Employees of China’s national TV network, celebrating the lunar new year with illegal fireworks, managed to lob a skyrocket onto the roof of a nearly complete ultramodern hotel adjoining their own headquarters building.

The resulting fire gutted the 44-story structure, leaving a charred, smoking shell looming over the Beijing skyline. Despite their complicity in the blaze, you would think this would be a real break for China TV’s reporters: How great is it to be able to cover one of the biggest stories of the year simply by looking out your office window?

But China’s ever alert propaganda office immediately issued a directive: “No photos, no videos, no in-depth reports.” Fortunately, technology, the bane of the censors’ existence, prevailed, and amateur photos and videos were posted on the Internet faster than the authorities could block them.

Still, pity the poor official tour guide who is required to respond to a tourist’s question about a 44-story fire-blackened hulk in central Beijing with, “Building? What building?”

Here is the piece, re-printed in its entirety:

For 30 years, the U.S. has maintained an “unofficial” relationship with Taiwan.

And while this outdated policy acquiesces nicely to communist China’s absurd (and equally outdated) claim of sovereignty over democratic Taiwan, it also badly undermines the American tradition of supporting democracy around the globe.

President Barack Obama could begin undoing this backward policy and send a significant foreign policy message by simply instructing his State Department to issue new guidelines lifting travel restrictions on Taiwanese officials to the U.S. and allowing direct contact between Washington and Taipei.

In fact, Mr. Obama suggested this during the campaign.

In March 2008, Taiwan held a presidential election. Ma Ying-Jeou of the Nationalist Party defeated the Democratic Progressive Party candidate. It was Taiwan’s second peaceful transfer of party power through democratic elections.

Commenting on the election, then-candidate Obama stated that the U.S. should respond by “rebuilding a relationship of trust and support” with democratic Taiwan. “The U.S. should reopen blocked channels of communication with Taiwan officials,” Obama said.

What is President Obama waiting for?

The State Department issued its first backwards set of Taiwan guidelines in 1979, when the U.S. ended diplomatic relations with Taipei in order to recognize the communist dictatorship in Beijing.

Since then, Taiwan has transformed itself from an authoritarian regime (much like China remains today) and into a vibrant representative democracy with a market economy — precisely the kind of country whose representatives should be able to not only communicate directly with their counterparts in Washington, D.C., but who also should be welcomed into the United States for official visits.

The Bush administration continued undermining American support for democracy abroad by expanding and re-issuing the backward guidelines in 2008.

For instance, high-level Taiwanese officials, including the democratically elected president of Taiwan, are barred from visiting Washington. On the other hand, the unelected leader of China’s thuggish communist party has been welcomed into the White House.

Another rule precludes U.S. embassy personnel from accepting invitations to “official” Taiwan-hosted functions, or functions held at “Taiwan’s official premises” and vice versa.

In a particularly bizarre ban on communication, U.S. officials are not allowed to communicate directly with their counterparts in Taiwan, but rather must send letters to each other through a third party.

As the Taipei Times newspaper describes, “Even personal thank you notes must be written on plain paper and put in a plain envelope to disguise the sender’s official identity.”

All of this, and more, just to appease the Chinese communists in Beijing.

President Obama could change this — without having to commit thousands of American troops, or billions of U.S. tax dollars, to either regime change or nation building.

In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Obama noted that “we cannot meet 21st century challenges with a 20th century bureaucracy.”

If this is so, how can we meet 21st century foreign policy challenges while tied to a 20th century Taiwan policy that contradicts everything the U.S. is supposed to stand for?

The GDR may be gone, but we still have the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

From the Associated Press on Christmas day:

Authorities in Tibet have detained 59 people accused of disseminating rumors aimed at inciting ethnic tension and have cracked down on illegal downloads of “reactionary music” online, Chinese state media reported Thursday.Law enforcement officers have found 48 cases of “rumor spreading” since March, when anti-government riots rocked the Tibetan capital Lhasa, a report by the China Tibet News said, citing a local public security official.

