Sean in Ottawa -- Good point in your second paragraph, but we have to question Beijing's sincerity at political reform. In the 1980s, Beijing transferred some responsibilities to the provinces, but it hasn't been enough. The consequences of Beijing's insistance on unitary governance of such a large population spread out over such a large territory -- corruption at every level of government and the disregard of national laws -- aren't being resolved despite two decades of harsh punishment, including executions, directed at corrupt officials. Underlying this is Beijing's fear of its own citizens and the citizens' mistrust of government officials and their lack of confidence in Beijing's competence in problem-solving. Beijing has also been slow moving towards some form of democracy. Actually, it hasn't moved at all since 1990 when Beijing approved village-level elections in a few provinces. It was announced as an experiement and it's still considered as such 20 years later.
Paragraph four is a slippery slope. I accept that different regions of the world face different challenges and so have different priorities, but the logic of paragraph four is often used by Chinese officials to stifle real human rights in China.
Ryan1812 -- What do you mean when you say that Canada is moving inward? It's odd that you refer to sovereignty as a 19th century (or earlier) phenomenon since much of the world at that time was under imperial rule. It seems that as those empires fell and their peoples increased interaction with others while establishing their nation-states, their desire to protect their cultural, economic, and territorial interests only increased. I refer to the failure of the Leage of Nations, the Security Council, the Balkans in the 1990s, former Soviet states in eastern Europe and Central Asia, China as an emerging communist state and then as developing modern state.
