Regime Watch: Beijing

In the journal World Affairs, P.J. O’Rourke has a lengthy and interesting first hand account of, as P.J. puts it, “what Chinese think of politics when politics isn’t what they’re thinking of.”

From the piece:

For years I’ve been active in Freedom House, the oldest of the private organizations advocating for international freedom and democracy. We’ve seen progress, especially since 1989. We’ve seen backsliding. And we’ve seen stasis, notably 1.3-billion-persons’-worth of stasis in China. Freedom House rates China as “Not Free.” On a scale of 1 to 7—where 1 is as free as human nature allows and 7 is completely otherwise—China scores 6 on civil liberties and 7 on political rights.

Yet we at Freedom House cannot be exactly right. A mere increase in China’s prosperity must mean that more Chinese have greater wherewithal to exercise some aspects of free will. Certainly the Chinese are more free now than they were during the Great Leap Forward, when millions were constrained by starving to death. And the Chinese are freer to go about their business than they were during the Cultural Revolution, when there was no business to go about.

One strong indicator of how much a society values freedom is the relative ability of individuals to arrange their lives as they see fit. So how does this work in China…where the economy has been at least partially unshackled from the wretchedness of communism, but where all the other good stuff (think life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) is still tightly controlled by a thuggish Chinese Communist Party.

Here’s a hint:

I talked to people who worked in private enterprise and people who worked in government and people who worked on furthering cooperation between the two. That is, I talked to the kind of people who are necessary to the advocating of freedom and democracy but who, so far, aren’t advocating it. We need to listen to what they don’t say.

If that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, keep in mind that O’Rourke is not just an astute political writer, but a humorist as well. Read the whole thing and you’ll see what he means.

This blog’s readership continues to grow. And while it may sound silly, I get a thrill when a country shows up on the readership stats for the first time….so a big thank you to the visitors from Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Israel and Romania who found their way to this site…I hope you decide to check back from time to time. As always, comments and e-mails are both welcome and appreciated.

June 1 update: Still more new countries on readership stats. Welcome to visitors from Mexico, Singapore, Brazil and Hungary.

June 2 update: Hello and thanks to new readers from India, Thailand, Poland and Japan.

June 6 update:  Welcome new readers from South Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Austria.

Weeks after burma was devastated by a cyclone, the generals who run Burma’s military dictatorship have finally begun approving a few visas for foreign aid workers, while at the same time whining that the amazing generosity offered by countries around the world just isn’t enough (or, to read between the lines, not enough to adequately line their own pockets while still pretending to care about their subjects).

From the associated Press:

Myanmar’s ruling junta lashed out Thursday at aid donors who promised millions of dollars for cyclone relief, saying survivors didn’t need “bars of chocolate.”

State-run media criticized donors for only pledging up to $150 million — a far cry from the $11 billion the junta said it needed to rebuild.

The Myanma Ahlin newspaper, a government mouthpiece, said cyclone victims from the hardest-hit areas could get by without foreign handouts.

“People from the Irrawaddy delta can survive on their own, even without bars of chocolate donated by the international community,” it said, adding they can live on “fresh vegetables that grow wild in the fields and on protein-rich fish from the rivers.”

Wow, the Burmese junta is a truly despicable regime. But one dependent on the support of other regimes, especially from Communist China. In a January 2008 report from the Washington, D.C. based Heritage Foundation, Steven Groves notes:

To repress a population of 47 million continually and successfully, the military junta must be well armed, and China is Burma’s primary arms supplier. The junta’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in August 1988 caused international aid and development assistance to all but dry up. With limited revenues, the regime turned to China for the arms and armor that it needs to sustain itself. China, which cracked down on its own pro-democracy rally in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, readily agreed and has given the junta $2 billion to $3 billion in military aid since the early 1990s, helping the regime to expand its army from 180,000 to 450,000 soldiers.

And yes, the regime in Beijing actually gets to host the Olympics. Wonder if the Burmese generals will have box seats at the games?

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization assembled in Geneva, and for the twelfth year in a row Beijing and its toadies at the WHO blocked Taiwan’s efforts at meaningful participation by denying Taiwan even “observer” status.

