AUKUS - best news in some time

So much to cheer in the new AUKUS alliance. 

Why?

1. It enhances Australia's and the region's defence. It enables Australia, New Zealand's most important ally, to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, which will much better serve the defence of Australia and its allies, than the diesel-powered retrofitted French ones, that the Malcolm Turnbull government ordered.  

2. It cancels the previous disgracefully wasteful defence contract, which was a A$90 billion pork-barrel deal to win votes in South Australia, driven by former Minister Christopher Pyne. It was a disgrace, and economically destructive whilst delivering little strategic benefit.

3. It annoys the Communist Party of China, which, given it is the political party responsible for the greatest famines and slaughters in human history, is entirely moral.

4. The mouthpieces of the Communist Party of China took nearly 12 hours to respond to the announcement, indicating that Beijing doesn't have quite the effective spook or snooping network that it might want, otherwise it would have promptly issued a line of comment in response.  AUKUS took Beijing by surprise.

5. So-called "peace" activists are unhappy, as is the Australian Green Party, whilst all fail to protest Beijing's military exercises against Taiwan, imperialist occupation of rocks in the South China Sea and skirmishes with India. It just shows them up for what they are, supporters for any tyrannies that confront liberal democracies.  

6. It has annoyed the Government of France the most, and even the supine European Union has shown sympathy to the gallic sooks.  France was not remotely this concerned about China's occupation of the South China Sea, undermining of rule of law and freedom in Hong Kong, authoritarian racism in its Xinjiang Province or indeed just about any other international incident in recent years. The French response is totemically beautiful, by confirming and reinforcing every stereotype about French hyper-arrogance and emotional incontinence about their entirely onanistic-pneumatic honour.  It's particularly delicious that France withdrew ambassadors from Washington DC and Canberra but not London, demonstrating, once again, France's unbounded Anglo-phobic arrogance, of a kind that it is claimed too many British people use as a stereotype. France EXCEEDED stereotypes about itself, proving that you cannot make up how absurd they can be.

7. The European Union has demonstrated its virtual irrelevance in international strategic defence circles. With France its only serious defence member, and almost all of its members pathetically irrelevant in their funding of defence (and some being neutral), it has been sidelined.  

8. For all of the self-serving puffery of the New Zealand Labour Party about the supposed importance of the Fourth Labour Government's nuclear free policy in the 1980s, New Zealand was, once again, proven to be utterly irrelevant in serious strategic international defence circles. New Zealand was sidelined (as was Canada), because it not only has little to add, but its adolescent nuclear-free policy is an inhibitor, not an enabler, of more robust defence of the region. Jacinda Ardern can claim "New Zealand wouldn't want to join", but it demonstrates that the "nuclear free moment" is more a display of performative virtue signalling, than anything of substance or impact on anyone, except those claiming how wonderful they are for the act of keeping nuclear powered submarines just over 12 miles off the coast of New Zealand.  What New Zealand does is of little importance to those who are committed to the international peace and security, and is of equally little importance in climate change, no matter the egos in Parliament who wish you believe otherwise.

So good for Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Joe Biden (even if Joe isn't necessarily fully aware), this was a great leap forward in dealing to a whole host of issues at once.

oh and don't anyone think for a moment that the EU was going to offer Australia a useful free trade agreement, neither France nor the EU really care about free trade.

Damien O'Connor - Beijing's new handmaiden

Last week was meant to be a point of triumph for Damien O'Connor as Trade Minister. As a member of the more conservative "right" faction of this Labour Government, he was happy to crow as to the success of the "updated" free trade agreement between New Zealand and the People's Republic of China (PRC).  

Stuff, RNZ  and TVNZ all largely reported the press release from his office about the "upgraded" agreement and for sure, for New Zealand trade access to the PRC it is largely good news, with 98% of NZ exports to be tariff free (by 2024 for dairy, notwithstanding the government's apparent tolerance for suggestions that the dairy sector be partly wound down to meet Paris Agreement commitments).  There will be reductions in compliance costs and overall on the face of it, it seemed positive from the point of view of a believer in free trade.  

However I was curious as to what the PRC gained from this, because none of the NZ news outlets seemed to ask any questions about that side, but repeated O'Connor's assurances that (RNZ):

"Protections in the existing agreement that are important to New Zealanders, such as our rules on overseas investment and the Treaty of Waitangi exception, remain in place"

Stuff report: "Rules for Chinese investors in New Zealand would not change in light of the agreement"

The flavour of it all is that the PRC is just like any other country, except of course we all know that it is not.  It is an authoritarian one-party state that brutally suppresses dissent, is one of the world's biggest cyberwarfare actors, is engaging in military expansionism in the South China Sea, is regularly threatening liberal democratic Taiwan and most recently has effectively destroyed the liberal rule of law in Hong Kong.  Most recently it has engaged in aggressive trade retaliation measures against Australia, NZ's closest ally, for it simply seeking an international investigation into its handling of Covid 19 - a pandemic that originated in China and was almost certainly mismanaged by the PRC. It isn't just another trading partner, but a regime that is antithetical to the values espoused by the NZ government, you would think.

So why not query further, given the context of relations between the Western allies and the PRC has gone downhill markedly under the rule of Xi Jinping?

Yet it takes little curiosity to find out what was being reported by the PRC's series of state news outlets about the free trade agreement:

China Daily published the following image:

It shows that NZ has effectively removed tariffs on ALL imports from the PRC, putting it on a parallel with Australia.  Now I'm no opponent of eliminating tariff barriers, but you'd think that there would be at least some querying of this. PRC businesses can now export to NZ on the same basis as those from Australia, and with no further barriers NZ has little more to "give away" to Beijing in future negotiations. 

The PRC gets new market access in legal services, project and management consultancy services in NZ, which may not seem like a big deal, but do NZ companies have equivalent access in the PRC?  Well it's a bit complicated as it depends on the sector, but NZ is much more open than the PRC on this.  For example, for project management, it HAS to be a joint venture in the PRC, but not in NZ. In construction NZ is already open to PRC firms, but the PRC wont let NZ firms enter unless it is a project fully foreign financed (i.e. you pay for it, you can work on it). One wonders why it was seen to be so important to let PRC firms enter markets in NZ that they are unlikely to add much value on, other than perhaps obtain experience and IP that they can use elsewhere.  

Yet there is something far more alarming in the agreement, which is the provision on foreign investment.  

Global Times, which might be described as the "aggressive" arm of the PRC state news propaganda apparatus said that:

"Under the new protocol, New Zealand will not investigate Chinese government investors with investments of no more than NZ$100 million ($71.82 million) or non-government investors with investments of no more than NZ$200 million, China News Service reported."

Now sure, that does mean that PRC investment is on a parallel with the CPTPP threshold, but let's pause a moment.  All PRC owned businesses invest in NZ with the explicit or implicit authority of the PRC and the Communist Party of China.  Experience elsewhere indicates that this intent may be anything but benign. PRC companies are known to engage in industrial scale Intellectual Property theft both domestically with foreign partners and internationally. This is hardly a surprise, as it is the core of Marxist-Leninist belief to use the systems of capitalist countries against them, with IP theft used both to advance its own industries and for military purposes.  For example, Siemen's entered into a JV in China to produce high speed trains, only to find that its majority PRC JV partners now re-exporting its technology to compete with it in Germany.  By law, all PRC citizens and businesses are required to comply with directions from the State security services wherever they may be, which is seen to be one reason why Australia's supplies of PPE were raided by PRC companies and citizens to be exported to China at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic (which resulted in Australian law being changed to stop this). 

