Are we afraid of the Chinese might?
There are certain embarrassing realities that a small cap-in-hand country like Jamaica has to deal with in its relationship with an economically cash-rich giant like China.
This is so especially when it appears that our traditional trading partner/lender/donor, the USA, is too taken up in its foreign policy with global political hotspots and, domestic concerns, to bother too much about an island nation like Jamaica, seemingly suspended — in spite of outside assistance — in blissful economic torpor.
Those realities centre on ‘selective conveniences’ like China’s assault on its press and those ‘dissidents’ who would dare do what we in Jamaica do every day — criticise the political leadership and no one is imprisoned for doing so.
The Communist party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) serves, at the very least, the dual function of a powerful organ crushing and silencing all dissents while perversely being the liberator of the capitalist economy, a form of production that ironically tends to thrive best in democratic states where media is held sacrosanct and people at street level are openly free to criticise political leadership.
Although I am certain the Jamaican political leadership is quite aware of the recent sham trials and imprisonment of noted dissidents in China, the prime minister and her second-tier leaders are…
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