Good news swept through China on Tuesday as the State Department released its controversial annual list of the worlds biggest human rights abusers. To everyone’s surprise, for the first time in three years, the Middle Kingdom didn’t grace the top ten violator list. The 2007 top ten worst countries on human rights were North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan, which begs the question, where the hell is Eritrea. Although the state department did cite extrajudicial killings, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, and the use of forced labor in the PRC, an AFP story suggested that China’s resumption of death penalty review power might have done the trick. Human rights groups slammed the report accusing the Bush administration of pandering to its Communist ally and avoiding friction with this year’s Olympic host country. If the U.S. has given up on being China’s moral superior, it symbolizes officially that the balance of power between these two nations has shifted to China. Beijing controls US banks, U.S. dollars, U.S. automakers, the U.S. food supply and most importantly, the U.S. labor force. And for once, it controls American loyalty. You know deep down, China belongs on that list somewhere.

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