thank you...
Posted on 12/17/2011 9:50:32 PM PST by bruinbirdman
With the siege of Wukan nearing the one week mark, and with the village of 20,000 now squarely in the cross-hairs of the global media, The New York Times questions how long the villagers can hold out as the government strengthens its armed blockade and tries to drive a wedge into the movement:
“We will defend our farmland to the death!” a handmade banner proclaims, referring to a possible land deal they fear will strip them of almost all their farmland. “Is it a crime,” another muses, “to ask for the return of our land and for democracy and transparency?”
How long they will last is another matter. As the days pass, the cordons of police officers surrounding the village grow larger. Armored trucks and troop carriers have been reported nearby. On local television, a 24-hour channel denounces the villagers as “a handful of people” dedicated to sabotaging public order, with the names of protesters flashing on a blue screen, warning that they will be prosecuted. Many here fear this will all end badly. “The SWAT teams and the police here are acting like they’re crime organizations, not police forces,” said Chen Dequan, a 50-year-old farmer and fisherman. “The entire village is worried.”
Tom Lasseter, the Beijing Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers who evaded the roadblock and has been Tweeting and reporting from within Wukan since Thursday (though it appears, based on his Twitter updates, that he is no longer the sole Western reporter in the village), caught up with Lin Zulian and Yang Semao, the two men singled out and wanted by the government for leading the revolt:
The mayor of the city that oversees this farming and fishing village has publicly named the pair as main agitators of Wukan’s recent rebellion against the local government. Acting Shanwei Mayor Wu Zili vowed to crack down on them and their allies, according to state media.
Such a threat would terrify most Chinese in a nation infamous for police state tactics. But on Friday morning, both men stood in front of a crowd of thousands here and railed against local corruption.
“The officials are lying to the villagers,” Yang said, standing behind a large photograph of Xue Jinbo, a fellow advocate who died in police custody Sunday. A few minutes later, he burst into tears that were echoed by heaving sobs from the rows of people in front of him.
Meanwhile, The Financial Times noted a defiant mood in the village:
An atmosphere of foreboding, tinged with jubilation, hung over the groups of young villagers as they took photographs with foreign reporters and worried about when the police might come again.
“We were very scared a day or two ago, but now, with the whole world watching, we don’t think they will dare do anything to us,” said one young villager was is half-jokingly referred by others to as Wukan’s “foreign minister”.
That joke underlines the astonishing fact that this village has now spent almost two months virtually independent from Communist party rule.
Bloomberg compares the Wukan standoff with the Occupy Wall Street movement, noting that the situation in China represents what happens when a “similar toxic mix” of grievances over wealth disparity play out in a totalitarian society.
You are equating apples with persimmons.
The China of today is not the Soviet Union of yesterday
The issues are far more complex
The Chinese government is no longer communist, except in name. A more appropriate name would be the Chinese Fascist Party. In stealing the nation's land from its original owners, the Party used to say that all land in China belonged to the people. In effect this meant that all land belonged to Party members, since those members decided how the land was used and for whose benefit. Still, for many Chinese, this wasn't unbearable, since they did get to use the land for planting crops, etc. However, the Party's role in selling the land off without sufficient compensation has finally broken the unspoken covenant between the Party and the people - the Party is now saying that that the land they stole from the ancestors of the villagers can no longer be used by those villagers. This has the makings of an agrarian revolt. Mao Zedong took advantage of similar sentiments to become the Emperor of China while nominally being head of the Chinese Communist Party. It should be interesting to see if any political adventurers with Mao's ability to lead a revolution arise, and whether there is enough discontent for a critical mass of followers to coalesce around these charismatic figures sufficient to launch a violent revolt. The Party will not give up power without a fight, so the question is whether any violent revolt that comes about resembles the failed Taiping Revolution of the 19th century, or the successful Xinhai Revolution of 1911.
The Chinese government is no longer communist, except in name. A more appropriate name would be the Chinese Fascist Party.
In stealing the nation's land from its original owners, the Party used to say that all land in China belonged to the people. In effect this meant that all land belonged to Party members, since those members decided how the land was used and for whose benefit. Still, for many Chinese, this wasn't unbearable, since they did get to use the land for planting crops, etc. However, the Party's role in selling the land off without sufficient compensation has finally broken the unspoken covenant between the Party and the people - the Party is now saying that that the land they stole from the ancestors of the villagers can no longer be used by those villagers. This has the makings of an agrarian revolt.
Mao Zedong took advantage of similar sentiments to become the Emperor of China while nominally being head of the Chinese Communist Party. It should be interesting to see if any political adventurers with Mao's ability to lead a revolution arise, and whether there is enough discontent for a critical mass of followers to coalesce around these charismatic figures sufficient to launch a violent revolt. The Party will not give up power without a fight, so the question is whether any violent revolt that comes about resembles the failed Taiping Revolution of the 19th century, or the successful Xinhai Revolution of 1911.
thank you...
Are there no Washingtons in China?
During the imperial era, the penalty for (unsuccessful) sedition used to be what might loosely be translated as the nine kinship exterminations, i.e. all your friends and relatives in every direction, typically resulting in the slaughter of thousands or even tens of thousands. Back then, the only reason to bet it all was to win it all (i.e. become emperor in place of the existing one). Today, the state's punishments are nowhere near as rigorous, so who knows?
Throughout Chinese history, there have been plenty of political adventurers with an eye for the main chance, but no one, to date, with the Cincinnatus-like character of Washington* combined with both political and military ability. Then again, the guy isn't simply a unique character in American history, he's one in world history.
* Mao had Washington's political and military ability, but was merely another Chinese emperor, an absolutist who killed more Chinese than the sum of the emperors who came before him.
It was back in the early 90s, right after Clinton gave them (as a freebee) the Klystron Switch so the Chinese could make working thermonuclear weapons (this was after Loral gave them the guidance systems for their ICBMs).
One of the military pages of the time carried the story, perhaps Stratfor, the Chinese, after testing their first couple of hydrogen bombs, went right for the neutron bomb. Clinton had just ordered US ICBMs to not be pre-targeted and the targeting cards removed.
Dr. Ed Tellar, urged Clinton not to make neutron bombs, and so it was.
Meanwhile, the Chinese pushed ahead with their program, testing the weapon on remote villages in the muslim regions - twice. Worked as advertised, making China the only known country with neutron bombs.
Don't be so sure of that, this is the first I've heard of it..........
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