| Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, the next Week�s Links will be sent two weeks from today, on December 6. Miss an Update, Weekly Links, or a North Korea Report? Find it on our web site. Link of the Week That�s how BBC�s Tim Luard saw things when he went to experience Beijing during last week�s Communist Party Congress � he had covered the PRC during its pre-Tiananmen days. He found that a meeting with a professor on a taboo subject � unemployment � turned into a nightmarish trip to a police station where they were �made to feel we were guilty of the gravest act of state espionage.� He ends his column with this pained observation, and warning: �As China becomes a bigger power in the world its government is becoming ever more fascist. In the run up to the Beijing Olympic games one can't help thinking of Berlin in the 1930s.� On Jiang Zemin Jamie FlorCuz, CNN, says goodbye to the former Communist Party chief. Willy Wo-Lap Lam, also of CNN, says hold the goodbyes � Jiang, no longer party boss but still head of the powerful Central Military Commission, is not going anywhere. On Women in Communist China The Communist Party has long prided itself on supporting women�s equality. However, the recent Party Congress shows that women have a long way to go in the corridors of Communist power, as Philip Pan noted in the Washington Post. Of course, in democratic Taiwan, a woman is now Vice President: the tough-talking Annette Lu. None of this even considers the hideous �one child� policy. More On Foreign Investment in Communist China The folks at Cutler & Co. saw a good investment opportunity in a Communist China. What they stumbled into was a scheme by their local �partners� to steal the firm�s assets for their own, shadow company. Cutler & Co. managed to have enough contacts and worker support � the local �partners� were friends of corrupt local Communist who �privatized� their piece for a song � to hold the thieves off. However, as John Pomfret notes in the Washington Post, the tale reveals �what remains the most powerful tool in China: relationships.� In other words, which Communist you know trumps everything else. On Japan and Communist China Will Communist China pass Japan as the leading economic power in Asia, or merely be �the kick-in-the-pants Japan needs to undertake the drastic reforms to make its economy healthy again�? Rebecca McKinnon, CNN, examines the issue. On the Rural Interior As the Communist Party is dropping its old ideology in exchange for anything it needs to keep power, even those who follow Maoism to the letter � such as the village found by the BBC�s Francis Markus � relies on migrant workers and tourism to prosper. On Nancy Pelosi E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, became the first pundit to take a look at new House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her record on Communist China. Pelosi is one of the most anti-Communist Democrats in Washington, and according to fellow Representative Chris Cox (R-California), she intends to keep pushing the issue as Minority Leader, ensuring a much more hopeful Congress for supporters of Chinese freedom. The editors of the Washington Times also examined the record of the new House Minority Leader. Since the editors are a conservative lot, and Pelosi is definitely not, they don�t have much good to say. However, even they acknowledge, �Few legislators have been as tough on the Chinese in terms of human-rights violations as Mrs. Pelosi.� On Communist China and Ecological Issues Alex Kirby, BBC, examines Communist China�s abysmal record on environmental issues � caused in large part by rampant over-development that no free market would ever allow. Even the Communists themselves are beginning to notice the damage they have done. Check out the latest on Communist China and the Terrorist War. Sign up now for the next North Korea Report, sent out every Monday. 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 you happen to find to the same address. |