Sydney Morning Herald, September 12, 2005
John Howard claims that the rise of China is good for the world.
I’m certainly not one of those who criticise the growth of China’s economy at the expense of jobs in the developed world. But to imagine that growth in the political power of China is without danger seems very naive. As Time magazine reports this week (Enemies of the State, September 19, 2005, pp 58-61) this is a country that practices population control by means like that described in the following -
“The men with the poison-filled syringe arrived two days before Li Juan’s due date. They pinned her down on a bed in a local clinic, she says, and drove the needle into her abdomen until it entered the 9-month-old fetus. “At first, I could feel my child kicking a lot,” says the 23-year-old. “Then, after a while, I couldn’t feel her moving anymore.” Ten hours later, Li delivered the girl she had intended to name Shuang (Bright). The baby was dead. To be sure, says Li, the officials – from the Linyi region, where she lives, in China’s eastern Shandong province – dunked the infant’s body for several minutes in a bucket of water besire the bed.”