News of the Day (May 26)

With Russian arms, Communist Chinese military tips the balance of power: So who holds the balance of power in Eastern Asia? Fairly soon, it will be Communist China, thanks to their leading arms supplier: Russia - "At some point this fall, probably in September, China will take delivery of a state-of-the-art . . . Russian-built S-300 PMU-2 air defense system (which) will provide China with the power to challenge the United States for command of the airspace over the Taiwan straits" (United Press Int'l via Washington Times). Meanwhile, the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies calculated that the Communist regime's actual defense budget was at least 70% more than what its willing to admit, and even that "ignores a number of big spending items. These include overseas weapons procurement, defence industry subsidies and research and development spending" (Financial Times, UK).

More on Communist China and the United States: Yahoo's history of helping the Communists nail dissidents (fourteenth, fifth, lead, third, eighth, seventh, third, fifth, eighth, last, third, fourth, fourth, third, eighth and eleventh items) gets the attention of Amnesty International (C-net). William R. Hawkins, of the U.S. Business and Industry Council, scores the Enlightened Comment of the Day with his call for tight tech export restrictions to Communist China (Front Page Magazine). Don Feder, Washington Times, calls on the World Health Organization to stop dissing Taiwan; San Francisco's Taiwanese-American community celebrates Taiwanese American Heritage Week (Epoch Times).

Canada file: I have a terrific relationship with the Western Standard, as one can see from the last quote in Kevin Steel's piece on industrial espionage and the numerous blog posts on the Shotgun. However, Ric Dolphin ridiculous paean to the Communist economy ran away with the Ignorant Comment of the Day award: "No one goes hungry in China these days." Ugh!

More on Communist China and the rest of the world: Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice President of the European Parliament (and a British Tory, for those interested) talks about the Communists with refreshing truth: "The Chinese communist regime is still a system of atrocity, despotism, and bigotry" (Epoch Times).

On the satellite regimes: Regarding the Communists' Korean colony, Jong-Heon Lee (UPI via Washington Times) examines the Stalinists' reasons for nixing the DMZ railroad crossing (fourth item). The price of rice in Stalinist North Korea skyrockets (Daily NK). Communist China builds another colonial, ahem, cooperative project with the Stalinists (Daily NK). Meanwhile, Tony Karon (Time Asia) predicts that the new American softness on SNK (second item) will be repeated on Iran.

Reporters beaten in Shenzhen: Two reporters, from Hong Kong Cable TV and Asia Television respectively, were doing a story on a medical lawsuit. They were conducting interviews at the Fuhua Plastic and Aesthetic Hospital when "were surrounded by five or six people who claimed to be hospital personnel" (Radio Free Asia via Epoch Times) and beaten.

On the Falun Gong War: According to Clearwisdom, "23 cases of Dafa practitioners in Mainland China dying from the persecution were confirmed" last month. Meanwhile, Clearwisdom also reports that the cadres in Heilongjiang Province have ordered numerous classified documents to be destroyed; the relevance may be this: "During the past seven years of their persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, all orders were issued via secret channels and the persecution was carried on behind the scenes."

Did Bank of China trick outside investors into bailing it out? That's what Hong Kong Open Magazine executive editor Cai Yongmei thinks just happened during the regime-run bank's IPO (fifth and sixth items): "These banks should have been bankrupt already if the Chinese government did not support them. In China, many economic transactions are dictated by the government and these banks are kept operating with people's money. Though these banks are still operating in China, they are very risky. The purpose of IPO in the Hong Kong stock market is to transfer the risk to overseas markets" (Epoch Times).