Reason Magazine - Topics > China

Moby Drives China Over the Edge

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:57:00 EDT

China has been working hard to maintain a delicate balancing act of putting on a nobody-here-but-us-freedom-loving-semi-capitalists act for the Olympic tourists and athletes, while keeping its citizens inside the cone of silence. And this week they finally cracked.

iTunes is blocked in many parts of the country today. And who drove China to distraction in the end? Why Moby and Alanis Morissette, of course. Singing about the Dalai Lama (or something) on the Songs for Tibet album just released on the site. On Monday, "the US-based Campaign for Tibet organisation claimed on its website that "over 40 Olympic athletes in North America, Europe and even Beijing" had downloaded the album." As usual, China offers a hilariously illogical explanation for its hugely disproportionate response to 40 downloads via its quasi-official news site:

Angry netizens [internet users] are rallying together to denounce Apple in offering Songs for Tibet for purchase. They have also expressed a wish to ban the album's singers and producers, most notably Sting, John Mayer and Dave Matthews, from entering China.

Gee, those angry Chinese netizens, they sure have a lot of power over China's Internet policy.

Of course, maybe the regime is right to freak out. Your people get ahold of a few good tunes, and the next thing you know, you might have a Singing Revolution on your hands.

Let the Games of the Milli-Vanilli Olympiad Begin!

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:24:00 EDT

From the AP:

A 7-year-old Chinese girl was not good-looking enough for the Olympics opening ceremony, so another little girl with a pixie smile lip-synched "Ode to the Motherland," a ceremony official said—the latest example of the lengths Beijing took for a perfect start to the Summer Games....
The news follows reports that some footage of the fireworks exploding across China's capital during the ceremony was digitally inserted into television coverage, apparently over concerns that not all of the 29 blasts could be captured on camera....
Lin Miaoke's performance Friday night, like the ceremony itself, was an immediate hit. "Nine-year-old Lin Miaoke becomes instant star with patriotic song," the China Daily newspaper headline said Tuesday.
But the real voice behind the tiny, pigtailed girl in the red dress who wowed 91,000 spectators at the National Stadium on opening night really belonged to 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Her looks apparently failed the cuteness test with officials organizing the ceremony, but Chen said her voice was judged the most beautiful.

More here.

The girl pictured here is the one who passed "the cuteness test." And, apparently, made the appropriate gang signals as well.

Is it just me, or did America—or maybe only Bob Costas, who looks digitally altered himself these days—just lose its innocence? Please don't tell me that the ~~gun~~ guy running around the perimeter of the top of the Olympic stadium during the opening cermonies was suspended by wires!

Speaking of good looks and the Olympics, here's a chilling Cold War-era tale of "vitamins" and sex-change operations featuring East German shotputter Andreas nee Heidi Krieger.

Milli Vanilli remembered here. Other classic lip-synchs include Whitney Houston and the National Anthem, Ashlee Simpson on SNL, and...add your own here.

Marni Nixon, queen of the Hollywood lip-synchers, remembered here.

Forget the Olympics—China's Victory Starts Next Year

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:28:00 EDT

China is set to overtake the US next year as the world's largest producer of manufactured goods, four years earlier than expected, as a result of the rapidly weakening US economy.
The great leap is revealed in forecasts for the Financial Times by Global Insight, a US economics consultancy. According to the estimates, next year China will account for 17 per cent of manufacturing value-added output of $11,783bn and the US will make 16 per cent.
Last year the US was still easily in the top slot and accounted for a fifth of the total. China was second with 13.2 per cent.

More here.

What say you, Hit & Runners? Does it matter?

Meanwhile, at the Olympics.

Seeing China Whole

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:00:00 EDT

If you look closely at a spot in a meadow, you will see some things you may not enjoy looking at—weeds, bugs, funguses, bare spots of dirt, bits of trash, animal bones, and so on. If you view it from a distance, however, you may see a vista that is far more appealing.

With the opening of the Beijing Olympics, outsiders are putting modern China under a microscope and finding much that is ugly. That perception is accurate but not complete. A full appreciation requires taking in the panorama of Chinese life and history, which may be hard to do in the preoccupation with the host country's flaws.

There are plenty to choose from. The government is repressive, undemocratic, and often brutal. It censors news coverage, imprisons dissidents, restricts religion, and maintains a monopoly on political power.

