Bonhoeffer Remembered

PEOPLE will always want more, of course - stronger language, more emotion, the sense that he's meaningfully invested in what he's talking about, and so on. That's understandable too given his already lengthy record of spin-doctoring subjects du jour to within an inch of their lives. But as a visiting foreigner in country - and a Sinophile national leader the regime panjandrums probably expected to be one of their more rhetorically accommodating chums - Kevin Rudd's criticism of China on human rights - in China itself - was effective. "There are still many problems in China. Problems of poverty, problems of uneven development, problems of pollution. Problems of broader human rights," the Prime Minister said to Beijing University students earlier today. If that truth about human rights can now actuate a decision by him to match his insipid Sorry Day symbolism with a withdrawal from the Olympic opening ceremony, Mr Rudd will have done well.

To many, including me, the overarching problem with China - and the true motivation for wishing nothing but ill on the upcoming police state Olympiad in Beijing - is not exclusively or even preponderantly to do with Tibet. It is about human freedom and a suspicion that all the realpolitik in the

“... whether politicians and those impressed with China's new veneer like it or not, a movement more potent than the Olympics has arisen ...”

Western world (and that's a lot) will not change China by 'engaging' with it. I think this is what my friend Saint underemphasises in that thoughtful statement of policy on our relationship with China, with which I generally concur. For yes, I couldn't agree more: contempt and acidic ridicule for the creepy Olympic "movement" and a realistic appraisal of Tibet's formerly native totalitarianism are reasonable - necessary, in fact. But whether or not politicians and all those impressed with China's new Las Vegas veneer like it or not, a movement more potent than the Olympics has arisen in the world - only partially encouraged by cuddly notions about the Dalai Lama - and it is adjudging liberty more valuable than money and holistic progress more crucial than economic growth. And it may achieve more than a dragline's worth of engagement.

We'll probably never know how much Kevin Rudd was motivated to speak as critically as he has - as critically as a visiting dignitary can in a host country - by the shambolic progress of China's Torch of Shame and its Blue Wiggle wardens. Back in the days when the sophisticated Paul Keating was calling General Suharto 'Father' and babbling about 'enmeshing' Australia's political economy with Asia, any criticism was hard to peremptorily ratchet up. That's one of the big problems with foreign policy "realism" - it evolves only via the most paradigmatic leaps, thus rendering inefficacious a hundred smaller steps towards liberty. Mr Rudd's address to the young students of Beijing University emphasised more than once that however marvellous their country's recent rise to prominence, China had to become part of a "rules-based order." To observe that order ourselves, we should take every step we can to ensure China has, perforce, to aspire to greater freedom.