PRC government entities can spend NZ$100m buying any property or business in NZ without any scrutiny or oversight, and non-government but government endorsed entities can invest NZ$200m.  Sure there are many laws in NZ to deal with intellectual property theft, after the fact, but the trade practices of the PRC internationally show that it has little interest in rule of law, given how quickly it has embarked on dubious sanctions against Australia, because Australia simply wanted some questions asked. That's how sensitive the tyrants in Beijing are.

So there are some serious questions to be asked as to the upgraded NZ-PRC free trade agreement that haven't been asked by the media.

Yet O'Connor went much much further.  On CNBC he played a tune that is familiar to China-watchers, which is to get the ally of an adversary to take on the adversary in foreign relations. Besides saying "nationalism is not the way forward" (being absolutely blind to the PRC's hyper-nationalism in recent years), he decided to give Australia some "advice":

“I can’t speak for Australia and the way it runs its diplomatic relationships but clearly if they were to follow us and … speak …(with) a little more diplomacy from time to time, and be cautious with wording… hopefully (they) can be in a similar situation"

"Speak with a little more diplomacy" presumably means ignoring the PRC's grotesque mismanagement of Covid19 that resulted in it being spread globally, not signing up with allies on a statement on the breaching of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, not complaining if PRC businesses and citizens buy up the PPE and medical equipment in your country to export it to China during a pandemic and then finger-pointing at your closest ally on command.  O'Connor supported mediating between the PRC and Australia because:

"We have a mature … relationship with China, and we’ve always been able to raise issues of concern"

Of course in part he is echoing Nanaia Mahuta who in December said that NZ could mediate between the PRC and Australia - which is exactly a tactic that Beijing wants.  This call is utterly disgraceful, and essentially represents the tyranny in Beijing peeling the NZ government away from its most important trading and defence partner, to effectively imply that the differences between Australia and the PRC are as much Australia's fault as the PRC.  It is Beijing asserting that there is moral equivalence between Australia and the PRC.  

"Raising matters of concern" is how the PRC likes things to be, for there to be diplomatic back-channel talk, whilst not publicly changing the relationship at all.  It means the PRC can break international treaties, threaten its neighbours and engage in aggressive actions internationally whilst the front window looks like a new free trade agreement and all is well. 

Beijing already used the NZ government as a pawn to attack Australia in this report by saying:

"The current difficulties facing bilateral relations are of Australia's own making. Only a real change in Canberra's hostile attitude towards China can ease the tensions, and reset bilateral trade ties between the two sides."

furthermore:

"Australia's provoking and smearing will only damage its reputation among Chinese enterprises and people, and hurt trade relations, Chen said, noting that "Canberra should consider Wellington as model and restore its relations with China by taking concrete action."

In short, Beijing claims that Australia's concerns, over Covid 19, Hong Kong, investment, South China Sea and Taiwan are not issues New Zealand shares similar concerns about.  "Wellington is a model" of obsequiousness.

The extension of this is that New Zealand is also not aligned with the United States, which looks like seeing little change in policy with Biden compared to Trump over China. 

NZ is, after all, almost irrelevant to the PRC, because NZ has virtually no military capacity to project and its trade potential is minimal, but NZ does have a great deal of intellectual property around agriculture and capacity to provide education for its elite. Australia is more important because its mineral reserves are vast and arguably the easiest to access of any major mining country given its legal/political structure, proximity and infrastructure, but also because it is strategically important militarily.

Beijing thinks it has turned NZ into a "neutral" party between itself and NZ's two biggest allies, and the fact that it has so easily played Damien O'Connor, and to a lesser extent Nanaia Mahuta should cause concern in the government and to New Zealanders more generally.

So what Beijing got out of the updated FTA with NZ was much more than unhindered trade access to a small economy, and almost unhindered investment access, it got a new friend that has broken away from Australia - that's worth much more strategically than access to a market the size of part of Shanghai.

So the next time Jacinda Ardern chooses to berate Australia over either its treatment of New Zealand citizens resident in Australia, or climate change, or indeed any other foreign policy issue, she might just wonder why the great ANZAC ally might just tell her to go ask the government's new mates in Beijing to help out, then she can wait and see if O'Connor might have enough time to spare once he has washed himself up after being ever so gratifying to the Communist Party of China.

70 years of the most deadly tyranny of human history

The People's Republic of China is celebrating 70 years today, but for anyone who believes in the dignity of humanity, any semblance of individual rights and freedom, or even believes that human beings should deal with each other in a context of truth, honesty and openness, it should be a day of mourning.

For all of the tales of the economic successes in mainland China since it abandoned Maoism in 1978, it is overwhelmingly a tale of blanking out the horrors of the rule under Mao, the ongoing horrors of a techno-authoritarian state that still treats its people as a means to an end, and a system that spread the spilling of blood beyond its borders.  Despite the power, prestige and wealth of China today, it is still poorer, materially and in human terms, on a grand scale, than it would have been had Mao's madness been defeated.  Indeed, had Mao not come to power, there are literally millions of people outside China who would not have been murdered by the regimes that he explicitly backed, armed and supported.

For China, as with Germany and Korea, there is a quasi-scientific laboratory of what would have been had the Communist Party been defeated.  Hong Kong may seem the obvious one, but the more compelling one is the "other" China, the Republic of China, in Taiwan.

You see in 1949, Taiwan was largely agricultural when the Kuomintang fled the Chinese civil war and set up its based in Taipei.  Sure, I don't have any delusions about the regime of Chiang Kai-Shek.  He was bloodthirsty, intolerant of political plurality and ruthless against dissent, but he did not embark on crazy plans that created mass famines, nor did he shut down the education system and economy for a Cultural Revolution.  More notably, as the People's Republic was recovering from the poverty, purges and madness of Maoism in the 1970s and 1980, the Republic of China on Taiwan saw off Chiang Kai-Shek, and his son, and became a vibrant, dynamic liberal democracy.  It has been so now for over thirty years.  

So Taiwan is free and Chinese, but it is also much wealthier per capita.  On average, incomes in Taiwan are 2.5 times that of mainland China.  Car ownership is 2.7x higher in Taiwan than the mainland.  Now of course the mainland has a much more diverse and complex demographic than Taiwan, but given Taiwan was a rural backwater in 1949, it truly is an economic miracle (the same tale is that of south Korea, as the southern half of Korea was mostly rural, but the north industrialised, not that you would know today).

By other indicators Taiwan is superior, on inequality the GINI index is 0.336 compared to 0.468 for the PRC (1 is highest inequality).  So "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is less effective at reducing inequalities than a capitalist liberal democracy.

However, this is about much more than economics.  China lost between 18 and 56 million people in the Great Leap Forward primarily due to man-made famine, as Mao diverted farmers to making what was effectively junk steel, farmers were forced to surrender a third of output for export and many other centrally directed follies such as the mass slaughter of birds (the Four Pests Campaign) resulting in an invasion of insects.  Beyond the famine was the political murders, the purges and the suicides due to the political campaign.  Frank Dikötter's book Mao's Great Famine devastatingly portrays the horrors of the time.  Mao was certainly history's greatest killer.

Beyond that, the PRC has executed millions as political prisoners, its maltreatment of Tibetans and today of the Uighur community in Xinjiang province are all horrors in their own right.  The Black Book of Communism estimates 65 million died due to the policies of the People's Republic of China, including murders, suicides and famines.  Sure some may argue details, but Mao did after all encourage the USSR to start World War 3 claiming that China could lose half its population and still have more people than the United States.  The One Child Policy nationalised human fertility and means there are now 30 million "surplus" boys or rather men who will never statistically find a female partner. This is also apparently affecting crime, as boys grow up in male dominated environments.  For all of the Communist Party's propaganda about the rights of women, it still owns the fertility of Chinese women, and it has never had women remotely close to power (excluding the psychopathic Jiang Qing).  

