Vol. 5 No. 3 (2010)

Since our last edition was published many important things have happened in the world. I will only mention a few because of their relevance to our Journal. First was the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to the US in January 2011. He was constantly peppered with the same old questions by the American press. Reporters continuously asked about “human rights and currency manipulation”. President Hu insisted that these were domestic political matters and therefore China’s business and no one else. On this we agree with him. Each country has its own laws and determines what is acceptable in their domestic politics. By our standards China does not have a very good record in human rights as we define it. But our definition is not the same as China defines it. As an example they see the most basic human right is to three meals a day. On this matter China is doing reasonably well. In a country where starvation has a long and recurring history, this is a matter of significance. We as a country have never really faced such situations so we take food for granted. We even destroy food to keep up farm prices. The most current Chinese abuse of human rights as we see it deals with Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. China would be wise to release him and let him go into exile, preferably to the US where he would soon drift into academic obscurity.