China's New PR War

China's New PR War

China will not let recent ethnic riots in Urumqi and Kashgar undermine its image in the West. Check out this great story on China's new PR war:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0710/p06s05-woap.html

Now I won't buy the savvy PR strategy of the Chinese communist regime. It was also on display during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. It cannot hide the fact that this is the same regime that charges families bullet prices for executing its own citizens. The same regime that is literally destroying Kashgar on the pretext of a potential earthquake collapse in order to "modernize" the Uighurs and destroy their cultural heritage in the process. Located on the ancient Silk Road, Kashgar would certainly be a world heritage city, if the Chinese bothered to apply to make it one. This is China that brought us the dogmatic cruelty of Maoism and its perhaps 50 million dead. The country that suffocates Tibet with its colonial control. The country that jails dissidents like a national past time. The country that shoots at its own people in cold blood, as the rest of the communist world shakes off the yoke of oppression in 1989.

The rulers in Beijing are getting PR savvy for sure. The Chinese economic powerhouse status is impressive. And China will increasingly play a major role in international affairs. Perhaps the major role in international affairs. But the people of China are not merely economic beings or obedient followers of a dying communist faith. They are also freedom-seeking beings longing to express themselves, free of the constraints of the Leviathan-like Chinese state.

Tamir Bar-On