The PRC claims to have esteemed credentials in international peace, but they are disingenuous.  This is the country that released the last ever atmospheric nuclear weapons test (16 October 1980), which started war with India in 1962, started a conflict with the USSR in 1969 and then attacked Vietnam in 1979 (because Vietnam removed China's Khmer Rouge from slaughtering the people of "Democratic Kampuchea").   

For within a year of founding the PRC, Mao encouraged fellow megalomaniac Kim Il Sung (as did Stalin) to attack the Republic of Korea, starting the Korean War.  When it all went sour when the US led UN forces pushed the regime to the Yalu/Amnok River, Mao sent in his "Chinese People's Volunteers" to save the Kim Il Sung Democratic People's Republic of Korea, prolonging the war by two years.  It's the People's Republic of China that has kept the world's only third generational hereditary Marxism-Leninist dictatorship afloat with the world's longest personality cult.  That's not something to be proud of.

Then you can look at Indochina, and consider the Khmer Rouge. Backed by Mao militarily, financially and ideologically, Pol Pot took inspiration from Mao's peasant revolution to deindustrialise Cambodia, empty the cities and put the entire population into slave like conditions to produce rice.  The starvation and slaughter of opponents (including anyone with much education, or who wore glasses) saw a third of Cambodia's population killed.  The Khmer Rouge abolished money, private property and business, and in the process extinguished millions of lives.  The People's Republic of China continued to back the regime after Vietnam invaded and overthrew it (as did some Western powers to their disgrace for some years), and today Beijing keeps the kleptocratic bully Hun Sen in power as it engages in neo-colonialism of Cambodia.

Today we can see the PRC building bases on disputed islands in the South China Sea, its neo-imperialism with developing countries as it accesses resources and provides authoritarian regimes with means to track dissent.  The PRC continuously talks of international relations in its simplistic and self-serving way, with one of its key principles "non-interference in each others' internal affairs", which is the tyrants' code for "if you don't mention us murdering our citizens we wont mention yours". For the Communist Party of China, executing dissidents and abusing Chinese people is an internal affairs, it regards itself as accountable to nobody.  Part of its view on internal affairs is Taiwan, which it does not tolerate as a competing regime.  Unlike Korea and the former divided Germany, the PRC has long taken the view that there being only "one China" that countries could either recognise the government in Beijing or the government in Taipei (admittedly Chiang Kai-Shek embraced this while he was alive too).  Even though the Republic of China government in Taiwan has de-facto relinquished any legal claim to govern the rest of China, the People's Republic of China considers itself the sole legitimate authority on Taiwan, so reserves the right to use force to "reunify" the country.  So Taiwan is diplomatically isolated, even though it is, to all intents and purposes, a capitalist liberal democracy with the freedoms seen in Western liberal democracies, and indeed Japan and the Republic of Korea as well.  Beijing is so threatened by the example across the Taiwan Straits, of Chinese people peacefully interacting and living in harmony under liberal democracy, that it seeks to blank it out of history and international affairs.

However, for today - a day ordinary Chinese people are not allowed near the celebrations in Beijing (remember any "People's" Republic is ironic, as it is only about the people as an abstract, not the messy, complicated, diverse and curiosities of real individual humans), because realistically the celebrations are NOT about the achievements of China, but the achievement of 70 years of a political monopoly on power by one of the most inept, corrupt and murderous political entities the world has ever seen.  China's growth in the past forty years is a testament to the hard work, determination and ability of Chinese people set somewhat free after thirty years of totalitarian tyranny, but it is in spite of the central control and direction of the Communist Party of China.

Had China avoided the catastrophe of Mao, it would today be a developed country, with a longer life expectancy, higher standard of living, with literally millions more people of talent and ability thriving, and a vibrant culture of debate, discussion, civil society and community.  Not a culture of fear, surveillance, authoritarianism and concealment of history and reality.  It may more closely resemble Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and Japan, and be a force for economic and political freedom, and the values of human dignity and the individual.

The People's Republic of China has been a catastrophe for so many in China, and has contributed to catastrophe elsewhere.  It is a threat to the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and is the world's greatest executor.  It is a modern surveillance state, built on intellectual property theft and a culture of fear, corruption and intensive state control, moreover the country is simply the tool of the Communist Party of China, which is itself not accountable to the government (nor is the People's Liberation Army, the armed wing of the party and state).  For the people in China, they may feel justified in celebrating the last forty years of remarkable economic growth and improvements in net standard of living for so many, but that is only because they partially embraced the economics of free market capitalism after decades of totalitarian central planning.  The Communist Party of China got out of the way to enable this, but what it does today is dehumanise and classify the people of China, treating them as servants of the Party and the State.  The people of China deserve better, and some people of China have that.

The future of China can be seen in Hong Kong and Taiwan, if the Orwellian bullies of Beijing dare let them be themselves, and reflect on what could have been and what could be, if they just trust the people.  After 70 years, the people of mainland China ought to be allowed to grow up, speak out without fear and choose those who govern them, and expect the basic principles of rule of law, individual freedom and autonomy, private property rights to apply to them, as they do to the 23 million Chinese people in Taiwan and the many millions of others worldwide.

I'll leave my final comment to the Mainland Affairs Council of the Republic of China in Taiwan:

"The Chinese Communist Party has persisted with its one-party dictatorship for 70 years, a concept of governance that violates the values ​​of democracy, freedom and human rights, causing risks and challenges for the development of mainland China... Its shouting about the struggle for unity, great rejuvenation and unification is only an excuse for military expansion, seriously threatening regional peace and world democracy and civilization...The lifeline of the survival and development of mainland China is not tied to one person and one party"

So why is China upset about Taiwan?

Because Taiwan is, de facto, a separate country, but the mainland wants to keep up the pretence that it is entitled to do violence to it at any time if it so wishes.

It is the only a part of China that is not governed by the Communist Party of China (the People's Republic of China (PRC) because the Communists didn't manage to take over Taiwan and a handful of islands off of the mainland coast at the end of the Chinese Civil War.  The effect was that the previous government of China, the Republic of China (ROC), "temporarily relocated" its capital from Nanking to Taipei, with the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) putting Taiwan and other islands (Kinmen, Penghu and Matsu Islands and some others) under its control in a state of emergency for over forty years.

The effect was not dissimilar to that of the two Koreas, except the two Koreas are of roughly equal geographical size and at one time similar GDPs (indeed the Republic of Korea "south" was poorer than the Democratic People's Republic of Korea "north" until the late 1960s). 

So as mainland China suffered under the jackboot of Chairman Mao for nearly thirty years, and lost tens of millions to executions and starvation, and stagnated, Taiwan was under the less brutal jackboot of Chiang Kai Shek for a similar period and became a rapidly developing industrial country. Of course since Mao died, China embraced corporatist capitalism and its economy has grown much like Taiwan did since the 1950s, but Taiwan also reformed although spent many years under tough authoritarian rule. In 1969 the first legislative elections were held to have representatives of Taiwan elected (all others were legislators who were elected before the end of the civil war representing Chinese provinces under "occupation" by the communists).  As those legislators passed away they were not replaced so by the 1990s, the entire legislative assembly was subject to competitive elections.  Martial law was ended in 1987 by Chiang Kai Shek's successor and son Chiang Ching-kuo, as Taiwan moved to being a fully fledged liberal democracy.  By 1992, remaining mainland representatives were removed so the entire legislative assembly was subject to competitive elections.  

Taiwan, as such, is a role model for China as an open, relatively free, liberal democracy, with rule of law, capitalism and political power tempered by the separation of powers.  This, of course, is a complete anathema to the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China.

