Ai Weiwei: "The Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win" | TheNextWeb

It’s easy to forget that Ai Weiwei is an artist, at times. The man who is so often (and rightly) described as ‘outspoken’ and a ‘dissident’ is one of the most vocal critics of the Chinese regime, particularly on the subject of Internet censorship, to the point that it tends to overshadow his work.

Ai, who famously designed the Beijing ‘Birds Nest’ Olympic stadium, something he now regrets, discusses the Chinese government and its attitude to technology and the Web in a new op-ed published by The Guardian.

In the article, that is also available in Chinese, Ai looks at the affect that the Great Firewall censorship has had on China. An avid user of Twitter — @awiwi – he pens an argument that, in the long term, China’s can’t keep the power of the Internet at bay forever.

The government is certainly doing its best to provide that theory wrong. Its heightened efforts to quash ‘harmful information online’ have seen it implement a identification verification policy for microblogs (albeit loosely so far) and make arrests, close websites and restrict Twitter-like services following excessive political speculation last month.

“[China] blocks major internet platforms – such as Twitter and Facebook – because it is afraid of free discussion,” Ai says. “And it deletes information. The government computer has one button: delete.”

Ai compares China’s Web effort to the construction of a dam:

China may seem quite successful in its controls, but it has only raised the water level. It’s like building a dam: it thinks there is more water so it will build it higher. But every drop of water is still in there. It doesn’t understand how to let the pressure out. It builds up a way to maintain control and push the problem to the next generation.

Ultimately, he believes, this approach will see the Internet and freedom “win” in the communist country:

It still hasn’t come to the moment that [the regime] will collapse. That makes a lot of other states admire its technology and methods. But in the long run, its leaders must understand it’s not possible for them to control the internet unless they shut it off – and they can’t live with the consequences of that. The internet is uncontrollable. And if the internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that.

The over-arching effect of China’s Internet freedom, Ai says, impacts on more than just civil liberties, it also blocks creativity, leaving China “far behind” other nations, he says.

For example, while those in the US discuss the (unlikely) possibility that Apple might bring its operation and manufacturing plants to the US, China’s dream is for the design of the device, and others like it, to come from within the Asian country.

Ai believes that the flagship Apple smartphone is  ”an understanding of human nature” and therefore it cannot be conceived from within China, he argues:

If a person has never had the right to choose their information, freely associate with any kind of ideology, and develop an individual character with some passion and imagination – how can they become creative?

Ai is unique in not being afraid to criticise, and be seen criticising, China. Consequently, his vocal comments have seen him handed a series of stiff punishments from authorities.

At its worst, he was detained for 81 days last year after a series of comments, released after apparently confessing his crimes. Though initially forbidden to return to social media, Ai quickly returned to his regular diet of Twitter and its Chinese equivalent Sina Weibo.

Last year he was hit by a massive $2 million tax bill but his supports used social media to rally round and collect donations to help pay it.

His latest scuffle with authorities saw the state order him to switch off a series of surveillance cameras that the artist had set up across his home. Ai had made the feed freely available online from April 2 to mark a year since his detention.

It remains to be seen how his latest article will be received by authorities in China and whether there will be further punishment dealt out to Ai Weiwei for his criticisms.

The full opinion article is most definitely worth reading, you can find it here.

via thenextweb.com

Very interesting perspective on the current state and future of Internet freedom in China.

Ai Weiwei’s taxing conundrum | The World | International affairs blog from the FT – FT.com

The Chinese are voting again. Having lost their chance to determine the outcome of Happy Girls, an audience-participation talent show that has mysteriously vanished from next year’s schedules, they are voting instead for Ai Weiwei, the artist and thorn in Beijing’s side.

Mr Ai was recently slapped with a tax bill of $2.4m, a financial summons that followed several months’ imprisonment earlier this year. But Chinese people in their thousands are offering to help the controversial artist pay. The BBC reports that, according to Liu Yanping, a volunteer at the artist’s studio in Beijing, nearly 20,000 people have donated a total of $790,000, and counting.

Most have done so by electronic transfer. Some – presumably technophobes – have simply lobbed money over the wall and into the artist’s compound. A few notes, folded into paper planes, have sailed over the wall too.

