China's price

China's executive vice premier, Li Keqiang, visited Spain on Tuesday as part of a tour that has taken him to Germany and Britain. The trip reflects his government's increasing awareness of China's burgeoning economic might and its recent willingness to take a bigger role on the international stage.

Acting rapidly to take advantage of the current financial crisis, China has made a series of strategic moves that has strengthened its hold over the world's commodities markets, international trade, and the global financial system; its role in the latter has become little short of a new world bank.

The visit of Li Keqiang to Europe this past week has served only to highlight China's role as a planetary financier, with the rewards that this brings with it for both parties. For while the importance of the trade agreements he has signed should not be played down, of greater importance to Europe is the message that his trip sends out to the international money markets, by calming the waters of the Spanish economy and by strengthening the position of the euro.

Li Keqiang announced during his stay in Madrid that China had bought Spanish debt, and that his country would be doing so again shortly. Li Keqiang gave his support for the reforms undertaken by the government, thus reducing the likelihood to some extent of further speculative sorties on Spain's debt.

But while the economic benefits of the Vice Premier's visit are beyond question, the political aspects to it are less so, and not just in relation to Spain, but also in the broader international context. China increasingly uses its economic clout as a way to validate a regime that has abandoned communism, but remains very much in control of a one-party state that has little respect or tolerance for human rights, as its response to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo last year illustrated.

Squeezed as they are by the economic crisis, the democracies of the West have decided for the moment to ignore what is going on in China in return for Beijing's financial help. The Communist Party, meanwhile, is not content merely with the West keeping its views on human rights and political freedoms to itself; it now demands the right to interpret political activity as it sees fit, an interpretation that it uses to justify repression.

Admiration for China's achievements must not be allowed to transmute into unabashed support for the policies being implemented there. The crisis shouldn't cloud our view of what is really going on. Realism doesn't mean resignation; it is simply an awareness that at times there is no alternative but to choose one of two evils. The fact that there may not be any alternative at a given time doesn't mean that the evil that has been chosen is any the lesser. The economic future of the world depends in large part on China, and we should not lose sight of the fact that China is demanding a price for this.