A photo of Hainan Island taken by my friend Ben in Beijing. (Click to enlarge.)
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September 19, 2006
September 18, 2006
It’s good to see China’s Netizens making fun of their dinosaur leaders as they continue their desperate, artery-popping quest to seal off communications, as though they can just make the Internet go away. We all know it’s an uphill, losing battle, but still they press on. They may as well be chasing windmills.
Hours after the government announced new regulations tightening Beijing’s grip over foreign news agencies this week, Chinese Internet users went on a tirade.
“Dear officials,” said one anonymous posting on Netease, a popular web portal. “Since modern technology is so advanced, why don’t you invent some pills which people can take and lose their ability to think? Then you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Similar outbursts have followed the release of rules aimed at tightening the state’s grip over books, the Internet, magazines, karaoke, broadcasting, video games, satellite dishes and even children’s cartoons.
With every passing year, Chinese increasingly expect freer information from varied sources with less government spin, to the consternation of a ruling Communist Party long reliant on an information monopoly to bolster its political monopoly.
The growing appreciation among young Chinese for unfettered news — and their ability to convey those opinions rapidly across cyberspace — is a key reason why Beijing will ultimately lose the information war, analysts say, even if it wins some near-term battles.
“The fact that Chinese officials are trying harder and harder means they’re actually having less and less control,” said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley, journalism school. “Between now and the Olympics, it will continue to weaken. They’re fighting a losing game.”
So the question is, why do they bother? It only makes them look senile and calcified, and any short-term successes will, as the article says, be wiped out by their inevitable final defeat. No matter; it’s a fight to the death, and instead of embracing reform and striving to use the technology to their better advantage, they can only swing their fists in the dark as they struggle to hold onto the total control that the Internet has made obsolete. Give it up, ye Chinese censors.
This article in today’s CSM is sure to ruffle the feathers of my friends for whom the notion of an independent Taiwan is sacrosanct – a notion I fully understand but have never actively lobbied for, as I believe the realpolitik of the situation makes it unrealistic and perhaps an invitation for major headaches. (As much as it hurts, I remain in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it school,” at least for now.) The article, written by Fei-Ling Wang, a professor of international affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, seems to me hopelessly optimistic.
Since the time of its first emperor, Qin Shihuang, China had been under centralized, authoritarian rule. But when the ROC was formed in 1912, hopes were high for democratic political change. However, external and internal wars, self-serving warlords, and abysmal ROC leaders tragically retarded China’s political progress. In 1949, a peasant rebellion influenced by communist ideology created the PRC and drove the ROC offshore to Taiwan. Mao Zedong, the self-proclaimed new Qin Shihuang, perpetuated and intensified mainland China’s despotic political tradition.
Today’s China is once again on the verge of parting from its Qin system. Yet democratic reform in the PRC is still far from a certainty, much less a success.
Fortunately, there are reasons to be optimistic. For one thing, the ROC has survived since 1949 and is prospering today. Over the past decades, the Taiwanese have proudly proven that Western ideas of capitalism, freedom, and the rule of law can thrive together with Chinese culture. Taiwan has gradually but successfully transformed from an authoritarian, one-party system into a young democracy, driven by the combined force of bottom-up and top-down efforts, as well as conducive foreign influences. The Taiwan story of economic growth and political change should be considered a great success story for all Chinese, on and off the island.
Unfortunately, the Taiwan story has been grossly discounted and marginalized by leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Rather than viewing Taiwan as a viable force of political opposition and a model of successful political change, China sees the ROC as just a local regime taking refuge under foreign protection and seeking independence. And Beijing’s stubborn refusal to enact political reforms has made full independence even more attractive to many Taiwanese. Beijing has also successfully portrayed Taipei as an anti-China traitor that has harmed and divided the Motherland. Many Chinese are therefore simply led to despise and reject Taiwan’s story of success.
