Some Western politicians and media entities are in fact representatives of business interests and usually base their opinions on foreign relations on this fact, says a signed commentary in Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po. The following is an excerpt:
They may claim they care about "human rights" and "freedom of religion" in other countries, but they actually support or ignore the same things at different times, depending on whether they believe it will benefit their countries or not.
Over the recent riots in Tibet many Western politicians and media outlets again teamed up to blame China. This reflects a significant change in international strategic plan, by which the Western alliance of interests has reached a sort of consensus that it is time to suppress China's development and isolate it.
There is no better example than the United States to illustrate this greed-based hypocrisy. The US government supported the Tibetan separatists financially, militarily as well morally throughout the 1950s and the 1960s but stopped abruptly when President Richard Nixon's administration decided to enlist China in order to pursue its rivalry against the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. It was also the time when Tibet was suffering from the ravages of the "cultural revolution" like the rest of China.
In the early 1980s when monasteries were restored, and people's freedom and living standards were improved substantially, the US began to play up the "human rights" issue. The fundamental reason is that great changes had by then taken place in the Soviet Union and East Europe. For its own interest, the US resumed its financial support to the Dalai group.
(China Daily April 30, 2008)