Luke Nottage's reply appreciated

Reply to Luke Nottage’s reply to my comments on his article “China, national security, and investment treaties”, 24/07/2009, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2009/07/24/china-national-security-and-investment-treaties/comment-page-1/

Thanks, Luke.

What I thought was there had been missing links in the whole drama of that detention. Each side has been left with speculations, misinformation and misunderstanding.

Another point was that it was highly likely that Stern Hu was caught in Chinese wider measures to clean up its internal management issues and in that process Stern Hu was a party to some of those issues.

There is more to be hoping for a better Chinese legal system we'd like to, and for the Chinese people too. It is them to bear that legal system much more than we Australians. The Stern Hu case, while being taken so seriously in Australia and with a lot of publicity, it is highly likely to a drop in the ocean in China as there are many more, much more serious cases that may be unfair from our point of view, or even may also be unfair within that complex and sometimes not clear legal system.

Your colleague's argument is impractical even to raise at a bilateral discussion. Even it could be done, probably there are always ways to bypass it, I am afraid.