Posted on 05/17/2005 9:44:56 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
May 17, 2005
A Clampdown in China
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
BEIJING
The most important person in the world right now may be Hu Jintao, and we're beginning to get a better sense of what kind of a leader he is: disappointing.
More than anyone else, President Hu will determine whether China can continue to surge and whether its rise will be stable and peaceful. Ever since he vaulted into the top ranks of the Communist Party in 1992, there have been vigorous debates about whether he is a closet reformer or a closet hard-liner, but now that he has been the Communist leader for two and a half years, we can form a tentative conclusion: the second camp seems to have been right.
Mr. Hu appears to be an intuitive authoritarian who believes in augmenting the tools of repression, not easing them. Most distressing, Mr. Hu has tugged China backward politically. He has presided over a steady crackdown on dissent, the news media, religion, Internet commentary and think tanks. China now imprisons far more journalists than any other country.
At The New York Times, we've seen this crackdown firsthand. Zhao Yan, a colleague who works for the Times bureau in Beijing, was seized last September and tossed into prison. Why? We don't know for sure, because Mr. Zhao has never been tried and neither his lawyer nor his family members have even been allowed to see him.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They projected too much of their wish into Hu when he rose to the top.
Ping!
If that is a Ping list can I be on it?
The New York Times doesn't see evil until one of their own is victimized by it. Between Mao and Stalim communism is responsible for over 70 million deaths. That's not enough for the New York Times to be against communism. But one New York Times reporter being thrown in jail is enough.
That is a China list. I have a N. Korea list, too. You just want China or both?
Both
As a side note, a NYT reporter thrown in prison. Dang, that is good news. Who cares about China.
Precisely.
OK.
Thank you.
Until the day it becomes a democracy once again China is an enemy and its leaders are not to be trusted.
Would you mind adding me to your China and N. Korea lists please?
Wasn't it briefly a democracy under Sun Yat-Sen? I'm not that familiar with that period of China's history.
Sure.
If Stalin had thrown Walter Duranty into jail, the Times might be a different paper today.
Of course, the Times can't understand why the Chinese would throw an ally like their reporter into jail.
If we send china more factories and buy more products from them they will become more democratic and their people will buy gadzillions of products from the US when they turn middle class.
To be democratic, Chinese communist rule has to end. However, before it happens, communists will do something really nasty with all those industrial base we help them develop. Current Chinese regime is basically a fascist regime. A fascist regime with modern industrial base would wreak major havoc before it goes down. Just like Nazi Germany.
I was being sarastic. Please look at my other anti chinese/free trade threads. I thought it would be obvious.
However looking back and reading some of the pro free trade idiots comments I guess I should have added a (sarcasm)
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