THE RED AND THE GREEN
CHINA'S USEFUL IDIOTS
Patricia Adams
1Introduction
For those who were under the illusion that China’s Communist regime is a force for good in the world, the last few years have been a wakeup call. Un-der President Xi, China incarcerated over a million Turkic Uighur Muslims in ‘re-education’ camps, unleashed the coronavirus pandemic on the world, violated its treaty with Britain by ending Hong Kong’s self-rule, exacerbat-ed its territorial disputes with virtually all its neighbours and has vowed to invade Taiwan. Through these eye-opening actions, among others, public opinion throughout the West has changed dramatically. Whereas the majority pre-viously saw China favourably – as a benign giant – nowadays only 15% of Australians, 14% of Swedes, 22% of British, 23% of Canadians, 25% of Germans, and 22% of Americans still feel the same way, according to a Pew survey published in October.1 Most now recognize that the Chinese Com-munist Party (CCP) lies, cheats, steals, threatens, and kidnaps in order to get its way in business and diplomatic relations, and that the regime is hos-tile to rules-based institutions. As catalogued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Bonnie Glaser, Western countries cannot assume Chinese goodwill: Canada is among the countries, of course, that have been targeted for harming Chinese interests and offending Chinese sensibilities. The arrest of Canadian citizens and the ban on imports of Canadian canola oil and other agricultural products are just the latest examples of Chinese eco-nomic coercion aimed at punishing countries that harm Chinese interests.The list of target countries is long: Norway, for granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo; Japan, for arresting a Chinese ship captain after he rammed a Japanese Coast Guard vessel in disputed wa-ters; the Philippines, for confronting Chinese fishermen operating in Scar-borough Shoal; and on and on, as well as South Korea for THAAD [Termi-nal High Altitude Area Defense], etc
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