May 10, 2004

IT WAS inevitable that the underlying theme for the Chinese Prime Minister's visit to Britain this week would be trade. Since the last time a Chinese leader visited Britain - President Jiang Zemin in 1999 - China's economic boom has astonished the world. Growth rates have reached double figures, manufacturing output has made China the new global workshop, and a steadily rising share of world trade means that other nations are finding themselves more and more reliant on China's economic prosperity. In this context, it makes sense that much of Wen Jiabao's time will be taken up in meetings with various UK business leaders.

But Mr Jiabao must also find time for less palatable matters. China's economic expansion is overdue and can help alleviate the abject poverty in which most of its 1.3 billion population still exist. But if it fails to give its people a greater measure of political and personal freedom, China can never take up a place at the table of civilised nations. This is what the Prime Minister ought to tell his Chinese counterpart when they meet today. The ruthless suppression of groups such as the Falun Gong, and the county's appalling number of state executions every year, make China, despite its economic freedoms, little better than a totalitarian state as far as civil liberties are concerned. [...] Such contempt for human rights must end.

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