Friday, February 04, 2005

News of the Day (February 4)

Refugees from SNK on one side, Communists and South Korea doves on the other: The desperate people escaping northern Korea are getting caught in a terrible diplomatic pincer movement between Communist China and democratic South Korea’s dovish President Roh Moo-hyun (Cybercast News). Given that nearly everyone in East Asia recognizes that the refugee flow is both a symbol and accelerator of the Stalinist regime’s collapse, the Communists’ willingness to send back any refugee they find, forcing refugees lucky enough to reach Communist China to live as nonpersons, is no surprise.

What’s more shocking is the behavior of the Roh’s government, which has decided being nice to the Stalinist regime is more important than the well-being of their fellow Koreans. Unification Minister Chung Dong-young even went so far as to drop this stunner on Korean media: “It is not desirable for anyone to organize defections, intentionally bringing people out of North Korea.” Thankfully, the notion that it’s better to let the people of northern Korea starve to death under Kim Jong-il, earns the government, which added insult to injury by dropping the “enemy” label from SNK (BBC), repeated and well-earned blasts from South Korea’s opposition and several human rights groups.

Industrial Espionage in Detroit: Fuping Liu, accused of “being part of a conspiracy to steal millions of dollars worth of trade secrets from two Metro Detroit auto suppliers” (Detroit News) and sell them to a Communist Chinese firm (Chongqing Huafu Industry Company), was transferred from jail to a Detroit halfway house by a federal magistrate.

Engineer from Communist China can’t go home due to his beliefs: Gui Yubin, an engineer and graduate from Shanghai Jiaotong University, is stuck in South Korea with no job, wife, or family – all because the Communists are certain to arrest him if he comes home because he is a Falun Gong practitioner. He told his story to the Epoch Times.

Parade in California bans Falun Gong under Communist pressure: The organizer of the San Gabriel Valley Annual (Lunar) New Year Parade, bowing to pressure from Communist China, has told Falun Gong it cannot join the parade, saying the community of faith was too “controversial”. It was another example of the long arm of Communist repression reaching across the Pacific (the Epoch Times details several more).

On the Communist treatment of Zhao Ziyang: Yan Jiaqi “was one of Zhao’s advisors for China’s political reform” (Epoch Times) before Zhao was forced out as Party General Secretary and placed under house arrest for opposing the Tiananmen Square massacre. He notes that even Mao Zedong, author of the genocidal “Great Leap Forward” and the Cultural Revolution, had more concern for his internal opponents than Hu Jintao (ouch!), and predicts that the Chinese Communist Party is headed for deep trouble because of this.

Lenovo profits hit the wall: Profits for Lenovo grew only 1% for the October-December 2004 period, as revenue for the Communist-owned firm actually fell. The news comes as Lenovo’s bid to acquire IBM’s personal computer branch remains under scrutiny from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment (tell them to nix the deal). Report: BBC

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