China To Strive For

Hey folks,

You want to know the kind of country some here would love to have? Look at China. According to the AP - Hu promises more open China in future By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao pledged Monday to make the government more open, responsive and law-abiding while moderating the juggernaut economy to produce more balanced and environmentally sound growth.

Sounds like the LWL here doesn’t it. Remember this promise from them of an more open and honest government?

Opening a pivotal party congress that is seen as a major test of his political strength, Hu outlined policies intended to make China more prosperous and stable by raising incomes and improving the party's hold on a fast-changing society.

“Contemporary China is going through a wide-ranging and deep-going transformation. This brings us unprecedented opportunities as well as unprecedented challenges,” Hu told the more than 2,200 delegates gathered in the Great Hall of the People for the meeting, held every five years.

In the far-ranging speech that lasted more than two hours and 20 minutes, Hu also promised to continue a buildup of China's military, emphasized Beijing's preference for a peaceful settlement with rival Taiwan, and pledged to use the country's economic and diplomatic clout as a force for peace internationally.

Yes folks, all they want is peace. Harmony. For all of the world to come together.

While the speech is the congress' most public event and provides a blueprint for upcoming policies, the meeting's chief purpose is to reappoint Hu for a second five-year term as party general secretary. A key measure of Hu's influence will be how many of his political allies he can maneuver into top party jobs, including proteges expected to take over from him when he steps down in five years.

In his report to the congress, Hu dwelled on his signature policy, a push to re-channel breakneck development by spreading the benefits of economic growth more evenly. Hu referred to the social divisions that have erupted from fast-growth, gaps between rich and poor, and made an oblique reference to an emerging, demanding middle class.

“A relatively comfortable standard of living has been achieved for the people as a whole but the trend of a growing gap in income distribution has not been thoroughly reversed,” Hu said. “There are still a considerable number of impoverished and low-income people in both urban and rural areas, and it has become more difficult to accommodate the interests of all sides.”

{Laughing} Sounds just like an LWL talking point. But HERE is reality.

While Hu spoke, police and soldiers who sealed off Tiananmen Square and the areas around the Great Hall of the People detained at least two dozen people, many of them elderly, forcing them into police vans. Many carried documents detailing grievances against local officials and hoped to get the attention of Chinese leaders.

“I'm willing to stand here as long as it takes. I don't know what happened to my sons,” said Miao Yufeng, a farmer from nearby Hebei province who said her two sons were taken away by police without explanation a year ago. She was later taken away by police.

It goes on to talk about Taiwan some more and a seek to have a more transparent Government which won’t happen. Then you have this from the Christian Science Monitor -by Peter Ford

As China's ruling Communist Party holds its most important conclave in five years, the government has launched an unusually harsh crackdown on potential troublemakers, say Chinese and international human rights groups.

Scores, perhaps hundreds, of petitioners, democracy activists, religious figures, and human rights workers have been abducted, imprisoned, or confined to their homes over the past six weeks, according to rights monitors.

“This definitely seems to be the worst in years,” says Phelim Kine, a Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch. “It is much, much more comprehensive and wide-ranging” than earlier sweeps.

Don’t tell me that our First Amendment is not all that important. If you did not have it, all the LWL, Moveon.org, Media Matters, ETC., would be round up and taken in. Most likely SHOT because of the things they say about our President. The sad thing is, SOME in this country DO want to do away with the First Amendment, as long as they are in power.

So, as delegates to the ruling Communist Party listen to their leaders' speeches and discuss the state of the nation at their 17th Congress here this week, at least one voice will not be heard: Yu Tongan, a peasant farmer in southern China. He would never have got into the most important meeting on the Chinese political calendar. But in the time-honored tradition of petitioners, he had hoped to buttonhole one of the delegates to seek redress for his son, who suffered brain damage after a government-mandated vaccination. Instead, he is trapped in his village by two plainclothes policemen standing guard outside his front door since Thursday. “I just wanted to find someone who would talk to ordinary people,” Mr. Yu explained by telephone from his home. “But the police told me I am not allowed to leave or I will be arrested.”

The goal of keeping Yu, and others like him, away from the capital “is to sterilize Beijing of potential public protests that would embarrass the party” during the Congress, says Mr. Kine.

Sounds like why some want to shut down Talk Radio here in this country.

“It seems to reflect a desire by some elements in the Chinese government to put a very calm facade over public events.”

At the Congress, party members select a new 190-member Central Committee that in turn appoints the Politburo, and set the course for the next five years.

Earlier this year, a Chinese human rights group published what it said was the text of an internal speech by Yu Hongyuan, deputy head of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, advocating “harshly penalizing one person in order to ... frighten many more into submission.”

Take out Rush, all others will shut up. Think about it.

That is what Li Heping, a dapper young lawyer who has made a name for himself defending dissidents, says he believes happened to him on Sept. 29.

After leaving his office in the company of one of the policemen who has been shadowing him for months, he says, he was forced into a car by four men in civilian clothes, who covered his head with a piece of cloth and drove him to an unknown destination.

In what appeared to be a basement, he says he was beaten unconscious by men armed with tire irons and electric cattle prods. He was then released in the middle of the night in woods outside Beijing with a warning to leave the capital and give up his law practice.

“The government says it wants a harmonious society, but what happened to me was a slap in the face for the rule of law,” Mr. Li says. “The trouble is that when people demand that the government respect their rights, and the government cannot do that, then they are seen as enemies.”

Sound familiar?

Other such “enemies” caught up in the current crackdown include one of Li's clients, Gao Zhisheng, another lawyer who recently wrote an open letter to the US Senate in favor of greater freedoms in China and who has not been seen or heard from since Sept. 22 when police raided his home.

A well known election activist, Yao Lifa, has been missing from his home in Hubei Province since last Sunday, according to his son. Family members told reporters that Ye Guozhu, who has protested the eviction of tenants to make way for Olympics projects, has been held, along with his brother and son.

Anonymous victims include scores of petitioners whose shelters have been destroyed in recent weeks and who have been taken into custody. Reuters news agency last month revealed the existence of a secret detention center in Beijing run by officials from the town of Nanyang in Henan Province where more than a dozen petitioners were being held in a two-story cell block.

A “dry run” for the Olympics? “We really have no idea how many” people have been detained in recent weeks, says Kine, “because so many of them are marginalized and do not appear on the radar” of human rights organizations.

Human Rights Watch is worried, Kine adds, that “this might be a dry run for the Olympics,” when the government will also be concerned to keep potential troublemakers out of public view.

“They have the template,” he says. “Given the relative success they have had in sweeping people off the streets this time, there is no reason why they won't do it again ahead of the Olympics.”

Folks, if you value Free Speech, you have to think about this. Some in this very country want to silence anyone that disagrees with them. They attack their person, and try to destroy their character. If they cannot do that, then they just want to make them go away. In China, they really DO go away. Is China REALLY something to strive for?
Peter

Sources:
AP - Hu promises more open China in future
CSM - In China, new crackdown on dissidents