Blogging the democratic revolution
No, its not pornography or terrorist websites. It’s Publius! Check out this new website, GreatFireWallOfChina.org, and type in any website to see if it’s blocked in China. What can I say? It’s an honor that the Chinese government thinks we’re influential enough that we deserve to be blocked. Cheers!
You are a very poor farmer in Sichuan and out in the countryside live far away from everything else, schools, medical care, government, roads, running water, everything. You are only poor because the communist government has taken away everything in the name of “the people.” Your two-year-old toddler swallows farm chemicals and is sickened. With everything you’ve got, you get into the rickety jalopy and drive as hard and fast as you can to make the long trek to the hospital to get the child to treatment. Your child is unconscious and struggling to breathe and the Chinese hospital, true…
Red Chinese national ballet performance in Guangxi, Nov. 9 Source: AP, via Yahoo! News Here’s a stunning development: Activists in China are starting to say out loud what the government is trying to muffle over without discussion: Communism is the problem in China. What is communism even doing in China in this modern age amid the glittering success of capitalism? What is it DOING here? And they are standing up to say it, taking to the streets, handing out leaflets, exercising their God-given human right to free speech, and property rights, and risking major consequences from the regime: Like this:…
In a moment where the forces of dictatorship and tyranny seem to be pushing back against democracy, the common thread that has successfully aligned nations such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China, and Sudan have been the supply and demand of energy. While it is encouraging that the relationships forged seem to be more based on Machiavellian pragmatism then aligned ideologies or long term goals, problematic occurrences and diplomatic realignment have debilitated the West????????s efforts to act against undemocratic forces. Increasingly, the ability to act as a geopolitical actor has been taken away from the United States and the UN as…
Just over three years ago, the United States and Chile signed a free trade agreement, opening up markets and allowing for greater prosperity in both countries. Now, Chile has signed a free trade agreement with China, the first between the Asian giant and a Latin American country, bilaterally opening up markets on both sides. It will lead, just as it has in the past, to greater prosperity for both. China and Chile have signed a free-trade agreement, Beijing’s first in South America. The deal will give China better access to Chile’s extensive natural resources, such as copper, while Chile will…
While the Bush administration has lost its ability to assert itself internationally, the void in cohesive diplomatic power combined with fluctuating energy markets has created the opportunity for problematic relationships to develop outside of the Western spheres. China, a country high on energy demand and human rights abuse, and Russia, supplier of ever more tainted and corrupt oil, have become trading partners. With the United States and Great Britain’s involvement in Iraq, NATO’s deployment in Afghanistan, and the short-term reliance on Russian gas in continental Europe, China and Russia have built a viable economic partnership as both continually support undemocratic…
The pro-democracy crowds were huge. Thousands of Hong Kongers carried signs reading ‘I want to vote.’ The democracy goddess was there, too. Former chief secretary, Anson Chan. (The kindly grandmother, not the kid.) Source, all photos: AFP, via Yahoo! Thousands of Hong Kongers marched in the streets to explicitly demand full democracy from Red China on the ninth anniversay of the British handover to the communist giant. Two leaders, Roman Catholic Cardinal Zen and Anson Chan participated for the first time – both are historically cautious, and deeply respected, their views are seen as a bellwether. The turnout – somewhere…
It is not surprising that Sherif Hamdy can write in the Daily Star that China is getting close to beating out the United States in the arena of public relations in the Arab World. I have seen maybe one or two American officials speak Arabic on Al Jazeera or Al Arabiyya regularly, and, according to the Government accountability office (via Foreign Policy Magazine’s blog and Kirk H. Sowell), only about 30% of American diplomatic personel in the Muslim world have proficancy in their host country’s language. At the US embassies in almost every Arabic speaking country I have visited (Algeria,…
Oh, to hear how some Americans talk! – the Chinese are a menace, and Latin America is full of different kinds of Mexicans all of whom want something from us before they go communist, same as the Chinese. In fact, probably joining the Chinese! That’s how the world looks to some on the right who don’t look too closely. I’ve seen it on bulletin boards and heard it on talk radio shows and listened to it from friends. It’s all scarily wrong. And fortunately, not the foreign policy of the U.S. Most in that establishment see far more closely what…
Long overlooked on the world scene, China has been a great destabilizer of several regions of the world by its strategy in seeking to lock up supplies of oil. Sudan. Iran. Venezuela. Ecuador. China is a player in all of these areas and more. China’s efforts to lock up oil may not be as barbaric in means as the Japanese, who went on resource conquests just before World War II but it is the same idea. In any number of ways, it could lead to World War III. It’s no good for anyone. Fausta at Fausta’s blog has an illuminating…
Hong Kongers hold a vigil to remember young people who died at Tiananmen Square in the name of seeking liberty for China. Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! In Hong Kong, tens of thousands of people – some 44,000 – commemorated the 17th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre in China. Even more bravely, some people in China came out to march in Tiananmen itself to commemorate the anniversary. Their signs were torn up by Beijing cops and they were promptly repressed. This commemoration was for one of the most significant democracy struggles of our times. And based on the growing…
I got a call from Beijing, Red China earlier this week from a friend who lives there. He told me he saw a growing willingness of the people from the outer cities to challenge the authorities. He also saw a growing willingness in the authorities to repress such people. The cops, he said, had it down to an art. He was in downtown Beijing on other business this month when he happened upon a large group of protestors, maybe 100 people, holding banners, passing out fliers and demanding justice for their dead killed in a police massacre last year in…
Chinese President Hu Jintao is in the United States to meet with President Bush this week amid much fanfare. Undoubtedly any meeting between the leaders of these two countries will be historic. On the one hand you have a longtime military and economic superpower, and on the other you have a country that hopes to be that within a few decades. There????????s a lot to discuss on the table. Trade and development. Bilateral relations and common concerns. Human rights. This visit, however, will be very different from previous ones. When President Bush visited China in November last year, something unprecedented…
Alvicho at Off Topic has some interesting thoughts about the symbiotic relationship between resource-hungry China and resource-rich Latin America, a topic that too frequently gets drowned in the paranoia of anti-Chinese sentiment. The relationship doesn’t bother me, as a matter of fact, I think Latin American states, especially those run by demogogues and populists, could learn the facts of life about how the world works, from places like China if they can’t bring themselves to pay attention to sensible, successful places in their own neighborhood like Chile. Alvicho’s thoughts are here.
