Tom Friedman's Chinese Dreams

Tom Friedman is a big fat idiot with a ridiculous porn-stache. There. I said it. Exhibit A (actually - there are many many examples but this is just the most recent): the vile piece of nonsense that was published as his column by the newspaper formerly known as the New York Times yesterday, extolling the virtues of the fascist Chinese state. Here is the money quote:

"One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."

Friedman should be forced to go and try to work as a journalist in China for a year (or better yet, a coal miner), and then come back and talk about what an enlightened "green" dictatorship they are running over there. Forget about human rights, forced abortion, the Tibetans, the Uighurs, the horrible illegal brick kilns filled with child slave labor, the rivers that have turned black from industrial waste, blah blah blah; they banned plastic bags! China will save us all!

Three Pulitzer Prizes. This idiot has won three Pulitzers. Honest to Betsy.

On the bright side, maybe this will help make more people aware of what an absolute blathering hypocrite of a moron Friedman has become. From his sasquatchian carbon footprint to his fawning leadership of the Van Jones mutual admiration society, I think we may be seeing the jumping of the shark by this fool. At least I hope so. But then again, this is the New York Times - home of the execrable Maureen Dowd, so my hope is probably badly misplaced.

UPDATE: FWIW, A guy has started a blog after reading this atrocious article calling on the NYT to fire Friedman.

Sphere: Related Content

Seeking truth from facts

The International Campaign for Tibet highlighted an interesting Xinhua editorial earlier this week in a post on their blog. The Xinhua article was about "mass incidents" in China, specifically one at a steel mill in Jilin province, and criticized the government for saying that the reason for these incidents was that those who rose up against the authorities "don't know the truth." This editorial says that if this is the real cause of anti-government actions, then simply telling the citizens involved "the truth" should be sufficient to stop them from striking out against officialdom. Now, Xinhua is of course talking about the kind of localized protests and anti-government violence that occurs all over China every day (some 90,000 times a year, apparently), but ICT's Stewart Watters makes the point that:

One of the challenges that Tibetans and their supporters face is to reach a point where commentators like Huang Guan or Chinese officials or ordinary Chinese citizens can begin to draw parallels between their own mistrust of the way the government characterizes and responds to mass incidents, and the factors that lie behind the Tibetan mistrust of Beijing.

Good point!

Sphere: Related Content

Xu Zhiyong

Great editorial today in Wash Post about Xu. The lede is priceless and a stinging indictment of the current US approach to China:

AT THE CONCLUSION of the Strategic Economic Dialogue on July 28, the United States and China issued a news release affirming "the importance of the rule of law to our two countries." One day later, Chinese police led prominent legal scholar Xu Zhiyong out of his apartment to be detained indefinitely.

I hope someone in the White House, Foggy Bottom or Treasury bothers to read it and takes a moment to absorb.

Here is a Xu quote that inspires me to have faith in the Chinese people despite their evil government:

"I strive to be a worthy Chinese citizen, a member of the group of people who promote the progress of the nation. I want to make people believe in ideals and justice, and help them see the hope of change.”

Obama is reportedly going to China in November. There are any number of ways he could either make this situation worse or better. If he did nothing but talk about this case, in excruciating detail, it would be a serious "teachable moment" for both the Chinese and the Chinapologists in the Administration. It really is China's human rights situation in microcosm.

Sphere: Related Content

Shutting down the internet to block a single dissident

Yesterday's outages at Twitter, Facebook and Live Journal were apparently the result of an effort to target a single blogger in the Republic of Georgia who is a well known critic of Russia. That the Russians would take down several of the most popular sites on the web just to shut down one guy says something really scary. This and the Chinese DDOS attacks on the Melbourne International Film Festival because of a documentary about Rebiya Kadeer remind us that we are dealing with criminal regimes. This remains true no matter that their leaders are invited to the G8 or G20 or their countries are veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council. Sphere: Related Content

The Global Climate Change Agenda vs. Prosperity & Freedom

Excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal about freedom, the poor and climate change. Money quote:

The real source of China’s pollution problem is a state-led industrial policy geared toward production, and state-owned enterprises (especially in “dirty” sectors like coal and steel) that strive to meet production quotas, and state-appointed managers who don’t mind cutting corners in matters of safety or environmental responsibility, and typically have the political clout to insulate themselves from any public fallout.

