This is scary as hell. Be sure to follow the link to the site that’s saying these nutty things, and remember, these are the people our dear leader listens to and answers too. Absolutely frightening.

There’s a lot of great stuff at this blog on many, many China-related issues, so please have a look.

It’s just the price you have to pay when you do business with an authoritarian state.

Microsoft’s new Chinese internet portal has banned the words “democracy” and “freedom” from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing’s political censors.

Users of the joint-venture portal, formally launched last month, have been blocked from using a range of potentially sensitive words to label personal websites they create using its free online blog service, MSN Spaces.

Virtually all principles and ideals vanish before the great god, Money.

After reading this post, I finally got around to blogrolling the guy. When I got to the third paragraph I was laughing so hard, people were coming to my desk to see what I was reading.

The thread that keeps on giving, now at a record 311 comments, is about to be bumped off my homepage. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say — in other words, it’s about to go to thread heaven. It was fun while it lasted.

Several commenters in the thread came up with unsolicited ideas for making this a more interesting site, and perhaps even a profitable one (that’ll be the day!). Amazon book links and book reviews…a Peking Duck gift shop with T-shirts and coffee mugs…periodic open threads to keep comments concentrated….

I’m thinking over all of them, and I appreciate the input. As i said in the Magic Thread, I’m not convinced a blog as small as this can support open threads, which hold their appeal based on steady contributions; they are usually successful on mega-blogs like Atrios and Daily Kos. But I’m willing to give it a try. Shall we consider this TPD’s first open thread?

But be wary — it’s the Reverend Moon’s Washington Times doing the reporting.

A highly classified intelligence report produced for the new director of national intelligence concludes that U.S. spy agencies failed to recognize several key military developments in China in the past decade, The Washington Times has learned.

The report was created by several current and former intelligence officials and concludes that U.S. agencies missed more than a dozen Chinese military developments, according to officials familiar with the report.

The report blames excessive secrecy on China’s part for the failures, but critics say intelligence specialists are to blame for playing down or dismissing evidence of growing Chinese military capabilities.

The report comes as the Bush administration appears to have become more critical of China’s military buildup.

Is the decibel level on the China Threat really rising or am I imagining it?

Update: Assrocket over at Powerline calls our intelligence people in China “panda-huggers” and urges swift militarization.

Here, it appears that a group of “panda-huggers” have dominated intelligence analysis on China for some years. Now we know they were wrong. There is no doubt that China has embarked on an aggressive arms buildup suited to projection of its power throughout the Far East. Which raises the question: Is Japan building warships? If not, why not?

Time to get serious! Batten down the hatches and get those missles ready.

Links via Instapuppy (yes, I admit I vist his site now and then).

Whether you think Chen is a traitor, an alarmist, an opportunitst or a hero, one thing is certain: his defection has catapulted the topic of Chinese espionage into the global spotlight and is fast creating a public relations nightmare for China at a time when it would rather the world focus on the upcoming Beijing Olympics and all the great things China is doing to prepare for them. No such luck.

A week later, the Chinese spy affair is no joke. The incredulity has been tempered by news of two other Chinese security officials backing Chen and promising supporting documents. Now the Australian and Chinese governments are facing questions.

Potentially, it could be China’s worst nightmare, the beginning of new global scrutiny of its human rights abuses before the crowning ceremony of the nation’s economic and political emergence, the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

For the Howard Government, there is concern about why – at a time of close relations between Australia and China – it rebuffed Chen, and shunned a rich seam of information about China’s spy network in Australia, China and other countries.

From the mundane to the dramatic, from petty vandalism to high-tech eavesdropping and abductions, Chinese dissidents have a wealth of tales of Chinese harassment and surveillance.

It has always been assumed that China had an active spy network in Australia; every nation uses espionage and some intelligence officials are even formally revealed to foreign governments. But intelligence experts say the Chinese spy differently, relying heavily on informants in the Chinese diaspora. And what is emerging is a spy network far more extensive and more active than many thought. Just as damaging for China is new evidence of horrific and systematic abuses against dissidents back in their homeland.

Chen made the initial claims but, as he has gone back into hiding, Hao Fengjun, a member of China’s state security bureau who sought asylum in February, has filled out the picture of a sophisticated and widespread network of intelligence gathering.

A member of the notorious “610” unit that prosecuted Falun Gong in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, he came to Australia with a file of highly sensitive information downloaded from his work computer. “It is not a question of 1000 spies in Australia, it is a network of informants, recruited and directed from outside the Chinese diplomatic missions in Australia. These persons report directly to the state security bureau in China,” he says.

A search of news headlines will show you that this is now a major international incident, and Australia comes across nearly as bad as China. (Well, not quite.) Reading the article cited above (especially the begining), I couldn’t help think this was movie material — the dashing young diplomat with wife and kids fleeing the torturing, blood-stained Chinese Gestapo only to find he was delivering himself to the enemy….

Pity, that Australia decided to cast itself as a villain when it could have been the knight in shining armor. The Australian media are having a field day savaging Howard for the way he botched this up.

