic 49-year-old, who was hailed by many as a heroine.

Under the media glare, Wu's compensation demands were met, but she is the exception.

For many, stronger resistance is the only option after being pushed off their land and finding local authorities unsympathetic.

According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Public Security, there were 87,000 protests across the country in 2005, up 50 percent from two years earlier, many of them to do with land grabs.

>> Read the complete article

By Chris Buckley | REUTERS AlertNet
23 July 2007

BEIJING, July 23 (Reuters) - China has stopped the public release of an official study putting a cost to the nation's environmental damage, a government researcher told a Chinese newspaper, blaming official reluctance to confront pollution.

The Beijing News reported on Monday that the release of a "green GDP" report computing the cost of pollution and ecological degradation in 2005 had been "indefinitely postponed".

Wang Jinnan, a senior expert at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning who was technical head of the project, said publicising the cost of bad air, water and soil had drawn fierce opposition from local officials eager to maintain growth.

"Taking out the costs of environmental damage would lead to a huge fall in the quality of economic growth in some areas," Wang told the paper.

"At present many areas still place GDP above all else, and when such thinking dominates, the size of resistance to a green GDP can well be imagined."

Wang said some provincial governments had lobbied the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the National Bureau of Statistics not to release the data.

The report was originally scheduled for release in March, the China Youth Daily reported.

A previous report for 2004 had calculated that environmental degradation that year cost 511.8 billion yuan ($67.7 billion) or 3.05 percent of gross domestic product -- a figure one SEPA official said at the time was "shocking".

That earlier report was issued in September last year with official fanfare and wide domestic media attention.

The report for 2005 shows "losses from pollution and reduction in the GDP indicator even higher than the 2004 report", the paper said, citing a weekend seminar on the study.

The report would also have computed economic losses from pollution for each province -- a sensitive step in a system where maintaining economic growth can be crucial to officials' promotion prospects.

The unusual revelation of official infighting is the latest sign that China's struggle to balance economic growth with environmental concerns has become a volatile political issue.

The Financial Times reported this month China had asked the World Bank not to publish estimates of the number of premature Chinese deaths each year from polluted air and water.

The bank study said about 460,000 Chinese died prematurely each year from water and air pollution and about 300,000 more died from indoor toxins.

>> Read the complete article

The Motley Fool
July 19, 2007

Be careful about what you buy, and what you put in your mouth

I really didn't know which board this was best suited for, but this is as good a place as any. I have been nearly bed-ridden the past couple weeks, and I feel like venting a bit, because I don't know if anyone here really knows how vulnerable our food supply is, and my poor health has been proof of that. I've spent much more time here on the message boards because I couldn't do much other than sit around. Bear in mind I had not been to see a doctor for illness since early 2000 (7 1/2 years ago), so it is unusual for me to get sick. Before this experience, Shrimp has always been my favorite food, and I had never had an allergic reaction to food.

I got sick from shrimp imported from China. Either melamine or fluoroquinones, or both. The exact cause was not verified. My doctor only treated me for the resulting bronchitis/pneumonia symptoms I experienced from my resistance being down, but I'm past it now. I had experienced kidney pain, which melamine could cause, and my initial prescribed anti-biotic wasn't strong enough. The doctor had to prescribe a stronger one. Fluoroquinones create resistance to anti-biotics. I had eaten at Captain D's regularly over the past year, as my family liked to go there on family night, and I would normally get the shrimp. In addition, I ate twice in a short period, on June 19 and 21 (shrimp lover's meals both times- 32 pieces of shrimp total), and shortly after the second time had a severe reaction, and became quite sick for two weeks after that. I emailed Captain D's corporate office and received their standard “legal” response, but they did confirm that some of their supply is from China. I had to call the national Poison Control hotline to log my case in also. At the time I ate there, the news had not yet hit about the Chinese seafood scare.

As I've gone through this “ordeal” I have also read up on what is going on with our Chinese food supply, and here are the things you must know:

1. Seafood (obviously). Verify it is not from farmed Chinese sources. Supposedly the open ocean caught seafood, exported by China is okay. It is when they farm it inland that they use those chemicals, and that is shrimp or catfish especially. Here is what the two chemicals do:
Melamine poisoning – can cause bladder cancer, also kidney stones.
Fluoroquinones – strong anti-biotic, but when passed through food in this way, can cause you to develop harmful immunities to anti-biotics, preventing their effectiveness in future treatments.

2. Cough Syrup. Don't buy any cheap cough syrup. The same ingredient in the Chinese toothpaste has been found in cheap foreign cough syrup (deaths in Panama). No incidents reported here in the U.S., but no one has come forward to say all U.S. supplies are free and clear either.

3. Vitamin C. Begin to take a critical look at ingredients and labeling, Vitamin C is only one of many to watch. The Chinese control 90% of the market on the chemical used for this, and there are rumors of harmful metal content. The U.S. food and beverage companies may have to begin quality testing of the Vitamin C additive, rather than giving it a free ride. This is a developing story, but it appears that the testing for additives is not the same as for food by the FDA.

4. This list is longer, but you just don't know it yet, remember that.
“Since U.S. laws don't require food and drug sellers to label products with the country of origin of ingredients, it's impossible for consumers to know where food or supplements are coming from, not to mention what factory produced them.” See Seattle Times news link below.

Last, the leader in China who was their equivalent of our FDA chief was executed yesterday. That's how significant of an issue all this stuff is to them. (or perhaps it was better to silence some of them)

Links for the various stories or FDA sites on this stuff:

Execution of “FDA” official, cough syrup problem: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8Q9JE9G0&show_article=1

Chinese Shrimp problem http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01660.html

FAQ on the Seafood problem http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/seadwpe.html

Vitamins and additives article http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003732744_vitamins03.html

FDA's Seafood page: http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/seafood1.html

Complicating the issue, there is also a U.S. problem with melamine in shrimp. http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01643.html

>> Read the complete article

By Howard W. French | The New York Times
July 17, 2007

China’s efforts to bring a quick end to an embarrassing labor scandal over slavelike conditions for hundreds of workers at brick kilns in Shanxi Province has provoked anger among victims and widespread criticism.

The provincial government said Monday that dozens of officials were being punished in the scandal, but that only six low-level figures in the Communist Party or the local government would be prosecuted. The punishments ranged from demotions and firings to expulsion from the party or administrative warnings.

“Other than the direct responsibility of the owners, the ‘black brick kilns’ incident happened mainly because of lax supervision and dereliction of duty of grass-roots party and government officials,” Yang Senlin, a senior provincial Communist Party disciplinary official, told the Xinhua news agency.

Contradicting the accounts of many people who were freed from the kilns, including numerous children, Mr. Yang said there was no evidence of collusion or corruption among local officials.

Chinese journalists say government propaganda officials have urged the news media to limit coverage of the scandal. But the announcements on Monday brought a torrent of strongly critical commentary on the Internet, with thousands of bloggers and participants in news discussion groups denouncing what were widely perceived as light punishments and questioning the failure to pursue criminal charges or corruption accusations in more cases.

“A serious political incident was first turned into a serious criminal case, and then slowly transformed into a matter of ordinary malfeasance,” one online commenter wrote. “Once all of these rustlings are over, the same things are bound to happen again.”

Another wrote, “This is an obvious matter of dereliction of duty, and it has been treated as a question of party discipline instead of under the legal code.”

A Beijing lawyer who is not directly involved in the matter voiced disbelief about the small number of criminal prosecutions. “Look how many places and how many people were involved in this,” said the lawyer, Li Fangping, whose specialty is civil rights law. “Without the protection of more officials, this would be impossible.”

>> Read the complete article

Editorial in The New York Times on Monday, July 16, 2007

The Chinese government’s extraordinary decision to execute its chief food and drug regulator for taking bribes and allowing the sale of tainted drugs is a perfect example of all that is wrong with China’s approach to regulation.

Beijing’s leaders — who disdain the idea of their own accountability — may think that killing the regulator is enough to reassure consumers at home and abroad that China is now ready to guarantee the safety of its products. But they’re wrong.

What China needs is an effective and transparent regulatory system and a clear understanding that its export boom will suffer if it continues to sell tainted food, toys and toothpaste. Until that happens — and there is no guarantee that it will — American regulators will have to do more to screen Chinese imports to protect American consumers.

China’s dysfunction has deep roots. The Communist Party leadership has muzzled consumer advocacy groups and the press. The government is also loath to do anything that might hinder the country’s breakneck economic growth. With no public accountability, shoddy companies are allowed to cut every possible corner in their pursuit of business, often under the protection of corrupt government officials.

The results include rivers laced with ammonia and toothpaste sweetened with an industrial solvent, as well as tainted antibiotics that have killed more than a dozen children and sickened hundreds. The good news is that for the first time China’s leaders are talking about the need for more and better regulation. And Washington and other governments can help with offers of technical advice and warnings about the cost of failing to take it.

But the scope of the problem is too big, too complex and too urgent for the United States — with $300 billion worth of Chinese imports a year — to wait for Beijing to act. American importers need to provide the first line of defense. Companies like Wal-Mart should send inspectors regularly to visit the factories of Chinese suppliers, to ensure that products are up to acceptable standards. Ultimately the American government will have to enforce these norms.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has spent the last five-plus years emasculating the American regulatory system. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has seen its budgets repeatedly cut. The Food and Drug Administration has not received the resources it needs and today inspects only a minute share of all imported food.

