- (november 2007)
Martyrs of the Chinese revolution.
If there are any martyrs of the capitalist revolution that is shaking
mainland China they are the coal miners.
But profit-hungry mine owners are desperate to take advantage of soaring coal prices and often ignore safety precautions in an effort to increase production.
China (the world's largest coal producer) generates more than two-thirds of the country's electricity from coal. Its booming economy has put even more pressure
on coal mines. In 2006 the number of miners killed in mining accidents was over
6,000, a number that makes the much more publicized accidents in the USA look
negligible. And, just like in the USA, statistics do not include the thousands
of coal miners who will die young of respiratory or other coal-related diseases.
It is a veritable massacre that modern countries need in order to support
their energy-hungry economies.
Each and other death of a coal miner stands on the conscience of the
anti-nuclear activists.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (september 2007)
A Chinese future for Myanmar or a Burmese future for China?
The peaceful Buddhist people of
Myanmar/Burma has been ruled by a brutal military dictatorship for decades.
It looks like an obsolete regime in a region that has become increasingly
democratic, with the notable exception of its biggest neighbor: mainland China.
It is also this big neighbor that has vetoed a United Nations statement
denouncing the oppression of the Burmese people by the military junta.
The communist party of mainland China never misses an opportunity to side
with the oppressor, whether it's Saddam Hussein of Iraq or Kim Jong Il of
North Korea.
No wonder: the Chinese dictators are afraid that what happens now in Burma/Myanmar may some day happen in mainland China. How long will one billion Chinese
people tolerate to be treated like slaves when most of their neighbors, from
Japan to South Korea to Thailand to Kyrgizstan to Mongolia to India, are free?
Communist China also has the problem that many of its border provinces were
invaded and annexed against the will of the people who lived there, and
thus it cannot count on the loyalty of its border regions. Regions such as
Tibet, East Turkestan, Inner Mongolia, etc would just be too happy to get
a chance to declare independence in the event of a national revolution.
The Beijing regime has just unleashed another campaign of oppression in the
restive provinces, even arresting children in Tibet who were writing
anti-Chinese slogans on the walls
(See this article).
The situation in mainland China mirrors the situation in Burma (also torn
by ethnic strife) too closely for the Chinese leadership to ignore it.
They might be cruel, but they are not stupid.
The Chinese also know that, being surrounded by countries that were attacked by
communist China at one point or another (India, Vietnam, Korea, Russia),
mainland China does not have a friendly way to communicate with the other
continents. Whether a Chinese cargo travels by ship through the China Sea
(Taiwan, Japan, Indochina) and the Indian Ocean (India) or overland via
Central Asia, Chinese imports and exports are at the mercy of countries
that have reasons to hold grudge against Beijing. Burma/Myanmar is the notable
exception. The current military junta has always been befriended by communist
China, that supplies the vast majority of its armaments.
Mainland China is Myanmar's main trading partner. Trade between the two
countries increased 40% this year alone. The pro-democracy demonstrations
in Burma/Myanmar could not come at a worse time for mainland China, that
obviously just decided to invest massively in its poor neighboring country.
The strategic value of Burma/Myanmar is simple: it could offer precisely the
safe and friendly road to the Middle East and Africa that other neighbors
cannot offer because of historical enmity. Burma/Myanmar could represent a
major shortcut to reach the Indian Ocean. There are Chinese projects to
build oil pipelines, railways and highways from the Bay of Bengal in
Myanmar/Burma to the province of Yunnan inside mainland China.
Mainland China has to hope that the people do not triumph in Burma/Myanmar.
If the people triumph against the oppressor, mainland China will have created
one more enemy: the people of Myanmar/Burma will remember which countries
supported their brutal dictators.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (july 2007)
Hu Jintao cracks down on information.
Totalitarian regimes are always paranoid about the access to information
by their subjects and victims. Hu Jintao's clique in Beijing is no exception
these days. After Britain gave Beijing control over Hong Kong (thus betraying
millions of previously free Hong Kong citizens), the West hoped that the
regime of mainland China would grant its citizens more freedom. Instead, very
little progress is visible. The Chinese jails are full of dissidents who dared
criticize the leaders of the country. Everybody (foreigner and Chinese national)
still needs a special permit to visit the occupied land of Tibet (and several
routes are still off limits to everybody). And mainland China keeps threatening
the free and democratic country of Taiwan with invasion.
World media such as the BBC News had long been banned from mainland China.
For a while the Internet was allowed to prosper. Recently, the Chinese
government has begun to crack down on websites too.
First they put pressure on the likes of Google and Yahoo to provide
communist-friendly search engines that would not display pages deemed
embarrassing to the dictatorship of mainland China.
Then more and more websites began to disappear in China, as the Chinese
providers were ordered to block more and more IPs.
For example, my website Thymos.com is
no longer visible in mainland China. It is visible anywhere else in the world.
In july the Western newsletter China Development Brief was ordered to cease
operations in China and summarily expelled.
These actions are the consequence of an action that Hu Jintao took after the
"color" revolutions of Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon. In all these
cases it was information that created awareness among people and mobilized
the masses against an oppressive and corrupt regime. Hu Jintao, the leader of
the second most oppressive and corrupt regime in that part of the world (the
first one being his friend's Kim Jong Il in North Korea), ordered the
security forces to prevent such a revolution in mainland China.
Hence the crackdown on information. Let the Chinese people know only what
Hu Jintao wants them to know. After all, this is the same butcher who
exterminated the Tibetan liberation movement.
One wonders how these idiots think of hiding their censorship from the millions
of tourists who will travel to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games.
For example, today very few
British citizens realize that the BBC website is not visible in China. During
the Olympic Games all British visitors will find out. Every tourist from
whichever country will find out that some source of information is not
available. Hu Jintao is a dreamer if he thinks that the Olympic Games will
boost the status of mainland China around the world: they will prove to the
world how backward his regime still it.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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