Not that we didn’t know that already. Go here for the proof.

Via Atrios.

Not surprisingly, there’s been a torrent of articles on Jiang’s resignation and Hu’s ascension over the past few days, but this one by supreme China Hand Ross Terrill is one of the few I’ve found that avoids the usual clichees (“Hu is an enigmatic man…”) and offers at least a modicum of substance.

Terrillo doesn’t say it in so many words, but I don’t think he’s expecting any dramatic reforms or changes from Hu anytime soon, if ever. Instead, he sees Hu as enjoying the “tranquillity of timidity,” where things are peaceful everyone knows huge problems continue to boil right below the surface.

Hu sincerely believes the main danger is instability. But it may really be political stagnation, as the economy and society leap ahead. The communist engineers seem unable to do more than tinker with great challenges. The big banks need to become commercial institutions instead of fingers on the hand of the party-state.

The talks, leading to more talks, on the North Korea crisis that China is orchestrating are no solution to a grave problem that could eventually leave Beijing facing Japan as a military giant. Peripheral parts of the Chinese empire, whether outside Beijing’s rule like Taiwan or inside it like Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet, won’t stop wanting a say in their future just because Beijing chants its dogma of “One China”.

Before long, extensive political change will hit Beijing, but it’s unlikely to come simply as a result of Hu taking over from Jiang. Does stability come from periodic oiling of the top political machinery plus law and order policies directed at the populace below? Or from safety valves of debate at the top and electoral politics, however cacophonous, feeding in from below? History says the latter. Democracies such as Australia and the US go on for centuries with only incremental constitutional change. Very few modern authoritarian regimes have lasted long.

The unity of timidity is better than chaos, certainly, but it merely postpones fundamental issues as did the Brezhnev era in Moscow. It is not a substitute for updating an anachronistic political system to match a booming economic system.

If you are a junkie for Chinese political news, you’ll want to read this.

Apparently the Chinese academic community is in a bit of an uproar now that the CCP has ordered the shutdown of the much esteemed Strategy and Management journal after it published an article on North Korea.

A leading academic journal that covered diplomacy, domestic politics and economics, Strategy and Management was respected at home and abroad for publishing thought-provoking, independent views that sometimes challenged government policies.

One of the editors said it was ordered to stop publication because of an article in its fourth issue this year that was highly critical of North Korea. The editor did not specify which article. “It may be stopped forever,” the editor said. “It was the State Press and Publication Administration that informed us.”

….”If it’s been asked to stop for good, I think that will be a very, very bad case,” said a Chinese foreign relations expert at a prestigious university in Beijing who declined to be named.

“It could indicate a tightening of political censorship,” said the scholar, who had published several articles in Strategy and Management.

Foreign news reports said the article pinned the blame for the nuclear crisis on the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, and criticized him for trying to maintain a system of “dynastic rule.”

The magazine’s closure highlights how sensitive relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have become.

….The article was so sensitive that all copies of the issue were recalled. “The magazines arrived on Aug. 17, but we were asked not to distribute them,” said Gu Lei, an official at the International Post Office in Beijing, which distributes magazines and newspapers.

Let’s hope the reforms continue, and thanks to the reader who clued me into this story.

Thanks to the Longbow Papers, I came across an article by E.L. Doctorow that performs something of a miracle. It seethes with anger and yet it is restrained and poetic. It shouts out at the reader, yet the language is soft and gentle. While you can sense the raw emotion underneath, the style and tone are immaculately disciplined and perfect.

I’m going to give a small sample, but you really should read the entire piece at Joseph’s site.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

Sometimes the use of a clichee is justified: Read the whole thing.

It’s a been one year since neocon grand dragon Richard Perle uttered the following statement:

And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.

My, what a difference a year makes. It’s important that all of us go back to the heady days of our march into Baghdad, up to the Top Gun landing on the aircraft carrier. We need to remember that language like Perle’s was absolutely commonplace then. Now, the leaders are revising history, scolding us with admonitions like, “No one ever said it would be easy,” and “War is always a long, hard slog.”

Boy, those sure weren’t the words they used when they were convincing us to attack. Then, it was all flowers and chocolates, a sweet liberation, rapid elections — all for free, paid for by Iraqi oil. Heh.

Seems like Americans overseas are being denied access to a federal site for voter registration. Who’s behind it? And why? You have got to read this to believe it.

