This is IT

For years, the Chinese Communist Party has benefited from a tidal wave of foreign investment in a slew of sectors, none more dramatic than that in information technology. The cadres had high hopes that IT firms from abroad - unable to resist the lure of "one billion customers" - would come banging on the door of Zhongnanhai, hat in hand and ready to little the information superhighway with whatever tolls or lane restrictions the Communists demanded. Instead, IT may just be the sector that points to the regime's future demise.

It all began with Google, who reacted to the CCP's refusal to address their concerns about censorship and hacking by shifting their search engine base to Hong Kong, where (for now) speech is still largely free, and self-censorship is not demanded (Washington Post). What this means for "one country, two systems" (or, as it has increasingly become, one country, one-and-a-half systems) remains unclear. It's reflection on the business environment in Communist China was far more revealing.

In effect, Google announced to the world that the Communist tyranny was incompatible with its business model. This makes Google arguably the first - and inarguably the largest - firm to make that decision. It shattered the myth that the CCP is a business-friendly regime, while putting a much-needed focus on how the Communists distort the market with their political objectives - to say nothing of their taste for corruption.

Google may not be alone for long. GoDaddy, an internet-domain firm best known in America for advertisements floating somewhere between provocative and bizarre, told a Congressional committee that CCP regulations for domain registration - including one that requires a domain buyer provide photo identification - left them "concerned for the security of individuals" (Daily Telegraph, UK), enough so that they could follow Google out the door.

An even bigger surprise came from India, where Dell is opening up a new computer production plant. According to India's Prime Minister, this could be the start of a dramatic shift (same link):

Mr Singh told the Hindustan Times: "This morning I met the chairman of Dell Corporation. He informed me that they are buying equipment and parts worth $25 billion from China (£16 billion). They would like to shift to safer environment with a climate conducive to enterprise with security of legal system."

. . . According to the Indian media, tax breaks given to Dell make it cheaper for the company to supply the Middle East, Africa and Europe out of India, rather than China.

Read that last line from Singh very carefully: "They would like to shift to safer environment with a climate conducive to enterprise with security of (a) legal system." That is clearly a shot at the Communist tendency to treat the Party card as a license to steal. It appears Michael Dell is getting frustrated with the lack of genuine rule of law in Communist China. If Dell follows through on the Chairman's apparent thinking, it would be the latest and most dramatic example of a growing investment trend away from Communist China in favor of democratic India.

Lest anyone think these are isolated incidents, a new poll from the American Chamber of Commerce revealed that a majority of foreign IT firms are unhappy with the Communist regime, and 37% of them blamed the CCP for damaging their sales. Overall 38% of all foreign firms polled "say they feel increasingly unwelcome to participate and compete in the Chinese market" (Newser).

Not that the Communists themselves are noticing. Mere days after playing the anti-American card against Google (BBC), they resorted to another heavy-handed tactic that makes so many investors squeamish - they tried to burst a housing bubble by banning all land sales (Business Insider).

Clearly, the Chinese Communist Party do not consider "a climate conducive to enterprise" as a top priority. Then again, they never have. What is different today is that many outside investors are noticing, and making decisions accordingly. Those decisions could not only put a crimp in the Communists' corrupt gravy train, but also provide an economic boost to the one rival that worries them as much as America does - India.

The cadres have literally unleashed upon themselves the hallowed (and hackneyed) Chinese curse: they have put themselves in "interesting times."

The CCP's organ trafficking admission - a sign of things to come?

The Chinese Communist Party admitted to breaking its own law against organ trafficking, and admitted to it in a big way (BBC):

About 1.5 million people in China need transplants, but only about 10,000 operations are performed annually, according to the health ministry . . . the government passed a law in 2007 banning trafficking as well as the donation of organs to unrelated recipients. But in practice, illegal transplants - some from living donors - are still frequently reported by the media and the Ministry of Health . . . In a rare admission of the extent to which this takes place, China Daily - citing unnamed experts - said on Wednesday that more than 65% of organ donations come from death row prisoners.

In other words, the CCP just admitted that over 6,000 organ "donations" came from the condemned, 2007 law be damned.

Of interest to many readers of this column, the cadres of course did not make any admission about organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. Then again, they don't really admit to killing them either, so this is no surprise.

What is important (and as with most important things regarding the CCP, it has been largely ignored) is this: the CCP admitted, once again, that it can't or won't enforce its own laws among its own members. After all, who else could be selling the organs taken from prisoners but the very Communist regime that supposedly made such organ selling illegal?

While most of the rest of us may not have noticed that whopping admission, the cadres certainly did: they were so nervous about it the rushed out anti-Uighur propaganda without notifying their "Xinjiang" counterparts. Even worse, the BBC got to the cadres in occupied East Turkestan before Zhongnanhai did.

That this would so badly scare the regime will surprise most people. After all, they have the friendliest Administration in Washington since Nixon. The elites in the free world are still seeing the mounds of American debt held by Beijing in economic terms (where it appears powerful) rather than in geopolitical terms (where it's practically worthless). Perceptions like that mean something, and for the CCP, it means a lot.

Still, reality trumps perception in the end - no matter how late that end comes. The one thing the cadres fear the most is the Chinese people rising up to take their country back. Amidst massive unemployment (as the Epoch Times noted earlier this week), the cadres were clearly worried that another example of their refusal to follow the rules could cause problems.

At the same time, with the next CCP Congress only three years away, and most cadres looking to take advantage of the transition from Hu Jintao, information like this could easily be used by one faction against another. So, off it goes into China Daily, leaving the party apparatus scrambling to distract the people's attention.

Lest anyone forget, Hu Jintao is the first leader in CCP history whose exit is considered common knowledge (Mao died in power, while Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin hung on as Central Military Commission Chairman for years after handing over the ostensibly omnipotent role as CCP General Secretary). As any other "lame duck" can attest, the people supposedly following Hu's orders are starting to look beyond him. Even in most democratic countries, factions within the incumbent party will start leaking against each other in an effort to gain the upper hand for their champion come convention or primary time - except that the leader is still considered legitimate and everyone accepts that the voters will decide the successor.

Neither of the above applies to the Chinese Communist Party. Thus, every factional battle has the potential for disaster - and the cadres have three more years of this coming, unless Hu has enough power left to tell everyone to calm down for the good of the Party.

That may be more wistful than it initially appears, for the factions within the CCP are marching straight into the classic "prisoner's dilemma" - concern for weakening the tyranny is trumped by the fear of the other faction (or factions) doing it anyway and getting the upper hand in the process.