This dreadful situation must change. The political rivalry from Taipei should stimulate rather than stifle, China’s democratization. Instead of propelling China into imperialism and militarism, Chinese nationalism could become a powerful driving force to constrain rising Chinese power and reorient it toward democracy. Taiwan must act as a catalyst for this because only with a democratic, free, and peaceful China as a responsible stakeholder in the international community can the Taiwan story securely continue. And only by assisting the peaceful rise and change of China can Taiwan solidify lasting support from the US.
To successfully help China change politically and rise peacefully, the Taiwanese craving to declare independence – while understandable – must be sacrificed.
Well, simply saying this awful situation has to change doesn’t mean very much. Sometimes awful situations, like Stalin’s tyrrany, go on and on, spanning generations. The professor goes on to praise Ma’s approach of upholding the one-China priciple if, and only if, the PRC’s government becomes accountable to its people. Well, it sounds good on paper, but to me it seems awfully dreamy. It concludes:
Only when the Chinese government is accountable to its own people can (and should) there be a peaceful rise of China. Toward that end, the democratic, free, and Chinese Taiwan will work wonders when it genuinely – but conditionally – unites with China.
What can one say aside from “Don’t hold your breath”? As it stands, the idea of unification with the PRC draws snorts and snickers from nearly everyone I’ve spoken with in Taiwan. I would be way more optimistic if the PRC were truly living up to its agenda of reform and not heading backwards in the area that matters most to the people of Taiwan – freedom of expression and government accountability. They like their freedom to protest and demonstrate here, and to choose the media that appeal to them (11 cable news channels in a country of 23 million!). Until such freedoms become a given in China, the idea of unification will be laughed at by most Taiwanese. And sadly, I don’t see the PRC coming around to Taiwan’s model of individual liberty anytime soon.
Put this in the News of the Weird category. German art students in Xi’an do the darndest things.
A German art student briefly took up a place among China’s famed Terracotta Warriors over the weekend — only to be discovered, disrobed and sent home.
Pablo Wendel snuck into a pit housing around 2,000 ancient lifesize pottery warriors and horses on Saturday afternoon, donned the military costume he had made himself, and took up a position on a small pedestal he had brought along.
He stood there, motionless and unblinking, for a couple of minutes until police found him, the Xinhua news agency said. The 26-year-old had his costume confiscated and was sent from Xian, the World Heritage site where the warriors are located, back to the eastern city of Hangzhou, where he studies performance art.
What would the first emperor say?
That’s the actual title of today’s NYT editorial – the kind of piece we’re seeing more and more frequently as the media finally start to shed their 911-generated fear of dissent and rediscover their intended role as watchdog and critic. The piece’s thinly veiled message will be missed by no one who possesses minimal gray matter: our president is an out-of-control egomaniac who believes he can do whatever he chooses, with no legal restraint, in the name of national security.
Watching the president on Friday in the Rose Garden as he threatened to quit interrogating terrorists if Congress did not approve his detainee bill, we were struck by how often he acts as though there were not two sides to a debate. We have lost count of the number of times he has said Americans have to choose between protecting the nation precisely the way he wants, and not protecting it at all.
On Friday, President Bush posed a choice between ignoring the law on wiretaps, and simply not keeping tabs on terrorists. Then he said the United States could rewrite the Geneva Conventions, or just stop questioning terrorists. To some degree, he is following a script for the elections: terrify Americans into voting Republican. But behind that seems to be a deeply seated conviction that under his leadership, America is right and does not need the discipline of rules. He does not seem to understand that the rules are what makes this nation as good as it can be.
The debate over prisoners is not about whether some field agent can dunk Osama bin Laden’s head to learn the location of the ticking bomb, as one senator suggested last week. It is about whether the United States can confront terrorism without shredding our democratic heritage. This nation is built on the notion that the rules restrain our behavior, because we know we’re fallible. Just look at the hundreds of men in Guantánamo Bay, many guilty of nothing, facing unending detention because Mr. Bush did not want to follow the rules after 9/11.
