AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Re: Crisis in Egypt!
A world of finger pointing as in trying turn what's happening in Egypt is all about China?
A world of finger pointing as in trying turn what's happening in Egypt is all about China?
Crisis in Egypt & Middle East!
- Thread starter pla101prc
- Start date
Re: Crisis in Egypt!
Apparently you fellows did not read or just ignored SampanViking admonition. The subject of Egyptian/Mid East crisis is to important to ignore. However you fellows are getting a little toooo personal. As we know that is a rules violation..Tsk tsk tsk..So I'll close this thread until 2100 GMT 02.17.2011 to allow for cooling off.
bd popeye super moderator
Apparently you fellows did not read or just ignored SampanViking admonition. The subject of Egyptian/Mid East crisis is to important to ignore. However you fellows are getting a little toooo personal. As we know that is a rules violation..Tsk tsk tsk..So I'll close this thread until 2100 GMT 02.17.2011 to allow for cooling off.
bd popeye super moderator
Re: Crisis in Egypt!
Thread open.
Abide by the forum rules. No personal attacks, flaming or trolling. Violators will be dealt with.
Politics cannot be avoided in this thread. Keep the tone of discussion civil. Also feel free to discuss all the uprisings in the Middle East.
I'm keepin' me good on on you boyz!!
bd popeye super moderator
Thread open.
Abide by the forum rules. No personal attacks, flaming or trolling. Violators will be dealt with.
Politics cannot be avoided in this thread. Keep the tone of discussion civil. Also feel free to discuss all the uprisings in the Middle East.
I'm keepin' me good on on you boyz!!
bd popeye super moderator
Seems like the protests from the Middle-East have made a bit of an "appearance" in China according to the Financial Times
Here is the lead in:
To read more at the source:
Just thought it was interesting since the story makes the link as if it is Middle East inspired.
A short video from ITN:
[video=youtube;c6OvvKBgHm8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6OvvKBgHm8[/video]
Here is the lead in:
To read more at the source:
Just thought it was interesting since the story makes the link as if it is Middle East inspired.
A short video from ITN:
[video=youtube;c6OvvKBgHm8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6OvvKBgHm8[/video]
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Engineer
Major
lol... I like how they do a voice over what she said so you can't actually hear what she said. Does anyone here have a good editing skill cares to take a video of demonstrations in the west, then do a voice over for an interview about how they are tired of democracy? And the end of that video is just full of sourness about how Western media has no influence in China.
There is no revolution in China, except the one that Western media is creating in its imagination.
There is no revolution in China, except the one that Western media is creating in its imagination.
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bladerunner
Banned Idiot
RE Egypts political upheaval. and the long term ramifications.
I agree with Banyans opinion piece in the Economist on this one, where I think he suggests that the major western powers have more wiggle room to come out of this one in the way it can be spun, where as countries like China and Iran don't.
The wind that will not subside
Hearing Egyptian echoes, China’s autocrats cling to the hope that they are different
THE speed with which popular protest swept aside long-lasting authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and then Egypt was enough to unnerve autocrats everywhere. In Asia they have watched the tide of heightened democratic aspiration wash across the Middle East and wondered how far it would go. Even in China, the government, ostensibly so confident of the correctness of the path it has chosen, has been wary of the memories events in Cairo might evoke, and of the hopes it might rekindle.
The most complete Asian despotisms—Myanmar and North Korea—may feel immune to people power. They can rely on their isolation, and on the sheer ruthlessness of their repression. In Central Asian dictatorships, closer in geography, culture and religion to the Middle East, the resonance of the recent revolutions may yet be louder. But it is in China that domestic parallels with recent events, above all in Cairo, are on most people’s minds.
They are also of the greatest global consequence, not just because of China’s own growing importance, but because its rise has led to talk of a “Beijing consensus” in which rapid economic growth matters more than freedom. In 1989, after the Beijing massacre, as communist dominoes began to topple in eastern Europe, China seemed the outlier, bucking an historical trend that would catch up with it one day. Its subsequent success has made that trend—towards greater freedom and democracy—seem less inevitable, and, for some, less desirable. Even Western commentators have conceded that China’s system delivers the goods. Chinese officials talk of the unsuitability for their country of “Western-style” democracy. This ignores the Western, Leninist origins of the Communist Party’s organisation, and glosses over the crucial “Western” element missing in China—the ability to get rid of unpopular governments without a revolution. That is why revolutions elsewhere are bound to be of compelling interest.
