While newspapers in the U.S. struggle to survive the triple threat posed by the Internet, the perception of a persistent left-leaning bias, and the weak economy, newspapers in the People’s Republic of China simply struggle to report the news.

Most outside attention has been focused on Chinese communist censors’ efforts to rein in internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo.  But, while the Great Firewall of China has gotten most of the headlines, more mundane means of information control in the restive nation of 1.3 billion people have gone largely unnoticed.

That China has a bureau named the Central Propaganda Department should give pause to any Westerner who continues to tout economic development in China as somehow paving the way for individual liberty for the Chinese people.  This Orwellian department has, amongst its powers, the ability to issue directives to Chinese newspapers.  The Central Propaganda Department’s most recent edict: a demand that Chinese newspapers cease reporting news from outside their area.  The reason for the order is simple—reports of unrest or official Communist Party corruption can be isolated to a small region, thus depriving would-be democratic reformers of the fuel of outrage needed to challenge a repressive and increasingly ossified system.

Now all Chinese newspapers may only print stories originating from their own reporters or from approved official reports. Especially forbidden are reports about Chinese security services or “sudden incidences,” unless approved by the authorities.

The catalyst for the edict from Beijing appeared to be the formation by provincial newspapers of a “news agency alliance.”  This arrangement allowed Chinese newspapers to swap stories, thus avoiding local Communist censors.  An example of this agreement that caught the unwanted attention of the Communist Party was a joint editorial carried by 13 newspapers on March 1 that questioned the continued operation of the household registration system, known in China as the “Hukou” system.  China’s household registration system is used to tightly control internal migration, preventing the impoverished rural Chinese from legally moving to the wealthier cities.

Even newspapers in supposedly free Hong Kong have been muzzled.  Beginning with the 1997 switch in sovereignty from the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China, the once-freewheeling Hong Kong press was brought to heel.  For a period of about four years after the handover, Hong Kong journalists would often write stories of official corruption in China.  One particularly egregious example happened in early 2001 when at least 38 children were killed while being forced to make fireworks by corrupt Communist Party officials.  The officials would fine the parents of any child who did not make their daily fireworks quota in between learning the basics along with ingesting the required propaganda about the glories of the revolution.  Once the Hong Kong press reported on the incident, Chinese security troops sealed off the city, the telephone lines were cut, and an official cover story was created in Beijing about a deranged man who ran into the classroom and denoted a bomb.  This sort of reporting rarely happens anymore out of Hong Kong.

The path to Communist Party control of the news in Hong Kong was necessarily less direct than it was in Mainland China.  Rather than employ Beijing’s Central Propaganda Department to make a direct mockery of the “One Nation, Two Systems” fiction, China simply bought its critics.  Every newspaper in Hong Kong prone to publishing unflattering articles about China was brought under new ownership.  Once owners friendly to Beijing were in place, the publishers simply reminded their journalists that continued employment would be dependent on the writing of stories that would not upset Chinese communists.  The arrangement swiftly shut down embarrassing criticism from the former U.K. crown colony.

The bottom line regarding information from the People’s Republic of China is this: treat every bit of information, whether “news” or corporate reports, as suspect.  China has centuries of practice in shaping information, both for internal and external consumption, the former, to control its people, and the latter, in present times, to project an image of a weak, developing nation whose sole interest is in trade.  As the Chinese warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu wrote: “All warfare is based on deception.”

Chuck DeVore is a California State Assemblyman, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, and was a Reagan-era Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs in the Pentagon.

As the world continues to do little more than wring its hands over the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, what passes for a government in Tehran is preparing to stone to death a mother of two for the crime of adultery (breaking news update, the Iranian regime may not stone the accused to death, but rather, execute her using a different method due to growing international outrage).  Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, 43, was convicted in 2006 and has already been punished with a flogging of 99 lashes (such a punishment can, in and of itself, be life-threatening).

I wrote about this barbaric Iranian practice last year when I reviewed Cyrus Nowrasteh’s hauntingly chilling and award-winning film “The Stoning of Soraya M.” on Big Hollywood.  If you haven’t seen it you should.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is notorious for other reasons too.  In 2007, an Iranian member of parliament, Moshen Yahyavi, admitted that Iran applies the death penalty for homosexual acts (joining such other stalwart member states of the UN such as Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Nigeria).

Iranian president Ahmadinejad infamously said in 2007 that there were no gays in his country after he was asked by students in New York about the hangings of two teenagers “convicted” of homosexuality.

All this matters because a nation’s dealings with its own people serve to as a window on how that nation views the rest of humanity.  Thus, when President Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust never happened and darkly says that Israel is “doomed” we must view his remarks in the context of his being the leader of a nation that stones women (never men) for adultery while hanging homosexuals.

Nations, as with people, cannot be perfect.  Nations, also as with people, can be bent towards good or evil.  The Islamic Republic of Iran is an evil regime. Iran’s leaders are determined to acquire a nuclear weapons arsenal and, unlike other nuclear-armed regimes led by men of ill-intent, the leadership of Iran claims to believe in martyrdom as a way to usher in the Hidden Imam, the Messiah-like figure of Shia Islam, and with this 12^th Imam, a Millennial Age.  Such motivations cannot be deterred in the conventional Cold War sense as America’s nuclear arsenal deterred the old Soviet Union (officially atheist Communist leaders aren’t big on personal martyrdom).

As the Islamic Republic of Iran’s uranium centrifuges spin towards nuclear midnight, think about the nature of regime that seeks to acquire the tools of atomic destruction.

Chuck DeVore is a California State Assemblyman, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, and was a Reagan-era Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs in the Pentagon.

The FBI’s arrest of 11 on charges of spying for Russia has provoked an unusual response—from President Obama, who is said to be “not happy” with the timing, according to the New York Times.  “Not happy”? 

The FBI moved to arrest the 11 accused clandestine agents for Moscow after a seven year investigation because they were afraid of a flight risk.  Indeed, one of those arrested was a Canadian citizen nabbed in Cyprus while trying to make a run for it to Budapest.

Which brings us back to the President’s reaction about the arrests of the Russian agents: “Not happy.”  “Not happy” that the FBI is doing its job?  “Not happy” that the arrests were made only days after President Obama had an “upbeat meeting” with the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev?  Both explanations betray an American President more concerned with the optics of “resetting” U.S.-Russian relations than with the manifold reasons why this relationship has been, and will remain, difficult. 

A non-exhaustive listing of recent Russian challenges might be in order at this point:

1. Russia’s invasion and crushing of tiny, democratic Georgia in 2008.
2. Russia’s selling of nuclear know-how to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
3. Russia’s stonewalling of efforts to diplomatically isolate the same Islamic Republic for its nuclear program.
4. Russian’s military threat to Poland and the Czech Republic if the U.S. Missile Defense Agreement was implemented by those nations (Obama canceled the agreement in 2009).
5. Russia’s use of its natural gas exports as a hammer to keep European nations in line.
6. Russia’s selling of high-tech weapons to the People’s Republic of China.
7. Russia’s repeated efforts, often in league with China, to penetrate and damage U.S. computer systems via massive hacking attacks.
8. Russia’s long, slow slide back into authoritarianism, as evidenced by the jailing of rivals and the growing number of “mysterious” deaths of critics.

The bottom line is that Russia is reasserting itself as a reincarnation of its Czarist past—and there is little relationship for the U.S. to “reset” here.  The Russians have their interests, we have ours—pretending otherwise won’t change that, other than to encourage the Russians with our weakness, as President Obama did when he made our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic “not happy” by unilaterally canceling the missile defense agreement the U.S. had with them.