Category: China – Politics

David Kan Ting’s Loathsome Infatuation With Mass Murderers

"A few vices are sufficient to blacken many virtues."
— Plutarch

Upon the death of Margaret Thatcher, David Kan Ting of Taiwan's China Post compares the accomplishments of Thatcher, Reagan and Deng Xiaoping, and finds the former two wanting:

In the long haul, however, I think Deng Xiaoping would stand head and shoulder (sic) above the rest of the few in spite of his physical stature. In five years, that's 2018 to be exact, China could overtake America as the world's largest economy, according to the Economist. The world is bound to undergo some profound changes because of the new pecking order brought about by Deng's epoch-making reforms 35 years ago. (emphasis added)

This observer is inclined to agree. Surely neither Thatcher nor Reagan can boast of the magnificent achievement of imprisoning and murdering 700,000 of their own citizens!

On the other hand, Deng the malignant dwarf✯ can – he imprisoned and murdered 700,000 Chinese intellectuals and landlords while serving as Mao Tse-tung's hatchet man during the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957-1958.

Odd that Tingles forgot to recount that. Must've slipped his mind…

But given the recent blood-curdling threats issuing forth from a certain North Korean nuclear madman, it's more than a little surprising David Kan Ting couldn't recall that it was Deng Xiaoping himself who was the North Koreans' primary enabler in their drive for nuclear weapons.

It was Deng Xiaoping who looked the other way. Deng Xiaoping who ran interference. Deng Xiaoping who propped them up economically.

It must therefore be Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Communist party that accepts a good part of the "credit" for the spectre of nuclear armageddon currently stalking Northeast Asia.

To this list, I shall not add the Tiananmen Massacre, of which Deng was the chief architect. Nor shall I mention the 3,000 souls mercilessly exterminated by Deng "we must prepare to spill some blood" Xiaoping.

I do not mention this matter - not because it's unimportant, but because by now it's painfully clear that David Kan Ting couldn't give two shits about Chinese murdered by their own government.

Postscript: David Kan Ting's latest column is not completely devoid of value – I, for one, did not know that Margaret Thatcher stumbled near a Chinese Communist legislative building back in '82. Nor would I have attached any deep metaphorical symbolism to her mistep.

I stand corrected:

The [refusal by Deng Xiaoping to allow Britain to keep Hong Kong] made Mrs. Thatcher apoplectic, and she fell on the steps of the Great Hall of the People — a lasting and telling image in the final episode of a 160-year historical drama of China's decline that began with the ignominious Opium War in 1860.

Ohhh, I get it: The fall of the mighty British Empire, and all that. Although I would suggest that the relatively unremarkable occurrance of a middle-aged woman in heels stumbling on stairs is far less "lasting and telling" than the revealing spectacle of Chinese ultranationalists like David Kan Ting crowing about it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but schadenfreude, by definition, is something one should be ashamed of.

Yellow 'Caution: Schadenfreude' sign, depicting stick figure man slipping while another points and laughs.

(Image from Lawsonry.com)

No matter. Regardless, I AM grateful that Ting educated me about this incident. So much so in fact, that I think it fitting to relate another obscure Margaret-Thatcher-in-China story:

This anecdote's for you, Tingles:

On a bitterly cold day, the Chinese had put on a magnificent parade to welcome Mrs Thatcher. It included hundreds of shivering children in the flimsiest of clothes. She took one look, called for the commander of the parade and ordered him: Take these children off the street or give them warm coats to wear.

(To this, The Telegraph adds that Thatcher threatened to leave the country immediately if her demand was not met.)

ThisIsCornwall.co.uk continues:

The officer quickly realised that arguing was not an option. And since they did not have several hundred coats to hand [out], the children were taken out of the parade and transferred to a building.

Mrs Thatcher personally checked that the building was warm inside before she would let this, by now browbeaten, officer off the hook.

Kinda metaphorical, no?


✯ We now have photographic proof positive that Deng more closely resembled a twisted hobbit than a malignant dwarf…

Always ready to admit error, The Foreigner sincerely apologizes for the mischaracterization – and for hurting the feelings of the entire Dwarven people.

Malignant hobbits: Deng Xiaopeng and Gollum

(Deng Xiaoping image from TopFoto.co.uk. Gollum image from OverYourHead.co.uk)

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Does David Kan Ting Take Pleasure In Innocent Chinese Being Mowed Down By Machine Gun Fire?