So far, the Olympics have not served the goal of fostering liberalization. "The year-long prelude to the Beijing Games has seen a major crackdown on free speech and dissent; a massive sweep of 'undesirables' from the host city; and increasing abuses of ethnic minority Tibetans and Uighurs," says Minky Worden, an official of Human Rights Watch, in an e-mail. In the next two weeks, the Chinese leadership is going to get a lot of unflattering coverage, all richly deserved.

But it would be a shame to focus on its sins to the exclusion of everything else. Westerners can easily forget that this authoritarian country used to be a totalitarian country, with perhaps the most grotesque human rights record of the 20th century

During the three decades after the Communist Party took over in 1949, it was responsible for more than 70 million deaths. Some of them were due to political persecution and terror, and some to catastrophic economic mismanagement. The party deliberately fomented savage social upheavals that not only punished its alleged enemies but devastated China's cultural heritage. It also kept the country poor.

All that is in the past. Since Deng Xiaoping gained power in the late 1970s and liberalized the economy, China has been transformed almost beyond belief. Its economy has expanded tenfold. No country in history has ever lifted so many people out of poverty so rapidly.

What was once a vast prison camp has conceded a great deal of personal freedom to ordinary people. They can work and live where they choose. They can travel and study abroad. They have access to the Internet. There is a growing sense among the Chinese that they are entitled to certain basic human rights—a startling development in a country where, for centuries, individual rights have been an alien concept.

As repressive regimes go, this one could be worse. Robert Ross, a China scholar at Harvard and Boston College, says, "I would put China in the top 10 percent of all the authoritarian states in the world"—comparing it favorably with many East Asian countries (notably North Korea and Burma), most Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, and most African nations.

He thinks the recent pre-Olympics security crackdown won't last long. And there is good reason to expect that in the coming years and decades, China will continue to progress in human rights.

Hoover Institution fellow Henry Rowen, an East Asia specialist, notes that development and democracy almost universally move in tandem. A market economy can't function without substantial freedom from state control. As countries become richer and more educated, they unleash forces that are incompatible with authoritarian rule.

You can usually anticipate political advances by gauging the rise of gross domestic product per capita. "In 2005," writes Rowen, "every country in the world (oil states excepted) with GDPpc topping $8,000 was at least Partly Free [as categorized by the human rights group Freedom House]; indeed, all ranked as Free except the tiny island city-state of Singapore." Given China's growth trajectory, he predicts it will move from Not Free to Partly Free by 2015—and by 2025, it will be "classed as belonging to the Free nations of the earth."

Anyone contemplating the thuggish repression still prevalent under the Beijing government may find that hard to imagine. But if the last 30 years have taught us anything, it is not to underestimate China's capacity for positive change.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Bush at the Olympics

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EDT

For those of us who used to be Summer Olympics junkies the way that baseball slugger Josh Hamilton used to be an actual heroin junkie, these are some pretty thin times. And not simply because chronically underweight actress Mia Farrow is webcasting an alternative "Darfur Olympics" in Africa designed to call attention to that particular Sudanese horror show.

The plain truth is that for all sorts of political, cultural, and athletic reasons, the Olympics just don't pack the oomph they used to. That's a good thing, by the way. It's the combined effect of the end of the Cold War, a vast expansion in the menu of entertainment options, and the development of individual sports into more and more insular and professionalized activities (track and field, for instance, only created its own world championship meet in the 1980s; prior to that, the Olympics effectively played that role). It's a better world when water polo matches and basketball games aren't proxy wars and the public at large can more easily ignore god-awful official mascots such as Izzy and Amik. (Article continues below video.)

Earlier this summer, Reason.tv asked D.C. residents whether the U.S. should boycott the Olympics in Beijing. Click above to watch the responses.

That said, there will still be immense quadrennial hoopla, some of it even entertaining, surrounding the Beijing Olympics. NBC is threatening 3,600 hours of coverage (and that's without even considering adding the 56-pound weight throw back into the mix), all anchored by Bob Costas, whose main selling point is that he's not Bryant Gumbel. American swimmer Michael Phelps is pushing for a record eight (count 'em, Mark Spitz) golds, Ralph Lauren has designed the U.S. gymnasts' uniforms, and it should be nothing less than mesmerizing to see which athletes actually drop dead from sucking in too much smog. And, of course, what sorts of doping charges will stick? (Hopefully none will cling to five-time Olympian Dara Torres, the great hope for all fortysomething out-of-shapers still harboring medal dreams.)

