For years, I allowed my respect and affection for the Chinese people to mute my criticism of the country’s government. I rationalized this, especially during visits to China, by saying that at least it is not like the regime of Mao Tse-tung, which caused an estimated 35 million citizens to starve to death during its inhuman “Great Leap Forward” alone. When apologists for the party-state insisted that things were getting better for a growing part of the population, I was far too willing to overlook egregiously bad governance, continuing official violence, growing social inequalities, absence of the rule of law, and widespread nepotism and corruption.

Living standards may have improved for some, but most of the population continues to be exploited by the party-state and domestic industrial firms that are often owned by or contracted for manufacturing to multinationals that now operate across China, often like 19th-century industrial robber barons. This explains partly why the prices of products that are “made in China” seem so low – the externalities are borne by workers, their families, and the natural environment.

Many across China have indicated in protests and other ways that "enough is enough." Friends of the Chinese people everywhere must support these voices crying for justice. In a 2007 UPI/Zogby opinion poll, 79 per cent of Americans said they had a favourable opinion of the Chinese people, while 87 per cent had an unfavourable opinion of their government. A similar survey done today in any rule-of-law country, including Canada, would probably produce similar findings. I wonder what the Chinese people would tell a pollster about the communist party, if they could do so without serious risk of violence or imprisonment?

Although the party-state has much to answer for, I want to concentrate on three concerns here: the environment, the killing of Falun Gong practitioners, and Chinese trade practices.

The Abuse of the Natural Environment

Three decades of “anything goes” economics have done enormous harm to the people and natural environment of China. Nearly half a billion Chinese citizens lack access to safe drinking water, while many factories continue to dump waste into surface water. A World Bank study done with China’s environmental agency found that pollution was causing 750,000 premature deaths a year. Sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from Chinese coal plants are now reaching well beyond China's borders. Yet Beijing has failed to achieve anything substantive concerning the protection of water, air, and soil. Many experts have concluded that China cannot go green without political change.

Consider, for example, the fate of Lake Tai. The International Herald Tribune reported that the lake turned a fluorescent green because of effluent waste. Two million people who live on its shores lost their main source of water. Local farmer Wu Lihong protested for more than a decade that the chemical industry and its friends in the local government were destroying one of China's ecological treasures. He ended up being sentenced to three years in prison on what the Herald Tribune described as an “alchemy of charges that smacked of official retribution." At his trial, Wu testified that his confession had been coerced by being forced to stay awake for five days and nights by police. The “court” ruled bizarrely that, since Wu could not prove that he'd been tortured, his confession remained valid.

The larger tragedy, of course, is that Lake Tai is only one instance of what unregulated capitalism since 1978 has done to much of China’s natural environment. Instead of stopping the pollution, the regime punishes the whistle-blowers like Wu.

The Killing of Falun Gong Practitioners

Falun Gong is a set of exercises with a spiritual foundation, which became public in China in 1992. Initially the government encouraged it as beneficial for health. By 1999, it had grown so popular that the party became afraid that its own supremacy might be threatened. The practice was subsequently banned and outrageously labeled by the government as a cult.

Practitioners were asked to recant. Those who continued the practice or protested the ban were arrested. If they recanted after their arrest, they were released. If they did not, they were tortured. If they still did not recant, they disappeared into the Chinese detention and forced labour system. What happened to the disappeared? David Matas and I came to the dismaying conclusion that many of them were killed for their organs, which were then sold to transplant tourists.

Since our first report came out, the Chinese Ministry of Health announced that, starting June 2007, Chinese patients would be given priority access to organ transplants over foreigners. The ministry also banned all medical institutions from transplanting organs into foreign transplant tourists. In August 2009, it was announced that the Red Cross Society of China was launching an organ donation system. Even with these changes, however, the carnivore commerce continues. The recipients have changed from foreign to local, but the sources remain substantially the same. While the Chinese government denies that organs for transplants are being sourced from imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners, it accepts that organs are being sourced from prisoners. The only debate we have with the government is which group of prisoners is the source of organs.

Chinese Trade Practices

China continues to dump cheap consumer goods into foreign markets. By keeping the yuan undervalued, the party-state creates an enormous competitive advantage for China and keeps many workers from Canada and across the world out of work. Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman has said that, by displacing the output of foreign producers with its own low-wage goods, China is arguably the prime culprit in holding back a robust recovery in global economies.

Economist Peter Navarro, author of The Coming China Wars, argues that consumer markets across the world have been “conquered” by China, largely through cheating on trade practices. These include export subsidies, the widespread counterfeiting and piracy of products, currency manipulation, and environmental, health, and safety standards so lax and weakly enforced that they have made China a very dangerous place to work.

Navarro has comprehensive proposals for all countries trading with China that are intended to ensure that commerce becomes fair, including defining currency manipulation as an illegal export subsidy and so penalized, a zero-tolerance policy for anyone who sells pirated or counterfeit goods, a ban on the use of forced labour, and the inclusion of strong provisions for the protection of the natural environment in any trade agreements.

I believe that if China revives its traditional values, abandons political Leninism, and adopts the rule of law, a free media, and governance of, by, and for all its people – a democracy with very Chinese characteristics – there will be harmony for both China and its trading partners. The Chinese people have the numbers, perseverance, self-discipline, entrepreneurship, intelligence, culture, and pride to make the new era better and more peaceful for the entire world.