Free Markets, Not China, Can Save Europe

For nearly two years, Europe has tormented itself with increasingly convoluted efforts to avoid the only cure for its countries with excessive sovereign debt: selective sovereign-debt defaults. Last week came yet another self-delusion: news reports have European leaders hoping that the Chinese government will invest tens of billions of dollars in euro debt to help distressed European nations avoid default. The money would come with strings attached. In fact, a deal with China likely would be the ultimate self-inflicted deformity: Europe would give up some of its rights to free political speech so that it could use Chinese money to hold the withering judgment of free markets at bay for a while longer.