European Communists, whose leaders almost always died in power, never had these problems unless the Soviet leader himself was gravely ill - and even then there was a faction interested in keeping that news under wraps to preserve their position. Ironically, in an attempt to ensure a smoother transition from one leader to the next, the Chinese Communists stumbled into this new problem without any guide to solve it.

By 2012, the factional warfare could end up with enough exposures to lead to a full-blown revolution. It may seem improbable, but it can't be seen as impossible. Hard as it is to believe, the Chinese Communist Party's attempt to modernize itself could very well be what seals its doom.

Twenty Years Later

So here we are, at another June 4 that much of the rest of the world won’t notice. It is all the more painful here in the West in that this anniversary – the 20th is one of our more important ones. It will hurt to see those who so bravely gave their lives be so cruelly forgotten.

The irony here – and one we must remember – is that this year, more than any other except perhaps for 1989 itself, we can truly say that those who were murdered did not die in vain. For whatever the rest of the world thinks of the Tiananmen Square bloodbath, the Chinese Communist Party is more afraid of it than it has ever been.

It would seem odd that this would be so. After all, the cadres have spent the last two decades erasing the Tiananmen Spring from local history books, and have rather brilliantly co-opted the previously non-Communist elite into the regime. Likewise, they seem to have convinced much of the rest of the world to move on and embrace the “new” China of the 21st Century. However, below the surface, it’s abundantly clear that the pressures that led the people to take to the streets in 1989 have never really gone away. They just went underground, and thus have become the cadres’ obsession.

We remember the students of 1989, but the CCP also remembers the laborers, farmers, pensioners, and other ordinary Chinese who joined the demonstrations (yes, that’s plural – it’s believed that 1 in 10 Chinese citizens joined some demonstration in hundreds of cities and towns that year). The cadres knew how to handle the intellectuals: a dose of radical nationalism and a slew of licenses-to-steal (otherwise known as Party Cards) did much of the trick. Thus, Beijing appears the model of peace and tranquility – to locals and outsiders.

Go beyond Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, or Shenzhen, however, and it’s a different story. The anger, fear, and frustrations are still there, met not with kind words and incentives but party-sanctioned violence and corruption. In fact, the CCP pyramid scheme used to win over the intellectuals in the cities actually made the situation in the countryside worse – since it was peasants and laborers who were forced to pay for the CCP’s plans.

This is the real reason Tiananmen – even today – must remain buried in the past: too many people outside the cities remember what really happened, and have no interest in forgetting. We who live and work outside China rarely see this, in no small part because the cadres cannot afford to let us. Much like the hard-line Communists in Europe saw their regimes collapse when the outside world noticed the people’s anger, so, too, would the CCP if the foreign approval upon which it depends turned into wishing – and helping – the Chinese take their country back.

So, to prevent this, the cadres have to make sure June 4 passes by quietly – or, to be more accurate, that something else distracts our attention. For years, it hasn’t taken very much (a late Presidential primary, the proximity of the D-Day anniversary, etc.). This year, however, the anniversary so spooked the cadres that they apparently allowed (and perhaps even encouraged) their Korean colony to become a nuclear power – a rather large role of the dice that, if they’re not careful, could lead to more Americans and others catching on to the ruse.

That the CCP felt compelled to let Kim Jong-il frighten the entire free world, spin South Korea permanently away from the pro-Beijing “sunshine” of the last decade, and nearly inject an unexpected hawkishness into the Obama Administration is a sign of just how desperate the regime wanted the Tiananmen anniversary off the front pages. If they remain that scared of the 20-year-old crackdown, lovers of freedom cannot be completely discouraged.

Moreover, despite what the CCP would have us believe, the future is actually bright for anti-Communists. After two decades of prosperity-fueled corruption, the regime is facing a recession that could leave tens of millions of Party Members without the ill-gotten perks to which they think they are entitled. India and the United States have moved closer than at any time in 40 years, while CCP ally Pakistan is losing credibility in Washington faster than it’s losing territory to the Taliban. Japan and South Korea are now firmly in the anti-Communist camp, and even Taiwan, despite the Communist-friendly Nationalist government, seems to be returning to its anti-Communist roots.

All the while, the historical symbol of bloody repression hangs everywhere. Invisible but undeniable, it reminds tens of millions of Chinese that there was, once, a different path, and makes laughable every effort by the CCP to make it go away. With what the regime felt it had to do to keep the past away, we can truly see that it (the past) is still strong enough to guide the present and the future.Communism in China will fall; the only question remains: how much time, blood, and treasure must be lost before it does? That question can only be answered by those who helped accelerate the end of European Communism but, for now, have yet to do the same to Chinese Communism – namely, us.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal and Virginia Virtucon

Here we go again

This was supposed to be the weekend in which the world watched the Chinese people memorialize those who have passed - including the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Hanyuan County massacre, and the Sichuan earthquake (Epoch Times). Given the fact that the casualties from the last of the three were greatly increased due to Communist corruption, it would have been a difficult weekend for the cadres.

Then North Korea - long the de facto colonial regime dependent on the Chinese Communist Party to survive - tried to launch an ICBM (Epoch Times). The rest is forgotten history.

That it took a matter of hours before the CCP was running interference for their Korean viceroy (Guardian, UK) should surprise no one. While the launch had been planned for some time - and the date more than likely given the OK by Beijing to divert attention from the customary April day to honor the dead - the actual firing of the missile was a geopolitical godsend to the Communists.

Consider the world the cadres were facing before Kim Jong-il distracted everyone. Australia was transforming itself from an "engagement" success story into the new anti-Communist hotbed (Agence France Presse and Epoch Times). Making matters worse, the CCP's cyberwarfare against the United States was convincing Americans that perhaps Beijing was not the friend it claims to be after all (David Gelernter, in Forbes, actually used the favorite phrase of this quarter - Cold War II). One of the leading organizations defending the persecuted Uighurs of occupied East Turkestan announced the date for their annual meeting - inside the U.S. Capitol (McClatchy).

Meanwhile, the news from within was equally bad. A leading shipping firm announced a cutback for the first time ever (Steel Guru). The chairman of its first "private" railroad company was jailed for embezzlement (AFP). Dissident groups came together to indict the CCP for its crimes against the Chinese people (China Aid). A factory closure lead 1,000 laid off workers to march into Beijing in protest (AFP). Questions about Gao Zhisheng refuse to go away (New Yorker).