In other words, China’s pollution problems are not a function of laissez-faire policies and rampant consumerism, but of the regime’s excessive lingering control of the economy. A freer China means a cleaner China.

There’s a lesson in this for those who believe that the world’s environmental problems call for a new era of dirigisme. And there ought to be a lesson for those who claim to understand the problems of the poor better than the poor themselves. If global warming really is the catastrophe the alarmists claim, the least they can do for its victims is not to patronize them while impoverishing them in the bargain.

Having traveled the world - including India & China - I have to say that in my experience, the poorer a place is, the dirtier it is and the converse is true (Ever been to Geneva? Do those people even have trash?). Hard to imagine why poor countries and people should want to remain poor, or even accept an enormous one-time wealth transfer (we won't be able to afford another one since we can't even really afford the first one) from rich countries to clean up their environment if the trade off is that they have to stay poor in perpetuity because they aren't allowed to grow their economy, er I mean increase their CO2 output. Shocking that less developed countries aren't leaping onto the climate bandwagon!

Sphere: Related Content

The Nork/SLORC connection

A few years back when I heard that the Burmese were getting help from the Russians to build a nuclear reactor, my thought was "Yikes, that is scary; those idiots couldn't run a fruit stand, let alone a nuclear reactor." Now there seems to be increasing evidence that Than Shwe and crew are trying to follow in the footsteps of North Korea, literally, and develop their own nuclear weapon. To say this is bad is like saying the mainstream media thinks highly of President Obama.

Apparently I was wrong to think of them as idiots. The Burmese junta formerly known as the SLORC (sounds like a bad-guy name out of Austin Powers or Get Smart, right?) is crazy, but they they are not stupid. They have watched the past decade plus of North Korean and Iranian nuclear brinksmanship -- and the corresponding attention, financial aid, business relationships, etc. it has earned for the rulers of those two regimes -- and decided "I gots to get me some of that." Their logic, which is irrefutable based on US policy responses over the past 15 years, is that if they get the bomb or even just make everyone think they are trying to or close or something, the West will stop picking on them and start showing respect.

Thanks Chris Hill - add another win to your column. And thanks also to China for all their "help" with Burma - couldn't have done it without you, as usual.

Sphere: Related Content

China's Cat & Mouse Game with Burma?

So... there is this odd piece in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine about how China is allegedly fed up with the wackadoodle Burmese junta and has been quietly reaching out to the Burmese opposition, led by Aung San Suu Kyi.  After portraying China as the victim of crafty erstwhile allies who often take it for a ride, the author breathlessly claims that: 

Indeed, recent weeks have shown China to be stealthily exploring the possibility that jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi might govern Burma as a more reliable, and perhaps more pliable, neighbor than Burma's junta does.

Ok - let's examine this claim.  First, she says China is reaching out to ASSK because they think she will be more "reliable" and "pliable" an ally than the junta.  This belief of theirs seems to be predicated on an assumption that a competent democrat will be a better ally that incompetent autocrats.  Pretty speculative stuff.  While I certainly think competent democrats would do a better job of running Burma (hell, a monkey with a dartboard would do a better job that these lunatics), it would be quite shocking if the Chinese government now thinks that a Burmese democracy would be more stable than the status quo.  This would fly in the face of everything they have ever said and done, both with regard to Burma and in China.   Seems unlikely.  Moreover, anyone who has ever met ASSK, or even knows anything about her would never use the word "pliable" to describe her.  This is one tough chick who has made unimaginable sacrifices for the sake of democratic ideals, but hey - the Chinese think she will be willing throw all that aside to preside over a more accommodating client state for their benefit?  Again, unlikely.  