Last week, Mr Ai, whose release from prison was conditional on his not talking to the press, told the FT: “When Chinese people have no other way to express themselves, this is the way they feel they can vote to express their dissatisfaction.” That probably constituted talking to the press. In fact, he has done several recent interviews in defiance of the ban.

Whether Mr Ai will have the last laugh is not yet clear. The Global Times, an English-language tabloid owned by the People’s Daily, wrote: “This event has been interpreted by some foreign media as the Chinese people donating to Ai’s cause. The action has also been regarded as a special protest by the artist.” But it cautioned: “Since he’s borrowing from the public…. some experts have pointed out this could be an example of illegal fundraising.”

So China’s most famous artist, known for his humorous, provocative and occasionally puzzling art, may be damned if he pays his taxes and damned if he doesn’t. Now that’s just surreal.

via blogs.ft.com

Ai Weiwei China's Best Known Artist Arrested in Beijing

via readwriteweb.com

Ai Weiwei, designer of the "Bird's Nest" Beijing's 2008 Olympic stadium, was detained today in Beijing as he attempted to board a flight to Hong Kong. His Beijing studio was also raided and his staff and family taken into custody. Ai had apparently been making plans to relocate his studio to Germany and has long experienced government pressure to silence his creative expression. I think this is a huge mistake by the Chinese government. If they want to avoid the fate of the Middle Eastern and North African governments that have seen their people rise up against autocracy they would be wise to not so blatantly harass the country's most revered artist.

Quick Notes from Beijing - James Fallows | The Atlantic

By James Fallows

Thanks very much to the latest guest team for their ongoing dispatches. Herewith, on a sanity break from other duties, some quick notes on what I first notice compared with my latest stint here last summer:

1) Pollution in Beijing itself has been as bad as the very worst I remember from the olden era. The view below (11am China time, Feb 23) has been more or less unvarying for the past four days. PM2.5 readings^[1] through that period have been steadily^[2] in the "hazardous" or "beyond index" category. I don't recall a stretch this bad, this long, before. Offered less as complaint than as reality check.

2) Prices are higher for everything, especially food. By Western standards they are of course very low. But by Western standards people's incomes are also very low. I see why there is so much talk about the disruptive effects of inflation. (Letting the RMB go up faster would help, but that's a topic for some other time.)

3) Internet blockages and social media interference seem worse than I remember experiencing between 2006 and 2009, except in the tensest Tibet-riot periods. Even VPNs^[3] sometimes don't work or are slow -- especially this past weekend when no one knew how serious the "Jasmine" demonstrations would become. To illustrate the difference this can make even if you're willing to shell out (as most Chinese citizens wouldn't be^[4]) $60 a year for a VPN to get around Great Firewall restrictions, here is a download screen showing progress on a file I was trying to save, from a server in the US:

If you can't read the small print, it's estimating 1 hour and 31 minutes to finish downloading a 34MB file. As it happened, shortly thereafter the connection improved and the file eventually loaded in "only" about eight minutes. But extrapolate that as an efficiency tax on the system as a whole. As I have mentioned many times, the whole setup here is quite an amazing combination of laissez-faire/chaos and cumbersome over-control. As many other people have mentioned, this is accompanied at the moment by a big media campaign^[5] pointing to the Middle East as an example of the kind of disorder China must avoid. The situation makes all the more startling the UN Security Council statement about Libya that China (along with other Permanent Members) approved yesterday:

>>The members of the Security Council underlined the need for the Government of Libya to respect the freedom of peaceful assembly and of expression, including freedom of the press. They called for the immediate lifting of restrictions on all forms of the media.<<

Emphasis mine, to indicate freedoms specifically not respected in China when inconvenient for the government and notably limited right at the moment. Lack of self-awareness on the government's part? Deciding that looking hypocritical was the lesser evil, versus standing alongside Qaddafi? Can't be sure.

