Letters to the Editor, International Herald Tribune, 27 August 1997

Regarding "A New Credo for a World (Mostly) at Peace: Make Money, Not War" (Aug. 25):

I take exception to the statement that "no Stalin, no Hitler, no Mao visits the cruel whims and devices of totalitarianism on vast numbers" of people in the world.

China is most definitely a totalitarian state. It has visited unspeakable atrocities on the poeple of Tibet, and it continues to do so. Deforestation, torture and murder are commonplace. Tibetans, who as a result of a Chinese invasion are now a minority, are routinely forbidden to practice their religion.

The genocide of the Tibetans and the destruction of their culture rivals the horrors of the Holocaust. But this remains largely ignored, perhaps deliberately, by the type of money-loving people described in the article who are eager to do business with China. The lure of profit that China dangles in front the world indeed masks a "new form of economic imperialism."

Norman Jackson, Paris