THE LEFT: COURTING CHINA

In both the U.S. and Australia, we are looking at pro-China Leftists leaders being elected in our next elections. Australia's Rudd speaks fluent Chinese and was praised by visiting Chinese President, Hu Jintao this week. Hillary Clinton is also into China up to her neck. I found a brilliant expose on the Clintons here with plenty of dirt on their filthy connections, including those to Communist China.

While we focus (rightly) on the Islamic threat, many of us are ignoring that elephant in our midst, PRC, because at the moment, it seems to be behaving itself. But is it really the benevolent, pro-west, newly reinvented entity it presents itself to be?

GRAND SCALE HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

Chinese who have escaped to other countries such as Australia are blowing the whistle on some of the unspeakable atrocities being practiced on mainland China. This week, a relatively large crowd of 1000 activists assembled to protest the arrival of China's leader, President Hu Jintao, in Sydney, drawing the official complaints of Chinese government officials. (More)

It's pretty easy from the point of view of the west to ignore that wide-scale corruption in China means that the whole thing is a giant, white-washed rotting corpse.

China's image was temporarily damaged by the discovery of illegal slave labour in their brick factories; evidence of the kinds of human rights atrocities that few of us want to even contemplate. The pictures emerged of children and mentally-retarded people who had been abducted being used to labour in these hell-holes. But has the west already forgotten?

DEFECTIVE CHINESE MADE PRODUCTS STARVING OUT LOCAL MANUFACTURERS

We could philosophize about the loss of work for our own factory workers as companies moved offshore to China. However, is the vast army of Communist working poor really manufacturing to international standards? We only really started to question whether cheap Chinese goods were all that when it was revealed that many of these products were found to be defective, even poisonous. (More) Here are a few examples:

Mattel plans to announce a recall today of lead-tainted toys from China, its third such announcement in about a month, according to three people with knowledge of the recall.

The recall of Fisher-Price and parent company Mattel-brand products includes nearly 800,000 Barbie accessories, GeoTrax trains and toy bongo drums, according to the sources, who didn’t want to be named ahead of the announcement.

Children can get lead poisoning from sucking on or swallowing toys or jewelry with lead. Lead can cause learning and behavior problems and even death.

Mattel to recall nearly 800,000 more toys

China is host to almost half of the world’s malware-infected Web sites.

According to a report released Monday by antivirus company Sophos, China–including Hong Kong–hosted 44.8 percent of the world’s infected sites in August. The U.S. ranked a distant second, hosting 20.8 percent of sites that contain malicious code.

More.

Starbucks has been working with coffee farmers in China’s southwestern Yunnan province to help them meet sourcing standards and has sent coffee shipments to the United States for testing, Starbucks China President Wang Jinlong said at the Reuters China Century Summit on Tuesday.

The embarrassment to China caused by one defective export debacle has resulted in the execution of at least one official (and probably others behind the scenes). Personally, I don't feel comfortable with summary scapegoating and executions at the drop of a hat to relieve the embarrassment of some Communist Party official.

The question is, will the west continue, to their detriment, buying the cheap, inferior products from this corrupt rotting corpse and put their own manufacturing industries out to pasture?

CHINA'S ANTI-WEST ALLIANCES

And more to the point, is China really our friend? We can't forget that China has in the not so distant past been embroiled in anti-west activities involving Russia and Iran, check here and here for more.

More recently, "the Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials."

(H/T - Trajan) More

The major Leftist candidates in the next elections of both Australia and the U.S. are both oh-so-progressive with their intimate links and parlaying with the leaders of Communist China. But what exactly are these would-be leaders putting us in bed with? Can we really trust a viper (and China's not the only viper in the partnership here)?

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Cross-posted here