Hu advises Bush that more spying, not less, will help the U.S. economy grow like China’s…

It is undeniable that China’s phenomenal rise to economic superpower status is due in large measure to its government’s denial of basic human rights to the hundreds of millions of poor Chinese who provide the cheap labour that fuels its economic growth. And, alas, many American corporations have conspired and colluded with the Chinese government to enable it to deny its citizens these rights.

Indeed, Chinese President Hu Jintao has good reasons to shout Yahoo!! for getting not only Yahoo but Microsoft, Intel and every other American hi-tech firm to check their conscience at the border as a condition of doing business in China. But, although the Chinese government takes great pride in its ability to control the minds and manage the freedoms of its 1.3 billion citizens, this overweening pride can lead to embarrassing situations abroad: As was the case when President Hu was heckled by a Falun Gong disciple at the White House on Thursday, and as I lamented in this previous article:

...it could not have helped the political atmospherics [of Hu’s dinner with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and the other corporate titans the Chinese have recruited as thought police] when Reporters Without Borders announced - on the eve of Hu’s visit - that the Chinese government’s Internet police (aided and abetted by Yahoo) had arrested and incarcerated even more journalists for promoting a “so-called Western-style democracy” than previously disclosed.

China human rights, Yahoo spying