China’s persecution of Uighurs remains a hurdle to detente

Robert Gregory makes a valid point questioning the need for any undue haste or necessity for closer relations with China at this time when there are more than one million Uighurs held in re-education camps, children separated from parents, forced indoctrination, reported forced sterilisation of women and the use of Uighur slave labour in solar panel manufacturing and in cotton production. (“As a Jew, I can’t stay silent on persecution of China’s Muslims”, 28/12)

While acts of protest such as an imposition of trade sanctions against China, as are being applied to Russia, would lead only to a total breakdown of trade, going against the interests and betterment of the respective populations, there is a strong case for the banning of imports of products made from slave labour.

Australia now finds itself in a position of strength based on surviving Covid while keeping the economy intact, the successful countering of China’s trade coercion through export diversification, and the significant fortifying of our defences through AUKUS, the Quad and strengthened security relationships with Japan and South Korea. This compares with China’s continuing issues with Covid and a faltering economy. Australia has no necessity to compromise. It’s China that needs to be thinking about change to normalise the relationship.

Ron Hobba, Camberwell, Vic

In his study of China’s growing control over sea routes and key European ports, Professor Jonathan Holslag of the Belgium Royal Higher Institute for Defence stated that in historical terms Western dependence on consumer goods made in China compares with Britain’s use of the opium trade to consolidate its imperial power over the Chinese (“Fleet of militarised ships ‘a threat to trade’ ”, 27/12). Hopefully we will learn to manufacture more things in Australia before it is too late.

Evonne Moore, Stepney, SA

Israel must be strong

One can argue ad nauseam regarding Israel’s conservative political parties and their idiosyncracies (“Netanyahu must steer ship of state”, 28/12). Despite national opposition, past Israeli governments have returned strategically important regional areas to Arab overlords. The result has been catastrophic, militarily, with many Israeli lives lost. Until at least one influential representative Arab leader declares that the Palestinian Arabs accept the existence of the democratic state of Israel, in the first instance, it is all a waste of time.

Aviva Rothschild, Caulfield North, Vic

It’s a measure of the extremism represented in the governing coalition cobbled together by Benjamin Netanyahu that even the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council has voiced its concern. The far-right dogmatism and ambition of partners such as West Bank settlers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich pose a defiant challenge to Netanyahu’s captaincy.

He may well be “Israel’s longest-serving and most experienced political leader”, as Mark Leibler and Colin Rubenstein declare, but what they and your editorial fail to point out is that Netanyahu is exploiting all his political skills to battle corruption charges.

The Faustian pact he has forged with ultra-Zionist radicals may delay his reckoning but will not serve Israel well, much less address the moral malady that afflicts its nationhood, the entrench­ed and worsening disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people.

Tom Knowles, Parkville, Vic

Talk the talk

There’s a group of folk clearly exercised about the English language and the use of correct vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Many of us self-identify as pedants, and proudly so. Nevertheless, language is a construct of creative beings, and as such is a living vehicle.

The interactions of human beings with each other and their environment are ever evolving and often encompassed in language that must continually develop and evolve to give voice to all that is or yet to be.

However, if language is not to be merely incomprehensible sounds and symbols, structures of agreed and understood meaning are necessary. Grammar, spelling, vocabulary meaning, punctuation and pronunciation are important for without a recognised system, instead of shared communicative language, we have babel.

Some may wish to tame and contain language within a codified straitjacket of rigid rules; others to set it free to constantly morph kaleidoscope-like.

For myself, pedantic in cringing with umbrage when English is abused through ignorance or pretentiousness, I am in awe of the living power of language and recognise that it will ever evolve and change. I just wish it wasn’t at the hands of the philistines.

Deborah Morrison, Malvern East, Vic