Bush really believes in Presidential Infallability, even after Katrina proved to us all that our president is grossly incompetent. (Sure, proof was already abundantly available to those who for many months had been carefully watching the disintegrating situation in Iraq. But Katrina brought it closer to home, and made the president’s ineptitude and callousness undeniable – the only positive side of the tragedy.) I’d like to think that after the Republican contingent led by John McCain forces Bush to compromise on the interrogation laws it will force the little man to be more humble and to face the fact that laws apply to the president, too. But that won’t happen; Bush has already proven time and again he will do whatever he chooses, led on by a higher authority. I always cringed when over-zealous liberals claimed Bush was as bad as Osama Bin Laden – and I still do. No, it’s a false statement, but increasingly I can see that there are nevertheless some strking similarities between the two men in regard to their perception of good and evil and of how far one can go to achieve one’s ends. In this regard, in their highly simplistic and narcissistic worldviews, these similarities cannot be denied.
September 17, 2006
Joe was never a favorite of mine. The former Republican congressman turned MSNBC newsman succeeded in turning me off again and again with his conservative outlook and occasional tirades against all things progressive. But credit where due: in recent weeks he has joined the ranks of Republicans who dare stand up against The Worst President Ever, and to finally tell it like it is. This is going to hurt, comng at a moment when the president is trying frantically to draw the war-torn GOP together in time to keep the Dems from sweeping the elections a mere eight weeks from now.
I can’t help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church’s Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit.
How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?
How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?
Easy. Blame George W. Bush.
Escaping political death by attacking an unpopular president is hardly new — especially since most endangered politicians have the loyalty of a starving billy goat. But this is Dubya’s Washington, where the White House has pushed around, bullied and betrayed GOP lawmakers for years.
Republican House members and senators always believed that this White House took them for granted. But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, most of them had no choice but to sulk in their cloakrooms, listen to Debby Boone on their iPods and take it like a man. Bush was a rock star among the party faithful through the 2004 election, so crossing this popular commander in chief was not an option. That’s not to say that Old Bulls didn’t privately growl about how they were treated better when their old nemesis was still frolicking with an intern. So what if Bill Clinton misbehaved? At least that president found time to personally negotiate terms of subcommittee markups — even if he was defiling the Oval Office at the same time.
There is much more very funny, biting stuff in this column. Read it all and pass it along to your Republican friends.
Of course, it’s tempting to ask Joe where he was in 2001 when BushCo was given rock-star status. But no matter – better late than never. This is all part of a long-overdue avalanche of damnation falling upon the Cheney administration. And it’s a Republican avalanche. Is there something cynical about it? Of course. There’s little that they know today that wasn’t known over the past five years. But as Joe says, it was impossible to turn on the president when he was riding high after 911 and in the early days of Mission Accomplished. Now he’s not so popular and he threatens his party’s electability, so he’s fair game.
The piece de resistance, of course, occurred when earlier this week the GOP Gang of Four (John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell) rejected Bush’s sleazy efforts to obfuscate the Geneva Conventions so that America can define torture however we choose. The four were all actual soldiers who understand just how terrible Bush’s meddling would be for the boys on the ground. This was to be Bush’s great act of unity, to bring all the Republicans together making a loud noise over the “War on Terror” in order to deflect attention from the disaster in Iraq. There’s a certain poetic justice seeing his efforts torpedoed by his own party. Words cannot express just how vile and deceitful Bush is being on the issue of torture – so deceitful that one former Bush worshipper says Bush must eventually be charged with war crimes.
First, let’s take the House, then move on to war crimes. As I now say with just about every post on domestic politics, the only thing that can keep us, the people of the United States for whom this government exists, from winning back the country is the bickering, message-free Democratic Party. If they let this slip through their fingers, I will declare them defunct, dysfunctional and utterly useless. This is their last chance. If they blow it, time for a new party.
September 16, 2006
I’m taking it easy this weekend. Instead of blogging, I’m just going to point readers to two interesting and related articles, You Can’t be Lei Feng All the Time and China Discourages Teenage Heroism. Enjoy.
The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies
By FRANK RICH
Published: September 17, 2006
RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush’s 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC’s Path to 9/11 so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: ‘For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.””
No kidding: The Path to 9/11 was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that ‘we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them.’ Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a ‘truce’ and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.
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