Second, China has been "stealthily exploring" this possibility "in recent weeks."  And how have they been doing this, according to the author?  Through these extremely secret maneuvers: allowing UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to travel to Burma; their support in the fall of 2007 (!) for the ridiculous Gambari mission after the regime crackdown on the Saffron Revolution; and their signing of an EU-ASEAN statement calling for the release of political prisoners.  Color me underwhelmed.  During this same period, China has had numerous state visits with the junta, maintained its economic and military support for the regime, and blocked serious efforts within the UN to go after the junta.  I just don't see it, based on the thin evidence the author provides.  

So maybe she knows something more?  Could be.  There have been claims over the years by various exiled Burmese democracy activists that they have maintained relationships with Chinese contacts who have alluded to their willingness to work with a Suu Kyi-led government.  I find this more compelling than the flimsy material in the FP piece, but I have always believed that these contacts were more likely part of an intelligence gathering operation by the Chinese than a sincere expression of interest in, let alone support for, the political aspirations of Burma's democrats.  

China has undoubtedly, at times, sought to soften its image as the patron saint of the world's worst dictatorships, especially when there was something else it wanted in play.  And yes, the epic bad governance of Burma creates headaches for Beijing.  But to leap to the conclusion that China is seriously reaching out to Burma's opposition, based on such shallow activities as support for a UN mission that serves as a useful fig leaf for the Chinese, especially when compared to the deep and serious ties that China maintains to the Burmese regime, seems like a lot of wishful thinking.

My real gripe, though, is with Foreign Policy magazine for publishing such a weakly argued, sensationalistic piece.  I suppose they could be forgiven if it had been submitted by someone who was famous for passing off gibberish as important information - say, for example Tom Friedman.  But I could not understand their allowance for such a lame piece from someone I had never heard of - one Wen Liao of Longford Advisors.  So I Googled Ms. Wen.

Here is a charming quote from another of her pieces, this time on how China's involvement in the war in Sri Lanka is really a good thing for all of us:

China’s newfound assertiveness, rather than creating fear, should be seen as establishing the necessary conditions for comprehensive negotiations about the very basis of peaceful coexistence and stability in Asia: respect for all sides’ vital interests. In recent years, such an approach ran counter to America’s foreign-policy predisposition of favouring universalist doctrines over a careful balancing of national interests. With the Obama administration embracing realism as its diplomatic lodestar, China may have found a willing interlocutor.

Huh?

And then there is this, from a piece Ms. Wen did last year on Tibet, which posits that China cracked down on monk-led protests because the US did not sufficiently reassure the ChiComs that Kosovo independence was a one-off event whose logic did not apply to them (especially since they were not engaged in ethnic cleansing - oh, nevermind...): 

The West has historically stressed two bright lines with respect to Taiwan: no independence and no use of force by China. But, in view of Kosovo’s independence against the will of Serbia and without UN sanction, these bright lines have become blurred in China’s eyes.

The world is risking much by injecting ambiguity into an issue that once seemed clear-cut. Thirty-five years ago, in a supreme act of modern statecraft, Zhou En-lai and Richard Nixon signed the Shanghai Communiqué, which set the following unambiguous standard: there is only one China, and Taiwan is part of it. An unequivocal reaffirmation of that understanding, particularly by the United States in the light of its role as primary backer of Kosovo’s independence, is now needed if China is to be reassured that its unity will not be called into question.

---

Both China and the West must now avoid letting exaggerated fears create self-inflicted prophecies. Events in Tibet can only be properly viewed with the shadows cast by Kosovo and Taiwan in mind.

What the what?  

So, again, who is the mysterious Madame Wen and why do people publish this nonsense from her?  Other than the fact that she is part of Project Syndicate, and that her "consulting firm" Longford Advisors is registered in the Isle of Mann, a notorious tax haven, I could find nothing about her.  Seriously - no professional, academic or other background.  Very strange.  

