Negotiating a free trade agreement with an increasingly totalitarian and plutocratic party-state in China, which treats its Tibetan, Falun Gong, Uyghur, Christian, farm, urban worker, and other communities appallingly, should be unthinkable for any democratic country.
Canadian Clive Ansley, who practised law in Shanghai for 14 years until 2003, notes that its Communist Party has long operated outside and above the law: