Dear me. Reading the article I predicted there'd be at least one silly bugger to pop up and decry the west as being just as bad as China if not worse. Congrats Arjay.

(The fact that A) you're able to continue posting your diatribes and B) nobody's dragged you out for a beating ought to be enough to make my point).

I concur that change has to come from within China, but that's not my chief concern. My concern is that Western countries do not remain resolute when faced with Chinese demands, and that we often behave as if we can't criticize.

Sure we can. And we should. We criticize our own inept governments all the time. We can and should criticize foreign governments that are exceedingly opaque.

When the Chinese government cracks down on foreign companies operating in China, we remain meek. When they give advantages to local businesses, we say nothing, for fear of being frozen out.

In terms of trade, I personally think we ought to consider modifying our trade policies to mimic Chinese policies, which would be a better incentive for them to reform. If they subsidize, we peg our subsidies at a proportion of their subsidies. If they impose tariffs, we peg tariffs at a proportion of theirs. If they have requirements for transfers of intellectual property (this is a particularly common requirement) then we figure out an equivalent.

But, we mandate that our restrictions will fall in line with theirs.

We should also be harsher on our own companies which are complicit in human rights abuses. Companies who sell intellectual property that will be used for things such as monitoring people over the internet and so forth, ought to face repercussions in their home countries.

Don't try to change China directly, but don't let them change us.

Mr Hennessy has a point: even though it might seem pointless to continue talking about human rights to folks to whom it's all greek, it's still important to do so - better to light one candle than curse the darkness. There are people who care deeply about human rights in China, because without human rights, nothing else makes sense.

Economic freedoms are frail and temporary, but without the rule of law buttressed by the will of the people, eventually the illegitimacy of the current ruling elite will one day collapse under the hypocrisy of its own corruption and thuggery. But South Africa can serve as an example of an authoritarian nation that did a u-turn when it saw the writing on the wall, and ceded power to the people. Burma seems to be another. There is hope. We can only pray.