But the most interesting performance of this games may have already taken place a couple of days ago, starting in Thailand of all places. That's when President George W. Bush actually sounded presidential for a change and made an unambiguous statement about human rights and China:

"We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labor rights not to antagonize China's leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential....We press for openness and justice, not to impose our beliefs but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs....
"The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings."

A Chinese spokesman responded with a courteous screw-you: "We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues." At the opening of the new U.S. embassy in China, Bush reiterated his theme of freedom and engagement: "We strongly believe societies which allow the free expression of ideas tend to be the most prosperous and the most peaceful."

If you care about civil liberties, foreign policy, government spending, expansions in executive power, Social Security reform, traditional African dancing, or you name it, Bush's presidency has been the sort of ongoing disaster-cum-embarrassment that the baseball team he used to own, the Texas Rangers, faces on an annual basis. And there is plenty to criticize in terms of Bush's current appearance in China. Not his going to the opening ceremonies of the Games in the first place, but his failure to meet openly with Chinese dissidents or directly address a nation-wide audience in China.

Despite the high-flying rhetoric of athletic competition, the modern Olympics, restarted in 1896, were conceived of as a political act—a way for the French to avenge on the playing field their battlefield defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (it's one reason why participants compete as part of national teams rather than as individuals). True to this origin, the Olympics have always provided a stage for world politics, both official and unofficial, well-intentioned and murderous. Hence the grotesque displays of Nazism in 1936, the student protests in '68, the terrorist atrocities of '72, Eric Rudolph's bombings in '96, and various boycotts, such as President Jimmy Carter's withdrawal of the United States team from the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Carter's boycott, done in the name of human rights, accomplished absolutely nothing. I'm willing to say that Bush is a worse president than Carter (who at least deregulated airline ticket pricing and interstate trucking, and invited Willie Nelson to the White House), but it's Bush who has gotten it right when it comes to superpower-charged Olympics.

To have Bush out there, saying what he's saying where he's saying it—and pursuing a larger policy of engagement via trade and other forms of exchange—is absolutely the best way to pull China into something approaching Western-style democracy, complete with robust individual rights and the sort of economy that will ultimately force governments to loosen up. Milton Friedman famously said that as people get richer, they demand the ability to live however they want—that economic freedom, which increases prosperity, helps create the conditions for political freedom. It seems clear that the Chinese government, like all governments, doesn't want to yield power if it can avoid doing so. It's also clear that the more a country trades with the world—for goods, services, and even cultural identities—the less its government can control its people. Here's hoping that the Beijing Olympics, regardless of the predictable and bizarre repressions going on right now to ensure a "stain-free" event, push that process along.

Nick Gillespie is the editor of reason.tv and reason online.

Bush on China: Don't Hold Political Prisoners

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:59:00 EDT

President George W. Bush is set to arrive in Beijing, China, today for the start of the Olympics. Here's a snippet from a speech he gave in Thailand before heading on to his final destination:

"America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists," Bush is to say in the marquee speech of his three-nation Asia trip. "We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly and labor rights—not to antagonize China's leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential."

More here.

I hope he managed to squeeze in a word about freedom of expression in Thailand, which just banned sales of the video game Grand Theft Auto.

And I hope when he returns to the U.S., Bush will consider cases of godawful and morally corrupt prosecution like that of Charlie Lynch, the California medical marijuana dispensary owner just found guilty of selling drugs in federal court.

But the message to China is a solid one, though suggesting freedom is a means to economic fulfillment is misguided in my opinion—it's an end in itself. But here's hoping that Bush's words are not simply meant for Western audiences who seem increasingly uncomfortable with engagement with China.

Convenient, Sufficient, and Censored

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:18:00 EDT

Contrary to assurances from the International Olympic Committee, The New York Times reports, journalists covering the Beijing games will not have uncensored access to the Internet:

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages—among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC's Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse....
Mr. Sun [chief spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee] said foreigners using the Internet in China would be subject to the same laws under which censors blocked access to a wide range of Web sites thought to be detrimental to stability. China has long maintained that its laws governing Internet access do not amount to censorship and are similar to restrictions on pornography or gambling sites in many countries.