Recollections of the Tiananmen protests were one reason China’s censors at first worked so assiduously to curtail discussion of the unrest in Egypt. The script was so familiar to those who had been in Beijing in 1989: the huge demonstrations; the mood of elated mass solidarity and rediscovered patriotism; the camping-out in the capital’s main square; the slogans against corruption and arbitrary rule; the belief that the army had sided with the people against their rulers; even the appearance of plain-clothes thugs in support of the regime. This time, however, the story had a happy ending, or at least a climactic, optimistic victory.
The Chinese press has indeed covered Hosni Mubarak’s downfall prominently, while noting, in the words of one newspaper, that “Egypt has won a battle, but not the war”. “Any political changes will be meaningless”, argued China Daily, “if the country falls prey to chaos in the end.” Others, however, have drawn a different conclusion from the events that led to a revolution. An editorial on the website of Caixin, a media group, began: “Autocracy manufactures turbulence; democracy brews peace.”
China’s own autocrats may feel, however, that for at least three reasons they can shrug off comparisons with Egypt and Tunisia. First is China’s record of three decades of stunning economic growth. A survey by the Pew Research Centre last year suggested 87% of Chinese were satisfied with “the way things were going” in their country. Second, even if they were not, no obvious hate figure exists to blame: China’s is a dictatorship of a party, not an individual. No long-serving despot is clinging tenaciously to power. In 2002 the Communist Party had its first-ever orderly leadership transition, and has promised another for 2012.
Third is the efficiency of its extensive internal-security apparatus and armed forces, which are subordinate to the Communist Party. But who knows how the security forces would respond if asked to suppress another mass uprising? They were ready to shoot protesters to quell unrest among ethnic Uighurs in Urumqi in Xinjiang in 2009. But even in 1989 the army did not prove wholly reliable—at least one general disobeyed orders to join the advance into Beijing.
A truly confident Communist Party would not have devoted so much effort to patrolling the internet to prevent surfers drawing parallels at home with events overseas. Always twitchy at any hint of instability, it has plenty of reasons to fret. Inflation, which raged in the late 1980s before the Tiananmen protests, is picking up again. The middle classes, often the locomotive of political change, are growing fast. Widespread graduate unemployment among their young is gnawing away at the hopes of those who should be the most optimistic about China’s future. And every year sees tens of thousands of protests, many over high-handed land grabs by local authorities.
And the tree that wants to be still
The latest people-power revolts pose two particular difficulties for China’s ideologues. First, they cannot be blamed on the usual suspects, external “black hands”—typically American. Rather, they have been in part anti-American rebellions. As in the Philippines in 1986, South Korea in 1987 and Indonesia in 1998, dictators once cosseted by America have been toppled.
Second, the revolts have lacked both clear ideological aims and coherent organising parties. China’s secret police are good at nipping political movements in the bud. But they missed the rise of the Falun Gong sect as a nationwide anti-government force. And despite their firewalls and armies of “harmonising” censors they might struggle to contain a microblog, text-message or social-network revolution. Their efforts to filter news from the Middle East were only partially successful. That may be why they find the news is so unsettling—because the Chinese people might see it not as a recollection of a nightmarish past, but as a vision of a hopeful future.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile as a result of Wikileaks Ajad could indeed be the good guy
Do We Have Ahmadinejad All Wrong?
JAN 13 2011, 7:30 AM ET1
"........Is it possible that Iran's blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran's most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalize, secularize, and even "Persianize" Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country's more conservative factions? That is the surprising impression one gets reading the latest WikiLeaks revelations, which portray Ahmadinejad as open to making concessions on Iran's nuclear program and far more accommodating to Iranians' demands for greater freedoms than anyone would have thought. Two episodes in .........particular ....deserve special scrutiny not only for what they reveal about Ahmadinejad but for the light they shed on the question of who really calls the shots in Iran. In October 2009, Ahamdinejad's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, worked out a compromise with world power representatives in Geneva on Iran's controversial nuclear program. But the deal, in which Iran agreed to ship nearly its entire stockpile of low enriched uranium to Russia and France for processing, collapsed when it failed to garner enough support in Iran's parliament, the Majles.
According to a U.S. diplomatic cable recently published by WikiLeaks, Ahmadinejad, despite all of his tough talk and heated speeches about Iran's right to a nuclear program, fervently supported the Geneva arrangement, which would have left Iran without enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. But, inside the often opaque Tehran government, he was thwarted from pursuing the deal by politicians on both the right and the left who saw the agreement as a "defeat" for the country and who viewed Ahmadinejad as, in the words of Ali Larijani, the conservative Speaker of the Majles, "fooled by the Westerners. ........."
I agree with Banyans opinion piece in the Economist on this one, where I think he suggests that the major western powers have more wiggle room to come out of this one in the way it can be spun, where as countries like China and Iran don't.