All of this was crowding for the attention of the CCP, the Chinese people, and the rest of the world - before the Korean colony blew it all off the front page. Now, once again, the CCP is the indispensable force, the regime to which the world must come and pay "respect" in the hopes that it will once again corral Kim Jong-il and get him to behave. Meanwhile, "engagement" supporters will be sure to do Beijing's bidding against anyone who refuses to fall for this nonsense and is determined to press the CCP.

In some places, however, the act is waring thin. While President Obama appears willing to keep playing the game, the fellow who won nearly 60,000,000 votes running against him has had enough (Voice of America).

More ominously, however, is the response of the Iranian mullahcracy:

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran said on Monday that North Korea was justified in carrying out its controversial weekend rocket launch and denied there were any links between the two countries' missile programmes.

"We have always maintained that space can be used for peaceful purposes by adhering to international laws," foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi told reporters when asked about Sunday's controversial rocket launch.

"As it is our right to do so, we maintain that others also have that right."

This matters for two reasons. The first and most obvious is the mullahs' desire to become a nuclear-armed state. The second reason, however, is just as important - Tehran's alliance to Beijing.

Lest anyone forget, as the mullahs close in on their first nuclear test, the calendar is closing in on the most dangerous anniversary for the cadres: the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Once more, the CCP faces the world remembering how it (the CCP) let its military loose on the Chinese people and painted the streets of Beijing in blood. The memory will lead the free world to recoil in horror. Even worse, it will lead to the inevitable examination of the two decades since, and how the regime is still the tyranny it was then, with broken promises about international trade and cooperation to boot.

It is sure to be a harrowing, painful day for the CCP - unless their friends in Tehran pull their own nuclear distraction.

In other words, this week is merely a preview of what we can expect in about two months time - and it will be just as maddening then, too.

The next four years

As always, Ethan Gutmann is a must-read in the Weekly Standard on the Obama Administration:

Human rights in China. Democracy in China. These are things that the Obama administration wants nothing to do with. Are the Chinese people on their own now?

His view has a lot of company now, especially in light of the Administration's recent actions (which Gutmann also details):

First came the news that Chas Freeman would chair the National Intelligence Council. The former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and an adviser to CNOOC (the state-owned Chinese oil company), Freeman clearly fits the Chinese Communist party's idea of a four-year plan for American intelligence oversight. Just note Freeman's curious 2006 statement about the Tiananmen massacre (C e-L note: said statement can be found here).

. . .

The Chinese will score their number two victory with Gary Locke, former governor of Washington, becoming our new commerce secretary. Locke's been a very--very!--good Friend of China: making public displays of affection for the party's brilliant stewardship, carrying a torch for China in the Beijing Olympics relay, and easily straddling his public and private interests to make a deal. Locke has paraded his guanxi--his connections--and, indeed, his numerous meetings with Hu Jintao are real. As are the campaign funds he got in the 1990s through Buddhist temple fundraisers, Chinese cut-outs, and confessed felon John Huang.

Naturally, Gutmann also had some choice words for the Secretary of State.

I am happy to report that Mr. Freeman has seen the writing on the wall and has chosen not to serve in the Administration (National Review Online - The Corner), but the person who wanted to give him a job is still there, as is the president whose "leadership" has brought us to this point.

That said, I'm not prepared to follow my good friend Ethan into the despair in which he understandably finds himself - not yet, anyway.

True, we are seeing an Administration with the largest blind spot on the totalitarian threat since the Carter era, and that should be cause for great concern. However, we also need to remind ourselves that the Carter era also happened to be one of the most prolific for anti-Communist dissidents - no matter how much they were ignored in Washington. Moreover, as the Carter crew continued to cower before Soviet expansion, more and more Americans started to wonder why, and demanded a change. Up stepped Ronald Reagan, and the rest was history.

Of course, this leads to a brief discussion of the Republican Party, which appears in disarray, recovering from a wildly unpopular president, and is still shot through with "engagement" supporters. However, again, we need to remember that the GOP was in just such dire straits in 1977 - in fact, one could say they were in worse shape. Moreover, unlike in the late 1970s - when Henry Kissinger was easily powerful enough to hijack the party's foreign policy views until Reagan won the nomination - no such "engagement" supporter is in a similar position today.

It is just as likely (perhaps even more likely) that the Republican Party will spend the next four years reconnecting with their anti-Communist past and bring that forward to the 21st Century.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Ethan has effectively noticed the complete silence of the left:

Nancy Pelosi cut her teeth on China human rights, but she won't break ranks without sustained pressure. Amnesty International has made some noises about Clinton's comments. To a lesser extent, so have Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch. But it's not nearly enough. And where are the AFL-CIO, the academy, and the sweatshop coalitions?

Either this pitiful state of affairs will be halted by other Democratic heavies who are not so worried about the president's views (Barney Frank comes to mind), or appeasement of the Chinese Communist Party will become a partisan issue - landing the president on the wrong side of a nearly 60-40 split.

Now, none of this is to excuse the president and his supporters from gross negligence in foreign policy - a negligence that is sure to cost blood (Chinese certainly, American possibly) and treasure (ditto). In addition, 2012 is a long way off, and the CCP can do a lot of damage in the interim (like Ethan, I am very concerned about Taiwan).

However, the regime cannot overcome its inherent weaknesses. It cannot afford to scale back the international adventurism that upsets so many in the free world. It cannot afford to wean party members of ill-gotten gains - the promise of which remain the biggest incentive for joining the CCP in the first place. All it can do is delay the inevitable.

History tells us the inevitable will come sooner than we can imagine; Ethan reminds us that it is already painfully late.

Will President Obama save the CCP? No.

For those of us who have been watch the Chinese Communist Party, this is a painful time. A golden opportunity to work with the Chinese people to end the CCP tyranny is being tossed away. There is no other way to describe the Obama Administration's policy toward Beijing.

Fresh off Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's abysmal visit to Beijing and the execrable appointment of cadre-sympathizer Chas Freeman, it should come as no surprise that Washington has resurrected military talks with the "People's Liberation Army" (Agence France Presse via Google). One of the "engagement" floozies called the talks "the single best set of talks I’ve been to" (Bloomberg).

Meanwhile, the new Commerce Secretary-designate (Gary Locke) prides himself on "reluctance to link trade issues to alleged human rights abuses in China" (Los Angeles Times).

Clearly, the new Administration prefers the cadres to the people. It's maddening; it's depressing; and it's an outrage.

But is it enough for the CCP to stave off its inevitable demise? I don't think so.

