Chinese elders call for free press

[Luke]

"Chinese veteran politicians call for reform

A group of 23 Communist Party elders in China has written a letter calling for an end to the country's restrictions on freedom of speech."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11529920

It seems that any real change in China has to come from within the country because no western country is willing to risk losing economic profits by taking a hard line against China.

I think a free press in China is a necessary prerequisite to solving the Tibet issue. If more Chinese people knew the truth about what was happening in Tibet, they would be more sympathetic to the Tibetans' cause, and that might result in actually constructive negotiations.

[mudra]

I agree. It is imperative that the Chinese people get more information about what really happened and is happening in Tibet.

The whole grip that PRC has on Tibet is sustained by its peoples firm belief in the PRC gov't version of the truth. The PRC's fear of course is that once that starts happening it could be the lynch pin for the unravelling of other parts of China (Inner Mongolia, the Uighyurs etc).

[ronnewmexico]

Sorry to disagree folks but I do.

Not all cultures are made for democracy or free presses. Iraq was kept under a iron boot heel of a dictator...but we now know why. There were many latent hatreds and such just beneth the surface.
This is the fact in many places. A free election in many parts of the middle east,,,yes Bin Laden would quite unfortunately be the result.

WE all tend to be biased towards the form of government where we originate. Even on the island anything approximating a true democracy did not evolve for many years.

China to my opinion as a single entity is held together by a string. But as with the soviet union disollution begets many other problems such as ethnic warring regionism and greater threats to safety for greater amounts of people than what is now.
So for the people in China who currently live in those lands I hope it stays together. Eventually it may be the freedoms they grant that allows it continuance. It is not to that I take exception.

I would not expect to see much wanting for other ethnic groups to suceed found in China. Each group would desire and does desire supremacy by my take. Smaller groups like Tibetans the larger majority, though completely wrong on the issue, may think them coddled and offered more rights than Huan. Of course that is just ethnic favoritism rearing its ugly head and not based in fact..but I would expect that is the norm. This is a agriculturally based nation just now entering the 21st century, with much bias as found in such places on occasion. And not all that far away from the great tragedy that was the cultural revolution.

[mudra]

I'm sure Stalin thought he was doing a good thing.

[Luke]

Hi Ron,

Sure, democracy isn't the best form of government for every country. But what concerns me more is how ethically a government treats its citizens. I don't care if a country has a democratic, communist, socialist, monarchist, or anarcho-syndicalist government so long as it behaves ethically and treats its citizens well.

If China wants to maintain its "one-party" system, then fine, but I just want it to be an ethical single party. For example, if China switched from anti-Dalai Lama propaganda to pro-Dalai Lama propaganda, that would be a positive change.

And I don't think your analogy with Bin Laden is correct. Bin Laden wasn't well-known in the Middle East until the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and by doing so, the US inadvertently created the greatest advertising and recruiting campaign for Islamic terrorists ever. After that, the terrorists could say, "See? This is what the US plans to do to all Muslim countries. So why don't you help us try to prevent this?"

[ronnewmexico]

Sorry no

Bin Laden was very popular with certain countries populations as soon as he was found responsible for 9/11.

People many, especially in the US, hold a view that people are generally everywhere pretty reasonable.
That is their personal experience but in a global context it is simply not true. It is a minority globally but in some areas it is a majority.
Some peoples hate other peoples and do indeed need constraint to stop wholescale killing of one and other. It is not of course their "nature" to be so it is how they were shaped by circumstance. Some were misshapened.

People that hold the above stated view on goodness will generally find always a outside agent or outside influcence to be the cause of genocide or similiar issues. This flies in tha face of the reality.
The Hitsu people did actually brutely murder the Titsu. No outside agent impelled literally thousands to kill with machete other hundreds of thousands. A condition of existant hate may be exasperated by a outside agent or influence but it cannot be denied the hate first existed.

I know fully I will not be able to convince any this is so. It can never be accomplished that thng.
But it is so regardless. Which is why I can predict political outcome with relative certainity and they can not.
YOu want to be able to predict also....you must adopt that view.

How a country treats its citizens is sometimes quite responsible when one considers how those people would act without constraint. Not always but sometimes.
China is one of those places. If dissolved it would take the better part of a century with many millions of deaths to eventually reestablish a ethnic and regional balance of power.