4) Smiley curve. As mentioned in the magazine here^[6] and on this site here^[7], many "made in China" exports are actually mere repackaging of high-value components from Japan, Germany, Korea, the United States, or someplace else. China is a huge export power, but not as huge as it seems. Latest evidence in this McKinsey report^[8] (free registration required). It said that if you separate the "real" Chinese content from what is counted as total Chinese exports, exports accounted for only about 1/5th of the recent increase in China's GDP -- rather than 1/3, as most reports would suggest, or nearly 2/3rds, as reported a few years ago. China still has a big trade surplus; it still relies too much on exports for growth; its economy is still out of balance with the rest of the world's. But the picture is a little different from the way it's usually portrayed. Here's the main McKinsey chart showing export-growth as a share of Chinese GDP increase:

Back to typing, and back to this week's guests.

via theatlantic.com

China's reaction: Build a wall | The Economist

Build a wall

The Year of the Rabbit starts badly

China's reaction

Feb 3rd 2011 | BEIJING | from PRINT EDITION

THE Chinese Communist Party’s Publicity Department (or Propaganda Department, a closer rendering of the Chinese) is adept at controlling news from abroad that might inflame sentiment at home. As communism collapsed in Eastern Europe 20 years ago, it kept all but the barest news out of the domestic media, jammed foreign broadcasts and ordered vigilance over fax machines.

In response to the unrest in Egypt, the department has apparently instructed the Chinese media to use only dispatches sent by the official news agency, Xinhua, and either to bury news of events there or play up aspects that show the costs of turmoil. Reporting the travails of stranded Chinese tourists, or the government’s noble attempts to rescue them, is fine, but sympathy with the protesters is taboo. The department’s instructions to the media are, as usual, a secret, but their effect is clear.

The party has also been busy trying to control the internet. Twitter has been blocked in China since 2009, but home-grown versions are hugely popular. Anyone trying to follow postings by users with an interest in Egypt, however, might struggle. Merely searching for the word “Egypt” in Sina Weibo, one of China’s leading Twitter-like services, produces a warning that “according to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results have not been displayed”. On Baidu, a big news portal, a prominent list of “hot search terms” includes “the return of compatriots stranded in Egypt”, but nothing else.

Related topics

• China
• Egypt

Chinese news reports have briefly mentioned the disruption of internet and mobile-phone services in Egypt. They have not, however, discussed China’s pioneering use of such techniques to impede the mobilisation of crowds. Use of the internet and mobile phones for international calls and text-messaging was cut off for months in the far-western region of Xinjiang after ethnic clashes there in 2009.

On February 1st the party’s main mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, relegated Egyptian politics to five terse paragraphs on page three but published a full page of articles under the headline, “The Internet is Warming the Whole of Society”. The internet, one scholar was quoted as saying, is a “great promoter of social change”. The party knows that all too well.

from PRINT EDITION | Briefing

via economist.com

Its always interesting to watch the Chinese media react to events with significant geopolitical implications because of the overt control over the media exerted by Beijing. Revolutions rarely carry the historical significance of these past weeks events in Eygpt, and the moment has clearly not been lost on the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.

I cannot say that I totally understand why the Chinese political leaders fear such news making it into the hands and minds of the Chinese people. Its not as if the people aren't well aware that they are in control of the status quo in China, of course they understand that if they wanted a new government it would almost certainly be theirs to take. If anything, IMHO, the party is the chosen vehicle of the people as the fast means of achieving prestige and respect as a culture/civilization on the global stage.

2008 brings the reality of modern China to Western living rooms...

Image by kk+ via FlickrImage by kk+ via Flickr

For the last decade, China has been meticulously grooming its capital city, Beijing, for the curious eyes of eager Western consumers and potential business opportunities offered by the 2008 Summer Olympics. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made grand promises of wealth and universal well-being to its vast citizenry, all of which hinge upon the near flawless production of the most anticipated event in the history of the Middle Kingdom.

Can the government contain the political powder-keg over which it rules? Will the world accept a Chinese superpower under Communist rule? History is hanging in the balance and nobody (least of all the CCP) knows what to expect in 2008, but I certainly look forward to sharing my thoughts on how America, and the West generally, should respond to the emergence of a more powerful and confident Chinese people.

I also welcome the submissions of papers, presentations, essays or videos anyone would like to contribute. Below I have embedded a great presentation compiled by a dear friend of mine, Victor Lang, who is a native of Hong Kong. Victor and I share many similar interests, such as China-Africa relations, international perception of Chinese politics, and domestic censorship by the CCP and corporations it intimidates to comply with their ridiculous media policies.

Happy New Year to all China Wakes readers and a toast to what will hopefully be remembered as the greatest year in the history of mankind's largest and oldest civilization.

