Inconvenient Realities

Poor China, Beijing just keeps getting hassled. If it isn't the friends she keeps, it's the plight of Tibet. If it isn't the sports world's ambivalence over the Beijing Summer Olympics, it's the hassle over her general human rights record. If it isn't world-wide resentment tempered with grudging admiration over her surging economic might in avalanching the world with her cheaply affordable products, it's the country's abominable environmental situation.

She just can't seem to get it right. It's like that old lady who lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn't know what to do. Basics: feed them. And that's exactly what China is attempting to do. Among a great many other things, having succumbed to the lure of Communist-style capitalism. That huge mother of a country with her enormous and unruly population wants affirmation from the world that she's doing a great job.

In some respects, that's so. In others, fairly dismal. Like people, countries do the best they can, and they reflect the imperfection of humankind. Some things, though, simply cannot be overlooked, can't be forgiven. When one segment of a country's population preys on another to the point where civil war breaks out and hundreds of thousands of people are murdered by government troops and their proxy militias, and millions flee, that's atrocity on a grand scale.

Now the International Criminal Court has charged Sudan's president with crimes against humanity and is awaiting an arrest warrant, China is desperately attempting to put on the brakes. Too impetuous, an obviously not quite well-thought-out move. It will have unfortunate repercussions, consequences. Most certainly. Perhaps not quite the consequences that concern China, since she's riveted to her need for energy.

The consequences aligned with a hugely angered Omar Hassan al-Bashir launching a refreshed war on the already desperate refugee-encamped Darfurians. Along with a renewed effort to encourage all humanitarian aid groups that their best interests lie in deserting the desperate Darfurians. And perhaps scheduling more deadly attacks on UN interests and personnel. Of course, the UN has anticipated that, and has begun the process of evacuating their own.

And then there's the status of the African Union peacekeepers stationed there rather uselessly, along with their cohorts from the United Nations, all in insufficient numbers to actually be of practical use in ensuring some measure of safety for black Sudanese. But China has huge interests in the country as an investor in its oil industry, and being incidentally the country's most important arms supplier.

"China expresses grave concern and misgivings about the International Criminal Court prosecutor's indictment of the Sudanese leader" said China's foreign ministry spokesman. "The ICC's actions must be beneficial to the stability of the Darfur region and the appropriate settlement of the issue, not the contrary". Might that be interpreted as a need to give Khartoum a little more time to pursue its agenda of genocide?

This very inconvenient situation at such a critical time for China is most unfortunate. "Our own peacekeepers could be threatened and also this will seriously impede China's space to mediate over Darfur and encourage dialogue between Sudan and the West", according to an Africa expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. This is China's traditional ploy, of lip service, while doing little-to-nothing to alleviate a disaster.

Besides which, China has not yet dispatched any peacekeepers to Sudan, she's just in the process. And there's Africa again, caught between a rock and a hard place. Sudan is one of their very own, an economically successful country with a huge population. Morally they have a duty to condemn the Sudanese president. On the other hand, they want to preserve some semblance of stability.

The AU's current chairman feels the warrant request to be rather "untimely", promising a deleterious effect on reaching a solution to the crisis, while increasing the potential for lack of security. As for South Africa, its spokesperson claims that is is "important for the ICC to understand that sometimes they must consult more and take action based on the fact it has to take the process forward." Oh, fancy that.

Something like the solutions found by the African Union and South Africa in particular with respect to Zimbabwe's crisis. So China's in fairly good company, in a manner of speaking. China defends her friends. She has come to the defence of misunderstood Iran, Burma, North Korea, and Sudan, among others.

Bearing witness to the need to placate dictators and sacrifice their populations. Like attracts like. But China can do a lot better, and it's past time she made the effort.