| Home page To receive this publication via e-mail, click here. The Week�s Links: Feature and Opinion Pieces on Communist China May 16, 2003 Link of the Week �Usually in this job you get to go off to unreasonably dangerous places, while your spouse and children stay somewhere nice and safe. Now, suddenly, southern Iraq felt unreasonably safe, while my wife and children sat in the eye of the storm in Beijing.� That�s how Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC, felt when he first heard of the SARS epidemic. Returning to the Communist capital has done little to ease his anxiety. Why? Wingfield-Hayes answers as follows: �Part of the problem is that even now no one really knows what to believe. Few here trust what the government is telling them. I know I don�t, nor do most of my Chinese friends.� More On Communist China and SARS John Pomfret, Washington Post, examines the political fallout from SARS, although the piece is a bit too optimistic, in part because it focuses on the changes in government officials, and not the continuity of the Communist cadres who hold the real power. Pomfret also discusses how an address in Beijing, long a sought-after status symbol, is now a one-way ticket to societal isolation � at best. Meanwhile, Hsu Szu-chien of the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University, links the SARS epidemic to the lack of accountability in and for the Chinese Communist Party, in the Taipei Times (link courtesy Susan Prager, Member since 2003). On Taiwan, SARS, and the WHO The above happens to be the title of James Hackett�s Washington Times column, in which he states the case for the island democracy�s entry into the WHO. Ellen Bork, of the Project for the New American Century, calls on the United States to make �a more serious effort� to bring Taiwan into the WHO. On the �Parlor Maid� The BBC calls the Katrina Leung case an embarrassment to the FBI. Sign up now for the next North Korea Report, sent out every Monday. Check out the latest on the Communist China and the Terrorist War page. Miss an Update, Weekly Links, or a North Korea Report? Find it on our home page. Sign the Boycott Petition: In reaction to the decision of the International Olympic Committee awarding Beijing the 2008 Olympic Games, the China e-Lobby has begun a petition for an American boycott of those games. Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested in receiving it. Anyone who wishes to join can send his/her name and e-mail address to [email protected]. Please feel free to send any news on Communist China or North Korea that you happen to find to the same address. |