Free Republic

Since the CCP initiated its ‘Zero Covid’ policy several months ago, millions of Chinese civilians have endured immense suffering.China’s ruling communist party (CCP) recently announced it is doubling down on its “Zero Covid” strategy, wherein it is forcibly locking down and oppressing millions of Chinese citizens with the ostensible goal of completely stamping out the respiratory virus. A little over a week ago, members of the CCP’s ruling Politburo Standing Committee held a meeting in which party leadership reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining the government’s current lockdown policies in major cities like Shanghai. According to a report from the China...

Divide and conquer, or divide and rule, was a maxim Chinese strategist Sun Tzu stressed in 500 B.C. Sun wrote that the supreme military commander "subjugates other people's armies without engaging in battle, captures other people's fortified cities without attacking them." Defeating an enemy "without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence." In the 4th century B.C., Macedonia's Philip II (Alexander the Great's father) demonstrated a genius for the type of duplicitous diplomacy that weakens and divides. The authoritarian Philip seeded resentment and aggravated old feuds in rival Greek city-states. Democratic cities were especially susceptible to his mix of threat,...

"I've known Xi Jinping for a long time. ... He doesn't have a democratic -- with a small 'd' -- bone in his body," said Joe Biden in his first press conference as president, and then he ambled on: "He's one of the guys, like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, who thinks that autocracy is the wave of the future -- democracy can't function in an ever-complex world. "It is clear, absolutely clear ... that this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies. ... We have to prove democracy works." Thus did Biden frame...