The defection – or rather the attempted defection – of Chinese consular official Chen Yonglin is proving to be most revealing of the thinking in the Australian foreign policy establishment, and of our government’s singular lack of courage…

Make no mistake: in Beijing they are horrified by this defection. They know that if western intelligence gets the opportunity to thoroughly debrief Chen it will be a serious blow.

All this being so, Australia’s astonishing refusal to grant immediate asylum, forcing Chen to go underground rather than receiving immediate sanctuary (with the concomitant debriefing), requires some consideration.

“Some consideration” — how’s that for Australian understatedness? What he means is the government should be drawn and quartered. And it will be, at least in the eyes of the world.

Apparently I’m not the only one who views the plight of 17-year old Chinese illegal immigrant Young Zheng with at least a bit of compassion (see this post and its comments for context). This is good news, and I hope it gets better.

A federal court in Philadelphia ruled Thursday that a 17-year-old Chinese boy cannot be deported until he gets another day in court.

The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means the government will not put Young Zheng on a China-bound plane today as planned. The Chinese teen fears he will be killed by his own smugglers if forced to return to China.

“This is a huge victory,” said John F. Sullivan, the attorney representing Zheng.

But it is only the first step. Sullivan must persuade the Board of Immigration Appeals in Washington to reopen Zheng’s asylum claim. Sullivan does not anticipate a ruling on that motion until Tuesday at the earliest.

The government has agreed to do whatever the court orders. I now see this as another political hot potato because it is a story that tugs at readers’ heartstrings and is receiving widespread attention. Fair or not, those factors just might help Young Zheng stay in America. And I hope that’s what happens.

Thanks to Gordon for emailing me with this tip. (And be sure to read his excellent new post on statistics that let Mao off the hook for mass murder. Hah.)

It’s time for Fox to fire Bill O’Reilly. They won’t (duh), but there is now ample cause — proof of contempt for basic ethics and flagrant abuse of his bully pulpit. Read the transcripts carefully to see what that bastard did.

A blogger makes an intresting comparison between China’s new policy of registering all bloggers and site managers with the controversial proposal from the FEC to regulate blogs that receive campaign contributions.

[H]ere’s the clincher: the U.S. Federal Elections Commission is proposing campaign finance restrictions for blogs with political content. The official Blogger blog, buzz.blogspot.com, says the rules would affect bloggers in three ways: mandatory disclaimers, registration as a political committee for team blogs, and filing of campaign expenditure reports. But you don’t see major headlines like “U.S. authorities declare war on blogs,” do you?

Sorry to have to disagree. First, if you google “Bloggers + FEC” you’ll see that there have indeed been plenty of stories in the major media on the issue. None says the US is “declaring war on blogs” because it wouldn’t be true. The US is imposing possibly unfair regulations on blogs that would force them to comply with campaign finance laws, and that’s at the heart of it. There is nothing about what bloggers can and cannot say. I don’t see a crackdown on US bloggers. A lot of bloggers are calling this a huge threat, but it can’t be seen in the same light as China’s Web censorship.

In China, blogs are often deleted, and bloggers who write the wrong things about those touchy subjects like TSM and FLG can disappear into the night. I’m not in favor of what the FEC is trying to do. But it has nothing to do with censorship or scare tactics, just whether the Internet should be regulated like other media when it comes to campaign money.

So that settles that debate.

A senior Australian minister said on Thursday that a Chinese diplomatic defector pleading for political asylum in Australia is in no danger of being sent home.

Chen Yonglin, a 37-year-old political affairs consul at China’s Sydney consulate, has told Australian authorities he fears for his family’s safety and would rather die than return to China.

“Mr Chen is in Australia, he is being dealt with in accordance with the ordinary process of Australian immigration law and he is at no risk of being sent back to China,” Health Minister Tony Abbott, a close ally of Prime Minister John Howard, told reporters.

Howard himself tried to calm concerns that Chen’s fate might be influenced by Canberra’s booming trade and economic ties with Beijing.

“Let me simply say that, just as in relation to the U.S., we have steadfastly refused to mix trade with politics and strategy and national security — so it is in relation to China, and I’m sure that our Chinese friends will know that,” Howard told a business lunch in Sydney.

Chen had said his job, which mainly consisted of persecuting FLG members, was killing him.

…Chen said his role at China’s Sydney consulate persecuting Falun Gong practitioners had given him nightmares. Falun Gong is an amalgam of religions, meditation and exercises that the Chinese government considers an evil cult.

“My spirit is severely distressed for my sin at working for the unjustified authority in a somewhat evil way and my hair turns white quickly in the last four years for frequent nightmares,” Chen wrote.

Chen described Falun Gong as a cult with vulnerable and innocent members and said he had feared being forced to return home to continue monitoring Falun Gong affairs.

“I would rather die than be forced to do so … I have no choice but to seek asylum in Australia,” he wrote.

I still suspect there’s more to this story. Meanwhile, this is certainly good news.