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In fact, this debate on the premier’s crying should not be a trivial matter. Its poignancy and enormous political implications have been closely related to Wen’s former mentor, Zhao Ziyang, the CCP general secretary who famously cried in Tiananmen Square, begging the protesters to leave the place that would soon become an intended killing field. If Zhao were not indecisive or did not cry in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or if he instead stood on top of a tank sympathetic to the pro-democracy forces—bravely commanding the tremendous force of the millions yearning for freedom, human rights, and for a change of the corrupt system, like Boris Yeltsin in the waning days of the Soviet Union—China may have already had a bold and visionary political leader and a brand new political reality. But in the final crucial moments that decided history, Moscow did not believe in tears, and Beijing did. A great historic opportunity was lost by Zhao for the complete lack of a strong and resolute visionary leader from within the power elite who alone could command the enormous political and military resources to change history. And now, as Zhao’s erstwhile protégé, Wen continues that legacy [7].

Modern Chinese nationalism often veers between Mr. Coubertin's and Mr. Maurras's ideas of nationhood. Officially, the government likes to talk about friendship between peoples, and harmony and peace, while at the same time promoting an injured sense of historical Chinese victimhood at the hands of foreign powers. When demonstrations of Chinese nationalism run out of control, with or without official encouragement, the feeling of national hurt can turn to violent aggression. It has been happening of late in the U.S., among other places, when Chinese students attacked Tibetans, or indeed anyone who "offended the feelings of the Chinese people."

This type of official patriotism is based on a peculiarly skewed view of history. Rather than celebrate the high points of Chinese civilization, the emphasis falls entirely on suffering at the hands of foreigners. The sense of victimhood runs so deep that it is impossible for most Chinese to view themselves as aggressors. The idea that Tibetans, for example, might have some reason to see themselves as victims of the Chinese, is absurd. More than that, many Chinese genuinely believe that this type of Tibetan "propaganda" has been deliberately taken up by the Western press to inflict yet another humiliation on the Chinese people.

This does not mean, however, that democracy would be an automatic cure. In the unlikely event that China were suddenly to have a peaceful transformation to a liberal democracy, nationalism would not go away. No party seen to be soft on foreign powers, especially Japan and the U.S., would be. Modern Chinese history has been so bloody that the scars will take a long time to heal. Ethnic nationalism can be a kind of poison, especially when it is based on a feeling of victimhood. Political freedom should help to soothe such feelings in the long run, but this will not happen in time for the Beijing Olympics.

The firm’s founder, Yan “Jane” Wang Jia, is an IT legend and former beauty queen who has parlayed her business success into political power. Referred to as the “Mother of the Great Firewall of China” by several Chinese IT Web sites, she sits on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which guides political policy in all areas of government and society.


On the other hand, I’ve seen no one addressing the questions of actual political and bureaucratic process. What comes first? Elections in major urban centers like Shanghai, a sort of Special Democratic Zone? Loosening of Internet controls? Judiciary reform? Privatization of state media? Releasing political prisoners? Local officials already abuse existing structures, how much more will they abuse transitional processes? If you don’t want a revolution, then there has to be some sort of proposed process that the current government can work with and Chinese citizens can feel both moves reform forward and doesn’t threaten to unravel society. If you don’t say anything about how you might accomplish such a thing, but simply describe the end result in which the government becomes something unrecognizable from the existing one, you may not have explicitly called for its overthrow but you sure didn’t call for something else instead. Not to mention its difficult not to see it as just a wish list. Anybody can make a wishlist - who’s going to do the real work?

I think the commenter who asks whether Charter 08 is really calling for a revolution has a point, and it’s not fair to riposte “well, if this all happened it would be revolutionary”. It wouldn’t be if the changes happened gradually or in a controlled and orderly way (as they did in other countries). The party itself, after all, keeps promising political reform, and many of the people who support it so heartily do so on the assumption that it is serious about eventually keeping that promise. The people I spoke to (and quoted) did not think this was a substitute for tackling concrete real life issues, but thought it important to have a framework within which to do so.

Notice, also that I said a “revolution of the system of government”. Not the government, the system. The problems I’m referring to is that when the system, the way things are done, from paying your electricity bill to detemining holders of public office, changes radically, 180 degrees, then there can be terrible consequences. How should one try to avoid those consequences? How can you make the transition smoothly? These are the things that ought to be discussed, and these are the things that will persuade people that your ideals can actually be realized. That might get you a groundswell of demand for change - abstract philosophical manifestos, though, don’t cut it.

This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.

Beyond that, this attitude that we should uncritically support Obama in everything he does and refrain from criticizing him is unhealthy in the extreme. No political leader merits uncritical devotion -- neither when they are running for office nor when they occupy it -- and there are few things more dangerous than announcing that you so deeply believe in the Core Goodness of a political leader, or that we face such extreme political crises that you trust and support whatever your Leader does, even when you don't understand it or think that it's wrong. That's precisely the warped authoritarian mindset that defined the Bush Movement and led to the insanity of the post-9/11 Era, and that uncritical reverence is no more attractive or healthy when it's shifted to a new Leader.

