China Leads Way on Global Free-For-All

Recent days have seen sharp new evidence of a recurring theme in China's rise -- the comfort it's providing to those who reject the notion of universal values. That is, if Beijing doesn't have to observe the popular electoral will or decriminalize political expression, why must anyone else? This is a pronounced knock-on phenomenon in petrostates: Not that Vladimir Putin particularly cares about comfort, but on New Year's Eve, Russian police arrested about 100 activists protesting a judge's addition of six years to the prison term of his political foil, oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Another China neighbor, Kazakhstan, which has spent years burnishing its democratic credentials in order to be elected chair of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, closed out its leadership year by acting to dispense with the next two presidential elections, Joanna Lillis reports at EurasiaNet. As for China itself, Beijing announced a further squeeze of rival high-tech energy and electronic product-makers such as Japan and South Korea by reducing the export of essential rare-earth minerals.