Opinion

Bull in a China shop

State Department functionary Michael Posner is either dumb or deluded.

He’s the fellow who earlier this month drew obnoxious moral parallels between US and Chinese human-rights records — and he’s still at it.

“Part of a mature relationship is that you have an open discussion where you not only raise the other guy’s problems, but you raise your own,” he had said — referencing, among other things, Arizona’s new immigration law.

Arizona wants federal immigration laws enforced, you see, and the Chinese violently oppress Tibetan and Muslim minorities and force North Korean refugees back home to face certain death.

To Posner, one’s the same as the other.

But Tuesday, Posner insisted that he intended no moral equivalence: “We never did get into the merits of the Arizona law. It was not in any way a comparison between that law and any specific law or practice in China.”

Hello? That’s exactly what self-flagellation before brutal dictatorships communicates — if not to Beijing itself, then certainly to dissidents and their oppressors around the world.

The Chinese (who, granted, need to be treated with somehow) probably just concluded that we’re stupid and weak.

In the case of Michael Posner, they’d be right.