Iraq and Afghanistan

Zhao Ziyang, the head of the Communist Party of China in the 1980s, fell from favor with the real leaders of the country in 1989 because he favored treating the students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square less harshly. Since then he has been under house arrest and seldom allowed to be mentioned. Now he has died. His death has hardly been acknowledged, obituaries are not allowed, eulogies are erased from web sites and chat rooms in so far as the authorities can get to them. A private memorial is being allowed, but no one important can come. His long-time aide has been prevented from leaving his house to attend.

This is the China that much of the world is trumpeting as the coming leader of Asia and perhaps the world. This is the China where an amazing percent of consumer products consumed in the West are now being manufactured. This is the China where economic growth is supposed to be laying the basis for a transition to democracy. But life in China seems so far from democracy. Its leaders thumb their noses at demands for more civil freedoms, let alone political. The Western media are quick to criticize Putin’s Russia, but Russia today has far more freedom than China. The totalitarian practice of erasing history, of creating nonbeings, is no longer practiced there.

How do we get a handle on the problem of China? How do we help China become part of modern civilization before it gets any more powerful? I do not know. But we could begin by taking down a few bridges, by emphasizing the differences between Taiwan and China, and by reducing our interest in trade, free or otherwise.