The well-publicized troubles that the Olympic torch has encountered on its circuitous trip from Greece to China, particularly on the leg that included London, Paris and San Francisco, are a wake-up call China needs to heed.
All too often governments and mutlinationalcorporations seem intent on appeasing China, in the style made infamous by Neville Chamberlain with Nazi Germany.

That’s because, with 20 percent of the world’s population, China is the proverbial 500-lb. gorilla of world economics — so it gets away with swinging its clout in pretty much any way it pleases.

China’s lack of democratic safeguards leaves its dictatorship free to exploit its workers and the environment, enabling a growth rate unprecedented in the world — at the cost of unimaginable social devastation and environmental degradation.

While world leaders kowtow, a huge amount of frustration with China has built up among the world’s citizenry. Its ethnic cleansing and cruelty in Tibet and its oil-motivated support of Sudan’s government — stymieing international attempts to stop the Darfur genocide — are the focus of the protests.

But besides the human-rights issues, food and toy scandals have erupted so frequently recently that  the “Made in China” label is becoming more of a warning than an enticement. Sadly, in the U.S. as in other countries, so much manufacturing  and finance have migrated to China that Americans have become dependent on the country that once was our sworn enemy for many of our goods and, increasingly, services. Indeed, China controls a tremendous amount of the U.S. debt.

So governments and corporations hold their noses and make excuses and tell us to be patient because “gradual” democratic change is sure to occur “someday” in China. They tell us we can’t afford the ramifications that stem from taking a strong moral — as opposed to a pocketbook — stance toward the hypocritically named “People’s Republic.”

Meanwhile, China is insisting that the Olympic torch protests are all some great conspiracy by the Dalai Lama and ethnic Muslim terrorists to sow dissent and split apart the Han empire.

But the Dalai Lama, as he always has, continues to preach peace and dialogue — while his Tibetan countrymen are killed, tortured or sent to “patriotic re-education schools” to be brainwashed and forced to vocally denounce their own spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

That’s why it is up to the people of the free world to exercise their hard-won rights to protest the grossly unjust abuse of power by China.

This could be the first time in history that the world community has spontaneously taken a strong and moral stand against a dictatorial bully.