people or profit? Cameron makes up his mind

On the side of profit, of course. He's just been in China with one of the largest trade missions ever mounted from this country to that. There were quite a few small business owners along for the ride, but many of the party included Cameron's own pick of his most powerful and influential friends.

Gone was any admonishment of China's treatment of the Tibetan people, China's "lebensraum", where China's writ runs deep, and the indigenous way of life is being steadily eroded away to nothing. But what does DC really care of them, when billions of pounds of exports are concerned? So he has kept his own counsel on the subject of human rights, lest some other even more cynical nation state gets in under our noses and steals our trade.

The other night I watched a fascinating and moving documentary on the life of Ai Wei Wei, designer of the "Bird's nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics, but who became so disillusioned by the way people came last when the authorities were planning the Olympiad that he boycotted the games altogether. Entitled "Never Sorry", the film showed  him making the middle finger salute which has become his trademark, to all the icons of Chinese culture: Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden City, the government buildings and so on. He's saying, Fuck you Chinese state: I'm not buying into your totalitarian crap. We even watched in awed horror as he raised a priceless Neolithic vase above his head and then dashed it to the ground, symbolically reflecting the destruction of Chinese culture that goes on every day in China, but which remains for the most part unreported.

Yet he was allowed to make this film, banking on his currency as an undeniable hero of the Chinese People's Republic. They have locked him up in the past, of course, but they left him alone for the making of this film at least. But it struck me that had he been a North Korean the project would never have got off the ground: he would have been under permanent house arrest years ago, or worse. However bad China may be, we can be sure of one thing. It's even worse in North Korea- God help them.