Will greater freedom and openness help keep it together....certainly. And such should be strived for.
With qualifiers. Every concentrated ethnic group everywhere in the world wants autonomy. Those who hold that view think always that is a good thing to be worked for. Disregarding the quite obvious fact their present lack of autonomy is present for reason. IN many situations very good reasons of greater protections of their populations or neighboring ethenticities populations.
It is simply more peaceful to do so.

That comment about Stalin I will not respond to. No inferal is made upon or to the poster but the comment....is entirely unthought and stupid.

So you want to be able to predict with certainity take my view.
YOu want to be continually surprised in things take your view.
It matter not a whit to me.

[Will]

This may be the old Commie trick. Getting everybody to relax and open up so the Party can identify the most dangerous elements. Then they round them up and off to prison, or worse.

[ronnewmexico]

China

is not a communist nation.They don't even have social security nor medical care for all. Communism if studied is a evolution. From capitalism to socialism to communism in theory. The socialism is not even present. There are no private corporations in a communist state. I could go on and on.

It is a totalitarian state useing the name communism to allow for its totalitarian aspect.

As was the invasion of tibet not a expansionist interest of ideological intent but a nationalistic interest of resource deriveing intent.
But called of ideological intent by the government..how else to substantiate heinous deeds.

Like Cho, Mao was a nationalistic/ ethnically oriented ruler first... progressive(if he could even be called that)...close to last.
And the cultural revolution had little to nothing to do with communism but all to do with class emnity with ethnic undertones.
This thing is misrepresented for various reasons some by intent some by misguided perception.

Why we assume people killing innocents by the thousands upon thousands are telling us the truths about their ideology and its influence upon those heinous deeds..... is beyond my understanding.
It is all about power..maintaining them personally in power, not communism.

That there is a undemocratic form of government to my opinion in china is not a bad but a good thing. The excesses of totalitarinism, the lacks of certain personal freedoms the jailings of dissidents the expansionist philosophy it is those we should do without not the lack of democracy.
China is not suited for a democracy. And a singular china as opposed to autonomy for varying seperate ethnic states, is also a good thing for the production of lesser immediate harm.

[Luke]

Sorry no

Bin Laden was very popular with certain countries populations as soon as he was found responsible for 9/11.

Okay, maybe he was popular then, but I don't think quite to the extent of "winning elections" as you stated earlier. His popularity surged after the US started its recent wars in the Middle East. Iraq had no terrorists before the US invaded it. However, the invasion made terrorists come to Iraq to fight. People are willing to become terrorists because they are sympathetic to Bin Laden's message after they see the US bombing and mistreating Muslims.

[ronnewmexico]

I won't argue on Bin Laden what's the point?

I could show with study many many more. The Russian communist party, all this talk of rights lost and the killings and Stalin and all that....the second most popular party in Russia after the disolution.

Kosovo Bosnia....the prime movers were all elected.
Hitler...though a minority did hold popoular opinion of 1/3rd of Germans and was elected to power. 1/3rd wanted what he wanted. In some countries it is half or more of the same type of thinking.

Three more right off the top of my head. With study a hundred or more...easy.

Peoples are not all benign nor doing the right thing.
Suchly democracies are not proper for all places nor circumstances. Iraq is a forth.... could really go on and on.

[catmoon]

Looking at the OP I see considerable cause for hope. Information is flowing more freely in China now than it has since Mao at least. Since the internet came into existence, this has become an exceedingly difficult trend to reverse.

At the same time, it seems to me that any major power shake up in China is ten years away, and if such should occur, it would be another 20 years before the dust settled and economic stability returned.

May the Dalai Lama live to see it.

[kirtu]

"Chinese veteran politicians call for reform

A group of 23 Communist Party elders in China has written a letter calling for an end to the country's restrictions on freedom of speech."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11529920

This is encouraging. But is it 1973 in China (Solzhenitsyn and other intellectuals calling for expanded freedoms in Russia) or 1983 China itself with the ecstatic but short lived promise of reform or 1986 Russia with Gorbachev's dedication to reform or is it something else (it might develop into 1988 Hungary for example)? If it is uniquely Chinese (and really all national change in unique) the sun might be rising still for quite some time to come.

Kirt