As long as a local ruler supplies Peking with oil or strategic raw materials, China couldn't care less if the local ruler slaughters a third of the people to supply China.
So what gives with China's southern Africa client (tip to Belmont Club)?
China, Zimbabwe's biggest trading partner and source of aid (in no small part because the rest of the world has embargoed it!) announced it will cut off all non-humanitarian support for Robert Mugabe's regime according to Lord Malloch Brown, Britain's foreign minister.
This is BIG NEWS, at least from where I'm standing.
China's also gotten tougher on Sudan of late. Perhaps the powers that be in Beijing believe they might gain more by playing better with the international community.
At the very least, they can smell change in the air. Zimbabwe's no longer bankable, no longer a country in which to make long-term investments in industries or in people. Politically, I get the sense that things could turn in any number of directions at any moment.
So when China cuts off one of those local pyschopaths, what does it tell us?
Perhaps it means that Zimbabwe can't deliver the goods anymore, so China is cutting its losses.
Or maybe China is beginning its pre-Olympics charm offensive by stiff-arming its usual Third World despot clients to preempt talk of a boycott.
It would be a shame if we couldn't take advantage of this change in Chinese policy regardless of why it is happening.
