I’m a tad baffled as to why The Moderate Voice chose to feature this apology for the government of China, except that it disses Hollywood icons Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg.

Apparently Farrow has been critical of China, and Spielberg withdrew as an artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics because China was not doing enough to pressure Sudan to end the ongoing atrocities in Darfur.

Here’s a 2004 Washington Post article explaining the China-Sudan-Darfur connection. Very simply, China is investing heavily in Sudan’s oil industry. Because they need Sudan’s oil, China is helping to prop up a rogue regime in Sudan. As part of their deal, China set up weapons factories in Sudan. The weapons plus revenue from the oil are finding their way into the hands of militia who have been carrying out mass slaughter in Sudan’s western region, Darfur.

This has been going on for five years, so one might have assumed Spielberg ought to have figured things out sooner, but never mind. This is not about Spielberg. It’s about China.

Poor, misunderstood China is also helping to prop up the military junta in Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar). China is not alone; the junta also benefits from association with the U.S. multinational oil giant Chevron, the French oil company Total and a Thai oil firm. Unfortunately for the monks and laypeople of Burma, their country is a rich source of natural gas, much of which is being piped into China. And if you want to know what life is like in Burma today, please read this heartbreaking story in the National Catholic Reporter.

Barbed wire surrounds pagodas, and large numbers of Burma’s monks are either exiled, imprisoned, or “disappeared.” There are rumors of mass slaughter of monks. And then there’s this:

An economic symptom that Peters has seen develop over the past 10 years are “pint-sized monks and nuns” — children not older than 6 or 7 years who are left at Buddhist monasteries by parents unable to care for them. At the monasteries, the children will be educated and “they’ll go on the alms rounds and the public will feed them,” Peters said.

In Myitkyina, a priest who runs an orphanage told Peters that parents will come to Mass and leave a child behind. “Parents have to decide: Which of the seven kids are we leaving in the pew on Sunday?” Peters said. “It’s the mother’s job to pull the kid aside and say, ‘After Mass, when we leave, you stay. Stay in the pew, don’t leave.’ What does that do to a child’s mind, for the rest of his or her life saying, ‘What did I do that you chose me?’ What does that do the woman who made that choice?”

During last year’s “Saffron Revolution,” many nations called on China to apply pressure on the Burmese junta. China was silent.

Basically, China is willing to supply arms to and support any dictatorship, no matter how vile, as long as they’re getting oil and gas in the deal. And why is this sounding familiar?

I’ve been blogging all week at the other blog about the atrocities in Tibet. I’m not sure most westerners really appreciate the situation in Tibet. I have a background article here. I argue here why the government of China, not His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is entirely at fault for the unrest in Tibet.

I don’t know what Mia Farrow said about the government of China, but if anything I bet it wasn’t harsh enough.

Update: See also The Peking Duck.