The wind that will not subside
Hearing Egyptian echoes, China’s autocrats cling to the hope that they are different
THE speed with which popular protest swept aside long-lasting authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and then Egypt was enough to unnerve autocrats everywhere. In Asia they have watched the tide of heightened democratic aspiration wash across the Middle East and wondered how far it would go. Even in China, the government, ostensibly so confident of the correctness of the path it has chosen, has been wary of the memories events in Cairo might evoke, and of the hopes it might rekindle.
The most complete Asian despotisms—Myanmar and North Korea—may feel immune to people power. They can rely on their isolation, and on the sheer ruthlessness of their repression. In Central Asian dictatorships, closer in geography, culture and religion to the Middle East, the resonance of the recent revolutions may yet be louder. But it is in China that domestic parallels with recent events, above all in Cairo, are on most people’s minds.
They are also of the greatest global consequence, not just because of China’s own growing importance, but because its rise has led to talk of a “Beijing consensus” in which rapid economic growth matters more than freedom. In 1989, after the Beijing massacre, as communist dominoes began to topple in eastern Europe, China seemed the outlier, bucking an historical trend that would catch up with it one day. Its subsequent success has made that trend—towards greater freedom and democracy—seem less inevitable, and, for some, less desirable. Even Western commentators have conceded that China’s system delivers the goods. Chinese officials talk of the unsuitability for their country of “Western-style” democracy. This ignores the Western, Leninist origins of the Communist Party’s organisation, and glosses over the crucial “Western” element missing in China—the ability to get rid of unpopular governments without a revolution. That is why revolutions elsewhere are bound to be of compelling interest.
Recollections of the Tiananmen protests were one reason China’s censors at first worked so assiduously to curtail discussion of the unrest in Egypt. The script was so familiar to those who had been in Beijing in 1989: the huge demonstrations; the mood of elated mass solidarity and rediscovered patriotism; the camping-out in the capital’s main square; the slogans against corruption and arbitrary rule; the belief that the army had sided with the people against their rulers; even the appearance of plain-clothes thugs in support of the regime. This time, however, the story had a happy ending, or at least a climactic, optimistic victory.
The Chinese press has indeed covered Hosni Mubarak’s downfall prominently, while noting, in the words of one newspaper, that “Egypt has won a battle, but not the war”. “Any political changes will be meaningless”, argued China Daily, “if the country falls prey to chaos in the end.” Others, however, have drawn a different conclusion from the events that led to a revolution. An editorial on the website of Caixin, a media group, began: “Autocracy manufactures turbulence; democracy brews peace.”
China’s own autocrats may feel, however, that for at least three reasons they can shrug off comparisons with Egypt and Tunisia. First is China’s record of three decades of stunning economic growth. A survey by the Pew Research Centre last year suggested 87% of Chinese were satisfied with “the way things were going” in their country. Second, even if they were not, no obvious hate figure exists to blame: China’s is a dictatorship of a party, not an individual. No long-serving despot is clinging tenaciously to power. In 2002 the Communist Party had its first-ever orderly leadership transition, and has promised another for 2012.
Third is the efficiency of its extensive internal-security apparatus and armed forces, which are subordinate to the Communist Party. But who knows how the security forces would respond if asked to suppress another mass uprising? They were ready to shoot protesters to quell unrest among ethnic Uighurs in Urumqi in Xinjiang in 2009. But even in 1989 the army did not prove wholly reliable—at least one general disobeyed orders to join the advance into Beijing.
A truly confident Communist Party would not have devoted so much effort to patrolling the internet to prevent surfers drawing parallels at home with events overseas. Always twitchy at any hint of instability, it has plenty of reasons to fret. Inflation, which raged in the late 1980s before the Tiananmen protests, is picking up again. The middle classes, often the locomotive of political change, are growing fast. Widespread graduate unemployment among their young is gnawing away at the hopes of those who should be the most optimistic about China’s future. And every year sees tens of thousands of protests, many over high-handed land grabs by local authorities.
And the tree that wants to be still
The latest people-power revolts pose two particular difficulties for China’s ideologues. First, they cannot be blamed on the usual suspects, external “black hands”—typically American. Rather, they have been in part anti-American rebellions. As in the Philippines in 1986, South Korea in 1987 and Indonesia in 1998, dictators once cosseted by America have been toppled.
Second, the revolts have lacked both clear ideological aims and coherent organising parties. China’s secret police are good at nipping political movements in the bud. But they missed the rise of the Falun Gong sect as a nationwide anti-government force. And despite their firewalls and armies of “harmonising” censors they might struggle to contain a microblog, text-message or social-network revolution. Their efforts to filter news from the Middle East were only partially successful. That may be why they find the news is so unsettling—because the Chinese people might see it not as a recollection of a nightmarish past, but as a vision of a hopeful future.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile as a result of Wikileaks Ajad could indeed be the good guy
Do We Have Ahmadinejad All Wrong?
