Roland Boer's Blog, page 36

Kim Jong-Un’s new year address

This one is a beauty and worthy of note. In his new year address (for Juche year 107), Kim Jong-Un deployed the standard genre of communist speeches. It focuses on achievements in the past year, the international situation, problems that need to be addressed and the workers’ party. The section of most interest to observers is the following:

My New Year greetings go also to the compatriots in the south and abroad who are fighting for the reunification of the country and to the progressive peop...

How much is a DPRK ‘defector’ paid by South Korea and the USA?

In March, 2017, the South Korean ‘Ministry of Unification’ announced that it would increased the amount of ‘reward’ for a ‘defector’ from the DPRK. This is for ‘people who provide intelligence and knowledge that can enhance South Korea’s security’. The amount: they can be given up to one billion won, or USD $860,000, as well as allowances and living costs.

You can imagine how reliable such information would be.

In fact, the business of relying on émigré ‘testimony’ is in full swing, with book...

Text: Friend or Foe? The role of criticism in China

The following is the text of the preceding video:

A central aspect of democratic practices in whatever type of democracy we are thinking about is the role of criticism. How does criticism work in the Chinese situation of socialist democracy? A common international perception of China is that nearly all criticism is simply squashed down; it is censored and you cannot engage with it. This is actually not the case.

Criticism works in a number of ways in a Chinese situation. First of all, there i...

Friend or foe? The role of criticism in China

A snippet from last year’s MOOC, ‘From Mao to Now: On Chinese Marxism’.

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Back to the roots: rural Red Army schools and training centres

Two other aspects of the rural revitalisation under way in China: Red Army primary schools and rural revolutionary centres. Over the last ten years, more than 200 primary schools have been established in rural areas to specialise in teaching children about China’s revolutionary spirit and history – alongside regular education. In the enmeshed socialist market economy of China, much of the funding for the schools comes from donors, especially families with a history in the Red Army.

Further, t...

Australia: least friendly country for Chinese in 2017

A dubious achievement at the close of 2017: Australia was voted the least friendly country for Chinese in 2017. In an online poll, out of 14,667 respondents, 8,751 listed Australia as the least friendly, or 59.6%.

Why? Treachery or betrayal was cited as the main reason. On the one hand, bilateral ties have increased, the largest number of tourists in Australia come from China, tens of thousands of students study and work here. China is Australia’s largest trading partner, ensuring that Austra...

Karl Barth on Stalin

The socialism of Karl Barth – the greatest theologian of the twentieth century – is reasonably well-known, but for many the following observation is a step too far:

It would be quite absurd to mention in the same breath the philosophy of Marxism and the “ideology” of the Third Reich, to mention a man of the stature of Joseph Stalin in the same breath as such charlatans as Hitler, Göring, Hess, Goebbels, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Streicher, etc. What has been tackled in Soviet Russia – a...

Mao’s birthday: 26 December

Today, the second day of Christmas, or St Stephen’s day, or indeed ‘Boxing’ day, also happens to be Mao’s birthday. He was born on this day, 26 December, in 1893 – 124 years ago. If you are in China, it is not a bad time to visit his birthplace in Shaoshan, Hunan province.

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Christmas eve heatwave

It was a little hot yesterday on my 30 km ride to greet some new visitors from China. In fact, I have never been on a bicycle at this level of heat:

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Nice cool swim in the ocean afterwards!

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The original fake news: Tiananmen square ‘massacre’

This one was sparked by an item in the Global Times debunking a recent ‘report‘ from the former UK ambassador to China. This ambassador claims that more than 10,000 people were killed. But there is one catch: his ‘source’. It turns out to be a person who ‘was passing on information given him by a close friend who is currently a member of the State Council‘. Hmmm … anonymous third hand information is hardly reliable.

But then I went searching, since I had earlier come across a piece that syste...