A Letter to the Editor of The Australian

China hasn't changed

Some of us are old enough to remember  a time back in the early 1970s when not only were undergraduate  Maoists parading icons of history's greatest mass murderer through the streets, but ordinary Centre-Left Westerners were seriously discussing whether the Great Helmsman had produced a new humanity. Your editorial ("An open mind in Shanghai", 24/3) is evidence of a persistent residual  inability to confront the fundamental  evil of the Beijing regime.

China remains an undemocratic  dictatorship which denies its people basic human rights, including the  right to an open, transparent trial unmanipulated by the state. It might not  murder victims at the rate it did in the past, but it still executes petty criminals  for economic offences without due process of justice.  We should be kicking up an unholy row at the global level in an attempt to  shame China in the face of world opinion into giving Australian citizen Stern Hu a fair trial.

Bill James, Bayswater, Vic

John Li analyses the relationship between the US, Australia and China.

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