His son, Justin, aka Trudeau Lite, is now leader of the Liberal Party, and poised, some think, to become prime minister if Steve Harper gets his just desserts next October. Trudeau II caused a bit of a stir amongst Canuck chattering classes when he expressed admiration for the way the Chinese government gets things done.
He had been asked a question about which nation’s administration he most admired and why, and gave this response. "There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime. I mean there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about, of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted, that I find quite interesting."
That's kind of like saying that Hitler built some nice highways, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin deserves credit for running a pretty tight ship. It's true that the Communist rulers of the self-styled People's Republic of China (PRC) know how to get things done. Did they not dam up the mighty Yangtze and build a high-speed railway that will take you from Beijing into the heart of occupied Tibet? And how about the 2008 Olympics? Great accomplishments, to be sure. But at what cost?
The fact is that Communist China is one of the most authoritarian police states in the world. The price for its economic and material achievements is paid by the Chinese people in physical suffering -- imprisonment, torture and execution -- and deprivation of the human rights and freedoms.
In the early 90s, Beijing lost out to Sydney in its bid to host the Olympics, because of Western criticism of China's abysmal human rights record. When it applied again, in 2001, the pitch was that its record had improved, and if it was awarded the Olympics, it would do better. And so Beijing was awarded the Games. People wanted to believe -- then as now -- that increasing prosperity and engagement with the international community would soften China's authoritarian political system.
And did it? The answer, according to Philip P. Pan, is NO! Mr. Pan was the Washington Post's Beijing bureau chief from 2000 through 2007, and witnessed firsthand the persecution and prosecution of Chinese citizens who had the courage to assert the rights supposedly guaranteed to them under the PRC's constitution. He also investigated accounts of the fate of others who had earlier -- before 2000 but after the death of Chairman Mao -- fought and died for a freer society.
Mr. Pan's book is history, written in the best and most engaging way, in tales from the lives of real people. The author takes us inside the dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of ordinary men and women struggling to come to terms with their nation's past and take control of its future. Among the 11 people we meet are...
* An elderly surgeon who exposed the Communist cover-up of the SARS epidemic, then, years later, had the courage to write about his experience during the Tiananmen Square Massacre. For his pains, Jiang Yanyong, "The Honest Doctor" (that's the title of Chapter 8) was detained, interrogated, subjected to house arrest, and forbidden ever again to visit his children in the USA.
* A filmmaker, Hu Jie, who spent years making an unauthorized documentary on the execution of a young woman, Lin Zhao, during the Cultural Revolution. Ms Lin was at first an avid, slogan-shouting, little-red-book-waving Communist. But her eyes were opened by the mindless violence, mass starvation and other horrors unleashed by Chairman Mao. Her denunciation of the Communist Party and its "system" landed her in prisons and mental hospitals, where she wrote hundreds of pages of thoughts and pleas in her own blood. Hu Jie's film "Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul" (Chapter 2, followed by "Blood and Love", Chapter 3) was an underground success, but led inevitably to the knock of state security agents on his door.
* A blind man, Chen Guangcheng, who wasn't satisfied to be a masseur or musician -- about the only work open to blind people in China then and now -- so learned the law by self-study. Although not a lawyer, Mr. Chen devoted himself to bringing court challenges on behalf of the poor and oppressed, especially peasants who were being taxed to the point of starvation, and suffering the loss of millions of babies aborted or killed at birth because of China's evil One Child Policy. We read in "Blind Justice" (Chapter 11) how Mr. Chen was abducted, beaten and imprisoned, but lived to tell his story.
Do any of the stories have a happy ending? Yes and no. Like some films where titles at the end tell you what became of the characters, Out of Mao's Shadow has an epilogue in which we learn what became of Dr. Jiang, Mr. Hu, Mr. Chen and the others. Except for Lin Zhao, they all survived. They are still alive.
But did they win their battles? For the most part, they fought the Communists to a draw or, at best, a narrow win. But the larger war for basic human rights and freedoms continues. 11 Davids -- or 11,000 or 110,000, as in Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution -- are not yet enough to be more than a mere annoyance to the Goliath that is the Communist Party of China.
Out of Mao's Shadow challenges the conventional wisdom that free markets automatically lead to free societies. Justin Trudeau should read it. So should Pope Francis, Hussein Obama and all the other naive leaders of the West who think that "engaging" and "dialoguing" with the Communists will make them change. And yes, you should read it too!
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