The world is paying little note, but China may have a full-scale peasant revolt on its hands soon. The hideous irony is that the American idiot left, rather than loaning solidarity to the heroic Chinese peasants, will cheer on their oppressors in the name of (a now wholly fictional) "socialism." Bush, meanwhile, will use the Beijing regime's human rights abuses against the peasants as a lever to pry further economic concessions (privatization of land and resources, dropping of trade barriers) which will only make the lot of the peasantry even worse, disenfranchising them of what little autonomy and self-sufficiency they have left. From AFP via al-Jazeera, Dec. 7:

The front-page synopsis below the headline of the New York Times's coverage of Bush's Nov. 20 meeting with President Hu Jintao in Beijing said it all:

Hu Jintao Cedes Nothing on Political Freedoms —Will Act on Trade

Economic "liberalization" without lifting the dictatorship an inch. Contrary to the lingering illusions of the idiot left, the model for the current Chinese regime appears not to be Mao but Pinochet. Bush, for his part, dumbed down the whole notion of human rights by reducing them to one item on a laundry list of concerns, somewhere just below the "intellectual property rights" of US compact-disk manufacturers:

The Epoch Times, an international publication run by Chinese exiles harshly opposed to the People's Republic government, ran a synopsis Oct. 15 of its ongoing coverage of the rural conflict in Taishi, a village in Guangdong now occupied by police following protests against municipal corruption. This story says much about current political dynamics in the People's Republic of China, but it is slightly ironic that Epoch Times insists on casting it in anti-Communist rhetoric. The facts make abundantly clear that China's current rulers are now Communist in name only—the underlying conflict here concerns the privatization of village agricultural lands for the garish real-estate developments of the burgeoning nouveau riche elite.

The New York Times today notes the growing cult of Zheng He in China, the 15th-century mariner who led gigantic fleets across the Pacific and Indian oceans in the Ming Dynasty's brief but impressive expansion of naval prowess. Statues are going up of the eunuch admiral (who happened to be a Muslim—a fact presumably not emphasized by China's rulers), and a group of young Kenyans who claim Chinese ancestry due to an apocryphal Ming-era shipwreck on the East African coast have been invited to Beijing for ceremonies. The Times is quick to point out the obvious contemporary political context for this new personality cult:

Another factory forced to halt operation by heroic Chinese peasants protecting their lands from the industrial onslaught. We question how "violent" it is to tear down a security fence. In contrast, the security forces' response to the rising tide of peasant protest seems to be quite genuinely violent. From AP, July 19:

Violent protest by Chinese farmers forces shutdown of chemical plant
SHANGHAI, China – Farmers angered by toxic factory discharge they blame for destroying crops have attacked a pharmaceutical plant in eastern China, officials said Tuesday, the latest rural clash sparked corruption, pollution and other problems.

And, really, we could have done without this one. From the New York Times, July 15 via TruthOut:

Chinese General Threatens Use of A-Bombs if US Intrudes
Beijing - China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said Thursday.

A June 2 AP article reports that North Korea called Vice President Dick Cheney a "bloodthirsty beast" and lambasted him for calling the Democratic People's Rebublic (DPRK) leader Kim Jong Il "irresponsible." Said an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry source, "What Cheney uttered at a time when the issue of the six-party talks is high on the agenda is little short of telling [North Korea] not to come out for the talks." In a May 29 interview on CNN, Cheney called the reclusive buffont-haired Jong Il "one of the world's most irresponsible leaders" who runs a police state and leaves his people in poverty and malnutrition. The DPRK responded that Cheney was "hated as the most cruel monster and bloodthirsty beast as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood."(AP, June 2)

Topping the charts recently in North Korea was the mega-hit, "Fucking USA," which among other things, complains that the US stole a gold medal. The song ends with an explosion.

From the UPI:

ZHEJIANG, China, April 12: Rioting by farmers in eastern China has forced the closure of 13 new chemical factories the farmers claim are poisoning their families and crops. The protests began in the rural village of Huaxi March 24 when farmers began erecting roadblocks to stop deliveries to and from the factories that produce fertilizer, dyes and pesticides.