Xin Yuanming, deputy chief of the Lhasa public security bureau, said those being investigated were instigated by the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, according to the report. It did not name those detained nor give other details.

The rumors posed a threat to public security by fanning ethnic hatred and damaging the image of China’s ruling Communist Party, the report said.

Arrested for spreading rumors that might damge the image of the communist regime…the old GDR and its Stasi would be proud.

On his Taiwan focused blog, The View From Taiwan, Michael Turton has a great post (pics included) on the United States Postal Service’s apparent practice of stamping packages addressed to Taiwan with “Taiwan, Province of China.”

Turton’s post includes lots of details, possible conclusions and good questions regarding this practice, so check it out. Turton concludes:

Let me add this simple fact: the policy of the US government is, and has been for the last five decades, that the status of Taiwan is undetermined. As a government entity, USPS should not be flouting official policy.

So what does the thuggish, and sadly iconic, Guevara have to do with Mao,  Communist China’s ex-dictator?  From the description accompanying the video:

“We’re rightly horrified by fascist murderers like Adolph Hitler,” says reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie. “Why aren’t we also horrified by communist killers?” Certainly, Che’s body count isn’t anywhere near Hitler’s. But what about someone Che idolized, someone whom he might have liked to wear on his chest?

“Che, Castro, all the communist regimes idolized only one thing that Mao personifies—violence.” Kai Chen grew up in China under the reign of Mao Zedong. Although he won gold medals for China’s national basketball team, Chen’s was far from the celebrity life of an NBA star. Says Chen, “You have no right to talk, and you have no right to think.”

The punishment for questioning Mao’s authority was often death. The Black Book of Communism estimates that Mao is responsible for the deaths of 65 million people—a figure that dwarfs even Hitler’s body count. “Mao is a murderer,” says Chen. “The biggest mass murderer in human history.”

And yet, like Che, Mao’s image is becoming an increasingly popular way to move merchandise. You can buy Mao t-shirts, mugs, caps-you name it.

Really, why don’t the lear jet liberals reason.tv shows celebrating Che have similar contempt for communist mass-murderers as for fascist mass-murderers?

It’s like this.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently met with the Dalai Lama in Poland and Beijing threw a predictable temper tantrum.  But rather than trying to then appease the really easily annoyed regime in Beijing, French human rights minister Rama Yade told the regime to chill out.

From the December 8 EU Business news:

France appealed for calm Sunday after China strongly protested President Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, with the human rights minister saying there was no need for “psycho-drama.”

China reacted angrily to Sarkozy’s meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader on Saturday, saying it had seriously undermined Bejing’s relations with France and Europe.

“There is no need for psycho-drama,” human rights minister Rama Yade said in an interview to French LCI television.

“The Dalai Lama is not a dangerous man. He is a man of peace, of non-violence, who has been awarded the Nobel prize for peace.”

Yade stressed that China and France must pool their efforts to tackle the global financial crisis instead of feuding over Tibet.

“We need to cooperate, calmly,” she said.

Nicely done, though this still does not entirely excuse President Sarkozy’s blatant pandering to Beijing by refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama during a visit to France earlier this year.

From Richard Gustafson at the University of Denver, here is an academic analysis of “China’s Growing Influence on the African Continent.” From the abstract:

Because of their colonial histories, African nations tend to be splintered, and conflicts on the continent are frequently internal. Following the Tienanmen Square incident in 1989 and the end of Cold War, the West’s financial support to Cold War allies diminished at the same time China shifted the focus of its foreign policy toward Africa. It offered aid and low interest loans with few or no conditions regarding governance or human rights. The continuous power struggles and efforts to maintain power make China’s overtures tempting to many African leaders. Many of China’s interactions come at the expense of the citizens of African nations and create a long-term detriment to economies on the African continent.

