As of this writing, those students may have died in vain, if it's possible for one death to be more futile than another. China is no closer to a democratic government than it was before. This column isn't about politics, and I feel I have no more right to say what's better or worse in government than any other moderately well informed person. All I have are opinions with no more weight than anyone else's, so I'm not going to go into that end of it much except to say that it seems Tiananmen Square is becoming a microcosm of China's struggles. The Falun Gong have been using it lately for their own peaceful protests as well; at last count as of this writing, nigh on a thousand arrests for these Gandhi-ish sit-ins have occurred there, and presumably more on the way.
Why have I devoted two columns to China already? Well, they have roughly a quarter of the people on the planet. Except for staunch atheists, I'd think people could easily see some significance in that fact alone. Whether you see it as a fertile field to reap converts, a potential military threat, or just a concentration of consciousness doesn't much matter, the point is that well over a billion people live there and that has to count for SOMETHING in the Grand Scheme Of Things.
On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives officially told China that we'd like them to leave the Falun Gong alone, thank you very much, and if you'd be so kind we'd also prefer that you let other religions be, as well. Of course this country will take no action to back it up -- and to be honest, I don't really relish the idea of military problems with a nuclear power possessing more people than all the $50 bills that Bill Gates owns. I don't relish the idea of military problems at all. I don't relish the idea of my neighbors and friends dying to procure basic human rights for everyone else, and the U.S. gets officially mired in too many foreign squabbles as it is without picking a fight with China.
But really, China needs to just knock it off already.