As I suggested in my recent reason article about online gambling, that comparison, though obviously self-serving, should not be lightly dismissed. The U.S. government's heavy-handed attempts to stop Americans from visiting sites where they can play poker or bet on sports undermine its moral authority in attacking other countries' Web restrictions.

As far as Chinese officials are concerned, foreign journalists' Internet access is "convenient and sufficient" for covering the Olympic games. In their view, such coverage does not include the concerns that critics of the Beijing Games have raised about China's human rights abuses. While visiting journalists were dismayed to find that they "were unable to gain direct access to an Amnesty International report detailing what it called a deterioration in China's human rights record in the prelude to the Games," the Chinese government is dismayed at their dismay. Needless to say, from the government's perspective, talking about the Web censorship imposed on reporters covering the games is also not part of covering the games. Nevertheless, for a regime eager to be perceived as civilized and enlightened, denying the news media unfettered Internet access was probably not the savviest P.R. move.

A few years ago, after my own encounter with China's Internet filtering, I pondered the strange, half-free condition of Chinese Web surfers. In a 2002 column, I suggested that French censors could learn a thing or two from their Chinese counterparts.

China: An Island Nation?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:52:00 EDT

China isn't embracing rum cocktails with little umbrellas in them (as far as I know). But given the realities of Chinese geography--shared land borders with 14 other countries, but most of the population clustered away from those borders in the Han "heartland"--they might at least consider adopting some of the better features of island nations (say, hammocks and tropical fruit) to balance out the troublesome isolation:

From Strange Maps:

Only in three places are the Chinese borders naturally permeable: at the Vietnamese frontier, via the Silk Road, and near Russian Far East. Hilly jungles separate China from Laos and Burma, the Himalayas shield it from the Indian subcontinent, almost impassable deserts divide it from Central Asia and the forbidding expanses of Siberia have never appealed to Chinese expansionism (until now, as the Russians fear).
With the exception of the Ming dynasty’s sponsorship of admiral Zheng He’s naval expeditions (as far away as Sri Lanka, Arabia and Africa) in the early 15th century, China has never attempted to be a naval-based power – so for most of its history, China’s ports on the Pacific were hardly windows on the world either.

Check out the original article on Investors Insight, with lots more maps clarifying and expanding on the one above.

"Still a Developing Country"

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:41:00 EDT

Someone in China is hacking into the computers of American congressional offices. They've hit several congressmen in the last couple years.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) gave a speech on the floor yesterday described the incursion on his offices computers in 2006. The first target? "The computer of my foreign policy and human rights staff person." Why?: "My suspicion is that I was targeted by Chinese sources because of my long history of speaking out about China's abysmal human rights record."

China's defense:

"Is there any evidence?" Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a regular news conference in Beijing. "China is still a developing country."

Apparently, the country that maintains an elaborate censorship regime on Internet access at home, and manufactures huge amounts of computer hardware for use abroad is utterly bereft of gifted hackers. Go figure.

Via Ars Technica

P.J. O'Rourke on China

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:02:00 EDT

Apres his National Lampoon days, P.J. O'Rourke made his bones as a serious journalist (horrible phrase) at Rolling Stone by doing some of the best and most-involved shoe-leather-times-10 travel reporting ever since Tocqueville decamped to America. Via Arts & Letters Daily comes this excellent recent piece based on a trip to China O'Rourke took in 2006. From the opening:

It took me almost two years to realize that what I have is a survey of "the tacit consent of the governed." Not that the Chinese I talked to were taciturn. They were forthcoming enough about their government, but they didn't care much about the political theory of it. Tom said, "Their attitude is, ‘Shhh, politics is sleeping, don't wake it up.'"

I talked to people who worked in private enterprise and people who worked in government and people who worked on furthering cooperation between the two. That is, I talked to the kind of people who are necessary to the advocating of freedom and democracy but who, so far, aren't advocating it. We need to listen to what they don't say. Here is a record of what Chinese think of politics when politics isn't what they're thinking of.

This is O'Rourke at his best. Informed by ideological suppositions but not enslaved to them; talking to a wide range of people; bringing his perspective to bear; and more.

Read the whole thing at the World Affairs Journal website.

Sharon Stone's Bad Karma About Bad Karma

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:22:00 EDT

Luxury retailer Christian Dior has pulled advertisements featuring Sharon Stone from stores across China after the actress suggested the country's earthquake was "bad karma" for Beijing's policies in Tibet.