It will postpone it - and that postponement could lead to a painful loss of blood and treasure for the free world - but the Soviets gained a similar reprieve in the 1970s, and their decline continued apace in the 1980s.

In the case of the CCP, the problems that they face cannot be reversed by Washington, no matter how pliant or cooperative Washington may be. For starters, while President Obama has run away from his tough-on-Beijing rhetoric far faster and with more callousness than either Bush the Younger or Bill Clinton, the fact remains that neither of Obama's two predecessors stuck to their rhetoric for very long. Anti-Communists are still smarting from the betrayal, but it is a pain they've felt before.

More importantly, matters inside the CCP's realm continue to depart from the "engagement" script. There is no better example of the problems Zhongnanhai faces - and the appeasers' impotence in solving them - than the very "stimulus" package Beijing repackaged for the world today.

If one believes Wall Street, the Communists' stimulus plan is just what the doctor ordered. Markets zoomed upward today (MSNBC). Unfortunately for the cadres, optimism about the package is greater abroad than at home.

Take a look at what Peng Yunliang, a Shanghai Securities analyst, had to say (MSNBC):

Obviously, this unusual rally suggests that investors are overly optimistic about what to expect from the legislature.

A ringing endorsement this is not, but it was tame compared to the reaction of several "liberal Communist Party elders" (Int'l Herald Tribune), who had the audacity to demand the funds not be stolen by their fellow cadres:

A cluster of liberal Communist Party elders recently wrote to President Hu Jintao and the rest of the party leadership, seizing on the economic troubles and the need for more accountability to promote democratic reforms.

"We very much endorse the central government investment of 4 trillion yuan" — $586 billion — "to invigorate the economy," they explained in the letter, dated Jan.
20, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

"At the same time, we are extremely worried that the privileged and the corrupt will seize this opportunity to fatten themselves, damage the relationship between the party and the people, and intensify social conflict."

They pressed for checks and balances on the recovery program. More sweepingly, they urged that state media be freed from censorship and courts allowed to operate without inference from the governing party, reforms the party has repeatedly rejected in the past.

In other words, not even the cadres trust each other with the "stimulus" money! This comes despite another rash of "anti-corruption" measures (AFP via Yahoo), although given the regime's history with these things, it may actually be because of them.

After all, it is become more and more clear that bribery fueled the Communist expansion of the last generation (Times of London).

Finally, and most importantly, there is the reaction of the impoverished interior. This is typical (AFP via Google):

The central government is always promising us beautiful things, but in reality these things never happen.

There is one organization sure to be happy with the CCP: the PLA. After all, they got another whopping increase in funding (15% - London Telegraph).

Meanwhile, the very West that is bending over backwards to be nice to the CCP is - accused by the CCP of stirring up trouble in Tibet (BBC and AFP via Google) - and the people of Macau are told the true meaning of one-country, one-and-a-half systems (BBC).

The mutual distrust between the CCP and the Chinese people is still there; the economy - stimulus aside - is still unable to provide the funds necessary to keep the urban elite happy; and the regime must still rely on radical nationalism to survive.

Unfortunately, another Administration is determined not to take advantage of these weaknesses within the CCP, but that doesn't make the weaknesses go away. The CCP will limp along, adding more names to the tens of millions of victims inside and outside China, until the Chinese people finally have a partner in the democratic world ready to help them take their country back.

The "center" loses its grip

Hardly anyone remembers William Butler Yeats these days - at least outside of Ireland that is. However, one phrase from "Second Coming":

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

Now, the Chinese Communist Party didn't even exist when Yeats wrote this (the Soviet Communists were maneuvering for control of China through the Nationalist Party back then), but I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few cadres in Zhongnanhai were wondering about the ability of the "center" (themselves) to keep a firm hold on events.

Given the current global recession, the CCP desperately needs its Party members to dial down the graft. Yet for lower-level cadres (and middle-level cadres, and a good chunk of the higher-ranking cadres), the License to Steal was the first, last, and only incentive to Party membership in the first place. Can the CCP really change a behavior it was using as an incentive to boost its numbers for a generation?

Two pieces of evidence from this weekend suggest the answer is "No" - a former vice president of a regime-run bank busted for taking $1.5 million in bribes (Agence France Presse via Yahoo) and the head of the regime's credit export insurer nabbed doing the same thing. That these two corrupt officials were caught in the most sensitive areas of the economy - exports and bank lending - tells us all we need to know about the failure of the CCP to root out corruption.

If that wasn't bad enough, a new nightmare arose for the cadres - evidence that they themselves caused the Sichuan earthquake (London Telegraph):

The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.

Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.

Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, said it was "very likely" that the construction and filling of the reservoir in 2004 had led to the disaster.

"There have been many cases in which a water reservoir has triggered an earthquake," said Mr Fan. "This earthquake was very unusual for this area.

As an aside, we might want to keep an eye on Mr. Fan himself.

If word of this reaches the Chinese people (in Sichuan especially) it could get very ugly for the regime. In fact, the CCP may be preparing themselves for the worst; its latest report to UN on human rights deliberately skipped over several incidents of repression (Bloomberg). Meanwhile, its promises of being more open to the press - made in the run-up to the Olympics - have been exposed as fraudulent (Bloomberg).

Of course, the Communists are responding as all Communists do - by trying to project more power abroad and prevent the democratic world from noticing what's going on at home. However, even this is beginning to cause problems.

The cadres have clearly succeeded in building a blue-water naval force (AFP via Yahoo). However, rather than earn the respect of the United States (or engender weakness in the same), it has fueled the revival of anti-Communism in India (Indian Express). Meanwhile, recent comments by American Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about the CCP's deliberate currency devaluation got an unexpected boost from Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty - not previously known to be part of the anti-Communist force within the Great White North's Conservative government.

In fact, the only place where the elected party in power is consumed by the "engagement" nonsense is on Taiwan (AFP via Yahoo), and even there, talk is moving to concern that President Ma Ying-jeou - who has a bridge to sell, literally - "has no idea what he is doing and is compromising the nation’s security" (Taipei Times).

Now, all of this put together hardly spells the CCP's doom - for now. The center can still "hold" a while longer. However, if the anger of the Chinese people were ever to combine with a clear-eyed and sober free world recognizing the threat from Beijing, the cadres would suddenly be in very deep trouble. A similar combination that defeated European Communism, and the CCP has been trying to prevent it ever since.

Over the weekend, the CCP Doomsday continued to come closer. The center still holds, but its grip is weakening.

And they were doing so well

It was another rough day for the Chinese Communist Party, with the biggest blow coming from a most unexpected source - Taiwan.

