For Beijing, the only defense is a good offense

The Chinese Communist Party has used an aggressive foreign policy and radical nationalism to justify its regime and distract its people for nearly twenty years now. However, its efforts at empire-building may now have an added purpose, intimidating the free world into silence about its previous bad behavior.

As I noted yesterday, the cadres' Korean colony continues to make trouble for the United States and her allies - now to the point of testing more missiles to see which one is best for a nuclear warhead (BBC and One Free Korea). That isn't the only arena in which the CCP is on the march. They are looking to expand their reach and influence from Africa (Weekly Standard) to Wall Street (Washington Times), while the Long Arm of Lawlessness continues to be felt in both America and Canada (Epoch Times).

None of this is actually news, but it may carry a new sense of urgency for the cadres, and therefore those of us in their way (i.e., the rest of the world). The domestic pressures that are leading the CCP to make these moves (Epoch Times) are being compounded by international pressures, particularly over melamine-tainted exports (another batch hit Canada - Ottawa Sun). The cadres are slowly (at best) losing the gains earned through a quarter-century long charm offensive (Boycott 2008), with no clear end in sight (Epoch Times). Add to it the possibility of a dissident winning the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow (Epoch Times) and the regime has some serious problems.

For now, their attempt at intimidating the Nobel Committee is sure to backfire (Epoch Times), but the more geopolitical power the CCP gains, the more likely it is that fear will replace outrage after future outbursts from Beijing - and once the free world can be intimidated into silence, the cadres have far less to fear from their own people.

The fall of the CCP is inevitable, but like other tyrannies, the inevitable is made to look impossible by its would-be victims. The melamine scandal in particular makes it clear to the democratic world that the inevitable is also desirable. The cadres are racing against time to prevent America and her allies from grasping that realization and putting it to good use.