Obama, fleeing from the fallout of the decision to ship KSM to New York for trial and taking a break from the White House Afghanistan-war seminars, is heading for China. This is how they greet him:

China has detained several dissidents and campaigners ahead of US President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated first visit to the country, their relatives and close contacts told AFP Saturday. Obama arrives in Shanghai on Sunday and moves onto Beijing the next day for a four-day maiden presidential trip during which he has been urged to raise human rights with the Asian giant’s top leadership. But as the visit drew close, the head of an activist group for parents whose children were sickened by tainted milk in China had been detained, his wife told AFP.

Now where could the Chinese have gotten the idea that they could get away with such a stunt, making clear to internal dissidents just how impervious they are to outside pressure? Well, could be the snubbing of the Dalai Lama and the Obami’s systematic downgrading of human rights and support for democracy around the world. Could be that the Chinese, and every other totalitarian regime, have figured out that it’s open season on democracy and human-rights advocates. They have sized up Obama, concluded he is indifferent to human rights, and now won’t hesitate to bully their own people and, in effect, humiliate the American president by flaunting their own despotic behavior when he visits.

This is what comes from prostrating ourselves before thuggish regimes and signaling that human rights and democracy don’t rate high on our list of priorities. We will see more stunts like the round-up in China in the future. After all, we’ve already let everyone know that no adverse consequences will flow from this sort of behavior. And the Chinese dissidents — what do they think? One supposes they finally realize that hope and change don’t apply to them.