Feedback | 23 April 2005

China is still a tyranny

As usual Mark Steyn makes some good points, this time in his piece on globalisation (‘The sovereign individual’, 16 April). But he is mistaken in his praise of China, ‘the dynamic, advanced, first-world economy’. The Telegraph, for which Mr Steyn also writes, summed up China’s rulers in its leader of 16 April as ‘the tyrants in Beijing’ who have threatened all their neighbours and now are signalling a possible invasion of Taiwan.

Is China really the inspiration for ‘sovereign individuals’ that Mr Steyn suggests? The rule of law there exists largely for the protection of the state, not, equally, to protect the individual from the state and to ensure justice. There is little freedom of religion or of the published word, the internet is closely controlled, and ethnic minorities are persecuted. China has the largest number of extrajudicial executions of any country, leads the world in suicide, and is the only country where female suicides outnumber those by males. Female infanticide is so common that in parts of China there are 118 boys for every girl. At the moment Beijing is manipulating demonstrations against the Japanese, who in fact have apologised many times for the 1930s war, while Chinese security organs crush any public demand for democracy or simple justice.

I believe that Mr Steyn’s two Chinese examples (please, Mr Steyn, no one says ‘Chinaman’ any more; it’s not even in my spell-checker) may be leaving Canada to find work in China, and if they do so, in a big east-coast city, and have plenty of capital and contacts, they may prosper. But if they contest official corruption or make a public complaint about something political, they may wish they were back in Canada’s ‘ramshackle backwater’.

Jonathan Mirsky
London W11

Mark Steyn accuses Christian Aid of being comprised of ‘condescending neo-imperialists’ on the basis of some vague assertions, a bit of anecdotal evidence and some slightly bizarre predictions.