Of course, Taiwan (or rather the Republic of China in Taiwan - remember Made in R.O.C. labels on goods made a few decades ago?) has had an interesting history of international relations.   With the exception of the UK (primarily out of concern of Hong Kong), most Western countries did not recognise the Communist takeover of China immediately.  Australia and New Zealand did not until 1972, and even the United Nations seat for China was held by the Republic of China until 1971, as the United States vetoed the Chinese Communist regime (as it was called) from taking its seat despite strong efforts by friendly communist countries and developing countries lobbying on behalf of the PRC.  Albania became Beijing's biggest champion.  Both Beijing and Taipei regimes rejected each other being represented on the UN, but the US pushed for the PRC to be represented, not least because it seemed absurd that the world's most populous country (and a nuclear power) were not represented.  So the PRC was admitted, and the ROC expelled.   In 1979, the US switched recognition from the ROC to the PRC, but gave Taiwan a military security guarantee, as the PRC had always (and still does) reserve the right to reunify Taiwan by force.  

Both Chinese regimes refused to have diplomatic relations with any country that recognised the other, but the ROC on Taiwan dropped this in the 1990s, as it had lost recognition and embassies with almost all countries as few could refuse the commercial, diplomatic and strategic benefits of having good relations with mainland China.  Once Saudi Arabia (which had resisted the PRC because of its atheism) and South Africa (which shifted recognition not long after the end of apartheid) had dropped Taiwan, the ROC would only retain diplomatic relations with small Pacific Island, African or Latin American states, mostly through aid programmes (although this ended in 2000 as the PRC was able to outbid the ROC).

So Taiwan remains an oddity.  In every de facto sense, it is an independent country, with a military, government and informal diplomatic relations with many countries.  However, the PRC stops it from having formal diplomatic relations because it doesn't like the only part of China it didn't win in the civil war having a parallel status to it in international organisations or bilateral relations.  It claims that to do so would imply there are "two Chinas", which of course there are as there are two Koreas, and were two Germanys and two Yemens (and even two Cypruses) regardless of claims of legitimacy.

So Donald Trump accepting a phone call from the democratically elected President of the ROC should not be a big deal, except for Beijing, it ruffles their sensitivities over reality.  The US has a defence treaty with Taiwan, and should make it clear than any attack on Taiwan will be rebuffed by the US.  The ROC on Taiwan shares the values of the United States and other Western democracies, the values of freedom, individual rights and government that is determined by the consent of the governed.  The fact that this concerns the Chinese Communist Party is good, for it could do much worse than look at Taiwan and see an example of transition from one-party authoritarian rule to vibrant vigorous liberal democracy.   Peace between Taiwan and the mainland is critical for both, so I think there is little real risk of any aggression from the PRC, but it should be clearer than that.  A renewed US commitment to Taiwan because of its values.  

Nobel Peace Prize winner makes a timely point

The Nobel Peace Prize has been devalued so many times over the years that one could be excused for ignoring it.   From its regular glorification of the UN, to the celebration of fraudsters (Rigoberta Menchu), vacuous self promoters and appeasers (Jimmy Carter, Al Gore), accomplices to mass murder (Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat) and celebrators of dictators (Agnes Bojaxhiu), it has occasionally got it right  in more recent years- with Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi and Martin Luther King Jr. 

Granting it to President Barack Obama when he had demonstrably done nothing in the cause of peace (and whose record to this day remains bountifully barren in this field) even disgusted many who would have tended to be supportive of him.  An award for achievement which is designed to encourage someone who had only achieved rhetoric as substantial as that which lies between Pluto and Neptune is meaningless.

Clearly the Nobel Peace Prize Committee intended to encourage with the granting of the prize to Liu Xiaobo a timely debate within and with China about human rights and freedoms in what is now the world's second biggest economy.  

Xiaobo helped draft Charter 08, China's version of Charter 77 which in socialist Czechoslovakia helped to solidify calls to erode the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Prague.  His fundamental call is for China to no longer suppress political speech, a separation of powers between state and party, an independent judiciary, protection of private property rights and liberal democracy.

In that he is calling for that which now exists in Taiwan, which largely exist in Hong Kong and which are taken for granted in the West, and indeed in increasing numbers of Asian states.   Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia have all transformed themselves from dictatorships of one form of another into liberal open societies, where political debate is vigorous and free speech guaranteed.   China need not fear this.   Indeed, its future prosperity not only relies on it, but will demand it.

Much has been achieved in China in the last twenty years.  There is debate about issues, the gap is questioning the role of the Communist Party, and there is considerable risk if one criticises politicians.   Chinese people can live their lives without much political interference, and the amount of non-political/civil and private space for citizens has grown enormously.   However, without the ability to criticise ones political leaders, China remains a country where the state treats its citizens as children.

China's greatest weakness today is the rule of law.  Without an independent judiciary, without the ability of the judicial system to hold politicians, laws and officials to account - consistently - China retains a system where corruption is built in to the state, party, judiciary and all of the instruments of state violence.

The reaction of the authorities in Beijing is not unexpected, trying to shut down discussion, treating the Prize as "blasphemy" and threatening trade relations with Norway.   This is not how a modern 21st century power behaves, it is how the poor paranoid and blinkered Maoist China of the 1980s would behave.  

Indeed, it is likely that this will cause more harm than good, as the clumsy efforts to censor this news from the Chinese people will fail.  The internet, even as censored as is attempted in China, is too porous for this news not to now be widely known among tens of millions of Chinese citizens.   The attempt at treating these people as children who can't know news about their own country is counter-productive, and will undo the enormous efforts at national loyalty that were promoted by the Olympics and the ongoing national prosperity.   Following this failure, Xinhua News Agency (China's monopoly state news agency) will no doubt try to shape public opinion in the clumsy manner that was its full time job from 1948 till the 1980s, and this will be seen for what it is.

I like China, it is a country of immense diversity, energy, entrepreneurship and good nature.  I want it to succeed, but it is not a bad time to remind it to look at the two models of governance on its doorstep (indeed one shining example at the back door) that allows its citizens the dignity to speak freely about those who govern them and how they behave.   For the past 30 years China has been moving closer to how both Taiwan and Hong Kong operate - Mr Xiaobo reminds us of the great leap forward (!) needed to lift it up to the shining heights of a modern state and society that exist in that province and region.

Did China test Obama?

The recent typical furore about US sales of weapons to Taiwan should have been par for the course, but this time it provoked a particularly angry threat of outrage from Beijing.

Why?

Well for starters China sees itself as bigger, more powerful and more important on the international stage than it has ever been. Having eclipsed Japan as the world's second biggest economy, it now is flexing its power more openly. In part this is due to domestic nationalism, as can be seen by the large numbers of Chinese online willing to defend their authoritarian government, not out of love for the government per se, but out of nationalism. China is, after all, a country of considerable national chauvinism.

However, China also knows the nature of US-Chinese relations since the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 in the US made it national policy to supply arms to Taiwan. So why now?

My view is that it is a test of the Obama Administration. The dove like instincts of the Administration are simply being tested to see if there is a change from the Bush Administration.

China's wildest dream would have been for Obama to halt the supply of arms to Taiwan or delay it. Either would have been a disaster for Taiwan, and caused a panic on the stockmarkets and among the population there.

What was done is that a package negotiated by the Bush Administration has been allowed to proceed with one major change - no submarines. Taiwan had been promised submarines by the Bush Administration, and instead will receive Black Hawk helicopters, not exactly a substitute.

Taiwan has long sought new generation F-16s, to supplement those sold under the previous Bush Administration, but these were denied also.