Rather than read the whole very long report, here’s an excerpt from a Strategy Page analysis of the report concerning demographic changes in China in 2025:

China’s “one child” policy (to halt population growth), and the unanticipated appearance of cheap sonograms (enabling parents to determine the gender of their child while there was still time for an abortion) has caused an imbalance in the gender ratio. There are now 115 boys for every 100 girls. Young men are having a problem finding wives. Wealthier urban males attract more women from the rural areas (where 70 percent of Chinese still live), leaving a lot of lonely, poor and angry young men in the countryside. The smaller generations means that the proportion of elderly (made wealthier and healthier by the booming economy) is skyrocketing, while the workforce is shrinking. Both these trends are bad, and will have negative social and economic impacts.

As the NIC points out, the reports is not meant to be an exercise in “prediction or crystal ball-gazing.”  But it does sound like a plausible scenario.  And a countryside full of “lonely, poor and angry young men” sounds particularly bad.

From the FIDH statement:

According to the information received, since November 3rd, 2008, the city of Taipei has been heavily occupied by more than 7,000 police officers. The authorities have taken many drastic measures, including: confiscating and damaging private property, harassing and assaulting people who came too close to undefined or vaguely defined areas, clearing communal highway lanes with force, conducting random searches and arrests, and restricting the freedom of movement of citizens. These actions have been taken during Mr. CHEN’s visit, in the name of protecting security.

However, we fear these aggressions in fact aim at suppressing the right to freedom of expression of citizens. To supplement this violence, there are also unprecedented restrictions which clearly overpass the limits of ensuring security. For example, citizens have been restricted from displaying or carrying the national flag of Taiwan, forbidden to declare that “Taiwan is not part of China”, forbidden from carrying filming devices, and restricted from playing any music the authorities consider inappropriate.

These measures seem to be aimed at silencing political opinions rather than protecting security, and thus they blatantly violate the Constitution of Taiwan, notably Articles 11 and 14 which protect freedom of expression and international human rights standards. Consequently, FIDH requests that the National Police Agency and National Security Bureau, bound by the Constitution and the national legislation, should be held responsible for violating their legal obligations. The Judicial Yuan and Control Yuan should immediately conduct independent and impartial investigations into all allegations of human rights violations and hold all personnel in office accountable for neglecting their civil and legal obligations, in line with the Judicial Yuan’s recent statement that “it is very important to form an objective and solid review standard, and make the constitutional reviews more predictable and trust-worthy to people”. Those who perpetrated these violations, particularly in the National Police Agency and National Security Bureau, must be held accountable, in accordance with Article 24 of the Constitution of Taiwan, which stipulates that “Any public employee who, in violation of law, infringes upon the freedom or right of any person shall, in addition to being subject to disciplinary punishment in accordance with law, be liable to criminal and civil action. The victim may, in accordance with law, claim damages from the State for any injury sustained therefrom.”

From a Nov. 20 Freedom House press release:

Hundreds of university students are currently staging a sit-in in Taipei’s Freedom Square and several other cities to protest the government’s handling of the incident. During Chen’s visit, police reportedly used heavy-handed tactics—including physical assault, arbitrary detention and destruction of property—to prevent Chen from seeing symbols of Taiwanese or Tibetan independence, as well as broader demonstrations against the Chinese regime. Demonstrators also employed violence against police, throwing rocks and petrol bombs outside Chen’s hotel on November 6.

The clashes reveal a need for police to undergo crowd control training that adheres to the standards used in other democracies. Likewise, demonstrators and political advocacy groups must recommit themselves to orderly protests that avoid violence under any circumstances.

The inquiry commission should examine controversial passages in Taiwan’s Assembly and Parade Law, such as restrictions on where people are allowed to demonstrate, and determine whether they need to be liberalized to protect citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and assembly. The commission should also investigate claims that police are selectively enforcing the law.

The visit by Chen, the most senior Chinese official to visit Taiwan since it split from China in 1949, and the recent arrests of several opposition party figures are raising concerns that that President Ma and his Kuomintang Party may rollback democratic freedoms.