At least 68,000 people died in the May 12 quake in southwest China, which came months after unrest in Tibet that sparked an international outcry over Beijing's handling of the predominantly Buddhist region, which Communist troops entered in 1950.

"Due to some customer reaction we have decided to pull her image from all of the department stores and from all of China," Christian Dior China said in a statement.

More here.

Questions: Does this demonstrate the endless vapidity of Hollywood stars who rule the world like the dinosaurs once did? Or Sharon Stone's firm grasp of karmic understanding? The power of the market responding to new signals by punishing those who disappoint or dismay consumers? The power of a government that oversees the people who produce a ton of luxury goods sold in the West? Do Buddhists simply get what they deserve in every situation? Why was Buddhism so popular for a while among Westerners (Zen Archery, Hesse's Siddartha, Gary Snyder, "Karma Chameleon," and all that)? Do Theravada Buddhists emit less karma than than Mahayana believers (actual mileage may vary)?

Sharon Stone at Wikipedia here.

Adam Smith on Chinese earthquakes here.

reason's Kerry Howley on luxury fever here.

Red China Sends Secret Police to Cuba, With U.S. Blessing

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:32:00 EDT

Commenter Fluffy alerts us to this ABC News story:

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men − or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.
Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

Whole thing here.

Olympic Gag Order

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Prince Charles once referred to China’s leaders as “appalling old waxworks,” but the British Olympic Committee seems to find them intimidating enough.

“British athletes will have to sign a contract promising not to comment on any politically sensitive issues” during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, British Olympics Association spokesman Graham Nathan told CNN in February. They will be presented with the contract as soon as they qualify in Olympic trials, and athletes who violate the gag order by discussing, say, China’s dismal human rights record can be barred from competition and put on the next plane home.

Officials say they are merely trying to comply with Section 51 of the International Olympic Committee charter, which “provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” But critics note troubling parallels between this contract and a low point in British sporting history: The British soccer team, at the prodding of the British Foreign Office, lined up for a Nazi salute in the Berlin Olympic stadium before a friendly game with Germany in 1938.

China is hustling to put on its best face for the Olympic games in August, much as Germany did when it hosted the games shortly before World War II. While public persecution may be brought to a halt, dissidents such as the human rights campaigner Hu Jia are quietly being put under house arrest or otherwise taken out of circulation.

Many countries, including the United States, Canada, and Australia, have promised not to restrict their athletes’ political speech about China in the run-up to the games. In Britain, a public outcry has produced promises to “review” the U.K.’s policy, so the Brits may yet fall in line with their Anglosphere cousins.

Ready, Aim, Firewall!

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:28:00 EDT

Remember how anyone protesting China in Nepal risked getting shot during the Olympic torch relay at Mt. Everest?

Well, that's not the only censorship that's going to surround the Olympics, though it's a rather more dramatic interpretation of the word firewall: Technology Minister Wan Gang told Reuters some sites would be shut down or screened during the Games. "To protect the youth there are controls on some unhealthy websites."

In light of statements like there, there seems to be a serious case of unfounded optimism at the IOC:

Wan's statement comes just over a month after the International Olympic Committee reminded China of its obligations as an Olympic host city to allow the press to report as freely as they have in the past—which usually includes full, unfettered access to the Internet. The IOC insisted to the government that the Internet be "open at all times during Games time," and commission vice chairman Kevan Gosper appeared optimistic that China would comply. "On all issues where that's been concerned they've lived up to the (host city) agreement so we don't see any reason why they'd step back from that now," he said at the time.

More on China here. More Beijing Olympics here.

The Last Communist We Hang Shall Be the One Who Sold Us the Rope

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:40:00 EDT

Globalization and nationalism, chapter CCXXXV:

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say. The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning. But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper.

The factory owner reportedly told police the emblems had been ordered from outside China, and he did not know that they stood for an independent Tibet.

[Via Chris Hayes.]

Not the Strongest Possible Argument

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:03:00 EDT

[Via Roderick Long.]