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Americans are in no position to judge Chinese human rights...

Olympics Highlight Human Rights in China - washingtonpost.com

I used to think that I was a moral absolutist, and I would regularly dismiss my friends when they would attempt to justify something I considered "inhumane" as the position of a moral relativist, who sees fundamental differences in the way one human-being values the life of another based on cultural differences. It did not take long after I became interested in China for me to abandon my preconceived notions, which were likely the by-product of nearly two decades attending Catholic schools, and an attempt to more fully understand why it is that human life is not valued equally by all, or more importantly, why it cannot be such.

I always knew China was huge, but it never registered with me exactly how huge until I began studying the Chinese Communist Revolution and the major social movements subsequently led by Mao Zedong in an effort to "purge" his country of right-wing dissidents that may eventually pose a threat to the Communist Party's universal authority. The two largest massacres of human life in the 20th century were at the hands of Communist Chinese cadre, some of whom reverted to truly barbaric practices like cannibalism at the instigation of local and national party leaders. Literally tens-of-millions of Chinese citizens were murdered piecemeal during the "Long March" and "Cultural Revolution", yet still the country's population multiplied exponentially during the baby boom era. Growth was so amazing and untenable that the Party was forced to institute drastic population control laws, which we know as the "One Child Policy". Every living Chinese citizen has spent most, if not all, of their life in a fractured society built according to a strict social plan that harshly punished even the slightest deviation.



It is through the lens of this grossly incomplete history of 20th century Chinese growth and development that the West has chosen to judge the ethical standards of a civilization that makes up one-fifth of the worlds population, and has been wholly isolated from the world community until the last thirty years because of internal strife and political instability. I would never pretend that these are ideal circumstances from a Western perspective, or that these tragedies were unavoidable, but I believe it is essential that we not hold the common Chinese citizen responsible for the sins of paranoid men now but a memory. We must recognize that the Chinese people are aware of the differences between our cultures, and are ashamed of the history that we consider to be barbaric.



I have friends from China who comment to me often on how compassionate American culture is compared to their own. They can hardly believe it when they turn on the news to see 30 minutes of coverage on the investigation into the disappearance of one person, and they comment often on the propensity of Chinese media to completely ignore incidents such as floods, and poisonings of water reserves that literally kill whole towns of people in rural provinces.



I had a very difficult time trying to understand what the fundamental difference between the two civilizations that creates this culture of apathy on matters that we in America mourn daily as a nation. The value of each individual life in the US is truly held sacred by the media, which is largely due to the fact that these stories are the driving force behind stronger ratings because of the emotional response they elicit from viewers. Chinese media are much more interested in telling stories about great economic growth and massive engineering projects instead of the more emotionally charged stories, both because they cast the government in the most favorable light possible, and because this is what draws the attention and fascination of the average Chinese citizen.



You may be asking yourself, what is the underlying cause of this cultural divide? After much thought and reflection, I have reached two conclusions. First, Chinese society is essentially atheist, the antithesis of traditional American society, which has largely evolved from small communities built around the local church. Those who are deeply religious in China are absolutely in the minority, and their activities are viewed with great suspicion by the political classes of society because of the role religion has played historically in revolutionary political movements around the world. Secondly, the collective pride of Chinese society and the feelings of inferiority and lack of appreciation they have received from the more "developed" societies of the world, have created within the greater society a more focused and goal oriented vision of where their country is going and how progress toward that end earns them the respect they deserve around the world.



Though this narrow-minded, and less compassionate view on the world is largely the result of government suppression of dissent and censorship of news that serves as a distraction from Party plan, we should not be so jingoistic as to assume that we have any right or reason to pass judgment on a society that we should not even claim to understand. 1.5 billion human-beings is a staggering thought, and such circumstances are truly unprecedented in the history of nation-states.



To judge the undoubtedly complex and morally taxing decisions of the Communist Party Officials according to moral absolutes that we have concluded to be non-negotiable measures of social progress and worthiness of full diplomatic and economic recognition, is to me one of the most ignorant distortions of 21st century realities and further evidence of the poisonous opportunistic political culture that currently reigns in Washington. We cannot presume to understand the responsibility facing the Chinese Communist Party, and it is highly ignorant and dangerously presumptuous to arbitrarily decide that we can better judge the method of governance that is best for a country that in no way, demographically or ethically, resembles our own.