Sphere: Related Content

Uighurstan Power Plays

The NYT has an excellent piece today on how the hardline policies in Xinjiang relate to the bigger picture political jockeying within China's leadership.  The profile of the notorious Wang Lequan, which also notes his relationship to his protege and equal in nastiness Zhang Qingli - the hardline party secretary in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, is some quality reportage of the kind that is often sorely lacking when it comes to China.  I hope that everyone in the Obama Administration reads this article, as it exposes a number of important currents in Chinese political thought about how to manage the restive minority nationalities.  To whit: 

- Whereas in most other countries, the fact that Xinjiang exploded into violence in the first place would normally be held against Wang and Zhang, their harsh response and their reputation for toughness (which arguably is a leading factor in the initial violence!) will probably result in their continued promotion up the ladder.

- Wang and his ilk are among a minority who believe that inter-ethnic conflict, rather than economic slowdown, has the most potential to upset the Communist Party's apple cart.  This viewpoint may be self-serving, given his position, and is definitely shaped by the fact that he has spent the past 15 years cracking-heads in Uighurland.  Unfortunately, having recognized inter-ethnic conflict as a problem, he has come to the conclusion that the way to resolve the problem is to be as harsh as possible on one hand while maximizing assimilationist policies on the other.

- Hu Jintao, who comes across on the international stage as Mr. Smooth - a polished, modern leader, is thoroughly linked up with this mentality of repression and chauvinism.  He is probably one of its strongest proponents in the system.  

And so it goes.  US and European policymakers continue to pretend that they are dealing with a modern, normal nation, while China continues to act like a 19th century colonial power.  And we are surprised when the mask slips and the true ugliness peeks out from behind the 21st century veneer.

Sphere: Related Content

Uncle Zhou in Uighurstan

Uh oh.  It looks like the regime is getting serious, now that Hu Jintao has apparently sent the thuggish Zhou Yongkang to Urumqi to "direct safety work" in the restive region.  (Original article in Chinese here.)  So what is Zhou up to?  Let's take a gander at a completely spontaneous moment, as dutifully chronicled those crack journalists over at Xinhua:

“Hai-er-ni-sha-han, a 66 year-old Uighur woman who had been struck in the head with a brick while riding on a public bus, is currently receiving medical treatment. Zhou Yong-kang visited her bedside, and leant over to carefully examine her wounds. He expressed his personal sympathies to her. Hai-er-ni-sha-han said that she has confident in the party and the government, believes that the malevolent goals of villains will not succeed, and that ‘our lives will be sure to improve.’ Zhou Yong-kang said to her: ‘You have indeed spoken well. What you said represents the common aspirations of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.’”

Awwwww.  How sweet.  And who exactly is Uncle Zhou and why has he been thrust into this role of healing the ethnic divide?  Well - he just happens to have recently been promoted after serving a five year term as minister of "public security."  Before that, he was the party secretary in Sichuan province, where he launched a major crackdown on Tibetan "splittists" that was marked by the first execution of a Tibetan for a political crime in recent memory.  That crackdown apparently was key to his promotion to the national stage, since beating up on troublesome ethnics has long been a proven path to the top echelons of the Peoples Republic (see e.g. Hu Jintao).  

And who is China's propaganda machine trying to fool with this outpouring of concern from on high?  The domestic audience, of course.  Much as I love the early socialist prose style of this article, it is interesting how the Chinese people can readily believe this garbage when they generally take for granted that Xinhua is only giving them half the truth.  I blame a combination of latent Han chauvinism and, perversely (or not, since I am generally a conservative who opposes such things), the government's showy affirmative action program for minorities, which provides them a number of "advantages" (as long as they are willing to subsume themselves into the Chinese system).  This affirmative action program has convinced many Han that most minorities are either idiots who can't get by without a boost from the state, degenerates who get away with murder because of an official policy of leniency in criminal matters (although this official lenience certainly doesn't carry over to "political" matters), or lazy ingrates who should be thankful for the beneficence of the Chinese (read: Han) state.  

So much for harmonious society...

