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.

Revealed: How President Carter supported the Iranian Revolution

From 1941 to 1979, Iran was ruled by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, better known as the Shah (meaning “king”). Pahlavi’s modernization and anti-Communist policies won the backing of many Western countries, which saw oil-rich Iran as a valuable ally in a tumultuous region. At the same time, though, his secularism and suppression of political opponents left him strongly disliked domestically.Pahlavi’s regime was ultimately overthrown in the 1979 revolution, led by Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Mūsavi Khomeini.