Beyond the Taiwanese straits, things pretty much followed the new normal. The European Parliament raked Eutelsat over the coals for shutting out New Tang Dynasty Television (Epoch Times), but the EP has little real power. Senator Hillary Clinton (part of arguably the friendliest American Administration the CCP ever faced) gave the usual fog of words on her way to becoming Secretary of State (McClatchy via Yahoo). South Korean appeaser-in-chief Kim Dae-jung tried his hand at advising President-elect Obama (Washington Times), while the American "engagement" crew held another gathering to blast "isolationary policies" (Epoch Times).

Meanwhile, the usual platitudes about fighting corruption (Bloomberg) came with the ever-increasing warnings to from the higher ranks to the rest of the cadres of the economic problems ahead (Agence France Presse via Yahoo), which was likely done to reinforce the former because there won't be as much bounty to steal. Add to it the typical persecutions (BBC and Epoch Times) and one is left with a series of events and news that was par for the course.

The news from the island democracy, however, was chilling - for Beijing (AFP via Yahoo):

A Taiwanese government official and a legislator's aide were arrested Thursday for allegedly leaking state secrets to China, officials and reports said.

Wang Ren-bing, a specialist in the presidential office, and Chen Ping-ren, aide to a ruling Kuomintang lawmaker, were taken into custody early Thursday on suspicion of violating national security laws, said a spokesman at Taipei district court.

The spokesman declined to comment on reports that Chen allegedly passed information on the May 20, 2008 inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou he obtained from Wang to Chinese intelligence.

The United Daily News, citing unnamed sources, reported Thursday that Wang photocopied documents pertaining to the handover of power to Ma from his predecessor Chen Shui-bian as well as the presidential office organisational charts and division phone numbers.

Now, under normal circumstances (even the new normal), it would be Taiwan alone that would suffer the consequences of this embarrassment. However, this Taiwanese government specifically campaigned on a platform of non-confrontation with the CCP. President Ma's determination to follow through on that has spooked larger numbers of Taiwanese, and not just the supporters of the anti-Communist Democratic Progressive Party, which Ma tossed out of power with his election win last year.

The fact that Ma's party employed a conduit for sending information to Communist China will remind everyone why they were suspicious of Ma's Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party in the first place (it lost the elections of 2000 and 2004 over concerns it was too cozy with the CCP), which is the last thing the cadres need right now.

We already knew that the Communist-Nationalist charm offensive was falling flat - with less than one in fifteen Taiwanese asking for reunification under Communist rule. Now the rest of the country - but especially the voters who pulled the lever for the Nationalists due to domestic issues - will have to think long and hard before voting "blue" (color of the Nationalists and their allies) again.

Taiwan was one of the few bright spots for the CCP in 2008. Amidst the poisoned exports, the Olympic flop, and the economic slowdown, the cadres could look to the friendly government on the island and realize that its primary goal (gobbling Taiwan up) was becoming closer to reality. That "progress" could very well be halted in its tracks, giving the anti-Communist "green" coalition (DPP and its friends) time to regroup and make its case that resistance to the CCP trumps everything else.

After all, even most Taiwanese who wanted friendly relations between Beijing and Taipei probably didn't have this in mind.

Past and present collide

One last sliver of what the Chinese Communist Party will certainly call "the good ol' days" popped up this morning amidst the gloom of the new reality: Communist China passed Germany in 2007 to become the third largest economy on the planet (BBC and CNN). Now only the United States and Japan can claim larger economies.

I'm sure it was quite nostalgic for the cadres, as they continue to face the effects of a crippling economic slowdown (Guardian, UK) and an ever-increasing resentment of Communist corruption (Epoch Times).

In fact, the battle between past and present was the prominent theme of today's collection of news. Regarding relations with the United States, the cadres put the halcyon past on display once more - marking the 30th anniversary of the official establishment of diplomatic relations (Bloomberg). They even got the usual throw-Taiwan-under-the-bus language from their American guests. Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Miller detailed how Communist corruption has literally poisoned Sino-American trade relations of multiple levels in the Washington Times.

Even the shibboleths of the recent past are crumbling. President Bush still hasn't left office, yet the world-hates-America theme is already being debunked (Weekly Standard) - to the point that "polling data from the Pew Research Center shows that the United States still has approval ratings of more than 50% across Asia, giving it a more positive reputation than China" (Weekly Standard Blog). Ouch!

Not that recent events have been all bad for the Communists. Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton's tough words on the cadres' Korean colony (One Free Korea) were a painful reminder of how far we have fallen from the time when such words were commonplace - and credible (OFK). The viceroy has even gone so far as to pick his successor, we think (OFK).

Still, it should be clear that things are different now. Foreign investment is drying up, the ability to buy off the various elites who would otherwise form an anti-Communist civil society is vanishing, more Americans are seeing the regime as an immediate, personal threat due to poisoned exports, and the rest of the world (particularly Asia) has recovered as healthy perspective on Zhongnanhai and Washington. The trends that pointed to the CCP's ascendancy on the world stage have suddenly shifted. We will see if the CCP adapts before the Chinese people are able to notice.

2009 starts of with a bang

The traditional Chinese calendar has us at year's end, not its beginning. Still, even those who will celebrate the Chinese New Year later this month generally focus on January 1 as much as the rest of us. From that perspective the New Year is already off to a rocky start for the Chinese Communist Party - and not just because of the widespread acknowledgment of the Anniversary Syndrome (McClatchy via Yahoo).

The initial blow came from the Party itself, albeit in an attempt to mitigate the damage. The Communists' elite mouthpiece (Outlook) put job losses in the "People's Republic" in the eight-figure range (Agence France Presse via Yahoo), i.e., at ten million. Apparently, Beijing sent this out as an all-hands-on-deck warning to cadres high and low (plus all the dependent minions).

At the very least, the Communists area acknowledging they have a problem. Outsiders were aware of this for weeks (Bloomberg, the Australian Age, and the Times of London) - although Newsweek and Citi (Marketwatch) seemed to have missed the memo. They may want to talk to Bank of America, which has begun divesting its holdings in the Communist banking sector (Dow Jones via CNN).

Whether the cadres will actually do anything about it is another question.

After all, the regime isn't about to seriously fix one of the biggest drains on the economy: corruption. As Mark Magnier of the Los Angeles Times put it (Otago Daily Times), "local officials regard their position as a licence to steal" (hey, where have I heard that before?). Aside from symbolic gestures (Bloomberg), the cadres aren't about to do anything to upset that apple cart.

