News of the Day (October 28)

Another cyberdissident arrested: Communist China put cyberdissident Shi Xiaoyu behind bars for “his online reporting on workers' protests in the southwestern industrial city of Chongqing” (Boxun). For more on those protests, see second and lead items.

Mainlanders bring resignation statements to Hong Kong: Hong Kong is becoming a transit point for Communist Party members who are willing, but unable, to resign from the party. One mainlander “brought a list of more than one thousand people who wanted to withdraw from the CCP” (Epoch Times). Meanwhile, the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party has become a sought-after souvenir for mainlanders.

Communist China tinkers with tax code to help impoverished peasants: As part of its plan to “reduce economic disparity” (BBC), Communist China has decided to “raise the income tax threshold.” Actually combating the corrupt cadres who rob the impoverished peasantry blind was not on the Communists’ list of possible solutions.

China Construction Bank makes struggling IPO: The Communist-owned bank barely stayed above its initial offering price. The weak performance was blamed on “concern about bird flu in the region” (BBC); but one wuld have to assume the bank’s corruption (sixteenth item, seventh item), its bad loans (twenty-first item), and its need for tens of billions in bailout money (twenty-fourth item) had some effect.

SCO claims to back anti-terrorism: The anti-U.S. Shanghai Cooperation Organization (second item) issued another missive “against terrorism, separatism and extremism” (United Press Int’l via Washington Times). However, SCO Secretary General Zhang Deguang added something laughable: “member states would strengthen their crackdown on drug smuggling to eliminate a source of material support for various kinds of crime.” Would that include, say, Communist money-laundering of al Qaeda drug money?

Pentagon wants to keep training Taiwanese pilots: The Pentagon “submitted a proposed contract with Taiwan to Congress to continue training Taiwanese F-16 fighter pilots in Arizona” (UPI via Washington Times). The contract would ensure that the training and logistics support for the island democracy “would continue as before.”

Hu Jintao in the northern Korean colony: The Communist leader is “in North Korea for a rare visit expected to focus on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program” (BBC).

More on Stalinist North Korea: Andrew Harding, BBC, has a silly puff piece on the SNK food situation. Friendly Blog One Free Korea rips dovish South Korea for its refusal to support (Chosun Ilbo, SK) the European Union’s resolution to the United Nations General Assembly on the Stalinists’ human rights abuses (next to last item). OFK also and takes note of SNK’s eerily choreographed Arirang festival.

Woe Canada! Foreign Minister’s aide attacks supporter of pro-Taiwan bill: In what Paul Wells (Macleans) sarcastically called a “stellar performance,” Dan McTeague, Member of the Canadian Parliament and parliamentary secretary to Canada's Foreign Minister, hurled ad hominem attacks at Carleton University Professor Andrew Cohen over the latter’s support for a bill by Opposition MP Jim Abbott calling for closer Canadian relations with the island democracy of Taiwan (next to last item).

Anti-Communist Hong Kong columnist – “We are still a colony”: This is how Apple Daily columnist Kin-ming Liu ends her Washington Post piece lamenting one-country, one-and-a-half systems – “Eight years after the Hong Kong handover, I miss the British. Oddly enough, I didn't like them when when they ruled Hong Kong as a colony. But when I look back, I recall life as seeming more promising in those days than what we are facing today. And we are still a colony.”

Historian debunks Communist Chinese myths about World War II: Communist China has repeatedly told its own people “that the communist forces bore the brunt of the fighting against the Japanese” (Epoch Times). In fact, as historian, Mr Xin Haonian noted in his recent lecture at Sydney University (Australia), the Communists actually made “secret deals with Japan to obtain counties for their partnership.”

On Communist China and the United States: Martin Walker, UPI (via Washington Times), talks to U.S. Navy Admiral William J. Fallon, head of the Pacific Command and, sadly, someone who seems intent on drinking the “engagement” kool aid.

On Mongolia: Bill Gertz, Washington Times, interviewed Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar, who discussed his efforts to convince Stalinist-in-chief Kim Jong-il to democratize – don’t hold your breath, Mr. Enkhbayar – and Communist China.