As hearings begin on Capitol Hill over Google’s kowtowing to the repressive Chinese regime, China itself is cracking apart INTERNALLY over its Google censorship. Party officials have taken on other party officials and they are all slashing at each other at the top levels of Chinese government. Christian Science Monitor has the story here. Pamela at Atlas Shrugs is doing some terrific, tremendous blogging about this Google controversy. Read her latest in full here. Rebecca McKinnon at RConversation has news from Capitol Hill and further background here and here. Or go here and just keep scrolling.
Glenn at Instapundit has an excellent roundup of this growing issue about Google’s problematic relations with Red China’s government and its implications for freedom of press. The link is here. Val at Babalu and Steve at Hog On Ice have additional thoughts – or well, deeds – here and here. UPDATE: This just ran across the stock ticker: Google (GOOG) lost 6.35 to 436.68 in high volume despite news it launched a search engine in China. The search engine censors topics that are sensitive to Beijing, creating some controversy. Google hit an intraday high of 454.23 before falling back. THE…
These guys have the right idea. In a rare protest against an official media crackdown, about 100 journalists from one of China’s most aggressive daily newspapers have gone on strike after the paper’s editor and two of his deputies were fired, local journalists said Friday. The editor of The Beijing News, Yang Bin, and deputy editors, Sun Xuedong and Li Duoyu, were dismissed Wednesday as part of what media watchdog groups describe as a sweeping government campaign to tighten control over the media and the Internet. The striking journalists, about a third of the staff, stopped work on Thursday after…
Gateway Pundit has a roundup of the good news.
Jim Hoft has a couple of roundups, here, here, and here in chronological order. Pajamas Media also takes a look at what others blogs are saying.
The big but unsurprising news out of China is that — golly gee! — the government tried to cover up the huge chemical spill in the Songhua River that has closed down water supplies for nearly four million people in the city of Harbin. The International Herald Tribune reports on the timeline of events and how the government was finally forced to act. Similarly, the Washington Post describes the political fallout caused by the coverup. Environmental destruction due to the fast pace of industrialization and lack of regulation has been a big issue on the minds of the Chinese people…
Maybe this is why I’m so hesitant about Chinese aggression in the future: SHANGHAI: When it comes to their sex lives, Chinese are among those who “can’t get no satisfaction.” Chinese are among the groups that are the least happy with their sex lives, according to the 2005 Global Sex Survey results released yesterday by Durex condom company. Only 22 per cent of Chinese surveyed said they are satisfied with their sex life. On a global scale, 44 per cent of all adults claim to be happy with it. Look for China to, uh, dominate Taiwan at some point.
ForeignPolicy.com has a good and relevant article up about China’s crackdown on civil society following the colored revolutioned in Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the past few years. Georgia and Ukraine were bad enough, but when Kyrgyzstan — also a part of China’s growing sphere of influence — also joined suit, the Chinese government has become wary of a repeat scenario either nationwide or in renegade provinces. The article gives some background, and then talks about how mediums of communication and NGOs have become caught in the crosshairs more than usual of late. The recent democratic revolutions in Georgia,…
I think property rights is rapidly emerging as a central revolution of our time in many areas. It touches even the United States, as the Kelo case demonstrates. Private property is the one thing communist regimes oppose. It’s also the key to freedom and the only basis for rule of law. And what a coincidence, in the countries where there are the biggest fault lines on property rights, a communist regime is somewhere in the background, be it China or Venezuela. Via Fiscal Study (a great blog), linking Global Voices, and also via Simon World, a very important Chinese blog…
RFE/RL has an interesting story on the rise of social unrest in China. Scarcely a month goes by without news coming from rural China of often-violent protests by locals over corruption, land-grabs, taxation, or environmental issues. The authorities are struggling to stem this rising tide of challenges to abuses that are probably inherent in any one-party dictatorship. It discusses in-depth a lot of the themes I went over in a post I wrote recently. With protests growing in the double-digit percentages a year, their sizes increasing, and the violence escalating, this is something that needs to be watched very carefully…
This piece was beautifully written by D.J. McGuire at the China e-Lobby, which is “dedicated to exposing the abuses of human rights, threats to American security, and attacks on general decency committed by Communist China, and to influencing American policy to ensure these egregious acts do not go unopposed.” Make sure to check him out. Fifty-six years ago today, a plane carrying the leadership of the Republic of East Turkestan was on its way to Beijing for talks with Mao Zedong. In circumstances that can at best be called suspicious, the plane crashed, killing everyone on board. Upon hearing the…