So the Obama Administration has not followed business as usual, rather a watering down of business as usual. It passed the "test" as China showed its outrage by cutting military ties with the US, and threatening commercial sanctions on US companies supplying Taiwan. Most of those firms will not be concerned since they do not supply China in any case, but Boeing's role in the Chinese airline sector is substantial. That is where China could inflict some pain, although Airbus would be well aware of this and price accordingly to reap the rewards of any symbolic smarting inflicted upon Boeing.

China will hope that it can scare the Obama Administration into withdrawing more from providing Taiwan military assistance, for that is what it can hope for. China has no serious plans to invade Taiwan, for it knows such maneouvres would cost it dearly in foreign investment, trade access and international relations with more than a few neighbours. However, it keeps the threat of force to "reunite the motherland" there to keep Taiwan "in its place", and it is useful for nationalist rabble-rousing in the event of the need for a distraction.

Nevertheless, Taiwan (or more legally correct the "Republic of China" government temporarily exiled in Taiwan) deserves US support to defend itself. It is today a vibrant and open liberal democracy, with the rule of law, free speech and individual freedoms widely respected. It has changed a lot since the days of Chiang Kai Shek's authoritarian rule. Beijing will continue to treat its renegade province as such as long as the Communist Party holds a monopoly on power, for now it is up to the US to continue to provide sufficient support for Taiwan's free democratic government to deter attack from the mainland.

Chinese government wants cyber order

Having mulled over how to respond to Google's threat to withdraw from China, the New China News Agency (Xinhua) has responded with a technique well honed since 1949. It evades the truth.

"China's internet is open" it says. So what is the Golden Shield Project about then? Given my blog is now blocked in China, this is demonstrably a lie.

"China has tried creating a favorable environment for Internet". No China has sought to allow the internet to be used for business, but to use it to spy on dissidents and to block discussion, debate and free speech that goes contrary to what the Communist Party of China wants people to see.

Finally it makes it out to not be a big deal at all saying "Google sent a short statement to Xinhua Wednesday, saying, "We are proud of our achievements in China. Currently we are reviewing the decision and hope for a resolution."" This minimises the whole issue, makes it look like it is only a minor point.

Most notably the report says next to nothing about why Google has suggested it withdraw, citing a "dispute" with the government.

However, a darker response came from an official spokesman quoted by the New York Times. Wang Chen, the information director for the State Council (cabinet) said:

"Internet media must always make nurturing positive, progressive mainstream opinion an important duty" as he called for internet companies to "scrutinise" information that may threaten national stability and for online public opinion to be "guided".

Wang Chen thinks he knows better than your average Chinese internet user what opinion is worth considering and what information they should see. Big Brother state is alive and well in China.

The People's Daily (the official paper of the Communist Party) is saying more:

Spinning that this is all about pornography, not free speech per se it reports "all countries should "take active and effective measures to strengthen management of the Internet and make sure their problems do not affect other countries' cyber order." Cyber order?

Then it plays the "people will be victims card" "Chinese Internet users are the real victims if Google quits China. I think Google is just playing cat and mouse, and trying to use netizens' anger or disappointment as leverage" and the government doesn't care "It will not make any difference to the government if Google quits China; however, Google will suffer a huge economic loss by leaving the Chinese market".

Meanwhile its headline talks of linking the internet with telecommunications and broadcasting networks (hardly news), no doubt with the intent of showing China forging ahead with technology and development, to attract foreign corporate interest.

Of course, business analysts are unsurprisingly wondering if Microsoft and Yahoo will reap rewards from this. Neither have shown any great concern for allowing free speech in China, and Microsoft in particular is more focused on getting the Chinese government to combat software piracy. Yahoo in China is predominantly Chinese owned now, so it's sold out, literally.

My big question is how many business people, starry eyed by the size and scope of the Chinese market have sold out free speech, property rights and individual freedoms to make some cash. How many have been disappointed that the enforceability of contracts in the People's Republic of China has more to do with connections, the size of the company you are contracting with, its relationship with the layers of government and the Communist Party? How many have wondered why theft of intellectual property is rampant, as the Communist Party has long regarded theft as a legitimate tool, like the USSR did? How many have found corruption to be rampant and have participated in it?

In other words, how many of those who seek to enjoy the fruits of capitalism spend so little energy and time in supporting the basic concepts that make it work? As such, is it any wonder that they then become victims as governments and citizens turn on businesses, assuming that capitalism unfettered doesn't mean laws against fraud or theft?

For Google, free speech and the ability to enforce laws against trespass (hacking) have proven to be critical to what it does. Maybe it is about time that other businesses in China (and indeed in all countries) paid attention too.

Google says no to the Communist Party of China

Google's enormous success as a company offering a search engine and advertising related to it has given it dominance in how people search the internet. A dominance that has upset governments, some of whom are keen to kneecap overly successful businesses (think of anti-trust/competition law agencies, none of which have learnt from the absurd attempt to kneecap Microsoft, only to find that Microsoft itself is facing both competition and the disadvantages of being too big), but others don't like the internet because of it facilitating a free flow of information and media.

Every new communications and information technology has seen responses from vested interests seeking to restrict or ban it. However, they have also proven to be the unlocking of freedom, a check on bullies, charlatans and authoritarians of every bent. It is no surprise that the Nazis engaged in public book burning, that communist Romania banned typewriters unless they were officially approved, registered and their typefaces customised so the Securitate could tell whose typewriter had produced a document.

Whilst the Nazis were the first to extensively use radio broadcasts to rally support across the nation, the discovery of shortwave radio meant that people in authoritarian regimes could get news from free countries. So the Soviets and even today regimes in China, Cuba and Iran still attempt to jam inbound radio broadcasts from the likes of the BBC and Voice of America. North Korea simply produces radios with no tuning dial, with the capacitor preset to the single state radio station.

Television became a key platform to inform East Germans of what life in the West was like, and news from a non-Stalinist perspective, with much of East Germany able to receive West German terrestrial television broadcasts. Satellite TV more recently has made major inroads across the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. However, entry into that market in China has been done respecting local censorship laws.

However, the internet has become revolutionary. As anyone online can produce content, and the content accessed is up to the person online, its scope is ubiquitous and all encompassing. However, unlike broadcasting, the internet is also an essential business tool. Email is now vital to the productivity and sales of many businesses.

In the mid-late 1990s I attended several intergovernmental meetings which discussed "regulating" the internet. At the time Saudi Arabia had banned it, because it had no idea how to handle content that was blasphemy against Islam and anything of a sexual nature. What was made abundantly clear is that with the internet comes freedom of choice, although some countries were and still are engaging in grand firewall projects.

When Google set up google.cn, it agreed to respect the censorship policies of the People's Republic of China. Google argued that participating in the Chinese market would be more positive for free speech than ignoring it. However, whilst Google would explicitly not include certain results in its google.cn searches, it was clear savvy users in China could find ways around this.

Since then, the Chinese government has expressed concern that Google facilitates access to pornography, and has called for Google to step up measures to help with its censorship efforts. It is trying to pursue an endless game and losing.

So the announcement by Google that it will pull out of China unless it can provide a free open uncensored service is astonishing. It has justified it on the grounds that there have been hacking attempts at Gmail accounts from China, and presumably it has little recourse to the Chinese authorities to prosecute this. However, it is a brave move in the country that has now got the largest number of internet users in the world.

Google has apparently stopped censoring google.cn, which must be causing great angst amongst the Chinese government and the Communist Party. Previously censored articles and images of Tiananmen Square, critiques of Mao Tse Tung and support for Chinese dissidents, Taiwan and indeed much porn will now be easily accessible.

More important than that, Google has let all users in China know of its policy. It has called upon the 300 million or so Chinese internet users to note what their government is doing, and how Google will walk if things don't change.

