Carl Minzner

Beijing increasingly appears to be walling China off from the outside world, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Take civil society. China’s national legislature is considering a bill that would further restrict the operations of foreign non-governmental organizations, deepening the bitter chill that has descended on the operations of domestic and foreign nonprofits over the last year.

Or look at the Internet. State authorities once confined themselves to censoring dissident voices. Now they are disrupting technologies such as virtual private networks that China’s tech gurus and foreign companies rely on to access commercial sites abroad and to scale the so-called Great Firewall, which blocks sites the government doesn’t want people to see.…  Seguir leyendo »

Deng Xiaoping is back … but only on television.

This year — the 110th anniversary of his birth — Beijing is sparing no expense to commemorate the former leader who launched China’s modern reform era in the late 1970s, bringing decades of blazing economic growth and steady resurgence as a world power.

Unsurprisingly, Deng’s mantle is being deployed for political ends. A new 48-episode documentary on his life airing on state networks draws a thinly veiled analogy between Deng and Xi Jinping, China’s current top leader. The suggestion is clear. Xi is a new Deng. And when top Communist Party leaders assemble at their annual conference this week, China will witness a revival of the spirit of reform.…  Seguir leyendo »