Sphere: Related Content

Burma and North Korea: the New Axis of Evil (and Crazy)

My friend Aung Zaw has a new piece talking about the increasingly warm relationship between the nutty military dictatorship in Rangoon and their equally deranged counterparts in Pyongyang.  I suppose it was only a matter of time before these two buried the hatchet and become BFFs.  Back in the day (1983, to be precise), when the North Korean government tried to assasinate some South Korean leaders in Rangoon, the Burmese regime of the day was pretty cheesed about it and broke off relations with the Hermit Kingdom.  However, now that both are decrepit Chinese client states run by a mafia of lunatics, it is only right that they link arms and dance off together in pursuit of nuclear weapons.  Thanks again ChiComs!  Couldn't have done it without your help. 

Sphere: Related Content

Neo-colonialism with Chinese characteristics

The NYT has an essay by an anthropologist who discusses the colonialist mindset of China's rulers (and, sadly, many Han Chinese) toward the Tibetans and Uighurs.  In describing how they see these minority groups, he says: 

For them, all minorities are fully — and only — Chinese citizens, and therefore must be loyal to the government and grateful for its largesse. There will never be much gratitude unless China’s leaders grant these groups real regional autonomy, guarantee freedom of religion, curb Han Chinese migration and stop their insulting rhetoric about underdeveloped minorities in need of help. But they won’t. So the unrest and discontent — at times exploding into the violence of the past few days — are bound to continue.

He also does a good job of explaining the difference between ethnic "nationalities" such as Tibetans and Uighurs, vice the 50+ other minority groups in China - i.e. Hui, Zhang, etc. - a distinction that is frequently obscured by both Chinese leaders and others in making comparisons to ethnic politics in other countries, as well as comparisons among ethnic groups within China.  

I am looking at a copy of Ross Terrill's "The New Chinese Empire", which has been waiting for me to read it for some time.  I think I'll start today...

Sphere: Related Content

I love the smell of democracy in the morning

Just read a great piece in the WSJ about the "dumbing down of democracy."  The author cites the example of Russian authorities (or should I say authoritarians) referring to their system as a "different kind of democracy" than what we have here in the good old US of A.  Well.  He could have just as easily used the Chinese example, where a government that is clearly authoritarian continues to play word games in asserting that they have a kind of democracy with Chinese characteristics (as if denial of basic civil and political rights were "characteristics" of a democratic system).  Surreal, yes.  Also dangerous, as the author points out: 

Letting genuine democratic aspirants in places like Iran and Honduras lose in front of a watching world will exact a price. The United States and the other John Locke democracies are in an active, long-term competition with fake democrats over whose politics governs the next century. And they will presume to choose which parties should run other counties.

There is the clear sense that anything the Bush administration did, the Obama sophisticates will not do. Does the fact that the Bushies pushed democracy mean it would be bad form to support even our own political system?

Over at The Corner, Jonah Goldberg makes many of the same points about Obama's antipathy toward democracy promotion: 

Again and again, the administration has made it clear that spreading freedom is so much ideological foolishness. Before the inauguration, he told the Washington Post that he was concerned with “actually delivering a better life for people on the ground and less obsessed with form, more concerned with substance.” There’s merit to this view in principle, though Obama seems to be thinking about “economic justice” more than a free society. But in practice, when American presidents say they don’t care about democracy, tyrants rejoice.

Which makes a nice segue to my Xinjiang piece in the Asia WSJ, and the comical-if-they-weren't-so-scary comments that the angry Chinese netizens have made.  I have always maintained that most Chinese seem to be missing the gene for irony.  I realize this is a horrible stereotype, but damn if they don't prove it true at every opportunity.  Hence, I am slammed by a bunch of nasty-grams from defenders of the Beijing regime, who are able to vent their spleen at me by virtue of the fact that they can take advantage of -- wait for it -- freedom of expression.

Maybe someday these poor unironic ninnies will figure it out.  Until then, I am going to double up on virus protection and enjoy the fireworks.

Sphere: Related Content

Uighur Protests continue

Just finished final edits on a piece for the Asia Wall Street Journal on the unrest in Uighur-land and the link to China's censorship policies.  It should be up on line around mid-day here, and in the dead-tree version published in Hong Kong tomorrow.  

