a human rights upside to global recession?

In 'The Human Rights Vacuum,' (a very quick read, so go read it) Samantha Power makes the correct assertion that China's insatiable need for resources and lack of concern for human rights, paired with the US' loss of stature in that arena, has led to a global environment that meets genocide with shrugs, violent oppression with averted eyes.

However, with gas at four bucks a barrel or whatever it fell to today, and China laying off wave after wave of workers, will that diminished appetite allow it to pause and take a breath long enough to reconsider the atrocities it endorses (through trade and its essential UN Security Council vote/veto)? Will it at least open the door to the UN (and maybe a new US administration, flush with international goodwill the likes of which we haven't had since 9/11) convincing them that over the long term, it is not in their interests to tolerate (and promote, in the case of Burmese weapons sales) activities that the rest of the world would condemn (as has the Bush administration) if only they weren't so damn afraid of what it would do to their business ties in those countries?

Unfortunately, I think the window of opportunity is too small. The recession probably won't last long enough to allow perspectives to shift in this way, the UN is too ineffectual in ending rights abuses, etc... But... if the mood of the increasingly angry American consumer could be further stoked with the realization that dollars go to China so they can be turned into things like rocket launchers and sent to Sudan and Burma, then there would be multiple threats to China's continued course of active inaction.

A boy can dream, can't he?