It is a calculated risk. In China, Google is not the leading search engine. A local variant, Baidu, (a blatant copy) is. However, it will not take long before its users learn they can access what was previously forbidden. Google risks losing advertising revenue in China, now the world's second biggest economy. Yet Google also will gain publicity elsewhere and support from millions in the free world.

So what is the likely response from Beijing? I suspect it will seek to wave Google farewell and seek to ingratiate itself with Yahoo and MSN. It is terrified of free information, protests and calls for political reform, so will itself seek to block Google. After all, the odds that millions of Chinese will revolt over this is low. Yet it will put a stumbling block in the growth of the internet in China.

However, kudos to Google. It will have declared its hand as being the search engine for a free world, it will have shown how a private company can frighten the world's largest authoritarian government. After all, look at how sanitised this report from Xinhua (the Chinese state news agency) is about the issue.

Peter Foster, the Beijing correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says: "Interestingly, for all the nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment that typifies China’s more vocal netizens, the majority of comments on Chinese web discussions forums seem to be extremely worried about what Google’s potential pull-out signifies for China in the longer term."

China has made massive progress though its own hard work and ingenuity, but it has also leant heavily on a global knowledge economy whose well-spring is the free-flow of information.

Google is a potent symbol of that idea and while China can get along just fine without Google in the short-term, a decision to shun Google (which at this point looks the likely course) would expose the inherent limits of the Chinese ‘miracle’.

Yes, the relative economic freedom China has experienced in the past 30 years has been matched by much less individual freedom, particularly when it comes to holding government and more specifically the Communist Party to account. It would appear that the Communist Party can no longer demand obedience and surrender by foreign companies seeking to reap rewards from the ample Chinese market.

Change you can believe in: Tibet

Barack Obama on Tibet and the Dalai Lama before being President.

Barack Obama on how President Bush should have boycotted the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in protest for human rights abuses in China, including Tibet

President Barack Obama cancels meeting with Dalai Lama, because US foreign policy interests are more important -which means getting Chinese support for action on Iran and North Korea.

Yep, awfully easily to play the moral high ground when you're not President isn't it?

60 years of Communist led China

Yet China could hardly be more different today than it was when Mao declared the “People’s Republic”. It is remarkable how the Communist Party of China (CPC) can even begin to claim that the China of today is a natural evolution of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse Tung Thought and is progressing towards communism. The truth is that it happens to be the centre of power, with the armed forces, for a burgeoning market economy. Even China's official media now celebrates the 30 years of opening up.

China one day, publicly, will be able to reflect with a bit more balance on the first 30 years of that period. It was a period when Mao directly through oppression and indirectly through shockingly insane economic policies was responsible for the deaths of around 60 million. Mao famously said that he didn’t fear nuclear war, because if half of China’s population were killed, there would still be over 300 million left to fight.

Today he bears the not widely recognised title of being the political leader with the most blood on his hands. Blood because the “People’s Republic” became a place where sacrifice to the common good became the guiding philosophy, the cult of Mao the national religion, the Great Leap Forward that proved to be the exact opposite, and an insane level of mass mobilisation during the Cultural Revolution that saw China stagnate and nearly break down into civil war. It is curious that Western academic and radical interest in China was primarily during that period.

China today is an astonishing contrast. With Mao gone, and the Gang of Four of totalitarian thugs arrested, China got on its feet in the 1970s, opened up to the world and Chinese people were allowed to enter business, and have private lives, again.

The results have been astonishing, China now approaches the economic output of Japan, which it is about to exceed to become the second largest economy. Instead of famine and virtually universal poverty, China has a burgeoning middle class. Instead of regimented socialist realism, Chinese citizens are part of the global community, with now the largest number of internet users of any country.

That isn’t a China under Maoist regimentation any more. For all of the symbols of Marxism-Leninism and statements about communism, the truth about China is that it is an authoritarian capitalist state, which happens to be run by the Communist Party. It is becoming more akin to the authoritarian capitalism of Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s under the Kuomintang that it is to Mao’s China, although there is undoubtedly less freedom than there was in Taiwan, China is not the totalitarian state it once was.

Media is under tight state control, but debate and discussion and criticism of current events is vigorous, as the sphere for what can be criticised ever inches wider. Education still indoctrinates into a positive history of the last 60 years, but the facts speak for themselves. China changed direction in 1978 and has not looked back.

China’s phenomenal growth has happened in spite of Mao and in spite of the Communist Party. Hopefully it will be less than 60 years before the Chinese people can more openly discuss the rivers of blood of the era (error) of Mao. Until there is a genuine free press and freedom of speech, China cannot fully progress and hold its leaders accountable, and fight corruption.

Meantime, it is no wonder, that despite the brutal mistakes of Tiananmen Square, Chinese people laud Deng Xiaoping, who surveyed years of purges to be the architect of China's transformation for the better. China's celebrations are full of communist imagery, yet celebrating a largely capitalist led transformation. Although, the authoritarianism still remains as the Daily Telegraph notes:

"The people have been told to stay away from the celebration of the People's Republic today; those whose homes overlook the route have been instructed not to hold parties. The government has banned the flying of kites in Beijing, an innocent pastime enjoyed in the city's parks by old men with weary smiles."

Note also the irony of the country that most resembles China's first 30 years, hailing its paymaster now. Many Chinese who visit North Korea today say it reminds them of life before 1976.

My hope for China is that its leaders continue to tell the people less what to do, and trust them more, and to make the grand step to make themselves accountable to the people directly, by allowing free speech, criticism and separating party, state and judiciary. Most think democracy is the key to unlocking it. It may be a consequence, but what matters most for moving China forward is freedom - and most of all, freedom of speech. No politicians should fear criticism so much that they lock people up for it. May it take much less time for the CPC to humble itself to make China really a republic for the people, as individuals, with rights. They are already halfway there.

Urumqi explodes, somewhat

Few will know of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province in China’s far west, but the reports from the BBC that riots that have erupted (and the news reports of them) show much about what China isn’t anymore. There have been riots, protests and counter-riots between the Uighur minority (who are the majority in Xinjiang) and the Han Chinese. Reports of 156 dead Han Chinese from Sunday’s riots are what the monopoly state media report, but some Uighur are saying many of their people were killed too. The truth is difficult to determine whilst China remains largely closed to alternative media.

It is easy to accept that China’s state media is pro-Han Chinese, so will always report the official view that all of China’s ethnic minorities are well treated and part of the People’s Republic of China family. Any protests are seen as counter-revolutionary riots inspired by foreign devils.

What has been reported so far is that there were Uighur protestors who turned on Han Chinese passers by, and the security forces. Since then, local Han Chinese have turned on Uighur owned shops and properties. In short, it is a nationalist conflict, being mediated by a state that is hardly known for its even handedness. China is, after all, a deeply racist society, which can be seen in its patronising attitude to minorities, and also if you scratch the surface about attitudes towards Africans, Europeans and other Asians.

However, let’s eliminate a few ideas about what these riots are:

1. Desire to overthrow the communist party: No, it’s not anything quite as fundamental as this. It started as a dispute regarding treatment of participants in a fight at a toy factory in Guangdong province between Han and Uighur peoples. Uighur are not so politically organised (or indeed brave) to confront that issue head on.
2. Muslim fundamentalism stoking in China: Yes Uighur are traditionally Muslim, but there is little sign that Uighur protestors are motivated by Islam.

This is a racial conflict, between Uighur who feels constantly discriminated against by Han Chinese, and now Han Chinese who are aggrieved by violence shown to them by rioting Uighur.

So what does it say about China? Well the tight security in Xinjiang seems to have waned significantly, as having protest to this extent and scale in this province is largely unknown (although protests are more common than most outsiders would believe). It also shows there will be grave fear that this could spark unrest elsewhere that could lead to the division of China – something the Communist Party fears second only to losing its monopoly on power.

