Posted on 03/22/2012 5:21:28 PM PDT by PotatoHeadMick
'Tanks in the streets of Beijing'
Nervous leaders in China have blocked all internet reports of an alleged attempted coup.
Online reports of tanks on the streets of the capital Beijing and shots fired within the secure leaders' compound - which is located next door the top tourist attraction, the Forbidden City - are being closely monitored by the international intelligence communities, including the U.S. and UK.
Popular Chinese microblogging sites Sina Weibo, QQ Weibo and the bulletin board of the search engine Baidu, all reported 'abnormalities' in Beijing on the night of March 19.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Well, its the Daily Mail, so let’s just wait and see...
It is the Mail and while they do have silly stories relating to minor issues I can’t imagine they’d let their, presumably highly paid, correspondent in Beijing lose the run of himself, I suspect there might be something to this.
Today the government denied rumors that...
The hardliners want to get rid of the market economy.
I guess they want to impoverish China like it use to be.
They’ll need to call in that debt pretty quick.
If something really serious was up, China would have put all their military forces on alert and likely cut off all communications in and out of the country. That would result in increased surveillance by American intelligence assets, including RC-135 flights 30-50 miles off the coastline of China. And it would put the Taiwanese military on high alert, and American forces on Okinawa, Japan and South Korea would be put on higher alert status also.
This isn’t in a backwater area, it is the same as having a shootout on the national mall in D.C. There are tourists everywhere. We may have to wait until they get back home, but if it was big enough, someone saw it.
“The hardliners want to get rid of the market economy....”
Maybe they’ll team up with our leaders in DC....
Muslim spring?
DC in the east Pacific.
did anyone get a picture of these tanks?
What are you two hearing?
They can call it in all they want. They are bonds. They can sell them or they can hold em. Otherwise Bernake will just print more money to pay them.
This guy Bo looks like he wants to derail the market reforms that have been achieved. But I'm guessing the real reason they whacked this guy was because he wanted to crack down on corruption, which is rampant there. Guarantee you that's why the current leadership wanted him gone. They're all crooks and everybody there knows it.
bump
That can’t happen here, because our leader doesn’t have the power to... Oh yeah, never mind.
China is a house of cards, that can fall at any time.
What do you mean, economically or politically?
China has a lot of economic problems that are being made worse by corruption. Politically, the current leadership will do whatever it takes to keep a lid on any kind of social problems, even if that means putting tanks on the street. What do you think the 3 million strong PLA is for? Who are they going to attack with that large an army? No, that's for internal control...
this hasn’t disappeared yet? ;-)
Yes.
How much influence does an unstable China have on the boy king?
So do I understand you correctly that some sort of extra security activity is occurring and the internet is indeed being blocked?
Would you say then that there might actually be something to this report?
“I say we go into orbit and nuke them from space.” Ripley
Agreed. My thinking is that a faction of the Chi-com high command is trying to re-constitue their old communist ways. China has become a powerhouse of economics, but the elders are growing weary of market economics. They want the old communist ways, as many do in Russia.
Think obama and all his "high command" who want a socialist/communist system. Much easier for a nation that has experienced it for decades to re-constitute.
Sounds like our “boy king” (Obambi for those in Rio Vista) gets his 3am call.
Well, at least Anita Dunn will be pleased. Probably scores of other czars and czarinas in the White House, too. Certainly lots of folks at the State Department China desk will get a boner over it (China going more Red).
1. The foreign press is forced out of China, or at least out of the city of Beijing.
2. The Chinese government interrupts the operations of Walmart and McDonald's in China, and news start coming out of Bentonville, AR (the corporate headquarters for Walmart) and Oak Brook, IL (the corporate headquarters for McDonald's) of such an event. It would also be necessary to closely monitor any activity at Apple, since Apple products are assembled by several Foxconn assembly lines all over China.
[ “If they start to kick out foreign press you will know something is coming down.”
Agreed. My thinking is that a faction of the Chi-com high command is trying to re-constitue their old communist ways. China has become a powerhouse of economics, but the elders are growing weary of market economics. They want the old communist ways, as many do in Russia.
Think obama and all his “high command” who want a socialist/communist system. Much easier for a nation that has experienced it for decades to re-constitute. ]
Not to mention if China’s economy starts tanking a bit (which it seems to be doing). It will give the old Guard a lot more excuses/reasons to seize control over the younger people in leadership....
His argument is that, because of its history of Confucianism, which preaches a strong hierarchy (the intellectual class loves that), they'll never be able to compete with the west, let alone exert much, if any, influence in the world. Interesting argument.
No kids involved, plus it's not Spring Break in Mexico. /sarc
Seriously, I support what Free Republic's admin mod did in following the lead of others in yanking inappropriate posts on the Obama children. My point is that the Chinese have no legitimate reason to get American websites to scrub discussion of this.
Also, thank you to TigerLikesRooster and AmericaninTokyo for your work on the ground. The next time I'm in Korea, I may ask if I can look both of you up since most Korean flights stop in Tokyo. Unfortunately the last time I was sent on business to Korea by my newspaper was over a decade ago, and I lost out on a chance to work for the English-language desk of a certain Seoul newspaper in 2001, so all my Korea travel since then has been personal on my own dime. Plus now I have to pay somebody else to do my job when I'm gone on top of paying my own paycheck. Capitalism sometimes carries certain negatives like having to figure out how to pay my employees and my own bills, too, but obviously the Chinese and North Korean alternatives to capitalism are horrifically worse.
Just let us know...
This was reported on Rick Wiles/Tru News the night before last. My brother called me but I couldn’t find anything on it at all but this confirms it. DM has lousy editing but they do seem to break stories or print stories quicker than the maggots we call journalists here in the states.
Correction: It was on the Roger Hedgecock show.
[My thinking is that a faction of the Chi-com high command is trying to re-constitue their old communist ways.]
Paranoid about getting a run on their NyLon pantyhose maybe.
Thank you.
Online whispers
The anatomy of a coup rumour
Apr 5th 2012, 7:22 by G.E. | Beijing
http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/04/online-whispers
In a free Western democratic system of government, rumors circulating on the internet about things like traffic blockages wouldn't even be considered news, but if they were, they'd quickly get proved right or wrong, either via the mainstream media or via “crowdsourcing” (of which Free Republic is a major example). Look, for example, at how quickly we learned about the plane crash in Virginia Beach.
In a country like China, minor stuff like this becomes an international incident and leads to a half-dozen people getting detained.
This is an excellent example of how authoritarian states fear information getting to their people, and while leaders of democratic states get annoyed by wrong reports, they realize the alternative is far worse.
Even with the American military, Army Public Affairs doctrine is “maximum disclosure, minimum delay.” If troops don't believe their commanders are being honest about battlefield defeats and crime in the ranks and corruption from senior leaders, they won't know if they can trust their leaders to be honest about the reasons for following orders that can get people killed or seriously injured.
The media can be a major pain in the neck, obviously. That's our job. What just happened in China is an example of why that job is important — the alternative to media being able to check out rumors and find out if they're true is that rumors spread widely and nobody knows what to believe.
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