The US State Department has got off on the right foot under Clinton by telling China its human rights record stinks. Of course her first visit to China did'nt put human rights front & centre in terms of the bilateral relationship, and you would not expect that from a first visit by a new administration. However, Clinton has signaled human rights will be taken seriously by the Obama administration, most particularly at home where the US needs to model what it preaches abroad.
China reacted badly to the State Dept report as expected, denouncing US human rights violations, which it has to be said have been many over the period of the Bush administration.
The cynical disregard for human rights underlying the Olympic movement's dalliance with this regime beggars belief. I can still hear commentators banging on about 'children being fed' and a 'stellar economic performance', justifying repression and brutality on a wide front. Apologists for totalitarianism eventually have their collective noses rubbed in their own excrement - for instance, where was that economic miracle when 20 million people were recently made jobless and forced to return to rural squalor? Where are the worker protections? Where are their human rights?
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