China Holds the Cards

The revolution seems to be spreading. Chinese authorities have moved to stop the so-called 'Jasmine Revolution' presumably modeled, on a quieter scale, after the open protests which have been rampant throughout the Middle East.

What does this mean? For starters, that no matter how much Beijing may attempt to keep its people down, even to the point of westernizing to a certain degree, it cannot keep all information about the outside world under control. The Chinese citizenry have apparently heard about Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen. Yet as the experience of everyday Chinese citizens has no doubt shown them, popular uprisings are more subject to be brutally crushed in their homeland. They must play a stealthier game.

Yet of all the, well, what we must hope are movements towards democracy now occurring around the globe, any new initiatives within China to open its internal policies in favor of greater human freedom must be seen as the most critical. There isn't a nation in the Arabic world where internal changes would mean as much to the long term health of the Earth's nations as a democratic, pro-West China would offer.

This is most surely not meant to denounce the movements within the Middle Eastern sphere. The people of those nations have the right to the same to basic human freedoms as anyone else. Still, they do not harbor within them the possibility of a true and lasting worldwide peace which a positive change within the Chinese leadership can. They have oil, and little more. China has size, and a brute military potential which does not exist anywhere else except here in the US, and perhaps Russia.

It is important to support all those who fight for real and true freedom. But the fact is that, on the world stage, size matters. China has what Yemen and Bahrain, and even Egypt and Algeria, do not. And that is the potential to make any and all movements towards human rights anywhere, moot.