As I said, I'm all for information transparency and uncensored internet access. However a lasting progress in political reform comes from inside of a country, not from external pressure. Many Americans seem to believe in the external pressure they place on other countries; this might be a main cause of the problems with the US foreign policy. Looking at history – Americans have been in numerous countries trying to impose an order through external influence, how successful has this been?

Peter Scheer's effort to have WTO sanctions imposed based on Beijing's internet censorship, and the hearings that will be held tomorrow in Washington DC.

I will never forget my first visit, in 2003, to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing. I was welcomed by Wang Luolin, the academy's vice-president, whose grandfather had translated Marx's Das Kapital into Chinese, and Huang Ping, a former Red Guard. Sitting in oversized armchairs, we sipped ceremonial tea and introduced ourselves. Wang Luolin nodded politely and smiled, then told me that his academy had 50 research centres covering 260 disciplines with 4,000 full-time researchers. As he said this, I could feel myself shrink into the seams of my vast chair: Britain's entire think tank community is numbered in the hundreds, Europe's in the low thousands; even the think-tank heaven of the US cannot have more than 10,000. But here in China, a single institution—and there are another dozen or so think tanks in Beijing alone—had 4,000 researchers. Admittedly, the people at CASS think that many of the researchers are not up to scratch, but the raw figures were enough.

China, according to the new political thinkers, will do things the other way around: using elections in the margins but making public consultations, expert meetings and surveys a central part of decision-making. This idea was described pithily by Fang Ning, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He compared democracy in the west to a fixed-menu restaurant where customers can select the identity of their chef, but have no say in what dishes he chooses to cook for them. Chinese democracy, on the other hand, always involves the same chef—the Communist party—but the policy dishes which are served up can be chosen "à la carte."

The Internet is not the same for everybody. Despite it's reputation as a borderless, global, connected, democratic network, access and content filtering based on national boarders has become the norm. The BBC, for example, filters content for copyright reasons to visitors accessing their website from outside of Great Britain. Much more serious, however, is the heavy political censorship happening in countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. China, being the most extreme example, strictly censors political content on the web through the blocking of IP addresses and dynamic content filtering. With the support of western technology companies such as Cisco, Yahoo, and Google, The Golden Shield Project (sometimes referred to as the the Great Fire Wall of China) censors the web for China's 1.3 billion inhabitants. The Internet police in China is estimated to contain over 30,000 workers, and is responsible for blocking content such as Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, religion, and some international news.

We have to be aware of the fact that the Internet has given the youth living in controlled societies infinite venues for digital entertainment - without any religious or social censorship - that may not necessarily be enhancing their digital sense of citizenship and civic engagement. Risking the comfort of their bedrooms - with their hard-drives full of digital goodies - for the gloom of a prison cell does not appeal to many of them. The governments are all too happy to promote this new cult of "cyber-hedonism." Whatever keeps these troubled youths from the streets is inherently a good thing.

The fact that existing political activists embraced the Internet as a tool of mobilization is fairly noncontroversial. What's less obvious is how many digital natives the Internet has turned into digital renegades - and how many into digital captives. It's precisely this balance that will determine what the political landscape of Russia, China or Iran will look like in 10 years.

胡锦涛在贺信中指出，《求是》暨《红旗》杂志是党中央指导全党全国工作的重要思想理论阵地。自创刊以来，为探索我国社会主义建设和党的建设规律作出了艰辛努力。特别是在改革开放的历史新时期，深入宣传马克思列宁主义、毛泽东思想、邓小平理论和“三个代表”重要思想，深入宣传科学发展观，着力阐述党的路线方针政策和中央的决策部署，及时回答广大干部群众关心的重大理论和实际问题，为提高全党的马克思主义理论水平、推动党和国家各项事业发展作出了重要贡献。

Dr. Yu started his remarks by underlining how Hu Jintao, only a year after he was made vice-president, made his national debut in 1999 following the Belgrade bombing—at the height of anti-American protests—and urged for calm and reason from the angry mobs when then-President Jiang Zemin was at the height of his power. Hu’s show of grace, which stood in strong contrast to the often crass measures descriptive of Jiang’s leadership, has led some notable China watchers to predict that Hu is a visionary leader. However, Dr. Yu argues that Hu is not visionary, and the hysteria against the Dalai Lama is an example of Hu’s pedantry of the traditional Chinese political psyche.

It would be a good strapline for the 60 Minute interview with Gao Xiqing, president of the Chinese Investment Corporation. Give the man a PhD in giving reasonable responses under hysterically motivated questioning.

He points out that to withdraw funds for political reasons would hurt everyone: the fund, the Chinese government, the US, the company concerned. It’s therefore highly unlikely to happen. In other words, the business and investment ties between the two countries could help to dissipate and moderate political spats rather than exacerbate or be used as a weapon in them.