It has echoes of Tibet, not that Xinjiang should be independent, but rather that calls for accountability, transparency and for the state to be colourblind are only fair and natural. However, one should be cautious about supporting the Uighur unreservedly. Turning on innocent passers by, attacking and killing them isn’t exactly a way of gaining ANY kind of moral authority.

However, it would probably be in the best interests of China, the Han Chinese and Uighur if the people of Xinjiang had the same sorts of freedoms, and independent state institutions that Chinese enjoy in another part of China – Hong Kong.

Hong Kong shows China of the future?

150,000 people in Hong Kong holding a vigil in memory of the suppression of protestors at Tiananmen Square in June 1989 should give pause for thought.

Hong Kong IS a Special Administrative Region, but it is still an integral part of the People's Republic of China. The Government of the People's Republic of China has said it will guarantee Hong Kong's "system" until 2047 at least, but if it felt threatened it would undoubtedly step in. It clearly believes the prosperity of Hong Kong is too important to threaten, and threatening free speech and political freedom in Hong Kong would threaten Hong Kong's prosperity.

In other words, China IS changing, it is evolving. Taiwan too was once an authoritarian state, as was South Korea - both now free thriving liberal democracies. It may simply be a matter of prosperity, but it does show that opening up economies is a path to more individual freedom.

It is a message that leftwing so called human rights activists might bear in mind.

20 years since the PLA turned on the people

20 years ago there was much optimism in many parts of the world. Mikhail Gorbachev had ushered in a new age of freedom and openness in what was then the Soviet Union, and had made it clear to the former Soviet satellites in eastern Europe that what happened to the politics of those countries was up to them - no longer would the USSR intervene as it had done explicitly in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 (and less explicitly on many other occasions). Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia were already moving rapidly forward, as it appeared the Cold War was fading away. This was watched by tyrants in all "really existing socialist" states that remained, as the regimes in Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany and Albania all clung on in Europe, whilst in Asia, Pyongyang, Hanoi, Beijing and Vientiane remained defiant.

Mikhail Gorbachev sought to end frosty relations with China by visiting Beijing in May 1989, the coverage of which was significant, as Gorbachev brought with him a message of openness to government, and an end to the totalitarian tentacles of single party rule involving itself in most aspects of life. It was a message noted by students in Beijing, which brought about protests in Tiananmen Square calling for similar reforms to bring freedom of speech and an end to the unfettered rule of the Communist Party of China.

The events of 2-4 June 1989 in Beijing are well known. I have blogged before about it, one noting a report from the then Radio Beijing English Language Service which you wont hear on the modern day China Radio International. I don't intend to repeat it.

It is worth noting that China is freer now than it was 20 years ago, not least because the advent of cellular phones and the internet has made it more difficult to control information flows to the public. However, the Chinese government has also loosened up, criticism of officials and debate about how policies are implemented appears. While questioning the rule of the Communist Party can still land you in prison or worse, the appearance of protests and the reporting of protests about situations and issues at the local level shows progress. There is little doubt that as Chinese gain property rights and prosperity they are more demanding of government. This is something unheard of when Sue Bradford went to Maoist China in the early 1970s.

Yet it isn't enough - China has two vibrant examples of free, open Chinese societies on its doorstep. Hong Kong is within its grasp, and flourishes with the rule of law and a quasi-democratic system of government in a free society. Taiwan has a vibrant liberal democracy and free society. The Communist Party of China, which essentially is running a corrupt state capitalist system (rather like an organised crime syndicate, as it is not accountable) fearful about what would happen if it "let a hundred flowers bloom". However, it is, in effect, slowly letting the screws loosen - even if questioning its rule remains taboo.

Reports after the Tiananmen Square massacre range in deaths from the low hundreds to the thousands. The most memorable image being the one man standing in front of the row of tanks. It is true for evil to be done it simply requires good men to do nothing, but in this case it was the People's Liberation Army that turned on the people. Chinese people still get arrested, imprisoned, tortured and executed for challenging the government, and the behemoth of the Chinese government and Communist Party of China can still bulldoze over people, leaving no trace of where they have been, with no accountability.

The BBC has an audio archive to remember the events.

It is time to take a moment to wish for more freedom in China, and gently remember those who strived for that which so many of us take for granted.

UN Racism conference was a farce before it started

While most of the focus on the UN Racism Conference (Durban Review Conference) has been on Ahmadinejad, the signs were there well before that this would be a farce. Islamic countries all wanted the conference to be an effort to prohibit defamation of religion, and to slam Israel. Cuba also wanted anything to do with freedom of speech removed. Iran sought to overwhelmingly dominate the conference proceedings.

Even more sinister is the effort by China, Cuba and South Africa to promote the idea that victims of Trans-Atlantic slave trade should be compensated - i.e. implying the old call that African-Americans should be compensated for what their distant ancestors suffered. That all fell flat.

UN Watch has excellent coverage of the background meetings before the Conference, showing just what rogues so many attendees were looking to be:

In the Intercessional Working Group for the Durban Review Conference, Pakistan, speaking for the group of Islamic states (OIC), objected to paragraph 56, which “Stresses that the right to freedom of opinion and expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic, pluralistic society,” saying that it did not see how this relates to the conference’s focus on racism.

(In which case what harm does it do? Yes you can guess).

Cuba argued that paragraphs about freedom of speech and expression should be moved to the more passive Section 1, which reviews progress of states rather than demanding action from them.

(Funny that, you don't get freedom of speech and expression in Cuba)

Cuba also endorsed mention of the ad hoc committee on complementary standards, an Algerian-chaired U.N. committee that is seeking to add an additional protocol to the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) that would define criticism of religion as a violation.

(In other words, trying to say criticising a religion is a form of racism - what nonsense).

China, Cuba, and South Africa argued that there needs to be more work on paragraphs 60-62 on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. China said these paragraphs should be more “victims oriented,” implying support for the African-led effort to demand that Western countries pay reparations for the past injustice.

(In other words, the US government should pay African-Americans compensation for the suffering of their ancestors - even though Africans in Africa today almost all have lower standards of living than African-Americans).

In a meeting of the Durban II working group at the U.N. Human Rights Council, Iran was extremely active, proposing amendments and language changes in more paragraphs than any other state, and in a few instances, ignoring the Chair’s plea to hold off on certain paragraphs for the time being and engage in a constructive manner.

The closing session of the working group on the draft Durban II declaration:

Iran asked that the paragraph on Holocaust remembrance be deleted;

(because of course, it mind never have happened right?)

The Czech Republic for the EU requested an amendment to the controversial paragraph 30, which “Takes note with appreciation that the Ad hoc Committee on the Elaboration of International Complementary Standards convened its first session,” proposing to delete, “with appreciation.” The ad hoc committee is primarily responsible for promoting the campaign to criminalize the “defamation of religions” within U.N. human rights law. Nigeria lashed back at the EU, proposing to keep “appreciation,” while adding, “and commends” the committee. The paragraph was then tabled and skipped.

(Czechs bravely wanted to dismiss the Islamic driven attempt to restrict religious criticism, while Nigeria endorses Islamofascism).

Cuba proposed the deletion of paragraphs 55 and 56, which emphasize the importance of freedom of expression, saying, “There is no reason why we should single out one right, which is not even associated with the fight against racism.”

Iran proposed a new paragraph 56 that calls for “permissible restrictions to freedom of expression.” It also suggested integration of the “defamation of religions” concept into article 66, which deals with incitement to hatred.

(Both being great opponents to freedom of expression).

So is it any surprise that New Zealand felt that there was no point going to fight a gallery of rogues that were uninterested in racism, and driven more by fear of their own appalling standards of free speech and openness being scrutinised?

