Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting as many as 20 demonstrators and were searching for the protest organizers, according to villagers and a newspaper report Saturday.
What seems most significant is that this doesn't appear to be an accident. Instead of pulling back to consider their horrible error, the Chinese government is locking down the village and pursuing the protesters, trying to nail the organizers.
Amnesty International is mildly upset at Peking's method of dispute resolution, but I'm sure they won't let this cut into their staff work on investigating American failure to refill the rice pilaf bowls at Gitmo. One must have priorities.
On a personal note, with a reader in Shezhen in this province who has regularly machine translated my blog, this hits home a little more. While I remain convinced that we must resist Peking's attempts to confront us, I do retain some hope that the Chinese people will be our friends one day. Once we were allies, as the Flying Tigers represented a real commitment of Americans to defend China before we entered World War II.
How long can the Chinese government get away with this behavior?
UPDATE: Via Instapundit, lots of links to the situation. Apparently, seventy dead civilians and armor and machine guns posted in the village. With tanks involved, I assume this is the PLA and not the People's Armed Police. This would indicate a level of seriousness I did not suspect at first.