The stateside version of the WSJ has an op-ed from Rebiya Kadeer that touches on some of the same themes as my piece, particularly the race-baiting aspect of China's response to this crisis and the Tibetan uprising last year.  To whit: 

The recent Uighur repression has taken on a racial tone. The Chinese government is known for encouraging a nationalistic streak among Han Chinese as it seeks to replace the bankrupt communist ideology it used to promote. This nationalism was in evidence as the Han Chinese mob attacked Uighur workers in Shaoguan.  This official encouragement of reactionary nationalism among Han Chinese makes the path forward very difficult. 

As the violence escalates, so does the pain I feel for the loss of all innocent lives. I fear the Chinese government will not experience this pain as it reports on its version of events in Urumqi. It is this lack of self-examination that further divides Han Chinese and Uighurs.

It is also fascinating to me that Hu Jintao has bailed on the G8 meeting in order to be in China to deal with the situation in Uighur-land.  The protests are spreading to other areas, much as protests spread across the Tibetan plateau after the brutal crackdown in Lhasa last year.  When will the Chinese learn to handle these situations better?  I have to believe that they will at some point because they show a pretty strong capacity to learn on the media management front and apply lessons to improve their approaches over time.  Yet the heavy security response to non-violent protests by ethnic minorities seems immutable, always with the same tragic results for the victims of violence and the negative fall-out for the Chinese.

Silver lining here is Rebiya getting a forum for her moderate and reasonable sounding ideas, and the fact that most media stories are highlighting the Chinese government's race-baiting and censorship, as well as the underlying causes of tensions in the region (China's bad policies on migration, education, language, religion, etc.). 

Sphere: Related Content

Seriously?!? Are these people crazy or just evil?

More on the violence in Uighur-land from an AP story:

Meanwhile, for much of the afternoon, a mob of 1,000 mostly young Han Chinese holding cleavers and clubs and chanting "Defend the Country" tore through streets trying to get to a Uighur neighborhood until they were repulsed by police firing tear gas.

Panic and anger bubbled up amid the suspicion in Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee). In some neighborhoods, Han Chinese — China's majority ethnic group — armed themselves with pieces of lumber and shovels to defend themselves. People bought up bottled water out of fear, as one resident said, that "the Uighurs might poison the water."

The outbursts happened despite swarms of paramilitary and riot police enforcing a dragnet that state media said led to the arrest more than 1,400 participants in Sunday's riot, the worst ethnic violence in the often tense region in decades.

Trying to control the message, the government has slowed mobile phone and Internet services, blocked Twitter — whose servers are overseas — and censored Chinese social networking and news sites and accused Uighurs living in exile of inciting Sunday's riot. State media coverage, however, carried graphic footage and pictures of the unrest _showing mainly Han Chinese victims and stoking the anger.

The Chinese also said that the riots were stirred up by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur exile who is a leader of her people because the regime put her in jail for having the nerve to complain about the horrible situation of the Uighur people.  She had the nerve to do this precisely because, call her crazy, the Chinese had annointed her as a model Uighur due to her business success, and made her one of their ethnic show ponies.  When she actually thought that this gave her some grounds to present evidence of the grievances of her people to the Chinese leadership, they threw her in jail and nearly killed her.  To this day, her children are in jail because they are her children.  

So, is the Chinese regime out of their minds or are they really this cynical?  Is stoking ethnic hatred to maintain your own legitimacy the behavior of a responsible government?  Let's think about a few lessons from history...hmmm....

A few facts: 

- The initial incident that sparked all this was an attack on a group of Uighur men in a coastal Chinese town.  A mob of Han Chinese attacked and beat 6 Uighurs who were accused of raping a Chinese woman.  What does this remind you of? (here's a hint: Emmit Till; here's another: Adolf Hitler)

- Han Chinese outnumber ethnic Uighurs 2-to-1 in Urumqi, and control the political, security and economic infrastructure of the city, region and country.  

