Let them eat cake

Conservative MP Helena Guergis demands that Canada stop giving aid to China, based primarily on the fact that China itself has enough wealth to build up a large army and a space program.

There's an obvious counterbalance to those considerations:

(T)he Canadian International Development Agency says aid to China is necessary because, despite its progress, it still contains 20 per cent of the world's poor and "some of the earth's most severe environmental problems."

Inequality between rural and urban areas, particularly in western China where women and ethnic minorities are "disproportionately affected," means "targeted measures are needed to address these imbalances."

While China probably does have enough resources to take care of its own if it so chose, it should be plainly obvious that the priorities of the Chinese regime lie elsewhere. Canada's choice is thus between either neglecting the Chinese poor entirely, or offering enough aid to allow them to at least survive, and potentially to have a role in reshaping the state in the longer term.

One would think that if reform is our goal, then our policy should ensure that potential reformers have the means and opportunity to be heard. One would then be thinking a lot more clearly than Helena Guergis.