News of the Day (March 23)

Communist push for U.S. concessions to Stalinist North Korea “wearing thin”: The constant drumbeat from the cadres in Beijing demand the United States add to its already considerable concessions to the Stalinist regime is “wearing thin in Washington” (Cybercast News). According to one analyst, “Beijing has to choose between North Korea and the U.S. and can no longer keep having it both ways.” At the risk of being rude, yours truly has already predicted how that will go.

Cadres pledge to fight “media corruption”: Ostensibly, the Communists are “barring journalists from reporting if they are found to have made up stories or taken bribes” (BBC). Already, there are “fears among those trying to write about abuses of power or corruption that they could be targeted,” and from here, those fare are well justified.

As resignations spread, some wonder if “anti-secession law” was to counter it: Although the Communist regime has never set foot on Taiwan, many mainlander members certainly have come to the island democracy. One of them, formerly the Director of the Shanghai Hospital Pediatrics Department, quit the party and called on “other mainland Chinese living in Taiwan to read the “Nine Commentaries” and withdraw from the CCP.” This was reported by the Epoch Times, which also recorded the resignations of cadre Wu Tian, a lifetime member who – for obvious reasons – would only call herself Yansheng, and even several Russian Communists. In light of the mass resignations (now over 440,000), some believe the Communists passed their “anti-secession” law against Taiwan “to revert the impending fate of disintegration” as Zhong Lihua of Taiwan’s Liberty Times (via Epoch Times) put it. Stephen Gregory, the Epoch Times United States Editor, concurs. Zhang Tianliang, also in the Epoch Times, remains convinced the Nine Commentaries could end Communism in China regardless.

Cadres admit to terrible water pollution, sort of: Communist China is admitting that water pollution is so rampant that “a third of China's rural population – an estimated 360m people – lack access to safe drinking water” (BBC). Even here the cadres are lying; the actual number of citizens drinking water “unfit for human consumption” (seventh paragraph) is at least 700 million.

On the State of the Workers in the Workers’ State: One of the biggest fears among inhabitants of Communist China’s rural interior is “falling ill, since it requires an expensive trip to see a doctor.” The editors of the Epoch Times detail how workers in the rural interior have grown poorer and poorer every year.

Other Commentary and Analysis: Ellen Bork, Deputy Director of the Project for the New American Century, reprints and lauds a letter from dissidents in Communist China calling for the European Union to keep its arms embargo on the regime. James T. Hackett, Washington Times, calls for a greater emphasis on missile defense to counteract “China's steady military buildup in support of a fanatical determination to control Taiwan.” Li Difei, Epoch Times, examines the lengths to which the cadres have gone to block New Tang Dynasty Television from being aired in Communist China.