- The Chinese government strictly controls all telecommunications into and out of Uighur-land.  Rebiya Kadeer lives in Washington, DC and is a 60+ year old woman with a cellphone.  Yet, according to the Chinese regime, she orchestrated these protests.   

- Last year, the Chinese government claimed that the Dalai Lama's "clique" in India orchestrated protests in Tibet.

Conclusion a reasonable person would reach if given the facts: either the Chinese government is not as on top of things as they claim to be in Tibet and Uighur-land, or maybe they are not being truthful in blaming the Dalai Lama and Rebiya Kadeer when these miserable, put-upon people decide they have had enough and just can't take it anymore.

Conclusion that most Chinese people reach because they only hear what the government wants them to: Uighurs and Tibetans are ungrateful little snots who are trying to destroy China.  But please don't take it upon yourself to beat the crap out of them - that is our job.

AGH!!!!!

Sphere: Related Content

China: The revolution will be spun

Good piece in the NYT today about China's efforts to block & spin events in East Turkestan/Xinjiang, which is all the better because it quotes my dear friend Xiao over at China Digital Times.  He is so brilliant.  Key passages from the article: 

Hours after troops quelled the protests, in which 156 people were reported killed, the state invited foreign journalists on an official trip to Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital and the site of the unrest, “to know better about the riots.” Indeed, it set up a media center at a downtown hotel — with a hefty discount on rooms — to keep arriving reporters abreast of events.

It is a far cry from Beijing’s reaction 11 years ago to ethnic violence elsewhere in Xinjiang, when officials sealed off an entire city and refused to say what happened or how many people had died. And it reflects lessons learned from the military crackdown in Tibet 17 months ago. Foreign reporters were banned from Tibet, then and now. Chinese authorities rallied domestic support by blaming outside agitators but were widely condemned overseas.

State television has focused primarily, though not totally, on scenes of violence directed against China’s ethnic Han majority. Chinese news Web sites carry official accounts of the unrest, but readers are generally blocked from posting comments.

As in Tibet, blame for the violence has been aimed at outside agitators bent on splitting China — in this case, the World Uighur Congress, an exile group whose president, Rebiya Kadeer, is a Uighur businesswoman now living in Washington.

The most troubling aspects of this whole approach are the regime's attempts to play ethnic politics and their ability to manipulate foreign media.  On the first, it is extremely frightening to think that a nation of 1.3 billion people, 90+% of whom are of the Han (Chinese) ethnicity can be so easily manipulated by their authoritarian government into hating their "brothers and sisters" - be they Uighur or Tibetan.  Think about it: We're talking about a regime that is willing to pit more than 1 billion its own people against small ethnic minority groups that were already suffering from heavy discrimination and who lag behind the rest of China on virtually every social and economic indicator - hardly smacks of confidence in their own legitimacy.  

Which leads to the kind of stories they are able to get out of "western" media from the calculated junket to Urumqi.  On the face of it, inviting a bunch of foreign journalists to Urumqi the day after massive riots flies in the face of the Chinese media control mind-set, and gives the an impression of increased openness that will earn them credit from the west.  However, I would bet my last grain of rice that in addition to the New York Times, there was a sizable contingent of "journalists" from countries such as Nepal, Russia, Pakistan, etc. - where the press is nominally free but journalistic standards are, shall we say, more creative.  Setting aside the ongoing decline of journalism in the western world, my experience with the reportage of the Nepali press corps leads me to believe that the Chinese will get exactly what they want out of this junket:  a suitable number of news stories in English and other languages, from a range of sources that are not the Chinese state, but exactly parrot the coverage one would find in Xinhua.  The online media market is increasingly a numbers game, and they have probably rightly calculated that they can achieve parity or maybe even supremacy in the post-protest spin zone by just increasing the amount of "positive" reportage by "independent" sources.

This is sophisticated stuff worthy of Madison Avenue or the Obama White House.  Coming as it does from a large, increasingly powerful authoritarian regime, it should be horrifying.  Policy-makers and the media themselves need to recognize that this media management strategy is a key factor in the ability of what should be very brittle regime to continue to survive and thrive. 