Thus the regime will likely do what it always does when it's in trouble: crackdown on dissidents (AFP via Yahoo and WebProNews), rattle its sabre (Strategy Page), and steal what it can, when it can (AFP via Yahoo and Bloomberg).

Will it work this time? I'm not so sure. While I tend to be skeptical about the assertions that the world is facing its toughest economic situation since the Great Depression, this really is an unprecedented situation for the CCP. The last time it face economic problems like this, it deliberately caused them in the Great Leap Backward (which was far worse, BTW). While economic growth ceased being sufficient for the regime to maintain power after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, it has made it easier for the regime to recruit cadres (see above, licenses to steal are always worth more if there's plenty to take) and buy off the parts of society that would usually start tyranny-replacing dissident movements.

If anything, the economic doldrums will make the regime more reliant on the radical nationalism it has used as its raison d'etre for twenty years, which is bad news in the short run for Taiwan, India, Japan, the United States, and the rest of the democratic world.

However, if the free world is ready, willing, and able to resist the CCP's efforts to preserve itself at the expense of everyone else, it could lead to the regime's collapse. We can only hope.

What to do about North Korea

Quite a bit of attention is being paid to the latest collapse of North-Korea-nuclear-talks (Washington Post and Washington Times). Once again, the Stalinist regime in northern Korea has told us that after giving them nearly everything they want, they still want more.

North Korea's antics are becoming legendary (One Free Korea has the latest), yet even now, no one seriously talks about punishing them, even minimally (BBC and CNN). I'm guessing this is due to two unspoken reasons: uncertainty about the fate of the viceroy (OFK), and the fact that the Chinese Communist Party remains the regime's biggest benefactor and ally.

The cadres have been using their Korean colony brilliantly. It has badly distracted the Bush Administration (and may very well do the same to its replcaement) while extracting concessions from America and making her look pathetically weak. Despite all the talk about Zhongnanhai's stash of American Treasury notes, it is the Korean colony that has provided the cadres with the most leverage against the United States.

I humbly submit it is time to turn that around use create some leverage of our own.

OFK has some excellent ideas for how to respond. None of them would make the CCP happy, but that's just the point. Rather than let the Korean issue be used against us, we should be using it against them.

Consider the cadres' position right now. The economic slowdown is spreading (BBC, Epoch Times, and Market Watch), as are emabrrasing exposures of corruption (Epoch Times). The democratic world continues to criticize them (Agence France Presse via Yahoo and Epoch Times), however softly. Even the normally friendly Bush Administration is growing colder as it leaves (AFP via Yahoo).

Now, imagine, on top of all that, the cadres find out that the United States will make it much harder for them to prop up the Korean colony due to various trade sanctions and other actions. Might the cadres decide they don't need this bothering them right now?

Of course, the endgame must be the liberation of the Korean and Chinese peoples, but that will be years off unless Beijing feels more pressure - exactly the kind (albeit not the volume) of pressure the Administration can still inflict before it leaves next month. It would also be a cold splash of reality for a regime that can hide from its troubles by reveling in Chen Shui-bian's indictment (BBC and CNN) and France being, well, France (London Telegraph).

There is still time for the Bush Administration to take the tougher line and establish the pressure for incoming President Obama to use (if he chooses to do so). At the very least, it would show that, in its final hours, the Administration finally got something right in East Asia.

More steps in Brezhnev's shoes

The Chinese Communist Party had another typical day - typical of the Soviets in the 1970s, that is.

Within the free world, they were able to score some wins. Their minions disrupted anti-Communist efforts in Korea (Washington Post) and Israel (Epoch Times), while an American court ordered a Chinese mother of four - and thus a violator of the one-child policy - back home to face sterilization (World Net Daily).

Before anyone goes after the jurists in this case, it must be remembered that the Xiu Mei Wei could easily be granted asylum by the political branches of the government. That neither President Bush nor Speaker Nancy Pelosi has even begun to consider this reflects badly on both - but especially Pelosi, given her anti-Communist past.

It's a different story on the Communists' home turf: reports of citizens angry at local cadres (Epoch Times), petitioners telling their tales of being tortured by Communist police (Epoch Times), and more melamine (BBC). This on top of the usual reaction that comes from brutal human rights abuses (Epoch Times) - reaction which remains quiet until the moment the camel's back is broken and the people rise up to take their country back.

All in all, it was another day of muddling through for the cadres, but while they mark time, the end comes one day closer.

The Mumbai attack, and what it means for Beijing

More melamine deaths (CNN and Epoch Times) and an export sector in serious trouble (BBC and the Epoch Times); Communist China was facing growing domestic problems just as anti-Communism was becoming the consensus in India.

Suddenly, India suffers a major terrorist attack in its chief commercial center (Mumbai, known to many Westerners as Bombay) - an attack that was authored by the Lashkar-i-Taiba terrorist group - and this from a captured terrorist himself (Washington Post).

Where has Lashkar-i-Taiba had a refuge and support from friendly government officials for nearly two decades? The answer is Pakistan - the very same Pakistan that has been an ally of the Chinese Communist Party for six decades.

Before anyone thinks I've gone over the edge here, I am not claiming that Beijing had a hand in the Mumbai attack. However, I have noticed that it has refused to join in the American and Indian demands that Pakistan help catch the perpetrators (Washington Post).

How has Pakistan responded? Well, a senior military official there suddenly decided it was a good time to call Taliban warlords "patriots" (Weekly Standard Blog), while others are talking about shifting Pakistan units away from figthing terrorists on the Afghan border and put them n the Indian border - where they would effectively be protecting terrorists.

Clearly, the duplicity of the Pakistani military did not change with the election of a new government. Still, Pakistan's Beijing allies continue to avoid responsibility for their longtime alliance with Pakistan (although it would help a great deal if Washington wised up and stopped calling Pakistan an "ally").

Robert Kagan (also in the Post) would give the Communists the chance to reveal their true colors:

Have the international community declare that parts of Pakistan have become ungovernable and a menace to international security. Establish an international force to work with the Pakistanis to root out terrorist camps in Kashmir as well as in the tribal areas. This would have the advantage of preventing a direct military confrontation between India and Pakistan. It might also save face for the Pakistani government, since the international community would be helping the central government reestablish its authority in areas where it has lost it. But whether or not Islamabad is happy, don't the international community and the United States, at the end of the day, have some obligation to demonstrate to the Indian people that we take attacks on them as seriously as we take attacks on ourselves?

. . .