Honest question. Let's look at the evidence:

On the one hand, David Kan Ting appears to be a fan of Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong May-ling), whom he describes as, “the legendary Mei-ling Soong, wife of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who has been hailed as “the eternal first lady of China.” ✵

Soong May-ling herself was quite unequivocal on the matter of Tiananmen Square, describing the perpetrators as "dastardly Communist poltroons" and "demonic butchers" (The China Post, June 13, 1989 †).

So on the basis of this, I'd have to say, no, David Kan Ting of Taiwan's China Post DOES NOT take pleasure in innocent Chinese being mowed down by automatic machine gun fire.

But not so fast. You see, Soong May-ling is long dead-and-gone. And now, David Kan Ting has a new female hero. (A she-ro, if you will.) His latest idol de jour is Peng Liyuan, first lady ogress of China.

Peng Liyuan's reaction to Tiananmen Square could not possibly have been more different from Madame Chiang's. Whereas Soong May-ling seized the moment to denounce the Communist authors of this hideous crime, Peng Liyuan chose to laugh and clap and dance and sing at the deaths of thousands of Chinese at the hands of the People's "Liberation" Army.

Evil Chinese cunt Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, rejoicing and entertaining the troops after the Tiananmen Square Massacre 1989.

(Peng Liyuan, entertaining PLA troops after the Tiananmen Massacre. Unlike Elvis, she don't look "all shook up". Thousands of Chinese murdered? Time to par-tay!
Image from the International Business Times)

So we come once more back to the original question: Does David Kan Ting of Taiwan's China Post take pleasure in innocent Chinese being mowed down by automatic machine gun fire?

Given Dave's rather eclectic choice of heroes, the best that can be said is that the answer is…inconclusive.

✵ Contra to Ting, Madame Chiang Kai-shek has ALSO been hailed by Taiwan's democratic opposition as, "the most evil woman to wield any kind of power during that bleak 100 years [ie: the 20th Century] and that her influence on almost anything she touched was corrupting and malign."

But I digress. My goal here is not to investigate Soong May-ling's place in history, but to ascertain her attitude concerning the Tiananmen Massacre.

† Since the China Post does not have online archives extending as far back as 1989, this is a second-hand quote by Soong May-ling, from a source whose reliability is suspect (to say the very least!)

Nevertheless, the quotes are in keeping with another (more reliable) second-hand source, so I therefore regard them as authentic.

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David Kan Ting ♥Loves Peng Liyuan – Butcheress Of Beijing

(or, “The Drivel Comes Just In Time”)

The main title exaggerates slightly: China's current first lady, Peng Liyuan, didn't personally butcher any Chinese at Tiananmen Square. That we know of…

No, she merely gave a big pat on the back and issued a hearty, "Job well done!" to the Communist stormtroopers who did.

The AP has the story:

A photo of China's new first lady Peng Liyuan in younger days, singing to martial-law troops following the 1989 bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, flickered across Chinese cyberspace this week.

It was swiftly scrubbed from China's Internet before it could generate discussion online. But the image — seen and shared by outside observers — revived a memory the leadership prefers to suppress and shows one of the challenges in presenting Peng on the world stage as the softer side of China.

Evil Chinese cunt Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, rejoicing and entertaining the troops after the Tiananmen Square Massacre 1989.

(Elsewhere, a commenter saw this picture of Peng singing in front of the PLA after its merry massacre, and suggests she was either crooning "I've Got A Crush On You" or "Tanks For The Memories".
Image from the International Business Times)

Meanwhile, David Kan Ting of Taiwan's pro-Communist China Post earlier this week beclowned himself by breathlessly praising the bestial Peng. A sampling of quotes:

China's new first lady was as graceful and glamorous as a supermodel when she emerged from Air China's 747 jetliner…
–David Kan Ting, The China Post, Wed Mar 27, 2013

Peng Liyuan captivated millions of fans the moment she stepped into the international limelight. Wearing a smile and dressed in a simple black peacoat, she waved…
–David Kan Ting, The China Post, Wed Mar 27, 2013

She is the United Nations ambassador for health, working to stamp out the scourge of AIDS. It seems that she possesses every quality necessary for accomplishing the daunting mission before her.
–David Kan Ting, The China Post, Wed Mar 27, 2013
[Evidently, soullessness is now a UN job prerequisite. — The Foreigner]

