Dear Editor: I would like to congratulate you on the editorial (“Religious Repression Unabated in China,” June 1).

For years the mainstream media have maintained an illusion that “China is like us” or “almost like us,” that “outsourcing of material production is good for U.S. consumers because T-shirts will be a dollar cheaper on Walmart shelves,” that “our future belong to a service economy, not to old fashionable smoke-stack industries,” etc., etc. All these “wisdoms” accompanied phenomenal profits being made by American corporations over decades of “opening up of China.”

Sadly, the religious freedoms have not advanced as expected and in some instances the significant regression occured.

PIOTR KUMELOWSKI

Forest Hills