Reply #3: A Matter of Execution (Hoagland WaPo)

[struggle4progress]

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, July 15, 2007; Page B07

China's Communists always have been quick to execute political dissidents as a warning to follow the party's ideological line. Now the regime summarily executes people for being bad at capitalism.

Zheng Xiaoyu was put to death the other day not only for multitudinous sins but also to reassure foreign markets that China's manufacturing industry will no longer mindlessly poison some of its customers. With Zheng's execution, Mao Zedong's revolution has reached the stage of becoming a focused exercise in marketing -- skillfully gathering profits abroad to make the party rich and powerful at home.

Mao promised socialism with Chinese characteristics. His political heirs have delivered a fierce capitalism with Chinese characteristics. The Communist Party struggles to rein in the free-enterprise monster it has created through its quasi-ideological emphasis on wealth and consumption. To counter emerging threats to global market share, the government produced -- what else? -- a five-year plan to eliminate health hazards from its food and medical exports. It reinforced the message by executing the unfortunate Zheng. ~snip~

The official Xinhua news agency did not say how Zheng -- sentenced on May 29 -- was killed on Tuesday. So we do not know if he was shot in the back of the head, as is customary. Nor do we know if his family was then presented with a bill for the cost of the bullet that killed him. This cruel twist has long been standard practice for dissidents in China, which carries out more court-ordered executions than the rest of the world combined, according to human rights groups. ~snip~

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301708.html?hpid=opinionsbox2