Links for October 5th

I’m proud to say that I traveled to Brown University to join the student protest for Burma. Xu Wenli, a co-founder of the Chinese Democracy Party, gave a great speech, as did the former president of Brazil Fernando Cardoso.

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  Read the Brown Daily Herald article about the protest

Hundreds of students dressed in shades of red and purple gathered Friday at noon on Lincoln Field to draw the campus’ attention to ongoing anti-government protests in the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar.

It’s also worth reading Christopher Hitchens on holding China responsible for supporting Burma’s military junta.

• Maintained in China: Burma’s foul regime depends on Beijing

I thought President Bush was quite correct in listing his least favorite regimes during his address to the United Nations last week and in trying to ramp up the international pressure on the goons in Rangoon. The governments that he singled out were the uniquely repellent ones that consider the citizen to be the property of the state and the uniquely boring ones that have remained in power until their citizens are positively screaming for release. I do not need to specify these senescent gangster systems individually, except that they all have one thing in common. They are all defended, from Cuba to Zimbabwe, by the Chinese vote at the United Nations.

While on the topic of Chinese politics, there’s a great article over at The New York Times about the NPC battle over who’ll succeed Hu Jintao. The reporters seem to have some inside sources:

• Chinese Leaders Deadlocked Over Succession

Just days away from a major leadership reshuffle, China’s Communist Party bosses remain deadlocked over who should sit on the ruling Politburo Standing Committee and who should be anointed to succeed President Hu Jintao as China’s No. 1 leader five years from now, party officials and political experts say.

Notable posts I read today:
China Law Blog: China Warns Foreign Companies
RConversation: Eating River Crab at the Harmonious Forum
Financial Times: Chinese cyber-call censored (I think a more suitable headline would be Chinese Communist Party censors Communist Party magazine)