As China opens up, it keeps a wary eye on the former U.S.S.R.

iht.com ^ | May 19, 2008 | Philip Taubman

[Tailgunner Joe]

A dash of openness can be a dangerous thing in an autocratic state. Mikhail Gorbachev discovered this two decades ago when his campaign to inject some daylight into Soviet society doubled back on him like a heat-seeking missile.

Now China's leaders are playing with the same volatile political chemistry as they give their own citizens and the world an unexpectedly vivid look at the earthquake devastation. ...

"When you start opening up and loosen controls, it becomes a slippery slope," Jack Matlock Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Moscow during much of the Gorbachev period, said last week as he watched the events in China. "You quickly become a target for everyone with a grievance and before long, people go after the whole system."

Chinese leaders are well aware of the Soviet experience. The bloody crackdown against the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989 seemed motivated in part by fears that a relaxation of repression would lead to a replay of Soviet turbulence in China. It was no accident that China was the first country to translate and reprint Matlock's 1995 account of the demise of the Soviet Union, "Autopsy on an Empire." ...

The slow disintegration and collapse of the Soviet empire and dissolution of the Communist Party were not exactly what Gorbachev had in mind when he took power in 1985 and began his twin policies of glasnost (greater openness) and perestroika (political reform). ...

"Gorbachev thought he could control glasnost and use it, but in the end even he turned against it..."

[Tailgunner Joe]

Mikhail Gorbachev: 'My family paid too high a price for glasnost' - 07/05/2008 - "I paid too heavy a price for perestroika."

[PugetSoundSoldier]

I’ve long maintained that - in the near AND long term - China is more of an ally than we know. The real threat is Russia, and China knows it. Best to work with China to contain and control Russia.

Say what you will, but the Chinese government is at least rational and focused on long-term viability of their country, even to the point of changing their internal economic and political structures.

Russia’s proven to be pretty fractured and irrational, and all too willing to either turn a blind eye or outright sell arms to whomever wants them, no questions asked.

If there’s a nuke or dirty bomb that goes off in a US city, I’ll guarantee it’ll be from Russian materials.