Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times April 27, 2011

Great Leap Backward

Excerpt:

Ms. Cheng was arrested on what was supposed to have been her wedding day last fall for sending a single sarcastic Twitter message that included the words “charge, angry youth.” The government, lacking a sense of humor, sentenced her to a year in labor camp.

So I tried to interview her fiancé, Hua Chunhui, but it turns out that Mr. Hua was recently arrested and imprisoned as well. That’s the way it goes in China these days. The government’s crackdown is rippling through the country, undercutting China’s prodigious growth and representing the harshest clampdown since the crushing of the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989.

The reason? Surprising as it may seem, the government is worried that China could become the next Egypt or Tunisia, unless security forces act early and ruthlessly.

HKO comment:

The required oxygen for capitalism is freedom. Without it economic growth will wither and die. China’s economic miracle will be very short lived until the initiatives that have been top down become bottom up. It will not happen when such freedom is oppressed.

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