I have a four-day weekend coming to me starting now. For today is National Day in China. And not just any old National Day – The People’s Republic of China is 60 years old today. Which is why HK has been staging all sorts of patriotic events for the past week or so.
Yeah, well, not to dump all over everyone’s festivities, but I can’t get all that excited when the following headline is less than a month old:
[Context is here, and background is here, if Han Chinese/Uighur feuds interest you.]That was the top story in HK for almost two weeks. The Chinese authorities claimed that the three journalists didn’t have proper press credentials, and that they were
“encouraging” the protesters to get violent, and that nothing would have happened if they had just “followed the rules”. On the other hand, when they called a press conference to announce these “findings”, Hong Kong reporters
were not notified.
Oops!
But this is how it works in mainland China. The local media is mostly owned and operated by the govt to some degree (to include the Internet, on which the govt is
also clamping down extra hard for the 60th) and anyone reporting undesirable things (such as criticizing the govt for anything) will find themselves in jail for subversion and advocating the overthrow of the govt. The govt always frames these things in terms of law – we are not jailing reporters because we oppose a free press, we’re jailing them because they did illegal things.
See what they did there?
Not that any of this is new. It’s been going on for decades. Which is another reason I’m not all that impressed with the PRC turning 60.
Don’t get me wrong – China has
come a long way since I moved to Asia in 1996. It’s a very different place today, and has a lot going for it in some ways. But by the same token, the PRC is arguably a failure on paper precisely because it had to jettison the core Communist ideology that spawned its existence just to get to where it is now. Result: the nation has made more progress in the last 10 years than it did in the first 50. And it’s
still running on a centrally planned economic model. If they went for actual capitalism, they’d be Canada by now. Only, you know, with nukes, zero free speech, state-approved religion and no democracy to speak of.
But who am I to be critical? Sure, China is still a one-party dictatorship run by control freaks who will not tolerate anyone challenging their authority in any way, to includes journalists doing their job. On the other hand,
the nightlife really swings.
Anyway, this is why I don’t take National Day seriously. It’s also why I sneer at the current conservative fear and loathing in America, which apparently is
EXACTLY like 1930s Austria RIGHT NOW which means Obama really is Hitler and Real Americans
must take their country back – with GUNS.
Yeah.
Take it from someone who has lived within 50km from two actual Socialist dictatorships (the second being East Germany) and has been inside four of them (the other two being Vietnam and Laos): as wannabe Hitlers, Stalins or even Mao Zedongs go, Obama is not f***ing trying. The Dictators Tea Club would reject his membership application out of sheer embarrassment.
"So you bought shares in one car company, bailed out some banks and proposed universal healthcare coverage that yr own party wouldn't even pass. And ... that's it, is it?"
Damn commies,
This is dF
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