The colour of money

[smokingboot]

So, President Hu Jintao comes to Britain, and the capital is bathed in red light to honour China. One of the most oppressive regimes in the world and we are smiling and talking trade and making nice with the speeches and the dinners; Because Tianamen Square was just a moment's photo and Tibet's a lost cause and anyway it was all years ago.

Now, I am a believer in the use of money as a lure towards humanitarian ideals. The land of Turkey has a past redolent with culture and beauty, ancient and sophisticated, but with a dreadful record of human rights, something they are redressing now because they want to join the EU. Apparently, the UK and China will be working on more environmentally sound policies and the pragmatist in me says, well OK, you can't change the past but you can change the future. The Tony Blair in my head can see the sense of it.

But even if this was the reasoning, I would have to reject it for many reasons; the graves are too many and nameless; far far more than the excesses of Saddam Hussein. Then there's the politically cultivated xenophobia, the clamping down on free expression and the rights of individual citizens within their state,the deliberate policy of cultural genocide applied to another country, and perhaps most basic of all, the fucking torture. Now, it's just one point but in the tradition of Kryten, it's such a pertinent one I feel the need to mention it again: The Fucking Torture. All this is forgotten over canapes, and pretty lights on the capital city of Great Britain, supposed champion of humanitarian if not always libertarian ideals.

What then is to be done? China could go and get her business elsewhere, and then we have no way of influencing her policies; Or she could just stay rogue and be a problem to her neighbours. We bring her in, because, the argument goes, China is too big to be influenced in any other way.

Well, here's the thing; we can encourage China to trade and exchange ideas, we can encourage her into situations where more of ours and more of hers must meet and understand each other, but we don't have to fawn, and we don't have to pretend the past didn't happen, and we don't need to present a light show to convince the Chinese government of how great China is; they believe it already and consider it a justification for the most disgusting and horrible human rights abuses, in order to preserve and advance its greatness.

So no light shows. Trade and change and courtesy but no flattery; if the West banded together behind those ideals we take so seriously we will bomb less powerful nations to express them, if we held out the hand of genuine friendship but made the price clear in terms of humane behaviour, we would not be easy to ignore or despise.

But we don't. We smile. We put on lightshows and get the contracts ready.

Gangsters west, bullies east, landscapes bathed in red. That's the colour of money.

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