China's latest Olympic lie

Since the Communist Party came to power in China, its regime has long presented a show pony to the world of how much the Han Chinese dominated one party state respects and listens to the ethnic minorities of China. It is not only sensitivity about what the world thinks, but also to present a united "one China, many faces" ideal. It is most regularly seen at the Congresses to the Communist Party of China (CPC) where representatives from provinces such as Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia are all expected to wear traditional "national" dress, to distinguish them and show that the CPC grants and commands respect (and obedience) from the Chinese ethnic minorities.

In the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony the same was seen with 56 children dressed in the native costumes of ethnic minorities within the People's Republic of China - except they were all Han Chinese children according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

Again Chinese officials have been willing to answer obfuscate questions around this saying "I would argue it is normal for dancers, performers, to be dressed in other races' clothes".

The unspoken truth about China is that it is quite racist, it is the norm to regard other ethnic groups as inferior. Don't forget the Han Chinese form around 90% of the population of China (including Taiwan) and there has been no need for China, unlike the USA, ex. European colonial powers or subjects, to confront racial bigotry.

The fact the children are Han Chinese will be neither here nor there to most Chinese, and yes in truth it is of small consequence - but it does raise the question as to why the Chinese Communist regime did NOT simply find some children from the ethnic minorities. It also raises the question of the truth of how these ethnic minorities are treated by the state - we hear much about Tibet, but what do we not know? Maybe it isn't much different from the majority, maybe not, and not having a free press means people outside China will predominantly assume the worse.

China is changing

I'm less surprised that, Lin Maoke, the little girl shown singing in the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, was lip syncing, because Chinese Communist politicians decided the little girl REALLY singing, Yang Peiyi did not meet the criteria that "The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression" (reports CNN). The Communist Party of China has been lying to its people and the world incessantly for the past sixty years.

What is most notable is that the General Music Designer of the ceremony actually revealed the fact, and revealed it on Chinese state radio, and it was reported, and presumably with little consequences for the man concerned - Chen Qigang.

This is the kind of honesty and openness unknown in the China that Sue Bradford went to 35 years ago, and dare I say even 10 years ago. Chinese bloggers are debating it and some condemning it. China is changing if one looks closely.

It goes without saying that the replacement of the child for one "cuter" is rather distasteful to many of us, who find the idea that some aging communist official could deem the appearance of a child to be not good enough for the nation to be abhorrent. I'm sure those who made this decision are hardly picture postcards of beauty themselves, in fact they have proved themselves to be so.

However, allowing this debate does show a change, one that is positive, and which puts China well ahead of the likes of Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe and Burma. May debate on other official decisions flourish.

Bush tells China before he goes there

Yes President Bush laid it into China, appropriately and respectfully, before his visit for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. However, the media has been largely quiet about it - no doubt because they almost all hate him and couldn't possibly cheer him for saying something that, if the UN Secretary General or Helen Clark had said it, they'd all cheer.

Bush said "we press for openness and justice not to impose our beliefs but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs"

Indeed. and...

"The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings"

Who could disagree at all? Helen Clark wont say it though, she doesn't want to upset China.

CNN reports China's dictatorship predictably saying "We firmly oppose any statements or deeds which use human rights, religion and other issues to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries"

Yes, it is of course like saying that you can't complain to your neighbour if he is beating up his wife and kids, as it is an "internal affair". It is not an internal affair when people are being murdered for their opinions.

So Bush has done well, he has noted China's progress and welcomes close relations with China - that's more than the loud protestors on the left who were amazingly quiet when China went through its most murderous and brutal period of recent history, under Mao in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

The Olympics hopefully will be a glorious event, for the athletes. Some may bravely make a statement of protest against the authoritarian nationalist spectacle the Chinese Communist Party is trying to portray to the world, but regardless it will be a noteworthy event. China has come a long way, but it doesn't mean we should ignore what more it needs to do to become a civilised member of the world community.

The blood spilt at Tiananmen

19 years ago it was, and I was 19 years old when it happened. I wrote much about it a couple of years ago, and that is all still valid.

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I visited the very place myself, and paused for a moment to remember. I was, after all, a university student at the time, and it could have been me gunned down, or arrested, for arguing for free speech. China has moved on in many ways since then, but it still keeps a tight rein on free speech. It has incorporated Hong Kong, a beautiful vibrant world city of trade, freedom, commerce and culture - look there China, spread what Hong Kong has to all of China. Look at Taiwan, it has much the same and thrives.

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So today spare a moment to remember the last moment some Chinese people stood up for the simple right of freedom of expression, when China looked like it might make the step of separating party and state - an essential prerequisite to fight corruption and establish rule of law. It's not anti-China, it's as pro-China as one can be - it believes the Chinese people can make choices to rule their own lives and express themselves, without fear of saying as they wish, and without fear of what they may say. Go on China, the USA and Japan can do it, South Korea can do it, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan can do it. The only people who should be afraid are those who fear criticism and cannot respond creditably. Even people in Hong Kong can march against what happened in Tiananmen Square.

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Meanwhile, China Radio International (the successor to Radio Beijing) wont be repeating this broadcast today. This was what was said, before freedom was snuffed out in the Chinese state media:

"Please remember June the Third, 1989. The most tragic event happened in the Chinese Capital, Beijing. Thousands of people, most of them innocent civilians, were killed by fully-armed soldiers when they forced their way into city. Among the killed are our colleagues at Radio Beijing. The soldiers were riding on armored vehicles and used machine guns against thousands of local residents and students who tried to block their way. When the army conveys made the breakthrough, soldiers continued to spray their bullets indiscriminately at crowds in the street. Eyewitnesses saysome armored vehicles even crushed foot soldiers who hesitated in front ofthe resisting civilians. [The] Radio Beijing English Department deeply mourns those who died in the tragic incident and appeals to all its listeners to join our protest for the gross violation of human rights and the most barbarous suppression of the people.”

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China seems more open to debate nowadays, so I call you to go here, to China Radio International's website and ask why it doesn't discuss the events of 3 June 1989. Do so politely, there is a form in the bottom right hand corner. Sadly I expect it will go into this sort of denial, but go on - someone will be reading it.

Burmese junta letting its people die

Apparently today the Burmese embassy in Bangkok was closed, for a public holiday, whilst many aid workers sought visas to enter and provide help. French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher has asked that the UN Security Council pass a resolution to allow aid to be flown in by force if necessary.

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The Australian reports that Burma was warned of the cyclone two days ago but didn't warn its beleagured population. One of the murderous thugs that run the regime has shown how much he is concerned about the locals:

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Social Welfare Minister Maung Maung Swe said "For expert teams from overseas to come here, they have to negotiate with the Foreign Ministry and our senior authorities"

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Just another government with blood on its hands, letting its people die for the sake of protecting their precious dictatorship. Charming.

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China meanwhile is sending US$1 million of aid to the capital and half a million in aid materials. That'll be well spent of course. Wen (Chinese PM) said "I believe that the government and people of Myanmar will soon overcome the difficulties caused by the cyclone and restore normal life and production," in a message to his Myanmar counterpart General Thein Sein. Yes, the government is always most important isn't it?

China's censorship easing off?

The Peoples' Daily is the Chinese government's official paper. Its forum has much anti-CNN anti-Western discussion, but I did manage to post the following:

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"You may criticise CNN, but is it possible on Chinese media to loudly condemn CCTV? You see unlike people in China, I can watch CNN any time and it will never be censored. I often disagree with it, but I am free to choose. CNN is a private company, it does not represent any government, people in China should remember that and that they cant see it uncensored."

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It's not much, but perhaps things are changing slowly. It wasn't long ago that such criticism would be censored.