JAN 13 2011, 7:30 AM ET1
"........Is it possible that Iran's blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran's most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalize, secularize, and even "Persianize" Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country's more conservative factions? That is the surprising impression one gets reading the latest WikiLeaks revelations, which portray Ahmadinejad as open to making concessions on Iran's nuclear program and far more accommodating to Iranians' demands for greater freedoms than anyone would have thought. Two episodes in .........particular ....deserve special scrutiny not only for what they reveal about Ahmadinejad but for the light they shed on the question of who really calls the shots in Iran. In October 2009, Ahamdinejad's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, worked out a compromise with world power representatives in Geneva on Iran's controversial nuclear program. But the deal, in which Iran agreed to ship nearly its entire stockpile of low enriched uranium to Russia and France for processing, collapsed when it failed to garner enough support in Iran's parliament, the Majles.
According to a U.S. diplomatic cable recently published by WikiLeaks, Ahmadinejad, despite all of his tough talk and heated speeches about Iran's right to a nuclear program, fervently supported the Geneva arrangement, which would have left Iran without enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. But, inside the often opaque Tehran government, he was thwarted from pursuing the deal by politicians on both the right and the left who saw the agreement as a "defeat" for the country and who viewed Ahmadinejad as, in the words of Ali Larijani, the conservative Speaker of the Majles, "fooled by the Westerners. ........."
so apparently Chinese media cannot draw different conclusions from a event. the only right thing to do is to join the great chorus of democratic enterprise and hell with anything that these pitiful media distaste.
well personally i thought anyone with a brain should see the legitimacy in Chinese media's argument. it helps to see these reports as one that came from people who have actually been through chaotic times than people with ulterior motives. i have said this earlier as well, when all the flowery rhetorics and good will go away, which they inevitably will, egyptian people is left dealing with the same cold hard reality that brought down mubarak. i remember two years ago when i got slammed by my classmates for saying that obama was nothing different, well those same people havent paid attention to US politics ever since and obama was really no different. its the same thing here, now the press is all over this, but wait til when the egyptians have to deal with the down to earth issues like feeding its people, making jobs, make money, the press will be no where near them because they have all scrambled to other big stories. it shouldnt take a rocket scientists to realize this stuff. if the press was as powerful 100 years ago as they are today, people would be hailing Russia's Feb revolution in the exact same manner, until the cold hard reality of bread and war hits and 8 months later they'll have to scramble to find an excuse for why democracy failed.
for the egyptians who think that they are at the end of the tunnel, i say "sucks to be you"
well personally i thought anyone with a brain should see the legitimacy in Chinese media's argument. it helps to see these reports as one that came from people who have actually been through chaotic times than people with ulterior motives. i have said this earlier as well, when all the flowery rhetorics and good will go away, which they inevitably will, egyptian people is left dealing with the same cold hard reality that brought down mubarak. i remember two years ago when i got slammed by my classmates for saying that obama was nothing different, well those same people havent paid attention to US politics ever since and obama was really no different. its the same thing here, now the press is all over this, but wait til when the egyptians have to deal with the down to earth issues like feeding its people, making jobs, make money, the press will be no where near them because they have all scrambled to other big stories. it shouldnt take a rocket scientists to realize this stuff. if the press was as powerful 100 years ago as they are today, people would be hailing Russia's Feb revolution in the exact same manner, until the cold hard reality of bread and war hits and 8 months later they'll have to scramble to find an excuse for why democracy failed.
for the egyptians who think that they are at the end of the tunnel, i say "sucks to be you"
Engineer
Major
It betraits their true intention, doesn't it? By "media freedom", the West does not mean Chinese get to have choice on accesses to information. Instead, it means Chinese could only access what Western media deems as "the truth". Another way to put it is it means Western media gets to do whatever the hell it wants. As a consumer, that sounds more like media monopoly to me. From this perspective, things that didn't make sense before now becomes more clear. Complaints about China having no media freedom are nothing but sour grapes; passive-aggressive vents of fustration that the West isn't able to exert influence over that market.
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Guys if you want to comment on the Jasmine revolution I posted some photos and an article about it ..
http://www.sinodefenceforum.com/general-pictures/chinese-daily-life-videos-photos-news-76-4403.html
So take your discussion there!
bd popeye super moderator
http://www.sinodefenceforum.com/general-pictures/chinese-daily-life-videos-photos-news-76-4403.html
So take your discussion there!
bd popeye super moderator