Eight years on . . .

On April 5, 2000, I sent an email with all of the news from Communist China that I could find on the internet. Twelve people received that message. If memory serves, it rose to about 20 by the time the next Update would be sent a week later.

It's been a dramatic eight years, for me, for my country, and for this cause. Yet somehow, I am still here, drawn to the cause of the Chinese people and their struggle for freedom.

I could give several reasons why: the horrifying treatment of the Chinese people by their Communist rulers, the arms deals with terrorist regimes, the anti-American ambitions of Beijing, the gutsy resistance of the Taiwanese people (now joined, and perhaps replaced, by the people of southern Korea). In the end, however, they all wrap into one -because the fate of the planet is in the hands of the Chinese people.

The day will come when the Communist regime falls, and once China enters the free world, its resources and its resourceful people all but ensure it will lead that free world within one or two generations. The question is this: how will it happen? Germany and Japan, after all, went from irridentist tyrannies to democratic models in six decades - but would anyone want a repeat of those sixty years? By constrast, Eastern Europe was liberated with only two shots fired (into the heads of the Ceaucescus).

If we can help the Chinese people liberate themselves, it can be done without bloodshed, and China can be the model for every tyranny left on earth whose people yearn to be free. If it takes a war, it will likely be the bloodiest the world has ever seen.

It is that war and carnage that those of us who support the Chinese democracy movement from outside are desperate to prevent. Thus, we are not only trying to help the Chinese people, but all the world's peoples. As Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (or Michael Shaara) put it: "in the end, we're fighting for each other."

So I will go on fighting - through the Olympics, through the anniversaries (Tibet's 50th, East Turkestan's 60th, and Tiananmen's 20th are next year), through the various change in deck chair on the Zhongnanhai Titanic - and I will not rest - in fact, I cannot rest - until China is free.