It is hard to imagine anything good coming out of the China export scandals. But perhaps they will persuade Congress’s new Democratic leaders that America also needs a stronger and more transparent regulatory system.

by AFP | Khaleeij Times Online
July 13, 2007

GENEVA - Two human rights groups on Friday sharply criticised a senior Olympic official who warned social activists not to use the Beijing 2008 Games to highlight their concerns.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) said the remarks by the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) chief Beijing organiser, Hein Verbruggen, repudiated the Olympic movement’s own ideal and its Code of Ethics.

‘Your questioning of those who use the Olympic Games as a platform on which to advocate human rights, as well as your calling upon the Beijing Organizing Committee to ‘take steps to negate’ human rights agendas, may serve to embolden the Chinese authorities who already systematically oppress human rights defenders,’ the groups said in a statement.

‘The statement will certainly further endanger the already precarious personal security of these individuals,’ they added.

The human rights and anti-torture groups said the Games were ‘a force for good’ thanks to Olympic movement’s ethical principles, which say that ‘safeguarding the dignity of the individual is a fundamental requirement of Olympism.’

The FIDH and OMCT told Verbruggen they were ‘alarmed to hear your statement that the ‘agendas’ of organisations based on these principles have no place in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and must be ‘negated’.’

‘In our opinion, actions taken in the ‘spirit of humanism, fraternity, and respect for individuals,’ which inspires the Olympic ideal, can never be characterised as ‘regrettable’.’

>> Read the complete article

By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
July 13, 2007

A Chinese doctor who exposed the cover-up of China's SARS outbreak in 2003 has been barred from traveling to the United States to collect a human rights award, a friend of the doctor and a human rights group said this week.

The doctor, Jiang Yanyong, a retired surgeon in the People's Liberation Army, was awarded the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award by the New York Academy of Sciences. His army-affiliated work unit, Beijing's Hospital 301, denied him permission to travel to the award ceremony in September, Hu Jia, a Chinese rights promoter who is a friend of Dr. Jiang's, said Thursday.

The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, which is based in Hong Kong, also issued a statement reporting the rejection of the travel request. The doctor could not be reached at his home for comment, and a person who answered the phone in the director's office of Hospital 301 said the situation was unclear, declining to provide further details.

Dr. Jiang rose to international prominence in 2003, when he disclosed in a letter circulated to international news organizations that at least 100 people were being treated in Beijing hospitals for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. At the time, the Chinese medical authorities were asserting that the entire nation had only a handful of cases of the disease.

The revelation prompted China's top leaders to acknowledge that they had provided false information about the epidemic. The health minister and the mayor of Beijing were removed from their posts.

SARS eventually killed more than 800 people worldwide, and the government came under international scrutiny for failing to provide timely information that medical experts said might have saved lives.

Dr. Jiang was initially hailed as a hero in Chinese and foreign news media. He used his new prestige in 2004 to press China's ruling Politburo Standing Committee to admit that the leadership had made a mistake in ordering the military to shoot unarmed civilians on June 3 and 4, 1989, when troops were deployed to suppress democracy protests that began in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Dr. Jiang, who treated Beijing residents wounded in the 1989 assault, contended that the official line that the crackdown was necessary to put down a rebellion was false. His statement antagonized party leaders, who consider the crackdown a matter of enormous political sensitivity.

Jiang Zemin, then the leader of the military, ordered the detention of Dr. Jiang, who spent several months in custody, people involved in his defense say. Dr. Jiang was eventually allowed to return to his home but remained under constant watch. He has not been allowed to accept press requests for interviews or to visit family members who live in the United States, friends and human rights groups say.

Mr. Hu said that Dr. Jiang's superiors at Hospital 301 had told him that he could not travel to New York to collect his award because the ruling Communist Party was seeking to maintain an atmosphere of social and political stability in the period leading up to the 17th Party Congress in the fall, when party leaders decide on a new leadership lineup.

"There is always some big political event they can use as an excuse to put pressure on human rights defenders," Mr. Hu said. "The real reason is that they want to keep him under house arrest so he has no opportunity to speak the truth to the outside world."

By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
July 10, 2007

A legal rights organizer who helped peasants protest local officials in Guangdong Province was put on trial on charges of illegal business activity. The organizer, Guo Feixiong, had repeatedly called on China’s Communist Party leadership to liberalize the political system. His wife and supporters in the international human rights community said that Mr. Guo had been tortured in custody and that the police had coerced him to confess to a nonpolitical crime. No verdict was announced.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
05 July 2007

The wife of a blind human rights activist said Thursday she evaded surveillance officers to make a trip to the Chinese capital, where she tried to find out how her husband could serve his jail sentence at home.

Chen Guangcheng, 36, was beaten by fellow inmates last month after he refused to have his head shaved, his wife has said, leaving him with cuts on his legs and swollen ribs. A shaved head is a defining characteristic of Chinese inmates and Chen -- protesting his innocence -- had refused to wear his hair any shorter than a crewcut.

