Word: reformer
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...many rights advocates, it has become increasingly clear in recent months that those reforms are still a long ways off. "It used to be the case that whatever the negative developments and systematic smothering of dissent, there were always some signs of hope and potential advances on other fronts," says Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher with the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "But recently the good news has been very few and far between. There has been a total lack of progress on legal reform, the media, rural reform, labor. These issues were very much carrying forward hope...
...sensitive anniversaries that fall this year - including the 20th anniversary of the crushing of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic - will likely contribute to the chill. Even political jockeying at the Party's top levels is stifling openings for reform, with leaders reluctant to make any bold move that might jeopardize the delicate equilibrium in a government essentially run by collective decision-making...
...Such absurdities underline the extent to which the government is now willing to go to preserve a "harmonious society," in President Hu Jintao's oft quoted catchphrase. Whereas previous leaders like Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin have taken risky steps such as opening the country to economic reform and joining the World Trade Organization, the administration of President Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao seems "paralyzed by fear of the downside," as Bequelin of Human Rights Watch puts it. He says the state's level of control has always oscillated, but with a long period of heavy repression having already past...
That should grease the skids for President Obama's visit to Mexico on April 16, after which he will attend the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Only time will tell if the U.S. gesture can prod Mexico to take its police-reform obligations more seriously. (See pictures of crime-fighting in Mexico City...
...year-old offensive against the cartels, which has had to rely on the Mexican military, given the corruption and incompetence of most Mexican police forces. Seven thousand troops now patrol Juárez. The Merida Initiative does steer resources to Mexico's fledgling police- and judicial-reform efforts, including sorely needed police retraining, but critics say it should do more in that area, since professionalized cops are the long-term solution to the crisis. Then again, that responsibility is Mexico City's, not Washington's. Clinton and Obama can now go south of the border and say the gringos have...