This is a topic that is also being debated nationally:  whether, or to what extent, concerns about human rights and the right to free religious expression should affect US trade relations with China, a country that violate human rights and restrict the right to worship.

This is a topic that is also being debated nationally:  whether, or to what extent, concerns about human rights and the right to free religious expression should affect US trade relations with China, a country that violate human rights and restrict the right to worship.

Pope John Paul II, in his speech to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps in 1995, had the following to say:

It (an embargo) is a means of exerting pressure on governments which have violated the international code of good conduct and of causing them to reconsider their choices. But in a sense it is also an act of force and, as certain cases of the present moment demonstrate, it inflicts grave hardships upon the people of the countries at which it is aimed.

...Before imposing such measures, it is always imperative to foresee the humanitarian consequences of sanctions, without failing to respect the just proportion that such measures should have in relation to the very evil which they are meant to remedy."