The star of Peng Liyuan is rising, to the ecstasy of her people at home who have never felt so proud in their lives. Some bloggers described her as “elegant and magnificent,” while others gushed over her “talents and beauty.”
–David Kan Ting, The China Post, Wed Mar 27, 2013
[Tell us, Dave, for we really must know: Is she more elegant than magnificent…or more magnificent than she is elegant? Only a dedicated truth-seeker such as yourself can ever hope to be impartial enough to solve this baffling mystery. –The Foreigner]

It seems that the fever about Peng Liyuan is not going to recede any time soon, and rightly so.
–David Kan Ting, The China Post, Wed Mar 27, 2013
[Ting's got a fever, and the only prescription…is more Chinese corpses. –The Foreigner]

Now with the godsend [represented by Peng Liyuan's very existence], it's worth the long wait.
–David Kan Ting, The China Post, Wed Mar 27, 2013

Whoa, Dave, take a saltpeter or something. Not to run you down or anything, but I haven't seen analysis this objective since last week's hard-hitting expose on Justin Bieber.

In Tiger Beat magazine…

(To paraphrase an old Cajun, drag some Communist advertorial money through a trailer park, and you never know what'll turn up. Or get written down…)

David Ting began his slobbery fanboi column by humming an old Taiwanese tune from the '80s titled, "The Drizzle Comes Just In Time." (Drizzle being a good thing, Ting informs us, especially after a period of a long drought.)

Well, it might come as a surprise, but I, too, cannot help humming a tune from the '80s when I now think of Peng Liyuan. Granted, it's not nearly as famous as Ting's – just some obscure song by a little-known band that never went anywhere. Maybe you've heard of it though.

It's called, Another One Bites The Dust.

Given that China's new first lady, Peng Liyuan, publicly supported the massacre of thousands of her own countrymen, it seems entirely appropriate. (And as an added bonus, it's even got lyrics about machine guns, bullets and dead men dropping like flies as well.)

Now THAT'S authenticity. (No matter how hard Tiananmen Massacre denialist Tsai Eng-meng tries to bluff fools into believing otherwise).


Postscript: Other '80s songs which could serve as lietmotifs for China's bloodthirsty first lady ogress:

  1. Hit Me With Your Best Shot — Pat Benetar
  2. Cold-Hearted Snake — Paula Abdul
  3. I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight — Cutting Crew
  4. It's A Sin — Pet Shop Boys
  5. Wipeout — Fat Boys & Beachboys
  6. What Have You Done For Me Lately? — Janet Jackson
  7. Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone — Glass Tiger
  8. Everybody Wants To Rule The World — Tears for Fears
  9. A View To A Kill — Duran Duran
  10. Eyes Without A Face — Billy Idol
  11. An Innocent Man — Billy Joel
  12. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? — Culture Club
  13. Der Kommissar — After the Fire
  14. Back On The Chain Gang — The Pretenders
  15. Overkill — Men at Work
  16. Hard To Say I'm Sorry — Chicago
  17. Hurts So Good — John Cougar Mellencamp
  18. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around — Stevie Nicks
  19. Guilty — Barbara Streisand & Barry Gibb
  20. [Don't!] Do That To Me One More Time — Captain & Tennille
  21. Cruel Summer — Bananarama


UPDATE: One wonders what '80s song Fang Zheng recalls when thinking about Peng Liyuan?

Having been "liberated" from his legs by the tank treads of an "elegant" and "magnificent" PLA panzer, Fang no doubt bitterly remembers the Pet Shop Boys' What Have I Done To Deserve This?

No word yet from David Ting on whether Fang Zheng wore a pair of absolutely FABULOUS designer prosthetics to the inauguration of Peng Liyuan's husband. They must've been simply to-die-for though, right Dave?

Fang Zheng, missing legs and in a wheelchair after being run over by Chinese tanks at Tiananmen Square. Not to be confused with the famous 'Tank Man' of Tiananmen Square. Hi, my name is Fang Zheng. Some people confuse me for the famous “Tank Man” of Tiananmen Square. I get that a lot. If the Butchers of Beijing ever try to tell you that they don’t run over their citizens with tanks, remember this: Although they may have taken my limbs...the Chinese government is the one without a leg to stand upon.