The Olympics Were Never "Only About the Athletes"

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:36:00 EDT

The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum takes down a list of standard excuses for "going along to get along" at the Beijing Olympics. Highlights:

"The Olympics are a force for good." Not always! The 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany, were an astonishing propaganda coup for Hitler. It's true that the star performance of Jesse Owens, the black American track-and-field great, did shoot some holes in the Nazi theory of Aryan racial superiority. But Hitler still got what he wanted out of the Games. With the help of American newspapers such as the New York Times, which opined that the Games put Germany "back in the family of nations again," he convinced many Germans, and many foreigners, to accept Nazism as "normal."...
"A boycott doesn't solve anything." Well, doesn't it? Some boycotts do help solve some things. The boycott of South Africa by international competitions was probably the single most effective weapon the international community ever deployed against the apartheid state. ("They didn't mind about the business sanctions," a South African friend once told me, "but they minded -- they really, really minded -- about the cricket.") The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics helped undermine Soviet propaganda about the invasion of Afghanistan and helped unify the Western world against it.

Her powerful kicker:

No one involved in the preparations for this year's Olympics really believes that this is "only about the athletes," or that the Beijing Games will be an innocent display of sporting prowess, or that they bear no relation to Chinese politics. I don't see why the rest of us should believe those things, either.

'One Child' Has One Decade (at Least)

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:29:00 EDT

The Chinese government, which last month indicated that it was considering changes to its oppressive limits on family size, now says its "one child" policy will be maintained for at least another decade, despite a looming gender imbalance and shortage of young workers:

"The current family planning policy, formed as a result of gradual changes in the past two decades, has proved compatible with national conditions," Mr. Zhang [Weiqing, minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission] said in a front-page interview published Monday in China Daily, the country's official English-language newspaper.
"So it has to be kept unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth."
Mr. Zhang said that 200 million people would enter childbearing age during the next decade and that prematurely abandoning the one-child policy could add unwanted volatility to the birthrate.
"Given such a large population base, there would be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child rule now," he said. "It would cause serious problems and add extra pressure on social and economic development."

In the December issue of reason, I considered the consequences of the "one child" policy for Chinese parents, Chinese girls, and adoptive parents in other countries.

China's Baby Shortage

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:16:00 EST

The Chinese government is signaling that it may loosen its draconian restrictions on family size because people are not having enough babies:

China's fertility rate is now extremely low, and the population is rapidly aging, especially in urban areas. Experts have warned that China is steadily moving toward a demographic crisis with too many old people in need of expensive services and too few young workers paying taxes to meet those bills. China is often regarded as having a limitless pool of young, cheap labor, but the country's biggest manufacturing centers are already facing labor shortages.

This is not the only problem created by the Chinese government's regulation of reproduction. Limits on family size lead to the wholesale abandonment of baby girls by rural parents keen to have at least one son. They also encourage sex-selective abortions, which contribute to China's worrisome gender imbalance. The on-again, off-again enforcement of China's population policies, which has featured onerous fines, mandatory sterilization, forced late-term abortions, and literal home wrecking (by local officials wielding iron bars), has caused bursts of popular unrest. Presumably these side effects are also on the minds of Chinese officials who say they're considering a change:

Zhao Baige, vice minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, told reporters at a news conference that government officials recognize that China must alter its current population-control policies.
"We want incrementally to have this change," Ms. Zhao said, according to Reuters. "I cannot answer at what time or how, but this has become a big issue among decision makers."...
Ms. Zhao said surveys indicated that a large majority of younger Chinese would like two children. But she warned that current plans call only for studying potential changes and that any adjustments must not lead to a rapid jump in the birthrate.

It's not clear what sort of tinkering Chinese officials have in mind. Parents in rural areas, where a large majority of the population lives, are already subject to a "one-son/two-child" rule, which allows them to try again for a boy if the first child is a girl. The government could extend that rule to urban families, or it could further raise the limits outside cities, which would reduce the incentives driving the abortion of female fetuses and the abandonment of female babies.

In the December issue of reason I considered the costs (and benefits) of China's "one child" policy.

Harmful Elements in the Air

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:51:00 EST

Happy news from Hong Kong:

The Hong Kong government's attempt to shut down pirate radio broadcaster Citizen's Radio was scuttled in a recent decision of the Hong Kong High Court. In the decision, the Court stated that it did not see how the station's broadcasting could jeopardize public safety.

In a complicated ongoing legal battle, the Hong Kong government had sought to extend an injunction preventing the station from going to air. Citizen's Radio argued that denial of their application for a license violated their freedom of expression.

