Olympic boycott will be futile

China has only become integrated into the global economy over the past 20 years. But the results for China are stunning; hundreds of millions of people lifted out of extreme poverty.

This lifts living standards worldwide, has kept global inflation down, and stretched families' purchasing power. In part, this is why the past 10 years have seen the most sustained economic growth in history.

There are some who oppose New Zealand's trade deal with China and want a boycott of the Olympics. It's precisely because China depends on the global trading system that world opinion on human rights now matters to the Chinese.

Thirty million people perished during the Cultural Revolution and Mao's great leap backwards. World opinion didn't matter to the Chinese then, now it does, and that's a good thing.

China is going through the same process as places like Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. As living standards rise, a middle-class emerges that seeks out better social outcomes.

Wages in the Pearl delta rose 13 per cent last year. Seven thousand factories will close this year because wages have moved up and these jobs will head inland, to Vietnam, even Africa. This is the virtue of free markets and globalisation.

For the first time the Chinese government is answerable to its own laws, you can now sue the government! It's no longer an atheist state, there is the beginnings of freedom of religion: over 10,000 Chinese Muslims were allowed to go to the Haj in Makkah.

Christians sued the Shanghai government for wrongful arrest when they express their religious beliefs. This is imperfect and uneven progress that should be celebrated. All this is healthy and most leaders have hit the right balance in making these points.

An Olympic boycott would be futile and counter-productive. Why should sportspeople carry the absolute burden of foreign policy? Why not stop the thousands of Chinese students who pay to study overseas? Because it would be stupid. Is this in contradiction of a sporting boycott of apartheid South Africa? No. Sporting contacts are a big deal in most countries.

To the shame of New Zealand, the South Africans once imposed their racial selection policies on us. And New Zealand, for a long time, accepted their dictates.

The first leaflets I delivered were "No Maoris, No Tour". Amazingly, a Conservative Party Deputy Prime Minister, when in South Africa, tried to cool the situation suggesting that an All Black team should have Maoris, but "not too many, and not too black".

Racially selected team

"The principles that politics shouldn't interfere with sport, saw another conservative New Zealand prime minister specifically invite a racially selected team from South Africa to coincide with an election in 1981, which he won because of the protests and division, and then opposed sending a New Zealand team to the Moscow Olympics. Wrong on both counts, so my country can hardly hold its head high.

For the first time, I recently refused to sign up to a statement by the "Shared Concern Initiative", suggesting the consideration of an Olympic boycott.

This global group of "worthies", of which I'm the least distinguished member, is led by my hero, the noble past president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, a poet and politician who was imprisoned by the Communists. The Dalai Lama has not suggested a boycott, Nelson Mandela did.

New Zealand has just signed the first-ever free trade agreement of any developed country with China. This deal is worth a few hundred million dollars to New Zealand, small compared to the Uruguay Trade round, and modest compared to what New Zealand will get from the Doha Trade round.

Why is it so modest? Because the terms of China's accession to the World Trade Organisation collapsed tariffs in agriculture. Isn't it a good thing that China is now inside the WTO and answerable to its rules, obligations, and binding legal disputes system?

The WTO and the Doha Round is still the biggest global game. But we can do bilateral deals and advance the WTO round. Despite the fact that these are not "free trade agreements" but "preferential trade" agreements.

Not altogether good, but you can't afford not to do it. It's a melancholy fact the best thing I ever did was leave New Zealand to run the WTO. China joined the WTO and the Doha Trade round was launched in my time.

But modesty prevents me from pointing this out to Kiwis.

Mike Moore is a former prime minister of New Zealand and former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation.