Hu's little secret

No one is yet able to determine whether Hu Jintao, the president of the People's Republic of China is a closet liberal or an ultra-conservative trying to solidify his image. This article describes some of the things that Hu has done on both the conservative and liberal side. For instance, he had ended the cover-up about SARS in 2003 and sacked several officials responsible for the cover-up. In addition, a government official (appointed to office by Hu) responsible for state secrets has ruled that casualties of natural disasters are no longer considered state secrets. He even recognized the birthday of reformist Hu Yaobang, the Chinese leader whose death had sparked the Tienanmen Square revolt. Hu has also opened his country's doors to Taiwan opposition politicians. On the other hand, he had three Internet artists imprisoned for speaking out against the Communist party and two journalists for foreign media companies arrested.

This uncertainty worries me. If he's a closet liberal, then he may well be able to avert any tensions rising in East Asia before anything happens. However, if he's an ultra-conservative, he's liable to ignite the next major problem area in the world. If this happens, focus will shift away from the Middle East (which very well might reduce the power of terrorists in the area since they can't get our attention any more) into East Asia. Will the American people want to support Taiwan? Or will they simply say, "go ahead and take it, it's yours anyway"? American businesses are fairly happy right now with China, except for a few economic issues that they are not that eager to press.

In any case, I'm going to keep watching China to see what's happening there.

Dumb question: when Hu sacked the people responsible for covering up SARS, I wonder if the ones responsible for sacking the people responsible for the cover-up were sacked as well...