From Rueters (May 19):

The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) assembly again rejected Taiwan’s bid for observer status on Monday, declaring that mainland China had responsibility for health issues affecting the island’s 23 million people.

The decision, taken on the opening day of the WHO’s six-day annual meeting, was the 12th year in a row that the United Nations agency had rebuffed Taiwan’s campaign.

It is quite amazing how willing so much of the world is to appease a communist regime like China at the expense of a representative democracy like Taiwan.

Rueters continues:

A proposal to drop the agenda item calling on Taiwan to be given observer status was adopted without a vote as part of a behind-the-scenes deal to give the issue an airing without devoting too much time to it.

“The reason that no one objected is that we all know what the outcome is,” said one diplomat. The assembly has a built-in majority against Taiwan, which draws support only from a couple of dozen small countries mainly in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific, plus the United States.

Taiwan is a member of the 152-nation World Trade Organisation but is excluded from most other international bodies because of Beijing’s one-China policy.

If we are going to have “international bodies” then perhaps it is time for the liberal democracies of the world to break off from the United Nations and form a new international body that includes Taiwan, but excludes China and the other thugocracies that inhabit the UN.

Ever wondered what life is like under a thuggish African regime?

The Independence Institute has a new video up on You Tube featuring Habtamu Dugo, an Ethiopian journalist forced by the Ethiopian regime to flee his own country.

The editors at gadaa.com, a Horn of Africa news site and portal, wonder if Chinese construction companies in the Ethiopian city of Finfinne (or Addis Ababa, as it is also known) are using the same building standards in Finfinne as were apparently used to build schools in China:

Looking back, it is important to note that school buildings were the most affected by the quake. Thousands of children, who were attending classes, were buried alive underneath blocks of crumbling concrete walls. Whereas government buildings located in the same quake zone as the schools did not even get a scratch (so to say) from the earthquake. Over the past week, this fact has raised eyebrows among many engineers and experts of building safety standards. These engineers and experts ask: why would government buildings stand tall and schools crumble down when both structures were equally hit with the same quake?

Great question.

(Thanks to Habtamu Dugo for the link)

The United States too often kowtows to Beijing’s absurd claim of sovereignty over democratic Taiwan.  One of the more weak and archaic U.S. appeasment policies towards China is a decades old ban by the U.S. State Department on personal meetings between high-ranking officials of the U.S. and Taiwan.  My colleague at the Independence Institute, Dave Kopel, has a great idea for helping to end this silly policy, involving U.S. Presidential candidate Barack Obama:

By expressing a readiness to meet with Cuba’s Raul Castro, and also to meet with personally with the heads of Iran, Syria, and North Korea, Senator Obama seems to be promising that one of the changes his Presidency would bring is a greater willingness to engage in person with controversial foreign heads of state. Accordingly, there is another head of state with whom Obama should also promise to be willing to meet in person: Taiwan’s new President Ma Ying-Jeou. Inaugurated on May 20 as Taiwan’s democratically-elected President, Ma is a Harvard Law School graduate who speaks excellent English. Unlike some of the other foreign leaders whom Obama has said he would meet, Ma won a legitimate, free election, is very friendly towards the United States, is not working on a nuclear weapons program, does not militarily threaten the U.S. or its allies, and does not sponsor international terrorism. A fortiori, the case for a meeting with Ma is much stronger than the case for a meeting with Castro et al.

As Dave points out, such a meeting would “infuriate the Chinese Communist dictatorship.” But it would be great to have a Presidential candidate express a willingness to engage Taiwan, one of Asia’s most dynamic representative democracies, without regard to what the regime in Beijing thinks.

As Kopel continues:

However, such a meeting might help allay concerns that President Obama would be easily coerced by dictatorships, or that he might be weak in supporting U.S. allies. In any case, given that Obama has answered whether he would be willing to meet with Raul Castro, it would be reasonable for him to state whether he will meet with Ma Ying-Jeou.