The unlicensed broadcasts were started in 2005 by a group of pro-democracy activists after their application for a license was denied by the Broadcasting Authority. The station airs phone-ins and discussions about current events and politics, including discussions about Hong Kong's transition to full democracy.

Brits Gag Athletes From Badmouthing China

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 09:20:00 EST

That's the British Olympic soccer team giving the Nazi salute to the German government before a 1938 friendly with Germany in Berlin. They were ordered by British athletic officials to give the salute in the spirit of being gracious guests.

The country apparently hasn't learned much. The British government is now requiring its athletes to sign an oath to stay mum about Chinese human rights abuses this summer while competing at the Beijing Olympics. Refuse to sign, and the government won't let them compete.

Here's hoping a British athlete signs the oath, then breaks it after winning a medal. It'd be nice to see the British government put in the awkward position of actually trying to enforce the ridiculous gag order.

Mao's English Tutor Dies, AP Recounts Softer, Jokey Side of Mass Killer

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:33:00 EST

Zhang Hanzhi, Mao Zedong's English tutor who stopped giving the tyrant lessons in 1964, "as the devastating Cultural Revolution began taking place," eulogizes the AP. The obit is heavy on whimsy:

"Although the Chairman was aging fast, his mind was still quick: when he spoke, he was forceful and witty, full of wisdom and globally strategic insights," Zhang wrote in the Time article. "I listened as he defended his principles, insisting that the Taiwan issue was an internal affair of China's. I also listened to his jokes with (Henry) Kissinger about exporting 10 million female Chinese to the U.S., which stunned the U.S. Secretary of State."

No doubt Kissinger was hoping for a higher number. More "The Lighter Side of Mao" here.

R.J. Rummel does the math on Mao's "democide" and comes up with a round number of 73,000,000.

reason's Jacob Sullum recently thanked Deng Xiaoping for little girls in his stunning, moving analysis of China's one-child policy.

Mao's Millions

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:06:00 EST

The BBC reports:

The Little Red Book and other publications continue to produce royalties for Mao's estate more than 30 years after his death.

An article published in the magazine Literary World of Party History laid out just how much Mao has earned from his writing.

It said that in 1967 he was worth 5.7 million yuan ($780,000, £400,000) from books printed in Chinese, English, Russian, French, Spanish and Japanese.

But that figure, including interest, had risen to 130 million yuan ($17.6m, £8.8m) by 2001. The article did not say how much the estate is worth now.

I knew that old commie had the heart of a canny money manager when I heard that the leftist folksinger Phil Ochs had reprinted some of Mao's nonpolitical poetry on an album sleeve. Just for the hell of it, Ochs sent the chairman a check for the rights to the verses. To the singer's surprise, the check was cashed.

Mao's heirs would like to dip into the Helmsman's hoards, but China's cabinet

decided to uphold an earlier decision not to give the money to Mao's relatives because his writings were not his own, but the "crystallisation of the party's collective wisdom".

Insert Randian rant here about collectivist second-handers taking credit for a great man's solitary creation.

Next Year in Norwood

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:52:00 EST

Miriam Leberstein reads the New York Times wedding section so you don't have to:

"Did you see it? Did you? Go home and look!" she sputtered. "It starts out totally normal and boring, with the Chinese-looking bride graduating from some American university with a technology degree, and the wedding to the American at some trendy resort with a Baptist minister. But look further and it turns out the bride's father was a head of the People’s Liberation Army of China. Mao must be turning in his grave!

"I looked at the announcement," Miriam continued, "and said, 'This is it. The child of a commander of the Chinese People's Liberation Army makes it into Weddings in the New York Times. What else is there to say about The New World Order?'"

That piece of the Zeitgeist comes from the latest post on Debbie Nathan's blog, which also includes this choice cut of forgotten history:

Mordkhe spent many years in the 1940s and 1950s as a "Territorialist." He and his group did not think it ethically correct or politically wise to create a Jewish state in Palestine. They explored other places, including Australia, Liberia, New Jersey, and the Norwood section of the Bronx.

China Wants to Know: How R U?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:09:00 EST

Restrict and censor the Internet, then sit back and wait for the inevitable result:

Cell phone users in China sent 429 billion text messages last year... In China, mobile users sent an equivalent of 967 text messages per user, more than any other country.

Via CNET