Chinese Confirmation

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Modern life offers many happy moments, but I’m particularly indebted to the People’s Republic of China for censoring the latest issue of the Far East Economic Review, which featured an article of mine on the cover.  As Rowan Scarborough was kind enough to href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/30/beijing-bans-may-issue-of-murdoch-magazine/">point out, the folks at FEER had asked me to update an old think piece, in which I had argued that contemporary China is difficult for us to understand, because it is something we haven’t seen before:  the world’s first mature fascist state.  And I did that, as you can readhref="http://feer.com/essays/2008/may/beijing-embraces-classical-fascism?searched=ledeen&highlight=ajaxSearch_highlight+ajaxSearch_highlight1"> here. One of the points I made is that the regime in Beijing is hypersensitive to criticism, and their reaction to my essay seems to prove that abundantly.  The entire issue was seized, both subcriber copies and newstand copies.  As I told Scarborough, one could hardly ask for more dramatic confirmation of my main thesis, and he was good enough to describe me as someone with “a penchant for tweating repressive regimes.”