Why the blind spot for China by the American intelligentsia?

Communist North Korea’s first dictator Kim Il-Sung, left, with Communist China’s first dictator Mao Zedong in 1961.

 

China remains the darling of western, particularly American, intellectuals and academicians even though under President Xi Jinping it’s reverting to the dictatorial habits of the era of Mao Zedung.

The system is not only incredibly corrupt but also authoritarian. We hear constantly about suppression of free speech, of the arrests of those speaking out against the regime or against particular policies, while serious dissent and political opposition is simply not possible.

The same intellectuals who once berated the U.S. for not moving closer to China, for remaining suspicious of Chinese motives and intentions, for objecting to the role of the Communist Party in a system masked in secrecy, have little to say about the real nature of the regime of Xi Jinping.

Rise of the Superpresident

 

Bypassing the checks and balances imposed by America’s founders, the executive branch has come to new heights of power.

Historians may look back on Jan. 14, 2014, as a tipping point in American history. On that day, President Barack Obama urged his cabinet to help him identify ways to advance economic recovery by circumventing the legislature.

“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need,” the president told reporters before his cabinet meeting. “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”

No president since World War ii has openly justified executive overreach by saying that it was necessary to circumvent legislatures because they refused to do what he wanted!

Teutonic Arrogance

ATHENS/BERLIN (Own report) – German politicians are reacting to the Greek government’s call for a partial remission of its debts and its throwing the EU-Troika out of the country, with ultimatums. “Tsipras had better cease his attacks on Angela Merkel,” threatened the European Parliament’s President Martin Schulz (SPD). “Beating up on the Germans” is “shortsighted.” State-financed German media organs are castigating Greece’s newly elected head of state as “obstinate” and complaining that he “is jeering,” “Germany is only one country among others.” US experts warn that in the EU’s crisis countries, the German austerity dictate has resulted in “a level of misery” “that surpasses the limits of tolerance for a democratic society,” and suggest that Greece be dealt with pragmatically – a partial debt remission along the lines of the London Debt Conference 1952/1953 model. Two years ago, Greece’s new Minister of Finance Giannis Varoufakis had already called on Germany to shift from an “authoritarian” to a “hegemonic policy” that would not use its economic power to hold the EU countries down, but to allow them to participate in the hegemonic benefits, as Washington had once done for the Federal Republic of Germany with its Marshall Plan. Varoufakis wrote explicitly, “Europe” does not need an “authoritarian” but “a hegemonic Germany.”