The question then becomes, what lesson should the free world take from all this and what policy response is appropriate.  First, we need to recognize China's censorship at home and spin control abroad as the strategic threat that it is.  Fighting back against it should be a strategic imperative, rather than the current ad hoc after-thought approach.  Together with other free societies, the U.S. needs to be pushing back on Chinese censorship with more information resources.  This means increased funding for surrogate radio such as Radio Free Asia, and efforts to improve access for services such as the Voice of America and the BBC.  We also need to invest in internet freedom initiatives that can challenge China's control of online space and discourse.  We need to both increase access to the "free" web for Chinese and expand the number and presence of alternate points of view in the Chinese vernacular.  These are all essential and, currently, all are very poorly funded.  

Western media and technology companies also need to recognize their responsibility as beneficiaries of the free press and free market at home in their conduct in China.  Fear of losing market share should not be allowed as an excuse for behavior that limits the freedoms of the Chinese people.  It is inexcusable that Microsoft, Google, Cisco and other technology companies are complicit in China's domestic censorship regime.  The U.S. Department of Justice and its European counterpart should be investigating Microsoft over the issue of whether its new Bing! search engine filters out results for Chinese language searches outside China, as has been reported.  The recent firestorm over the "Green Dam" filtering software, and the regime's about-face on that issue shows that it can be pressured effectively on censorship issues.  The key lesson from that episode is that unity and public outrage are effective tools in calling the Chinese government's bluff.  

The U.S. and other countries should also look at the possibility of challenging China's censorship of western media outlets through the WTO on the grounds of unequal treatment.  China's state-run CCTV television channel and other Chinese state-owned media outlets are given free and open access to western media markets while western media are blocked, censored and harassed in China.  The increasing privatization of Chinese media has created new opportunities to use market-based and legal tools to go after both the censorship regime and the disparate access.  

The Department of Defense should also be engaged, given the potential for China to apply the lessons learned from its cyber-war against its own citizens to cyber-warfare against the US and other countries whose war-fighting capabilities are heavily dependent on preserving an effective information-management system.  And, as John Dillinger said, people rob banks because that is where the money is.  DOD has the money and the rationale for working with other parts of the US government on this.  

  

I'm kind of on a roll here; I think I am going to take this and work it into a piece for MSM publication.  We'll see how that goes today!

Sphere: Related Content

Tehran's Tiananmen?

One of my favorite sources for China news, China Digital Times, has a new post that looks at the various comparisons between what is happening in Iran today and the events in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago, leading with the piece on this subject in the NYT today.  It also analyzes how events in Iran are playing in China.  I was particular interested in the piece by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker on how the Chinese blogosphere is commenting on events in Iran: 

There is an engaged, relatively mainstream population that is thinking seriously about what Iran’s experience says about China. Several bloggers, for instance, are using the unrest in Iran as a way to benchmark China’s movement toward democracy. Wu Jiaxiang, an intellectual and former researcher in the General Office of the Communist Party Central Committee wrote the other day:

For over ten years, Iran’s presidential elections have had turnout exceeding seventy percent, so much so that the closing hours had to be delayed until midnight. What does that show? It means that indifference towards democracy comes from the lack of democracy. There is no excuse for non-democracy.

Mao Anlin, another blogger, goes one step further:

Even Iran, such a religious country, has had so many years of elections. Candidates can squabble, the results can be questioned, the legislature can talk, and Khamenei can keep right on working. We [in China] insist on appointing every single candidate in advance, even for the chief of Macau. This is more than a little lagging behind Iran.

This is fascinating - Chinese "establishment" commentariat noticing that China has a democracy deficit IN COMPARISON TO IRAN.  

If nothing else, this kind of thing continues to give me some hope that the cramped realism that most policymakers fall into when it comes to China will prove as narrow and, ultimately, incorrect as it did predicting both political events in Iran and how US policy should look.

Sphere: Related Content