On Monday, the International Herald Tribune reported that the Pentagon is restricting international access to the Web site for the Federal Voting Assistance Program, the official government agency that helps Americans living abroad register to vote in the November election. According to the IHT, Americans who connect to the Internet using one of several foreign Internet service providers have reported difficulty logging in to the voting-assistance site. The Pentagon confirmed that it is blocking traffic from these ISPs — which provide Internet service in 25 countries — but it declined to say why.

“This is a completely partisan thing,” one Defense Department voting official stationed in Europe told Salon. The official, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being fired from her position, is one of the many people in the department assigned to help both uniformed military personnel as well as American civilians register to vote. She described the Pentagon as extremely diligent in its efforts to register soldiers stationed overseas — for instance, this official had been told by the department to personally meet with all of the soldiers in her unit in order to help them register. But the department has ignored its mandate to help overseas civilians who want to vote, the official said

Where do they get the authority to do this sort of thing? Who’s pulling the strings? Where’s the outrage, as old Bob Dole used to shout at us.

Via Kos

Dan Gillmore thinks it may be, and points to an article that says the following:

The internet’s most popular search engine Google has been accused of supporting Chinese internet controls by omitting contentious news stories from search results in China….

Researchers at Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT), a US company that provides technology for circumventing internet restrictions in China, have discovered that the recently-launched Chinese version of Google News omits blocked news sources from its results….

Google admits to omitting some news sources within China but says this is meant to improve the quality of the service.

“In order to create the best possible news search experience for our users, we sometimes decide not to include some sites, for a variety of reasons,” says a statement issued by the company. “These sources were not included because their sites are inaccessible.”

Bill Xia, chief executive of DIT, however, accuses Google of reinforcing Chinese internet restrictions by leaving some sites off its list. “When people do a search they will get the wrong impression that the whole world is saying the same thing,” he told New Scientist.

DIT enables Chinese internet users to get around government restrictions by connecting to computers located outside of the country.

Some users recently reported that Google’s Chinese news search returned different results depending when they searched using a computer based outside of China. The claims were substantiated by researchers who connected to computers inside the country.

In the past, other search companies have also been accused of supporting Chinese internet controls. In 2002, for instance, Yahoo’s Chinese search engine was modified to provide only limited results for queries related to the banned religious group, Falun Gong.

And Xia notes that Google recently acquired a stake in a Chinese search company called Baidu.com.

Ben Edelman, of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, part of Harvard University in the US, says Google will face increasing pressure from the Chinese government to adhere to its restrictions as it extends its reach.

“As Google gains more interest in China and even comes to have financial interests in China, it’s hard to imagine Google won’t do so,” he told New Scientist.

Gillmor points readers to a conversation over at Slashdot — but I’m at work and will have to check it later on.

A very strange and poignant story in today’s Times tells of a man in China who has volutneered to do the oddest public service: he tries to spot potential suicides as they approach a bridge, and stop them from jumping. Quite amazing.

By his own count, Mr. Chen, who is in his mid-30’s, has stopped 42 people from jumping since he began his patrols a year ago. He has talked them down and wrestled them down. He will hike up his pant leg to show a deep laceration from one tussle. He also has watched five people slip out of his grasp and fall to their deaths in the Yangtze.

It is a job that has required him to become a detective looking for clues in the souls of strangers. He stands on the southern end of the bridge, wearing sunglasses and a cap to block the boiling sun. He does not smile or talk much. He watches people, particularly the solitary figures staring down on the coffee-colored water.

“It is very easy to recognize,” he said of potential jumpers. “A person walks without spirit.”

Mr. Chen says he comes to the bridge because someone needs to – suicide is now the leading cause of death for Chinese aged 15 to 34. The Yangtze River Bridge, like major bridges in other countries, attracts a steady stream of jumpers. At least 1,000 people are believed to have jumped since it opened in 1968. The bridge is a national landmark in China; it is also more than 100 yards above the roiling Yangtze.

“It’s a place that has a 100 percent success rate,” said Fang Xueming, an attendant who works at the portable bathrooms on the bridge.

Chen has become somewhat of a celebrity, and people considering suicide call him constantly for psychological help.

It’s interesting that bush has only one response to Kerry’s charges that he’s bungled things in Iraq: “It’s just one more example of Kerry adopting a new position on the war. “ (Paraphrase.)

