On May 18, 8:30=A0am, Jim Walsh <jimNOwalsSPA...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Earthquakes and other natural disasters are a-political; they strike
> regardless.
>
> Unlike Burma, where the leader****p committed crimes against humanity,
the =
CCP
> did most of the right things. The key correct decision was not to hide
the=
> facts (a common failing in previous cases: i.e., SARs.) Allowing the
Chine=
se
> media the re****t the news live was a huge breakthrough. The second
correct=
> decision was for the leader****p to rush massive resources to the scene.
>
> (Sadly, the CCP was unwilling to accept foreign experts -- like the dog
te=
ams
> from Japan -- early enough so they could save lives.)
>
> Undoubtedly, the Chinese media could have been more aggressive (the
habit =
of
> following the Party Line is hard to break). For example, some buildings
th=
at
> should have survived the quake collapsed as a result of poor
construction =
and
> the Chinese media could have investigated such things to learn if
negligen=
ce
> or dishonesty or both were involved.
>
> --
> Love, Jim
> (I often delete parts of the previous post and I often remove excessive
> crossposts.)
>
With a bit of dread and caution no doubt!:
http://tinyurl.com/5mlady
headline:
The World
When the Kremlin Tried a Little Openness
By PHILIP TAUBMAN
Published: May 18, 2008
A dash of openness can be a dangerous thing in an autocratic state.
James Hill for The New York Times
POST-GLASNOST ****traits of Soviet leaders still lay abandoned in
Pripyat, near Chernobyl, in 2006. Viktor M. Chebrikov, left, led the
K.G.B. in the 1980s.
Mikhail Gorbachev discovered this two decades ago when his campaign to
inject some daylight into Soviet society doubled back on him like a
heat-seeking missile.
Now China=92s leaders are playing with the same volatile political
chemistry as they give their own citizens and the world an
unexpectedly vivid look at the earthquake devastation in the nation=92s
southwest regions. The rulers of cyclone-battered Myanmar, by
contrast, are sticking with the authoritarian playbook, limiting
access and even aid to the stricken delta region where tens of
thousands of people were killed by the storm.
While China=92s response to its natural catastrophe is certainly more
humane, and is only a small step toward openness, it could set in
motion political forces that might, over time, be unsettling. That=92s
especially true in an age of instant communications, even in a nation
like China, which tries to control Internet access.
=93When you start opening up and loosen controls, it becomes a slippery
slope,=94 Jack F. Matlock Jr., the American ambassador to Moscow during
much of the Gorbachev period, said last week as he watched the events
in China. =93You quickly become a target for everyone with a grievance
and before long people go after the whole system.=94
Chinese leaders are well aware of the Soviet experience. The bloody
crackdown against the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989
seemed motivated in part by fears that a relaxation of repression
would lead to a replay of Soviet turbulence in China. It was no
accident that China was the first country to translate and reprint Mr.
Matlock=92s 1995 account of the demise of the Soviet Union, =93Autopsy on
an Empire.=94
And China has taken a different reform path, in effect offering its
people robust economic growth, with a degree of responsiveness when
problems can be blamed on local officials, in exchange for continued
one-party rule. Playing up the response to the earthquake, even as
China restricts coverage of repression in Tibet, could prove a shrewd
move, rather than one that cascades into instability.
Still, it is worth recalling a time when a little openness flew out of
control.
As a correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times in Moscow
in the late 1980s, I had a ringside seat to observe the slow
disintegration of the Soviet Union under Mr. Gorbachev. The collapse
of the Soviet empire and dissolution of the Communist Party were not
exactly what he had in mind when he took power in 1985 and launched
his twin policies of glasnost (greater openness) and perestroika
(political reform).
As events unfolded, it was like watching a scientist start a nuclear
chain reaction that races out of control, eventually consuming him and
all those around him.
Mr. Gorbachev realized his country was rotting from within, paralyzed
by repression and ideological rigidity, a backward economy and a deep
cynicism among Russians about their government. =93We can=92t go on living
like this,=94 he told his wife, Raisa, hours before he was named Soviet
leader, he recalled in his 1995 memoirs.
But he clearly had no inkling of where his initiatives were headed
when, shortly after taking office, he broke new ground for a Kremlin
leader by mingling with citizens in Leningrad and giving unscripted
interviews.
In those early days of glasnost, it was hard to tell whether the
changes were purely superficial or the start of something more
profound.
One day in late 1985, Allen Ginsberg, the American beat poet,
unexpectedly turned up at the Moscow bureau of The Times, bearing a
package from Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet poet. It was the text of
a speech that Mr. Yevtushenko had given to the Writer=92s Union.
Serge Schmemann, my colleague, described it a few days later in a
front-page story: =93The session was a closed one, but even so the
poet=92s strong words against distortion of history, against censor****p,
self-flattery, silence and privilege in the world of letters were
strikingly bold.=94
As glasnost gathered force in the years that followed, it ripped away
the layers of deceit that were the foundation of the Soviet state.
Each step undermined the authority of the party and the
government. ... (cont)
|