Yesterday, regimewatch.com turned one month old, and today surpassed one thousand page views. I don’t really know what that means considering the thousands of other blogs out there, but it sounds like a big number to me. So to everyone who found their way to this site, and to everyone who chose to come back, thanks.

The majority of readers have come from here in the U.S., but regimewatch.com has also enjoyed visitors from Canada in North America; Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France in Europe; China, Taiwan and Vietnam in Asia; and a fair number from New Zealand and Australia.

So again, thanks for taking the time to read this site, and please keep coming back. Also, comments and e-mails (see about author page) are welcome and appreciated.

Over at the Independence Institute’s podcast site, ivoices.org, radio host Amy Oliver interviews me on the basics of the “Genocide Olympics”.

It’s from last year, but is just as relevant today. If you want a primer on the relationship between the regime in Beijing and the regime in Khartoum, and how China has not only helped fund the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, but has also armed and given political cover to its perpetrators, give it a listen (MP3 compatible).

The term “Genocide Olympics” refers to the fact that China, the host nation of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, is complicit in the genocide in Darfur, and therefore lacks the moral legitimacy to host the Olympics.

Columnist Nicholas Kristof has an interesting op-ed in the May 15 New York Times on Tibet’s “Terrified Monks.” Kristof tosses Beijing a few bones of appeasement such as his odd claim of “Tibetan brutality,” but overall the piece paints a grim picture of Beijing’s brutish occupation of Tibet, and is all the more interesting because, according to Kristof:

I sneaked through these Tibetan areas in Gansu and Qinghai Provinces, eluding the troops by taking a local car with curtains pulled over the windows, and it became clear that the recent anti-Chinese protests spread across a larger area in traditional Tibet than is sometimes realized.

Let’s start with the “Tibetan brutality.” According to Kristof:

Chinese citizens have been understandably outraged by anti-Chinese rioting by Tibetans in Lhasa in March. Tibetans burned 1,000 Chinese-owned shops (a few with people inside them) and savagely attacked or stoned ordinary Chinese citizens, even a child of about 10. The Dalai Lama and pro-Tibetan Westerners were far too leisurely about condemning Tibetan brutality, and America came across as hypocritical for apparent indifference when the victims in Tibet were Chinese.

Actually, for far too long, many Chinese and many of the Westerners who routinely appease Beijing have been far to leisurely about condemning Chinese brutality. That said, Krisof writes confidently about how “savagely” Chinese were attacked and stoned by Tibetans…confidently enough that he must be pretty sure of the accuracy of those statements. Yet later in his piece Kristoff writes:

Last month, the Chinese authorities ushered a group of journalists here on a tightly scripted tour to show that Labrang was calm — and then 15 monks rushed up to the group. One was crying, and all said that their human rights were being systematically violated.

After the reporters left, those who joined that peaceful protest were imprisoned, beaten and in some cases subjected to electric shock torture, the monks here say. That is impossible to confirm, and Tibetan versions of events are sometimes exaggerated.

So the Monks’ claims of what can only be described as “savage” and “brutal” beatings and torture are not only impossible to confirm (which is probably largely true) but also subject to exaggeration. But if this is so, then wouldn’t the claims of savage attacks on Chinese by Tibetans that Kristof notes also be, if not impossible, at least difficult to confirm and subject to exaggeration? After all, as Kristof notes, Western media coverage of the events in Tibet has been “tightly scripted” by Beijing.

Point is not to question whether some Tibetans-having lived a lifetime under the boot heel of a communist regime-might turn to violence, but rather that if a New York Times writer is going to be skeptical of the claims of beatings and torture by Tibetan Monks, then he should at least be willing to question claims about “Tibetan brutality” that might generate directly from the regime in Beijing, or that are passed along by China’s state-run media (which are, after all, one in the same).

That quibble aside, Kristof’s piece is a compelling read, as he continues:

Yet few will ever hear about the harsh crackdown unfolding here in the ancient Tibetan region of Amdo. Although there was some rioting here in Xiahe, and some attacks on the police and burning of police vehicles elsewhere, most of the demonstrators were peaceful. But even where protests were entirely peaceful, the repression has been merciless.

Whole thing here.