| Home page To receive this publication via e-mail, click here. The Week�s Links: Feature and Opinion Pieces on Communist China April 23, 2004 Dragon in the Dark: How and Why Communist China Helps Our Enemies in the War on Terror is now available: here, at Amazon, or call 1-888-280-7715. Link of the Week Philip Pan, Washington Post, details the rise and fall of the New Youth Study Group, i.e., how eight students talking vaguely about social reform ended up in the Communist cross-hairs. The piece, reprinted by MSNBC, reveals how the PRC used interpersonal relationships and their biggest weapon � fear � to turn the some of students into informants, and jail the rest. The piece is an excellent primer on how �the largest and perhaps most successful experiment in authoritarianism in the world� keeps itself in power. As the Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre Approaches The China Support Network remembers the passing of Hu Yaobang, and how the reformist Communist Party boss�s death in April 1989 led students to march into Tiananmen Square to honor him and take up his interrupted legacy of reform. On the State of Workers in the Workers� State John Zuo (that�s a pseudonym), in the Epoch Times, details harrowing abuses of labor rights in Communist China � including the hiring of children (supposedly illegal) in factories, backbreaking hours, and the widespread use of prison labor. Du Yilong, also in the Epoch Times, focuses on the exploitation and suffering of migrant workers, and bluntly states: �For over 20 years, China�s prosperity and development have been dependent on exploiting migrant workers. This is not an exaggeration.� More on Human Rights in Communist China Liu Qing, Epoch Times, blasted the new Communist regulations on protests (see last Update) as �another shortsighted bureaucratic policy� that �was enacted to further suppress people who already have been denied justice under the law.� Jay Nordlinger reminds his readers of the plight of jailed American resident Yang Jianli (see 2/21/03 and 5/2/03 Week�s Links) in National Review Online (fifth item). On Taiwan William Kristol, Chairman of the Project for the New American Century and editor of the Weekly Standard, calls for measures to tighten America�s friendship with Taiwan, including the latter�s entry into the anti-North Korea Proliferation Security Initiative, in testimony to the House International Relations Committee. Julie Chao, Cox News Service, profiles a building � in this case, the Taipei 101, the world�s tallest building � in the Washington Times. On Communist China and the United States Sign the petition for an American boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Think the situation is bad in the nanotechnology arms race? It�s not much better in space either, as Charles R. Smith, Newsmax, details. The editors of the Washington Times have high praise for Vice President Cheney�s speech to students at Fudan University, ignoring what he said in meetings with Communist leadership, in which his statements were far more checkered (see 4/15 Update). On Communist China and the North Korea Sign up for the North Korea Report to get the next edition on Monday. Eric Baculinao, MSNBC, gives a conventional-wisdom analysis of North Korea�s Stalinist-in-chief Kim Jong-Il�s visit to Communist China. On The Economy in Communist China There�s more talk of the Communist �bubble,� this time in Time Asia. Sadly, Matthew Forney seems more interested in how the PRC makes everyone prosperous than how the regime is using the economy to act against the U.S. David Ignatius, Washington Post, looks at the same issue, and makes the same mistakes. Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, United Press International, examines what a Communist slowdown could do to East Asia as a whole. Her Washington Times piece also ignores security issues. On The Ecology in Communist China Asia Times, via Epoch Times, gives an environmental profile of the city of Chongqing, home of the Three Gorges Dam disaster (see 9/20/00, 12/5/01, and 6/18/03 Updates). On Tibet Paul Stanway, Edmonton Sun, damns Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin with faint praise for his willingness to meet the Dalai Lama, and do nothing else to help the Tibetan people suffering under the Communist China�s thumb. Check out the Communist China and the Terrorist War page. Miss an Update, Weekly Links, or a North Korea Report? Find it on our home page. 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. |