Would the U.N. Security Council authorize such action? China has been Pakistan's ally and protector, and Russia might have its own reasons for opposing a resolution. Neither likes the idea of breaking down the walls of national sovereignty -- except, in Russia's case, in Georgia -- which is why they block foreign pressure on Sudan concerning Darfur, and on Iran and other rogue states. This would be yet another test of whether China and Russia, supposed allies in the war against terrorism, are really interested in fighting terrorism outside their own borders.

Indeed it would.

Given that Kagan is although one of the few anti-Communists in the American punditry, I doubt he's holding his breath on this one. Neither will I and neither should you.

The fact is, the CCP has long been a quiet terrorist sponsor, hoping that the rest of the world doesn't notice. Why? Because the CCP has relied on radical nationalism to justify its regime for years, and will need it even more now that its domestic economy has sputtered. Thus, the regime has become like American slavery of old - it must expand its influence and breadth, or it will die. Whether it's crushing the island democracy on Taiwan (otherwise known as "reunification"), replacing Japan as the lead power in East Asia, or replacing the United States as the lead world power while making sure India doesn't take the role, the CCP's greatest obstacles to its own survival are the two largest democracies on Earth.

So, instead of having to defend itself against parents whose children were poisoned, or foreign importers who won't touch anything it ships out, the CCP gets to defend Pakistan and the terrorists who use Pakistan as a shelter and the Pakistani military as a de facto sponsor. With any luck (for Beijing), the resulting brouhaha will be so bad it turns Afghanistan into a complete disaster (with Pakistan's soldiers handing the border regions over to the Taliban so they can point their weapons at India) that sours America on the entire War on Terror.

This is yet another reminder just how much said war is actually part of the Second Cold War. Victory in both can only come when China is free.

What Lev Navrazov Means

To be fair, I should actually start with what Lev Navrazov said (World Tribune):

The position of the totalitarian rulers of China is much more difficult, and they are inclined to safeguard themselves not by constitutional evolution of their country, but by the conquest of the rest of the world, to convert its population into their serfs/slaves or annihilate it.

This is the essence of the Chinese Communist Party's plan. If it sounds familiar, it should, because it was also Leonid Brezhnev's plan in the 1970s; in fact, it was going quite well until the United States decided to challenge it.

For the CCP, things look better on the international front - as the U.S. has yet to assume its role from the 1980s. The International Olympic Committee is still insisting the Beijing Games were a wondrous success (Boycott 2008), leading Americans, including retired Admiral William Fallon, are spouting the "engagement" line (International Herald Tribune). Foreign reserves continue to rise (Bloomberg), although there's a lot less there than meets the eye. The cadres can rail about the peaceful resistance in Tibet (McClatchy via Yahoo) without serious repercussions (BBC). The Korean colony seems (for now) to be having some more influence on South Koreans again (BBC). although we should emphasize some (One Free Korea). There is even talk about expanding the shipyards to more international customers (Bloomberg).

Domestically, however, the rot is more obvious than in Brezhnev's time. The economy is in serious trouble (Agence France Presse via Yahoo, BBC, Bloomberg, Business Week, London Telegraph, Washington Post, and the Washington Times), and corruption has reached the highest of its "entrepreneurs" (BBC and Epoch Times). Given the oncoming economic downturn, these could do far more damage than in the Brezhnev era.

For starters, economic development and radical nationalism were all the cadres had once Deng Xiaoping decided to steer clear of the Brezhnev path. While the former lost much of its luster after the Tiananmen massacre, a white-hot economy still enabled the cadres to keep the elite happy - especially local cadres in the rural interior for whom ill-gotten gains were simply a regular benefit of the job.

This enabled the regime to continue to get away with brutality toward its own people (BBC, Boycott 2008, Epoch Times, and the Washington Post). Now, with even Hong Kong coming under economic strain, the de facto buying off the elite could run aground (Washington Post). The truth about the anti-Chinese nature of the CCP (Epoch Times) will only make things worse (for the cadres).

Finally, even if the United States were to avoid becoming the anti-Communist leader Beijing fears, there's no guarantee India won't - especially if there's even a tenuous link between the terrorists who attacked Mumbai this weekend and the Communists' longtime ally Pakistan.

Thus, like the Soviets before them, the Chinese Communists are forced to subdue the rest of the world to prevent being subdued at home. The democratic world must not forget this. One day China will be free. The question is, how much blood and treasure will be spilled in the interim?

The Pinochet paradox (Or, why so many conservatives get Communist China wrong)

The gleaming facade that the Chinese Communist Party hoped to show the world continues to crumble.

Another foreign firm (MYOB - Australia) has come to the realization that the CCP is an immovable barrier to profitability (AAP via Epoch Times). The "1.3 billion customer" mantra has been attracting outside investors and companies for years; more and more of them find themselves throwing good money after bad. MYOB was merely the latest.

Many believe the investment climate in Communist China has nothing to do with its political repression. I disagree. A regime that can brook no dissent (BBC and the Epoch Times) usually has trouble with criticism or bad news on any front - including economics, but especially regarding corruption, which continues to be rife within the CCP (Epoch Times). Corruption greatly increases the operational cost for any business enterprise, and when that includes less than perfect information on the economic state of affairs, it can make business planning almost impossible.

Meanwhile, when the regime itself behaves in such a criminal, the very definition of "crime" becomes relative - as was seen in Shanghai, where an executed cop killer was lauded as a hero for standing up to the bloodthirsty regime (BBC). Many, many Chinese citizens identified with Yang Jia, who himself was a victim of police brutality, but foreign investors or firms - who mostly have no experience with tyranny at home - either have no concept of Yang's plight (meaning they see a dangerous society glorifying a murderer) or recognize that for a regime this brutal, nothing is sacred (including an outside firm). This is especially true given the CCP's ultimate weapon - trumped-up espionage charges (BBC) - to which foreigners are especially vulnerable.

Yet, despite all of the above, despite the continuing anti-American policies (Weekly Standard), and despite the antics of the obviously controllable Korean colony (One Free Korea), the CCP not only continues to get away with this on the world stage, but even continues to gain "engagement" supporters throughout the democratic world.

The reasons for this are myriad, but for one of the most important pieces of the Communists' charm offensive puzzle - bedazzled American conservatives - the answer can be found in an old Latin American dictator who gave up power two decades ago and died two years ago - Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.

