Letter: Placing own interests first may be an Achilles’ heel

By Letter to the Editor on March 10, 2021.

Dear editor,

Before Canada – or any other nation, for that matter - might effectively challenge China on its human rights violations, we first need a significant trade-export/import bargaining chip. But we - as one country of fewer than 38 million people, standing alone against China’s almost 1.5 billion consumers – likely never will.  

I can imagine that a large enough number of world nations securely allied, however, likely could combine their resources and go without the usual China bully-nation trade/investment connection they’d all prefer to abandon, instead trading necessary goods and services between themselves (and perhaps other, non-allied countries not beholden to China).    

Yet, maybe such an alliance has already been proposed and discussed, but rejected (behind closed doors) due to Chinese government strategists knowing how to ‘divide and conquer’ potential alliance nations by using door-wedge economic/political leverage custom-made for each nation (including Canada).  

Each nation placing its own unbending bottom-line interests first may always be its, and therefore collectively our, Achilles’ heel to be exploited by huge-market nations like China. 

Frank Sterle Jr.

White Rock, B.C.

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