Appease Red China?

Over at the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard claims that the only way to deal with Red China is (his word) appeasement.  In a nutshell, give the Communists whatever they want because they're really very harmless.  If we aren't really, really nice to the Celestials  we will alarm the little dears and set the world on the road to a replay of August 1914.

Where have I heard that before?  I remember; during the first thirty years of my life when pundits of a certain stripe were forever banging on about how the Soviets were perfectly harmless, yet at the same time a load of hair-trigger basket cases that we must be very, very careful not to alarm least they do something awful in a moment of panic.  It rang as false as an aluminium penny then and it still does today.

Red China is a dictatorship and Hu Jintao is no humanitarian who just hasn't found the time to close the Gulags.  So long as China remains in the hands of tyrants the policy of the civilised world should be what one would have toward a ravenous tiger in the garden: Keep a close watch on the Middle Kingdom and make it very clear and very public that they will never be given the benefit of the doubt.