That’s effective in a way – it makes a great soundbite, and it re-emphasizes the key message that Kerry is a spineless flip-flopper who can’t be trusted with America’s safety. The warbloggers squeal with glee when they hear this. Their man is so macho, he stays the course and Kerry is such a putz.

But this evasiveness can’t go on forever, especially as the crisis continues to spiral out of control and Americans are assaulted with the news of one defeat after another, not to mention one beheading after another. And Kerry is, finally, going after bush’s Achilles heel.

Flip-flopping. This is the major theme of the bush campaign, and it’s permeated nearly every campaign commercial and every reference to his opponent. And now it’s going to reach a new decibel level, because it is the only thing shrub can say to defend himself: “How can you listen to someone who keeps flip-flopping on the issues?”

Not only is this an unfair question, it is a wholly inadequate and flippant response to the incredibly serious issues Kerry is raising. Even if Kerry’s question is proof that he’s flip-flopped (which it isn’t), the fact remains that george has fucked up big-time and he owes us answers.

I won’t go on about bush refusing to accept any responsibility for the shit he causes or his blatant lies about how well things are going. We all know about those things — freedom on the march, prosperity around the corner, etc.. But I’ve given a lot of thought lately to the “flip-flopping” question, and I think it needs to be addressed.

Mark Kleiman flip-flopped on Iraq. So has Kevin Drum, William F. Buckley, Richard Lugar, Josh Marshall, Andrew Sullivan, George Will and countless others. Even I flip-flopped from my very briefly held belief that maybe getting rid of Saddam might be worth the effort (it took me about five minutes to change my mind). This isn’t a symptom of spinelessness, but of our insistence on looking honestly at what’s going on. I have infinitely more respect for those who have changed their minds about Iraq based on honesty than for those who insist on “staying the course” when that course has proven to be a reckless one, with nothing in sight except more needless deaths and unending misery.

Sometimes “flip-flopping” is a very smart thing. If Hitler had flip-flopped in 1942 and allowed the doomed Sixth Army to fall back from Stalingrad before it was surrounded, our world might be a very different place today. Instead, he was bold, he stayed the course, he didn’t turn back — and the flower of the German army was obliterated in the most horrific battle ever fought at any time or in any nation.

So let’s keep it in perspective. It’s not always weak to change your strategy or your point of view. Sometimes it’s a sign of maturity and intelligence. And simply trying to negate what Kerry has said on the grounds that he’s changed his position isn’t good enough, whether the charge is true or false (and in this instance it’s hands-down false).

As the carnage continues and our goals become increasingly elusive, Kerry’s points are going to resonate with a lot of voters. This is truly bush’s Achille heel, and his usual battery of maudlin slogans, platitudes and sugar-coating won’t protect him. McCain, Hagel and Lugar this past weekend all accused bush of misrepresenting the terrible crisis we face in Iraq. Are they all flip-floppers? Of course not. They’re saying the current approach isn’t working and we damned well better come to terms with that fact before it’s too late.

This was the entire focus of Kerry’s excellent speech yesterday in New York, and Sullivan writes that if he makes this his platform, it just might propel Kerry to victory.

I’m a realist and I know how tough the battle for Kerry is (though it’s not nearly as grim as the warbloggers are painting it). But it’s highly encouraging to see that he’s found his voice and his message. This is Kerry’s version of “It’s the economy, stupid.” I’ve been waiting for it a long time, and I hope it’s not too late, now that he’s been so drowned out by the tidal wave of negative noise and smears, utterly without precedent in an American election.

I still have faith in the American people, and believe that if they see just how bad things are in Iraq, just how despicably the administration has lied about it, they will be forced to ask themselves: Is this really the best man to have at his disposal all of America’s military might? After four years, has he demonstrated real leadership and accomplished meaningful results that justify the bloodshed and America’s brutalized reputation? (“Results” is a word he loves to toss around, with zero supporting evidence.) And if they ask themselves these questions, reality may seep in.

So let’s not ease the pressure; let’s treat shrub as a grown-up, and demand that he account for his actions. We know he’s “different” from most grown-ups, that he can’t testify without sitting on Dick Cheney’s lap, that he can’t think fast enough to answer questions at a press conference. But he’s still the president; we have a right to demand real accountability, not just feel-good clichees.

There is only one issue now, and that’s Iraq. If Kerry can focus attention on what’s really happening, bush is doomed, because his failure there will go down in history as one of the vainest, stupidest, most pointless episodes in all of America’s history.