(Image from The Independent)

UPDATE (Mar 29/13): In his opinion column, Ting favorably compares China's first ogress to Raisa Gorbachev. A more apt comparison might be to Asma al-Assad.

Like Peng Liyuan, Asma too was the subject of journalistic puff pieces — which were quietly withdrawn out of sheer embarrassment once her husband began massacring Syrians.

Asma al-Assad, wife of Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad.

(Asma al-Assad: No longer a "Rose in the Desert" - but still a cute piece of tail in a skirt. Image from GulfNews.com.)

UPDATE #2: All copies of Vogue's infamous "A Rose In The Desert" article have apparently been scrubbed from the internet, save for this one on a Bashar al-Assad fan-site run by an employee of the (ahem!) Syrian State News Agency living in Rome. As for the profile's author, Joan Juliet Buck, she regrets ever writing it.

Fun fact: an American lobbying firm was paid $5,000 a month by the Syrian government to get the obsequious Vogue portrayal published.

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Death Awaits — With Nasty, Big, Pointy Teeth

The Heirs of Mao ban a rabbit cartoon.  Yes, a rabbit cartoon.  I kid you not.

Reckon they're worried the little bunny-wunny-wunnies might hurt 'em:

A GRISLY cartoon that marks the upcoming Year of the Rabbit by portraying a bunny revolt against brutal tiger overlords has proven an online hit, with its thinly veiled stab at China's communist rulers.

(Video from YouTube)

And in related news, the Chinese Politburo has also declared a news blackout on the popular revolution against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.  Not just on the uprising, but on the entire country.  That is to say, the merest mention of the word "Egypt" in China is now a crime-against-the-state.  (At least as far as China's micro-blogging sites go.)

Nervous much, Pharoah Hu Jintao?

The Dog That Didn’t Bark

What, no editorials from Taiwan's China Post, cheering on Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize?  Whose struggle for freedom and democracy is something that Chinese everywhere can take justifiable pride in?  Not a word from the newspaper which has stated that after a century, it's HIGH-TIME for a person of Chinese extraction to win?

Nope, guess not.  Where once were glowing paeans for Beijing's '08 Olympics, are now only crickets for the frontrunner poised to become China's FIRST-EVER winner of the award.  Chinese nationalists, indeed.

(But then, when one takes the position that democracy is the worst political system ever tried (bar none!), it's not surprising that by default one roots for Communist jailors instead.)

Cartoon captioned: In China, No Presents For Christmas. Cartoon shows a PRC policeman in Santa's pack snatching Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo from the street. (Liu's sentence was expected to be delivered on Christmas Day, 2010.)

(Image from Reporters Without Borders)

UPDATE:  An Irish gambling company which allows people to wager on who will win the prize is apparently so confident that Liu Xiaobo will come out on top that they've stopped taking bets and started paying-off bettors 48 hours before the actual announcement.

Parting with their money before they absolutely have to suggests that they're completely nuts.  Or that they know something the rest of us don't…

UPDATE #2:  Beijing threatens to bring Norway its knees by withholding vital supplies of heavy metal-laced cigarettes.  Which will be difficult for the Norwegians to substitute, since China controls at least 92% of all the world's rare earths cadmium-flavored tobacco products.

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Tom Friedman Throwdown

Dr. Jerome Keating did a pretty good job last month.  But for bust-out funny, Iowahawk's the man to beat:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. For example, some argue that one-party autocracies might not always do stuff Thomas Friedman agrees with. But this risk can easily be avoided if the one party is a reasonably enlightened group of people, such as China, and/or Thomas Friedman. Only through this one party system can we impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward into a thousand-year empire of benevolent, iron fisted enlightenment.

Come to think of it, Iowahawk sounds like Sino-Imperialist Bev Chu over on Lew Rockwell's site.

(Only difference being Iowahawk has tongue planted firmly in cheek, while Bev is dead serious.)

Politics and Economics: Still Kept Miles Apart in PRC

Been meaning to link to this brief (but eye-opening) note on management's decision to light up the Empire State Building to celebrate the founding of Communist Party rule in modern China.

One wonders whether the board of Taiwan's Taipei 101 skyscraper will  be willing to sell themselves quite so cheaply.

