{"id":1758241,"date":"2022-12-01T07:50:48","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T12:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1758241"},"modified":"2022-12-01T11:18:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T16:18:51","slug":"austin-bay-the-tiananmen-tiger-stalks-the-chinese-communist-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/austin-bay-the-tiananmen-tiger-stalks-the-chinese-communist-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Bay: The Tiananmen Tiger Stalks the Chinese Communist Government"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Faustin-bay-the-tiananmen-tiger-stalks-the-chinese-communist-government%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1758241&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/6909fba970162e37b25227c497cb774d00968e19.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>What a difference a month makes when informed, brave and bitterly resentful human beings decide to revolt against an oppressive dictator.<\/p>\n<p>As I write this column, in mainland China&#8217;s major cities protesters are attacking the regime&#8217;s hazmat-suit-clad COVID-19 lockdown enforcers. In Beijing and Chengdu anti-lockdown demonstrations rock China&#8217;s premier university campuses. <\/p>\n<p>Why? For the demonstrators, the communist government&#8217;s zero-COVID policies have become intolerable acts \u2014 literally death sentences when citizens locked in buildings die in fires. <\/p>\n<p>The Chinese Communist Party demands Chinese citizens get a COVID-19 clearance code to buy groceries, use a public restroom and take a walk until the CCP says otherwise. Protest and go to jail. Or starve. Or die in a fire because the cops won&#8217;t let you out.<\/p>\n<p>China&#8217;s informed citizens have narrative savvy. Throughout the country protesters \u2014 some wearing surgical masks\u2014 stand before cellphone cameras and raise blank sheets of white paper. <\/p>\n<p>Right \u2014 white empty space. To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, sometimes nothing is a real cool message. The blank sheets simultaneously satirize and defy the CCP&#8217;s malignant state censorship. <\/p>\n<p>My translation of the blank: &#8220;We Chinese citizens say nothing yet you CCP tyrants fear our thoughts.&#8221; The empty page attacks the CCP&#8217;s systemic truth denial. <\/p>\n<p>So, across China rioters are calling for Xi Jinping&#8217;s removal. By name. The dictator by name.<\/p>\n<p>Yet just a month ago Xi had the Chinese Communist Party crown him emperor for at least another decade. <\/p>\n<p>Xi&#8217;s spin: With him at the helm China would create a 21st-century &#8220;Zhongguo.&#8221; In poetic English the word usually translates as &#8220;middle kingdom,&#8221; but quibblers maintain a more literal and accurate translation is a China that is &#8220;everything under the heavens&#8221; \u2014 a China at the center of all four cardinal directions on the compass.<\/p>\n<p>According to Xi, China under his leadership was creating an ideological alternative to the so-called American &#8220;liberal international order.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Xi&#8217;s propaganda: China&#8217;s authoritarian governance model works, and China&#8217;s economic success proves it works. China will run the world.<\/p>\n<p>However, scrutiny by informed and honest folks reveals the LIO is an ambiguous strawman akin to 20th-century Soviet propaganda damning democracy and free enterprise. <\/p>\n<p>My take: Xi plagiarized Cold War Russian propaganda.<\/p>\n<p>Does authoritarian governance work? The mass demonstrations and blank pages say otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>News outlets have videos of protesters blocking police vans and confronting riot cops. The instant comparison is the June 1989 Tiananmen Square &#8220;tank man,&#8221; the gaunt fellow who stood in front of a People&#8217;s Liberation Army tank and, for a moment, stopped it.<\/p>\n<p>Fact: the current demonstrations are the first widespread mass protests against CCP rule since Tiananmen.<\/p>\n<p>In 1989, China&#8217;s economic reforms were giving the Chinese people a taste of prosperity. In Beijing&#8217;s Tiananmen Square, the CCP heard free-market-spurred calls for political reform. Most protesters didn&#8217;t oppose CCP rule, but they wanted a more open government.<\/p>\n<p>However, one group in the square made a foam and papier-mache statue it called the Goddess of Democracy.<\/p>\n<p>The author of China&#8217;s market reforms, Deng Xiaoping, saw that as a challenge to CCP rule. He ordered the PLA to attack.<\/p>\n<p>How many Chinese citizens were murdered? Two thousand is a common figure. Other sources say 10,000.<\/p>\n<p>But ever since the Tiananmen slaughter, the CCP has been riding The Tiananmen Tiger.<\/p>\n<p>The CCP wants foreign investment in China&#8217;s economy but rejects participatory decision-making that might challenge party authority. The tension between party authority and free-market mechanisms is why the CCP attempts to &#8220;guide&#8221; public opinion (censor speech), crush dissent and resist demands that it share governmental power. I call it China&#8217;s Great Dilemma, a recipe for mass bloodshed.<\/p>\n<p>A closing thought: As China modernized, the U.S. bet that political liberalization would follow. International integration would mellow and moderate China&#8217;s Communists. But it didn&#8217;t happen, did it?<\/p>\n<p>To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.<\/p>\n<p itemprop=\"imageCaption\"><small>Photo credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/goto\/1173580\/\" rel=\"external noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NadineDoerle<\/a> at Pixabay<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a difference a month makes when informed, brave and bitterly resentful human beings decide to revolt against an oppressive dictator. As I write this column, in mainland China&#8217;s major<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1758244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1758241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1758241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1758244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1758241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1758241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1758241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}