Yuan Weijing said she remained concerned about her husband's well-being in jail.

''I think his life in there is very unsafe,'' said Yuan, 31, adding that her husband relies on other inmates to bring him food.

According to Chinese law, seriously ill inmates can apply to jail officials to serve their sentences in a hospital or at home.

Chen was convicted in August 2006 on charges of instigating an attack on government offices in Dongshigu. Police said he was upset with workers sent to carry out poverty relief programs.

He also was accused of organizing a group of people to disrupt traffic, allegedly delaying hundreds of vehicles for three hours, including an ambulance carrying an expectant mother.

His supporters say the charges were fabricated after he documented complaints that officials trying to enforce China's birth-control regulations had forced villagers to have late-term abortions and sterilizations.

Yuan arrived in Beijing on Wednesday and said she planned to meet with Chen's attorney to push for his release because he is unable to take care of himself. She also wanted to find out how blind inmates are treated in other countries.

>> Read the complete article

By Christine Moon-Counts | The Epoch Times
July 4, 2007

Hong Kong permanent residents Mr. Chu O Ming and Ms. Fu Xueying made history last Thursday when they filed a civil action in the High Court of Hong Kong SAR against three high-ranking Chinese communist officials for torture, illegal imprisonment, and persecuting Falun Gong.

This is the first time that high officials of the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) have been sued in Hong Kong, the area outside Mainland China housing the largest Chinese population, and which is within the jurisdiction of the P.R.C.

Theresa Chu, an international human rights attorney and Asia Director for Human Rights Law Foundation, believes this lawsuit is critical: "whether Hong Kong truly wants to uphold human rights and the rule of law and whether its courts truly want to maintain independence will be further tested and confirmed with this lawsuit against Jiang."

Defendant Jiang Zemin is the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and initiated and directed the campaign to eradicate Falun Gong since 1999, using the resources of the Party. Defendant Li Lanqing is the former Premier of the P.R.C. who implemented and micromanaged the persecution. Defendant Luo Gan is a Standing Committee Member of the CCP Politburo and personally inspected the labor camps across China to ensure that all levels of government implemented Jiang's directive to destroy Falun Gong practitioners.

>> Read the complete article

By Makau Mutua | The Nation (Nairobi, Kenya)
July 02, 2007

Recently, there has been a dizzying parade of high-level visitors between Africa and the People's Republic of China. Some Kenyan officials have suggested that the country should increasingly look East to diversify its economic relationships and reduce dependency on the West.

Theoretically, this sounds like a plausible idea. That is until you give it serious thought. China, once upon a time the pivot of the oppressed Third World, has itself become a voracious and cruel imperial overlord. That is why Kenya and Africa must fundamentally recalculate their relationship with the rising Chinese leviathan.

China still sings the song about Third World solidarity, but its political and economic actions and interests belie the song. This does not mean that Kenya should not engage China. Rather, it means that Kenya must guard its rear.

In effect, we do not simply want to trade the imperial West with another crude exploiter. A smart foreign policy cannot ignore China. But neither can it gloss over China's ugly record in Africa nor hand it the key to our treasures on sweet but empty promises. We must insist on a relationship of equals.

In terms of untapped resources, Africa is the last virgin frontier. The Chinese government has only belatedly realised this fact because of the energy needs of its high-octane economy. This explains the State visits by President Hu Jintao to African countries such as Kenya and South Africa that did not previously exist on the Chinese political map.

With a population of 1.3 billion, the largest in the world, and in a race for global supremacy with the West, China wants every valuable resource they can lay their hands on. This second scramble for Africa is not very different from the one by the Europeans in the 19th century. It is about economic exploitation.

Let's for a moment contemplate what has happened in China. The China of 2007 looks nothing like the communist state that Mao Tse Tung established in 1949. After his death in 1976, China steadily liberalised its economy and has become in reality a capitalist State ruled by a single party that is only communist by name.

The Communist Party of China has instead devised a highly successful strategy for global domination driven by a strong military and State-directed capitalism. In the process, nothing is sacred - not the people, the environment, or human rights. I used to have a soft spot for the Chinese because they were one of the major checks on the unbridled global power of the West.

At the United Nations and other institutions of global governance, China used to be a firm voice for the Third World. But in the late 1980s, China started to distance itself from Third World causes as its economy grew fast and its national interests shifted. As China's interests became increasingly imperial, it moved closer to the United States and away from the Third World. India is doing the same thing today.

Nothing demonstrates the callousness of Chinese policy towards Africa than its support for the Sudanese government in spite of the genocide in Darfur. Even with the killings of 500,000 black African Darfurians by the Arab Janjaweed militias and Sudanese government forces, China does not even have the moral courage to call that genocide.

>> Read the complete article