One wonders when the moderates in Europe and America will finally admit that the emperor has no clothes. Clearly, Western ire does not extend to preventing such irresponsible despots and their lieutenants from depositing their ill-gotten gains into a private bank account and then using those moneys to procure property. These assets are periodically frozen--and then unfrozen with much less fanfare after some token of obedience, usually a few months of cooperation with lenders, or diplomatic mediators, or humanitarian organizations. The assets are almost never seized; unless, like Mobutu Sese Seko, that despot manages to lose the war and die in exile. Widely perceived high moral status is no exception. The African National Congress may be willing to tolerate the greatest bribery scandal in Africa’s sordid history; in exchange for a more rigorous adherence to an ideology of expropriation in the name of redistribution. Irrespective of his unknown feelings toward South Africa's Whites and Indians, Jacob Zuma's incomprehensible personal conduct could render South Africa leaderless before the end of his first term. The same is true of Yasser Arafat or rather his wife. At the point of seizure, the banker must be obligated to return the money, if only to appease the country's creditors in the investment banking department at the expense of the retail banking department. Or, perhaps this is done to appease the newly installed kleptocracy. The new President for Life might take his business elsewhere. Any good student of economics will tell you that a nation's currency can only come back to it.
One can conceive of a Chinese foreign policy that would be acceptable to Western eyes. For instance, Chinese capital could be used to finance more Western arms exports to the Gulf States and elsewhere. Or, the Chinese government could hire British firms to recondition the old British rail road in Angola. But it seems unlikely that the Chinese government would be willing to pay for such a policy. The current policy creates work and immigration opportunities in a country with a population of between 1.3 and 1.5 billion people that can support about 1.1 billion people by even the rosiest estimates. It seems even less likely that a communist party would send its citizens and soldiers to fight and die for democracy. This "criticism" of Chinese policy only makes sense from a post-modern perspective where individuals powerless to stop massive events beyond their control bravely speak out against injustice, on another continent, while sitting in comfortable armchairs in centrally heated homes.
