Let’s end stranglehold that China has on trade

I HAVE the utmost sympathy for those who have to live under the monstrous regime that resides at Beijing.

This letter is not about the Chinese people. But just looking at the history of that regime points up the utter hypocrisy of western governments and economies in continuing to trade with and have dealings with it. Tibet, its defenceless neighbour, was invaded, its citizens slaughtered, its ancient culture destroyed. Then China had the gall to claim it was and always had been part of China.

During the so-called Cultural Revolution under Mao Tse Tung children were told they must inform on any ideological wrongdoing by their parents – such as selling on their own property (no Gumtree or the like allowed).

There is the continual repression of all protest and complete disregard of human rights, also the destruction of people’s homes to build the Olympic stadium in the run-up to the Olympics Games being held in Beijing in 2008. There is also persecution of people of faith, and more recently pet lovers in the West have been horrified and disgusted by the dog markets.

So now we turn to Covid-19. Whether the spread of the virus was the result of its having “escaped” from a laboratory or the trading of the vile wet markets, the regime ignored it and then acted at least three months too late. This with the knowledge gained from the Sars outbreak.

They should not be allowed to escape responsibility for its spread. A friend and neighbour, who worked there for a year or so, told me the wet markets were closed after the Sars epidemic but a few years down the line were reopened for the benefit of the better off, who regard raw or semi-raw bat or rat as a delicacy (ach y fi!). But wait on, this is supposed to be a classless society, isn’t it? A “people’s democracy”? What a sick joke – literally. It is in fact a state capitalist dictatorship.

In the absence of any mechanism or UN court to exact compensation from China for the countries whose economies have been badly damaged and in some cases completely destroyed (nothing could compensate for the millions of lives lost, of course) a process of finding new avenues of supply and the eventual exclusion of China by Western governments’ trading should begin. Donald Trump, in one of his more lucid moments, referred to this but nothing was done. I suspect China has attained a stranglehold on the West in terms of trade. The US, apparently under a previous administration, borrowed millions of dollars from China and then, instead of ploughing it back into the US economy, spent most of it on Chinese goods.

Western states should actively discourage their citizens from going to China and reduce flights in and out of that country to a minimum. And on an individual level we should do all we can to avoid products carrying the “Made in China” label (not easy, I’ve found, as it’s often well hidden). These products, whether it’s clothes pegs or the components of hi-fi or other devices, are invariably substandard. “A thing is not cheap if it’s poor quality” to quote someone much wiser than me. Further, having left the EU, we should begin rebuilding home industries and start a “Buy British” campaign.

I know all this is a big ask, but the alternative is that we carry on as we have done and wait for another deadly disease to be inflicted on us all.

Roger Kendall Cardiff

There is the continual repression of all protest and complete disregard of human rights...

Roger Kendall Cardiff