By almost any account, Pinochet's tenure (1973-1990) began brutally. After taking power in a military coup against a democratically elected yet increasingly unpopular Marxist, Pinochet was every bit the bloodthirsty tyrant. Yet as the 1970s wore on, he also radically reoriented Chile's economy in a free-market direction, and turned it into one of the most prosperous nations in Latin America. By the time he stepped down in 1990, Chile was an economic model.

For many American Cold Warriors of the time, Pinochet (a staunch Western ally) was himself a model dictator (to the extent that dictators could ever be a model), and the trajectory of his tenure was touted as evidence of the inevitable progress of economic freedom to political freedom. This has colored the view of most (if not all) CCP-"engagement" supporters on the American right. It is also spectacularly wrong for two reasons.

For starters, unlike Pinochet, the Communist Chinese economy is hardly a free market. The CCP still owns the major industries (either outright or through high-ranking cadres and their relatives). Even outside firms have to enter joint-ventures with regime-run domestic firms (which usually steal information from the foreign group and hand over to domestic "competition" for either a hefty bribe or a piece of the action). Pinochet's actual reforms would be considered dangerously radical to any CCP cadre per se.

Secondly, we must remember the reactions of the tyrants themselves. Pinochet was faced with a painful choice (for him) in the 1980s: his legacy (the revitalized Chilean economy) or his power. When the Chilean people told him he couldn't have both, he chose the former, and honored the referendum calling for him to step down.

The CCP by contrast, has never chosen to cede power - even slightly. There has never been a China-wide referendum similar to the 1988 Pinochet vote. Moreover, even in the "village elections" so highly touted by the cadres, anti-Communists and reformers who manage to win them risk jail, or worse, if they dare exercise the power their fellow villagers tried to bestow on them.

In fact, contrary to being a "model," the Pinochet experience was actually quite unique. Far more common is the method the CCP is attempting: fake reforms to fool the locals, win Western support, and buy time (in Eastern Europe, that came with national elections that had enough freedom to dislodge the Communists from power; the CCP refuses to let that happen).

Augusto Pinochet - for all his many flaws - gave his people real economic freedom, and rather than risk its extinction, added to it real political freedom. By contrast, the Chinese Communist Party has combined fake economic freedom with fake political freedom, and has chosen to toss each into the trash heap whenever either threatened its "mandate from heaven."

In other words, the CCP is nothing like Pinochet, and the sooner Pinochet's apologists and defenders on the right can see that, the sooner we will all be to a democratic world ready to see the Communist regime for what it really is and act accordingly until the Chinese people (hopefully with our help) can rise up and take their country back.

They found their target

So it appears the Chinese Communist Party has finally figured out how to solve its Brezhnev-redux problem.

Take steps to fix an economy busted by decades of corruption and manipulation (Epoch Times)? Of course not.

Reach out to the disaffected masses (Epoch Times)? No dice, save for an embarrassingly faked propaganda moment (Washington Post).

Take aim at the corruption that has literally poisoned the Chinese economy - domestically and internationally (Epoch Times)? You're joking, right?

Reign in the Korean colony? Why should Beijing mess with success (CNN, CNN again, One Free Korea, more One Free Korea, and the Washington Times)?

Face up to their brutal history as occupiers of Tibet (BBC and CNN) and East Turkestan - the latter of which has become so horrid that even your fellow occupying cadres have had enough (Epoch Times)? Try again.

Rethink their treatment of their own people, including following a UN panel's recommendation to look into the Falun Gong organ-harvesting outrage (Epoch Times). In a word: no.

Instead, the Communists have decided that their silver bullet for all of the above maladies is . . . to launch a rhetorical broadside against Axl Rose (Between Heaven and Earth and the London Telegraph) because he wrote an anti-Communist song - the title track for Chinese Democracy.

On one level, the absurdity of going after a song in the face of, well, everything else is comical, especially considering the Rose and his Guns 'N' Roses band's sails lost the Zeitgeist years ago. Then again, the CCP remains the entity that accidentally performed the heretofore impossible task of restoring the reputation of the Prince of Wales.

However, this is one regime that understands the sword's weaknesses against the pen. It's why they have stretched the Long Arm of Lawlessness out to smack NTDTV (Epoch Times), bury the unpleasant aspects of its history whenever and wherever possible (Weekly Standard), etc.

Trouble is, for all their efforts, the regime's true face keeps being seen (San Francisco Chronicle and the USCC), such that even their success in Taiwan (Epoch Times) comes with caveats (Washington Times).

In short, the cadres are exactly where the Soviets were thirty years ago, with an economy and social structure rotting away, and international acceptance just outside its reach - exactly where they did not wish to be.

Yet they refuse to do what the very few surviving European Communist parties (Hungary and Bulgaria, mostly) have done: namely abdicate power, admit to their mistakes, and take their chances on the electorate. So the economy and society will continue to decay; an aging rock band gets an unintentional boost to its career; and the clock continues to wind down on the Chinese Communist Party.

The Brezhnev bifurcation continues

On the outside, Communist China looks as menacing, powerful, and aggressive as it always has, what with more cyber-espionage (Newsmax), missile deployments (Epoch Times), troop deployments on the border with North Korea (Epoch Times), and even plans to scoop up pieces of General Motors and Chrysler (The Truth About Cars title is a bit overblown).

The regime looks every bit as threatening as Brezhnev's Soviet Union did in the 1970s. Their Korean colony even managed to spook the elected government of South Korea (One Free Korea).

Yet inside Communist China, it's an entirely different story: taxi drivers on strike (Washington Post), botched medical procedures (Epoch Times), the melamine fiasco (Epoch Times), corrupt hospitals getting rich off an earthquake (Epoch Times), and the continuing effects of the economic slowdown (BBC).

In other words, the regime is just as rotten one the inside as Brezhnev's Soviet Union.

Even the troops on the Korean border reveal the cadres' weakness as much as their strength. As an unnamed British intelligence source told Gordon Thomas (Epoch Times), "The problem we have is trying to decide that if Kim dies, who will take over? And during that process could there be a 'palace revolution' which in turn could lead to conflict beyond North Korea’s border if there is an uprising within North Korea."

In other words, the viceroy's successors might decide they don't want northern Korea to be a colony anymore.

What does this mean for the free world? It means we must remember the lessons of the 1970s and 1980s. When European Communism fell, it tried to prevent its demise by taking as much as it could from its enemies. By the early 1980s, the democratic world got wise, and from then it was only a matter of time.

As Chinese Communism suffers the same fate, the cadres are hoping their better PR with the democratic world can enable it to take more from us than the Soviets could. Once our leaders get wise, the end is nigh. Until then, however, blood and treasure remain at risk.