China's Hypocrisy

From the IHT comes this article.

Here is an excerpt:

In China, where the government works hard to control the flow of information, official accounts of the execution left no doubt about how to interpret the news.

"The execution of Saddam was a political farce controlled by the United States from behind the curtains," wrote one Chinese newspaper, The Legal Evening News, in one fairly typical commentary. "The U.S. feigned not to interfere, pretending that the execution of Saddam was a decision made by Iraq's own government."

Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, took a slightly different, though no less withering, tack before delivering this summation.

"The United States considers itself the patriarch of the world," it wrote. "Whenever someone doesn't please its eyes or obey its words, it will use its own ways to punish them, imposing sanctions or using force."

Judging from the reams of commentary like this in the wake of Saddam's execution, official China saw the event as a propaganda godsend. At least as far back as the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, Beijing has labored hard to counter notions of collective international responsibility for injustices committed by regimes against their own peoples.

This is all well and good. But if we think about it honestly and fairly, China is hardly in a position to be a moral authority on this.

From ABC:

China carried out 80 percent of the world's executions last year, the report said. Nearly 70 crimes carry the death penalty in that country, including nonviolent crimes such as tax fraud and embezzlement, the report said.

They tell me that the punishment must fit the crime, right? Well if that were the case, China has far exceeded this standard. And for them to sit on a moral pedestal and condemn the U.S. for anything on this, definitely wreaks of moral hypocrisy. If the U.S were to execute people for embezzlement and tax fraud, it would be a bloodbath.

China wants to be a most favored nation, but they still want to oppress their own people by fear and intimidation. They often take one step forward and then take two steps back. That makes it a little hard to get anywhere, wouldn't you say?