While the situations in both Burma and Sudan have brought united criticism from Western governments, China has remained silent on the human rights abuses and dismissed both injustices as internal matters.

Instead of being held to account by the international community for this policy, China has reaped substantial rewards from it.

In Sudan, most Western and all U.S. oil companies have halted operations to try to put pressure on the government. In contrast, China has moved in and actively worked with the Sudanese government.

In cooperation with China, the Sudanese government has forced the relocation of a quarter million of its citizens from the oil-rich land to make room for Chinese oil developers.

The Sudanese government has indirectly violated human rights by using the revenue from that oil, which is mostly sold to China, to provide weapons to the Muslim militia, or Janjaweed, to continue its genocide of black Africans in Darfur.

"China is Sudan's largest trading partner and the main foreign investor in Sudan's oil industry," said Roberta Cohen of the Brookings Institution, in a letter to The Washington Post.

In Myanmar, Western leaders have been similarly united in opposition to the government's brutal crackdowns and the existence of the military government (junta).

Unfortunately, like in Darfur, when the Western companies pulled out, Myanmar's neighbors moved in to seize a commercial opportunity. Myanmar's opportunistic neighbors have called for "constructive engagement," but the real meaning is just to join in the looting.

China has been the ringleader of this opportunism, and the two countries share more than a border, as The Economist pointed out. China was granted access to Myanmar's hydrocarbon resources, and thus became the junta's primary commercial partner.

The two countries are also some of the few places left in Asia where militaries are still willing to massacre large numbers of their own people just to support corrupt governments.

China hasn't been called to account for its shameful foreign policy. Much of this can be explained by the way that it bullies countries with its commercial power.

For example, by threatening to cutoff vital commercial and development money, China persuades most nations not to recognize Taiwan. According to the National Review's Jay Nordlinger, China has succeeded in bringing the number of nations that recognize Taiwan down from 70 in the late 1960s to 24 today.

What should the United States do? Well, the main lesson is that China will be a troublesome force on the international scene that has to be dealt with.

China will continue to dismiss the human rights violations of foreign governments, because a consistent policy of treating them as an internal matter is the easiest way to deflect criticism over its own human rights abuses.

A source of hope for controlling China is the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Since the situations in Myanmar and Darfur are first-class causes célèbres in the West, China knows that if its obstructionism gets raised to a higher profile, it could lead to widespread calls for a boycott of the games.

While war with China is something that few people in China or the United States hope for, we need to maintain a strong military deterrence. We need to make China aware that attacking Taiwan would come at high price.

What the international community needs to do is find a similar way to deter China from supporting brutal governments and make it feel more pain when it does.

[Reach columnist James Foxcurran at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]