WSJ.com - Tiananmen Square Now Draws Protesters With Housing IssuesBEIJING -- After paying $60,000 for her new apartment, plus another $12,000 for furniture, kitchen appliances and television sets, Liu Jing looked out the window and decided she had to take a stand.
Another skyscraper was rising that would block her view. Parking was impossible. Shops and a promised swimming pool and clubhouse for residents were nowhere in sight.
So along with several hundred of her middle-class neighbors, Liu Jing took to the streets last spring and summer. They blockaded construction sites and unfurled large banners denouncing the developer and demanding a halt to further construction.
Defying government restrictions on demonstrations, the new homeowners then piled into their cars and drove noisily through Tiananmen Square to confront Chinese government officials.
"I'd never done anything like that before," says Ms. Liu. "Owning an apartment changed me. I bought it. I must protect it."
These few paragraphs in the Wall Street Journal, perhaps anecdotal, bolster my belief that freedoms are indivisible. Once given a taste of ownership and participation in the capital markets, Chinese people would not long stand still for other repressions -- especially of the Orwellian goofishness offered by Beijing.
Actually, I'm a bit cold on the embargo anyway. Our freedom loving allies in Europe (cough, cough!) trade at will with Castro's thugs. (I'm in Dublin in a couple weeks, who needs cigars?) This pretty much cooks any efficacy of an embargo and just positions the US as a cause for the country's economic failure. (Yes, collectivism has had such a great record everywhere else!)
I have been conflicted but Liu Jing has given me hope.