THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume V, Issue # 121, April 25, 2003
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
SARS, RED CHINA, & THE FUTURE
By Alan Caruba
The first cases of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) showed up in China in November of last year. Until this lethal mutating virus escaped the vast borders of that ancient nation, the response of the Chinese Communist Party was to say nothing. Party and government said not a word about SARS, not even to their own people.
This tells you everything you need to know about those who rule Red China. This is not a regime that savors a free press, freedom of speech, or even what Westerners would think would be a normal response to a serious internal health threat. Not until it began to kill people in other nations, did China's new Mandarins admit they had a problem. If a reporter for a Red China newspaper had written a word about SARS, he would have been jailed. Their solution has been to fire the health minister and the mayor of Beijing. Now they have a full-blown health crisis on their hands. Their first response was to pro- tect their grip on political power.
From its emergence some six months ago in Guangdong Province, home to Hong Kong, SARS has rapidly spread to almost thirty other nations, infecting thousands of people and killing, as of this writing, over two hundred that we know about. China's leaders ini- tially tried to prevent the World Health Organization from visiting.
As word began to get out, I was reading Ross Terrill's book, The New Chinese Empire and What It Means for the United States ($30.00, Basic Books). I highly recommend this book to all who want to understand both the history of China and how Mao Tse-tung be- came its emperor in the last century. He may have been called "Chairman", but he was in every way the latest in the long line of emperors who had ruled China.
Like the mutated virus called SARS, the Chinese form of Communism was a Maoist mutant of Soviet Marxist-Leninist Communism. It need hardly be said that it failed in Russia and that it will fail in China. The only question is when? Until then, America had best be careful to avoid any snares the Red Chinese put in our path, nor should we cease to insure we remain the most powerful nation militarily. And, until then, the U.S.A. will have to work with the Red Chinese on common problems, such as the North Koreans.
Who is China's new emperor? He is President Hu Jintao, someone virtually no one knows much about. He succeeded former President Jiang Zemin, but it is Zemin who has retained control over the military. Up to now, all power has been concentrated in the hands of whoever was in charge of the central party apparatus of the Communist Party. This was the way Mao Tse-tung ran China and it continued under Deng Xiaoping. It would have been the way Chiang Kai-shek would have ruled, had he and his followers not been driven out of mainland China by Mao. Chiang took over Taiwan, which has, ironi- cally, become a jewel of Capitalism in the China Sea and a mote in the eye of the impe- rialist socalled "Peoples Republic" of China.
Much has been said of the reforms Deng Xiaoping introduced after the death of Mao Tse-tung. There was a flowering of Red China's economy, as Deng jettisoned much of the Communist baggage, e.g., many State-run industries. What did not change, though, was the total commitment to the "Four Absolutes" the Communist Party asserted. They are the Socialist road, the Proletarian Dictatorship, the Communist Party's leadership, and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung Thought. This garbage rules the lives of more than 1.2 billion Chinese and other ethnic groups under the control of Beijing.
What has not changed in China is the authoritarian political tradition, the centuries-old political tradition reaching back to the earliest Chinese dynasties. Just as the emperors were the living embodiment of Heaven (unless murdered to make room for a new suc- cessor or overthrown by a new dynasty), the handful of men who run the Communist Party are above the law because they are the law.
Terrill says, "China is not on the way to Capitalism; it is building a new genus of 'market socialism'" He predicts that "This Chinese formula for prosperity under authoritarian- ism will be Beijing's springboard to world leadership." I respectfully disagree. By virtue of its size and huge population, China has a place among the world's great nations, but it has no place at the table in terms of human rights, the participation of citizens in the rule of their nation, free speech, freedom of the press, and the other accoutrements of a mod- ern constitutional democratic society.
Red China is a Potemkin village that looks modern from a distance, but it has a very shaky financial and social infrastructure.
The SARS outbreak has jumped the Great Wall of secrecy that surrounds Red China. It has let the world peer into a society that, if it opened its doors, would see its citizens flood outward to anywhere else. Chinese people want to be Chinese, but, given the choice, they would not willingly be Red Chinese.
More on the Far East & U.S. Foreign Policy
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy
Center, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes
a weekly column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center (www.anxietycenter.com). He is the
author of A POCKET GUIDE TO MILITANT ISLAM and THE UNITED NATIONS VS. THE UNITED STATES, both available from the
National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.
Copyright 2003 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity