A Curious Little Blog

I have mixed feelings about whether Biden should have taken China to task for its treatment of the Uighurs (and Hong Kong) in his first talk with president Xi Jinping .  I do not have mixed feelings about how he explained his failure to do so in a town hall:  his responses are reprehensible.  “Culturally there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow,” Biden said.  Yes, we are aware that China has no respect for human life and this is normal for their government, but that is emphatically not a justification for their actions. Biden made it sound like China's human rights abuses are just a natural extension of their history of trying to stay strong and unified.  There is some truth in that, but historical continuity is never considered exculpatory, or even a mitigating circumstance, among Americans ready to denounce human rights abuses in other countries.  I don't always agree with the human rights gadflie...

I have every possible sympathy for the protesters in Hong Kong.  In 1997, when Britain returned sovereignty of the island to China (following the expiration of a 99 year lease), I thought Britain was wrong not to grant asylum to every Hong Kong citizen who wanted to immigrate to England.  This could, theoretically, have led to a flood several million non-English speaking people into the United Kingdom, and I can see the problems (not all that difficult to anticipate) if that had happened.  I thought Britain had a responsibility to those people who had been born and raised as British subjects not to turn them over to Chinese despotism.  I wonder how people on the Left would feel about such a situation today.  In general, they seem to support unlimited admission of asylum seekers, although only those who can find their own way into Westerns nations by walking or other means (I haven't seen any suggestions that we should fly those who live in the shadow of poverty ...