Bloggers can be journalists (and journalists can be bloggers) - We're battling for legal and institutional recognition that if you engage in journalism, you're a journalist, with all of the attendant rights, privileges, and protections. (See Apple v. Does.)

Bloggers have the right to political speech - We're working with a number of other public-interest organizations to ensure that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) doesn't gag bloggers' election-related speech. We argue that the FEC should adopt a presumption against the regulation of election-related speech by individuals on the Internet, and interpret the existing media exemption to apply to online media outlets that provide news reporting and commentary regarding an election -- including blogs. (See our joint comments to the FEC; [PDF, 332K].)

Singapore's exports collapsed by a stunning 35 percent in January, mirroring much of the rest of Asia. The export boom here was tied to credit-fueled buying sprees in the United States that stopped abruptly and may take years to return, if ever. Manufacturers are grasping for a Plan B. But none of the options -- mining domestic markets, or trying to tap consumers in still-growing China and India -- offers a truly viable solution.

"The collapse of globalization . . . is absolutely possible," said Jeffrey Sachs, a noted American economist. "It happened in the 20th century in the wake of World War I and the Great Depression, and could happen again. Nationalism is rising and our political systems are inward looking, the more so in times of crisis."

Economists from Credit Suisse predict an exodus of 200,000 foreigners -- or one in every 15 workers here -- by the end of 2010.

One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank. Her name is Kristin Petursdottir, and by 2005 she had risen to become deputy C.E.O. for Kaupthing in London. “The financial culture is very male-dominated,” she says. “The culture is quite extreme. It is a pool of sharks. Women just despise the culture.” Petursdottir still enjoyed finance. She just didn’t like the way Icelandic men did it, and so, in 2006, she quit her job. “People said I was crazy,” she says, but she wanted to create a financial-services business run entirely by women. To bring, as she puts it, “more feminine values to the world of finance.” Today her firm is, among other things, one of the very few profitable financial businesses left in Iceland. After the stock exchange collapsed, the money flooded in. A few days before we met, for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. “I’m so fed up with this whole system,” he said. “I just want some women to take care of my money.”

Proposals for a central database of all mobile phone and internet traffic have been condemned as "Orwellian".

But the Lib Dems slammed the idea as "incompatible with a free country", while the Tories called on the government to justify its plans.

"Ministers claim the database will only be used in terrorist cases, but there is now a long list of cases, from the arrest of Walter Wolfgang for heckling at a Labour conference to the freezing of Icelandic assets, where anti-terrorism law has been used for purposes for which it was not intended."

Why does a society that, like America, impresses most people who spend time here project such a poor image and scare people as much as it attracts them? Why do China’s leaders, who survive partly by listening to their own people, develop such tin ears when dealing with the outside world?

Of course, most official voices of China now have the opposite effect. Their minor, provable lies—the sky is blue, no one wants to protest—inevitably build mistrust of larger claims that are closer to being true. And those are the claims the government most wants the world to listen to: that the country is moving forward and is less repressive and more open than official actions and explanations (or lack of them) make China seem. Many Chinese who have seen the world are very canny about it, and have just the skills government spokesmen lack—for instance, understanding the root of foreign concerns and addressing them not with special pleading (“This is China…”) but on their own terms. Worldly Chinese demonstrate this every day in the businesses, universities, and nongovernmental organizations where they generally work. But the closer Chinese officials are to centers of political power, the less they know what they don’t know about the world.

China prepared for the Olympics. Is the world prepared for China? Over 5 nights leading up to the opening ceremony, we revealed the controversial politics, history and culture of the world’s newest superpower and host of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. WATCH THE EPISODES HERE! Naked China: Busting Out Naked China: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Naked China: Out of Control Naked China: Fighting for FreedomNaked China: Let the Party Begin

Maidan was a group of tech-savvy pro-democracy activists who used the Internet as a tool to support their movement. Maidan in Ukranian means public square and Maidan’s website features the slogal “You CAN chnage the world you live in. And you can do it now. In Ukraine.”

The main activity of Maidan was election monitoring and networking with other pro-democracy organizations around Eastern Europe.

“websites cannot produce an activist organization.”

The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."

By next year, the Chinese internal security market is set to be worth $33-billion. Several of the larger Chinese players in the field have recently taken their stocks public on U.S. exchanges, hoping to cash in the fact that, in volatile times, security and defense stocks are seen as the safe bets. China Information Security Technology, for instance, is now listed on the NASDAQ and China Security and Surveillance is on the NYSE. A small clique of U.S. hedge funds has been floating these ventures, investing more than $150-million in the past two years. The returns have been striking. Between October 2006 and October 2007, China Security and Surveillance's stock went up 306 percent.

Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, U.S. companies have been barred from selling police equipment and technology to China, since lawmakers feared it would be directed, once again, at peaceful demonstrators. That law has been completely disregarded in the lead up to the Olympics, when, in the name of safety for athletes and VIPs (including George W. Bush), no new toy has been denied the Chinese state.