Continuing the movement to boycott the Beijing Olympics next summer is one of the most disturbing examples of political opportunism, worse than most because it is based on an assumption of clearly non-existent moral absolutisms. The only way to effect the social ethos of Chinese, or any other civilization, is to earn both their trust and respect. The more American politicians deride the "values" of our competitors, the greater the chances that mutual prosperity will fall victim to cultural resentment and unhealthy competition between the two greatest and most dynamic societies the world has ever known.



This was written in a stream of consciousness, so it may be fractured and incoherent. I would appreciate any comments that you may have so I can revise and clarify my thought. Thanks.

Tags: Beijing Olympics, Olympic Boycott, CCP, Chinese Civilization, Moral Relativism, Moral Absolutism

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Great web tool for understanding censorship in China...

Great Firewall of China

I was very intrigued to stumble upon this web service which offers bloggers and web developers a tool for determining if their site's url is blocked by the censors employed by the Chinese Communist Party in an effort to control the information made available to its country's citizens via the internet. I have two primary blogs on which I write frequently about issues of international politics, economics and globalization more generally. This is one of those blogs, and as you can see, it is entirely devoted to my thought and evaluation of all things Chinese.



Naturally, I take great pleasure in receiving feedback from similarly thoughtful and curious Chinese who are moved one way or the other by things that I have written about their country, culture and future as a global superpower. I use Google Analytics to track the visitors to this blog, and one of the features of Google's service is a geographical representation of visitors. I am always excited to see a dot super-imposed over Beijing, or Shanghai, which I have noticed on several occasions on both of my blogs, and I just assumed they represented curious young students of the world like myself. However, when I typed my web addresses into The Great Firewall of China, I was shocked and disappointed to find out that my pages are in fact censored from web searches in China.



I guess that the visits I have received from China must have been individuals working for the state's massive internet censoring armies, which have been rumored to number in the tens of thousands. I cannot imagine what about my opinions are seen to be threatening, or worth censoring, with perhaps the previous criticism I have leveled against these very paranoid and unnecessary actions of the the CCP to retain their fleeting control over a society that deserves the right to express itself freely. Otherwise, I think that I am one of the most aggressively pro-Chinese conservative American bloggers on the internet, and it is too bad that my ideas aren't even available for consumption where they would be most appreciated. I hope there will be a day when the Chinese people are truly brought into the global community and allowed to flourish in the arena of free and open thought.

Tags: China, Internet Censorship, Great Firewall of China, Chinese Communist Party

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EU takes proper stand against Chinese censorship

Image by MrGluSniffer via Flickr

Bloomberg.com: EU Says It Opposes Chinese Restriction on Foreign News Agencies

It has been mere hours since my last posting, in which I make clear my fealings about the newly issued rules for foreign media outlets operating in China, and already I am impressed by the reaction of the Europeans. Can't say that I often agree with the EU, but on this issue all citizens who live in societies free of government censorship should be deeply disturbed by such measures.

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China's Draconian Media Policies Get Worse

Image via WikipediaFOXNews.com - China Tightens Controls on Foreign Media - Asia

Related Google News Links

The state-owned media outlet Xinhua Press today issued strict restrictions on the content distributed by foreign media on the mainland. Bloomberg summed up the scope of the new rules as follows,

Foreign news agencies are subject to approval by Xinhua and may face warnings, demands for rectification, suspension or cancellation of their qualifications to release information for breaching the rules, the statement said. 

Under the rules, foreign agencies must not release information that undermines China's national unity, sovereignty or territorial integrity; endangers China's national security, reputation and interests; or violates China's religious policies or preaches ``evil cults or superstition.'' 

The regulations also ban incitement of hatred or discrimination among ethnic groups, spreading false information, disrupting China's economic and social order, or undermining China's ``social ethics'' or cultural traditions.

Bloomberg LP, Reuters Plc and Dow Jones & Co. are among overseas companies that sell news and information to subscribers in China. Xinhua, while acting as the industry regulator, also competes with foreign news agencies to sell information.