On The Sunny Side Of The Street

I’m not going to heap scorn upon this China Post editorial.  Because there are days when I, too, think things might work out for the best in the Middle Kingdom:

Today’s communist leaders in China are pragmatists, who believes in Deng Xiaoping’s "cat theory" of getting results rather than Mao Zedong’s egalitarianism of glorifying poverty on an equal footing. The merit of the law should be judged by the answer to a single question: Do the people want it?

But the mainland people may want more-free elections, free press and independent courts, for example. Clearly, the National People’s Congress is in no hurry to work on these political reforms, which are lagging far behind. These are the reforms that can best safeguard against the abuse of power by corrupt officials. So, after property reform, political reform must be on the agenda.

Already, grassroots pressure for such reform is mounting. The rising middle class and increasingly well-educated people will demand political reforms that are now put on the back burner. If the past is an indication, we have reasons to be optimistic that such reforms will be carried out in another decade or two, if not sooner.

China’s communists may be more pragmatic than they once were, but is that pragmatism directed at doing what’s good for their country, or merely doing whatever allows them to hold their positions of power and privilege?  A selfless utilitarian might, out of a sense of pragmatism, be willing to allow himself to be voted out of office in order to better serve the needs of society.  But communist oligarchs obsessed with clinging to power may be much less inclined to do so.

Furthermore, while I agree that the well-educated will demand political reforms, it is not at all inevitable that they will succeed in getting these demands met.  Tienanmen Square happened once, and it can happen again.  And again and again.  Heinlein once depicted a society whose subjects were completely co-opted by a fascist state; they were perfectly free to make all the money they wanted, and as long they tended to their own gardens, the State was content to leave them alone.  The Federation was unapologetically brutal to those who dared meddle in politics, however.

"Starship Troopers" may have been fiction, but a few societies HAVE paralleled it in real-life.  Could China take that path as well?  I wonder…

There ARE indeed hopeful developments in China, but there are others the sober observer cannot ignore.  The creation of the "Great Firewall", continuing persecution against certain religious minorities, a blithely amoral foreign policy – these are all things that suggest China might be moving in a darker direction.

To this list, I might add China’s treatment of the free and democratic state of Taiwan.  A few years ago, a Taiwanese industrialist doing business there was threatened, with tax audits and overzealous safety inspections, into signing a document declaring his "opposition" to Taiwanese independence.  It was only last year that Chinese arm-twisting caused an airplane carrying Taiwan’s president to be forbidden from flying over Mexican airspace.  And let it not be forgotten that China currently aims a thousand missiles at Taiwan, in an effort to terrorize the population into submission. 

Taiwan is the canary in the coal mine, and how China treats it should be of interest to everyone.  Today, it’s Taiwanese industrialists who are being bullied into taking political stances; tomorrow, it may be businessmen from YOUR country.  Today, China prevents Taiwan’s president from freely traveling; tomorrow, it may prevent the president of some other democratic country it’s displeased with from doing so.

And the missiles?  Well, TODAY they, and other weapons, are targeted upon Taiwan.  And tomorrow?  Well, by now I hope you’ve gotten the picture.

Chinese Lebensraum in North America?

Over at The Corner, John Derbyshire comments on a purported speech given by one Chi Haotian, in which this apparently well-respected Chinese Communist party member (and former Secretary of Defense) stated his convictions that Hitler was too soft, a future China will need lebensraum, and to that end, the U.S.A. ought to be depopulated with biological weapons.

I think Derb gets it about right:

The authenticity of the piece needs addressing.  The Epoch Times is a Falun Gong publication and its journalistic standards have been questioned.  I take the speech to be authentic just on general grounds.  I.e. that is how old Party warhorses—like my father-in-law—tend to talk.  [Emphasis added]

To what degree Chi’s sentiments can be said to represent Chinese govt. policy is highly debatable.  Certainly these sentiments are widespread in China, particularly among young males.  There is a strong vein of amoral fascism in modern Chinese political thinking, along with the ancient conviction of racial superiority.

[…]

The value of documents like this is to show us a ruthless and amoral strain that is not uncommon in modern Chinese thinking, but which is inchoate and, in my opinion, not likely driving any current policy.

Just a little something to keep in mind next time Taiwan’s China Post airily dismisses the merest possibility that China could someday pose a danger to world peace.