Death of Purged Leader Prompts Fresh Calls for imperialist China to Democratize

Story dated 18 January 2005

For many of you who are unaware, the totalitarian Chinese government is a belligerent imperialist power that is not above conquering territory when it can get away with it. Don't believe me? Ask Tibet. Talk to citizens of Taiwan which China claims as it's own province and has threatened repeatedly to conquer militarily. Maybe you are too young to remember when this 'wonderful, peaceful' (read 'not United States') government slaughtered students participating in a pro-democracy protest at Tiananmen Square. I was in elementary school, and I remember seeing the headlines like it was yesterday.

Anyhow, once upon a time, there was a Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party names Zhao Ziyang. Mr. Zhao actually thought that maybe it wasn't a good idea for the government to steal from and enslave its people, and to murder people who thought such actions were wrong. Mr. Zhao "was stripped of his post and purged after reacting sympathetically towards student pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, shortly before the authorities sent in the army to crush them." He has not been seen in public since; he has been under house arrest. "China noted the death in a terse report released by the official Xinhua news agency, which said that "Comrade Zhao Ziyang died of illness in a Beijing hospital Monday." . . . The dispatch made no reference to Zhao's former senior position, nor to the fact he had been under house arrest for the past 15 years. Beyond carrying the same brief Xinhua item, other Chinese media ignored his death."

Many of the economic reforms China has pushed through in the last 15 years are because of Mr. Zhao's influence on behalf of the Chinese people. News of his death has sparked a new interest in seeing liberal democratic reforms in China. This was a man who was under arrest for 15 years because he held the opinion that people should be free and that students should not be crushed by tanks. Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan and cabinet spokesman Chen Chi-mai of Taiwan have both issues statements of hope that China will finally begin to make progress in the areas of democracy and human rights.

Just a thought: It seems to me that the leftist media and intellectual elites that we have to put up with in the United States and Europe only care about political prisoners and other bad things when the U.K., the U.S., or other non-Canada English-speaking countries are responsible. Remember Nelson Mandela? Remember hearing reports of his ordeal as a political prisoner under the white government in South Africa? Of course you do. But I'll bet you've never heard of Zhao Ziyang until you read this article.

posted by The Sovereign Editor | 3:30 PM

_____________________________________________