Germany Suspends Aid Talks with China Over Tibet Violence

[tekisui]

In a fresh blow to Berlin-Beijing relations, Germany has said it is freezing aid talks with the Chinese government as a result of China's crackdown on demonstrations in Tibet.

Germany said it was suspending intergovernmental aid talks with China if the country did not end a bloody clampdown on Tibetan protestors, raising the stakes in a highly charged international conundrum over how to deal with Beijing's rights violations months before the city hosts the Olympic Games.

German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said on Wednesday, March 19, that her ministry would suspend negotiations with the Chinese government which mainly involve grants to reduce air pollution by Chinese power plants.

"Violence can never be a solution," Wieczorek-Zeul said. "The two sides can only arrive at a solution through dialogue. Under such conditions, it is hardly conceivable to be conducting intergovernmental negotiations," she said.

Fresh blow

The move marks a fresh upset in Berlin-Beijing relations, which had only recently been patched up after Chinese anger at Chancellor Angela Merkel receiving the Dalai Lama in her office in September last year.

Government level talks between Berlin and Beijing, scheduled to start in May, would not begin until the violence has stopped, Wieczorek-Zeul said. The minister last year oversaw talks last year that led to total grants of 67.5 million euros ($105 million), her aides said.

These were mainly paid out to Chinese companies operating dirty electricity plants. Berlin said it offered the help because China had the world's second-largest emissions of carbon dioxide and was the world's worst sulphur-dioxide polluter.

link: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3203751,00.html

[Kutjara]

1. Please excuse me if I've missed a memo,...

...but why is any country still sending aid to China? China is a powerhouse economy, about to overtake Japan in the economic league, and well on the way to eclipsing us within the next 20 to 30 years. It's achieved this "miracle" by exploiting the shit out of its people, and the peoples of surrounding regions (including Mongolia and Tibet). It has managed to weld unbridled capitalist economics with communist ideology with fascist control systems to produce a Frankenstein's monster of a country.

China doesn't need foreign aid. What it needs is human rights.