Effectively, Beijing is drawing a line in the sand and the west is simply expected to respect China's sovereignty and stay on the other side. Unfortunately, the Chinese people have decided to go along with its government's overt attempts to drastically limit their access to information. This fact simply astonishes me, especially considering the countries growing exposure to the west and dependence on foreign markets to feed their industrialization. One would think that businesses and individuals in less accessible Chinese villages would demand access to information as the internet becomes more widely available. This could be an attempt by the communist government to institute these rules early, before the entire Chinese internet market becomes too accustomed to certain media outlets, but how can they realistically expect foreign media conglomerates not to declare all out war on the government. I think such careless decisions by the current leadership could prove disastrous in the long term, but these rules aren't set in stone and a little pressure from the west now could avert a crisis situation.

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Chinese Expand Internet Censorship- Set Sights on Google Earth

Image via CrunchBaseMapping China and the law

I found this posting from the Ogle Earth weblog, a Google Earth development community, particularly interesting. I am not surprised that the CCP has grown wary of companies such as Google, whose stated goal is to undermine suppression of individual freedom, and I used to believe that Google would never succumb to the pressures that be when pressed about their sensitive technologies. However, I have been very disappointed in the company since they decided to comply with Chinese censorship guidelines for their blogs and search results. 

For the companies executives and founders to seriously claim that they are "doing no evil" by removing any reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre from their search results, they must not have meant it when they made it their companies mission in the first place. I still hold out hope that they will soon do the right thing and refuse to self-censor their content. Who cares, the government censors still control the network, so they can just filter anything they want themselves, there is no reason to make it any easier for them. Some estimates place the number of government employed internet censors at roughly 30,000, giving them a more than adequate cyber-Gestapo to make sure the government doesn't look too bad. 

I have no doubt that any attempt to restrict satellite imagery of their territory would be quickly met with protest and even temporary shutdown from Google's Chinese operation, but it should not take such a drastic event for the greatest company in the history of the world (at least as far as I am concerned) to do the right thing.

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Report: Legislation Could Stop Chinese Censorship - CIO News Alerts - Blog - CIO

Report: Legislation Could Stop Chinese Censorship - CIO News Alerts - Blog - CIO

I think the ideas put forth in this post on CIO magazine's blog, which entertain the possibility of legislation resticting US companies from self-censoring their content on their foreign based services, are very intriguing (as well as consistent with the principles of our foreign policy since the end of WWII- anti-Communist). However, I doubt Microsoft and Google are going to be thrilled about the possibility of being forced to shut down their entire Chinese operation. Can these companies, and the US market withstand the impact of a confrontation between Capitol Hill and Wall Street over the fate of the Chinese nation? Can the Chinese government justify its suppression of the freedom of information when the issue comes before the international media? There are hundreds, maybe thousands of possible outcomes of such a bold policy initiative in Washington- but I have to admit, there are a great many that could further the revolutionary objectives of true democrats around the world, all of whom see a bright future for a China freed of the crimson shroud cast by its draconian government. The Chinese are excused to govern their country as they wish, but the free world must stay united in the pursuit of a world united in adherence to the progression of democratic sovereignty in every country in the world. To fail to do so, would be a failure to safegaurd the legitimacy of our philosophy of government as it meets its most formidable foe since the annialation of the fascists in WWII.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web users urged on China policy

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web users urged on China policy

There is nothing that I find more abhorrent in the prevailing ethical standards of corporate American than their compliance with internet and media censors around the world. They seem to have no understanding of how valuable their services are to the people of the world, who if denied access to these services would without question demand a change in government policy. Suppose Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others were to all say that is it, we are closing shop until we are allowed to do our job, which is proliferating the world's information to every human being on the planet. This is a force of globalization and technological modernization that no government should be permitted to resist. How would the Chinese government explain why the companies closed? How long would it take for the instinctively curious and ambitious Chinese populous to demand the government reinstate the companies free of censorship? I suspect the Communists are unwilling to risk their government over censorship of a world they can no longer deprive their citizens from exploring. It is the people's decision whether or not they choose to embrace western values and liberal political ideas, the party should fundamentally understand that they must concede this soon before they are subverted by a sudden embarrassment like the one I just articulated and lose their legitimacy. It has happened to every Chinese government in the last 1000 years, and if the historic success rate of Communism is any indication this long streak of total collapse is bound to continue.