Chinese Party leaders continue the news blackout on the Dongzhou killings.   They are likely betting that the Western media will turn its attention elsewhere (voting in Iraq; spying in the US), which will give them more leverage over their own media: if there is less attention from outside of China, it is easier to control information on the killings within China. 

     And it looks like that strategy might work.  The Dongzhou story is fading from the pages of American papers.  The South China Morning Post (sorry I don’t have a subscription…but read it on Lexis-Nexis) had a story today tracing the year-long roots of the struggle by Dongzhou villagers to secure adequate compensation for the land taken from them.  But there is nothing in the New York Times or Washington Post.   A Google News search finds little; and a Technorati search turns up almost nothing new.

     Notice, too, how today the People’s Daily and China Daily both run a story announcing the sixth confirmed case of Bird Flu.  And this gets picked up by the Washington Post.   They are changing the story, diverting out gaze elsewhere…

    And, then, they respond indirectly with a People’s Daily story about Hu Jintao going to Qinghai and saying: "We must work energetically to solve the problems that the people
concern most and are related to their fundamental interests."   Of course, if he cared about "the problems that the people concern most" he would be going to Dongzhou. 

     But Hu is not going to Dongzhou.  He will not go there.  He will ignore the people of Dongzhou; black them out; keep their story from the world.  Because if he dared go to Dongzhou he might really have to do something serious about the corrupt system he heads. 

If you don’t stand sincere by your words
how sincere can the people be?
     – Tao Te Ching, 17

     Remember Dongzhou.