Tyranny is fueling the coronavirus pandemic

On the other side of the world, one of the worst disease outbreaks in modern history is simmering. As of Friday, what is being called "coronavirus" (this is actually a name for a family of viruses including the common cold; medical experts are calling the actual virus in question COVID-19) had supposedly infected 75,567 people in China and killed 2,239 of them. Outside China, another 1,152 cases had been reported in 26 other countries, causing eight deaths, including recent outbreaks in South Korea and Iran. The director general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Friday: "Our window of opportunity [to stop the outbreak] is narrowing."

It remains to be seen whether China and other countries will be able to control the outbreak. But one thing is clear: Authoritarian political systems are lousy at dealing with disease pandemics. We see this in China today and in the United States as well.

COVID-19 originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and as Laurie Garrett writes in Foreign Policy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) horribly botched its initial response to the coronavirus outbreak: "China now faces international vilification and potential domestic unrest as it blunders through continued cover-ups, lies, and repression that have already failed to stop the virus and may well be fanning the flames of its spread."

One primary reason the Chinese government failed to contain the outbreak is because corruption and incompetence are inherent features of tyrannical rule. The CCP can't point to democratic elections to obtain the consent of the governed, so they instead rely on techniques like a massive patronage machine to cultivate loyalty. Political reliability is a major prerequisite for filling any of the millions of positions in the vast Chinese bureaucracy, which tends to inculcate a culture of blind order-following, telling one's superiors what they want to hear, and leveraging one's position for personal advantage.

At the same time, the CCP, like any tyranny, uses violent political repression to frighten the populace against challenging its rule. Both freedom of speech and freedom of the press are sharply restricted there — and anyone perceived as a threat to CCP rule gets a treatment straight out of 1984. There are reportedly about a million Uighur Muslims in horrific re-education camps in western China — essentially, the CCP is attempting to commit cultural genocide in a fit of paranoia.

The first person to call attention to the COVID-19 outbreak was a doctor named Li Wenliang, who told colleagues via social media that it looked like a SARS outbreak. This is the kind of honest competence that is absolutely vital in any rapid disease response, but tyrannies often try to suppress bad news rather than deal with the problem. So as Garrett writes, "for the so-called crime of rumormongering, Li and seven other physicians were brought before China's security police and compelled to sign a document admitting to 'spreading lies.'"

For the critical first few weeks, when aggressive quarantine measures might have stopped the virus in its tracks, the Chinese state first insisted there was no new virus, then that they had this situation well in hand — all while it continued to spread. When the epidemic became undeniable, the CCP looked like the liars they were, sowing panic as Chinese citizens wondered how bad it really was. When Li caught the virus and died on Feb. 6, heroically trying to raise the alarm to the end, flames of distrust and anger were fanned higher still — and foreign governments reasonably began to suspect they could not trust the numbers coming out of China.

Trust is a vital component of any efficient disease response effort. The population must believe that the government is not lying about what is happening, and that its response measures are based on science and reason — especially so people do not panic and try to flee, possibly spreading disease further by accident. The CCP has proved beyond any question it is not trustworthy, and is relying on yet more brutal repression, locking down entire cities and herding thousands into poorly-equipped quarantine facilities. So far these efforts have not successfully curtailed the virus' spread.

Americans should not take much comfort in our somewhat-less authoritarian system. The Trump regime's style of rule bears all the marks of typical tyrannical rule — the bureaucracy stacked with corrupt idiot stooges, the legal system corrupted to protect the president and his cronies from facing criminal charges, and inconvenient information denied by a howling propaganda apparatus.

As Michael Lewis writes in his book The Fifth Risk, the entire federal bureaucracy has been rotting under Trump rule, as he neither knows nor cares to take the most basic actions to keep it functioning. Most of the people running what remains of the American state are either committed ideologues (like the virulent racist Stephen Miller), interested parties, or career civil servants operating without official leadership. Only 35 percent of the key positions in the Department of Homeland Security that require Senate confirmation are currently filled. The department does not even have a nominee for secretary, deputy secretary, or general counsel. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has no nominee for deputy administrator or deputy administrator for resilience.

As Garrett writes in another article, "In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government's entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure." As a result, Trump's COVID-19 response has been flailing and helpless. "In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion," she writes. Recently The Washington Post reported experts at the Centers for Disease Control said 14 infected Americans who caught the virus on a cruise ship should stay in Japan for the moment rather than fly on a plane with hundreds of others and risk spreading it further. But the Trump administration higher-ups overruled the CDC, and all the passengers came back to California and Texas — the infected individuals separated behind plastic screening, but still posing an unknown risk.

Reactionaries often argue that ruthless authoritarian rule is more efficient than the democratic sort. But the world is getting a brutal lesson in how false that is. It was false in fascist Italy and Germany — the Nazi state was a chaotic disaster of corruption and incompetence — and it's false today. There is no substitute for democratic legitimacy and the patient, dull work of building and maintaining a competent, honest bureaucracy. The tyrannical idiocy of Donald Trump and China's communist dictatorship may get millions of people killed.

China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia

The mighty Chinese juggernaut has been humbled this week, apparently by a species-hopping bat virus. While Chinese authorities struggle to control the epidemic and restart their economy, a world that has grown accustomed to contemplating China’s inexorable rise was reminded that nothing, not even Beijing’s power, can be taken for granted.

We do not know how dangerous the new coronavirus will be. There are signs that Chinese authorities are still trying to conceal the true scale of the problem, but at this point the virus appears to be more contagious but considerably less deadly than the pathogens behind diseases such as Ebola or SARS—though some experts say SARS and coronavirus are about equally contagious.

China’s initial response to the crisis was less than impressive. The Wuhan government was secretive and self-serving; national authorities responded vigorously but, it currently appears, ineffectively. China’s cities and factories are shutting down; the virus continues to spread. We can hope that authorities succeed in containing the epidemic and treating its victims, but the performance to date has shaken confidence in the Chinese Communist Party at home and abroad. Complaints in Beijing about the U.S. refusing entry to noncitizens who recently spent time in China cannot hide the reality that the decisions that allowed the epidemic to spread as far and as fast as it did were all made in Wuhan and Beijing.

The likeliest economic consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, forecasters expect, will be a short and sharp fall in Chinese economic growth rates during the first quarter, recovering as the disease fades. The most important longer-term outcome would appear to be a strengthening of a trend for global companies to “de-Sinicize” their supply chains. Add the continuing public health worries to the threat of new trade wars, and supply-chain diversification begins to look prudent.

Events like the coronavirus epidemic, and its predecessors—such as SARS, Ebola and MERS—test our systems and force us to think about the unthinkable. If there were a disease as deadly as Ebola and as fast-spreading as coronavirus, how should the U.S. respond? What national and international systems need to be in place to minimize the chance of catastrophe on this scale?

Epidemics also lead us to think about geopolitical and economic hypotheticals. We have seen financial markets shudder and commodity prices fall in the face of what hopefully will be a short-lived disturbance in China’s economic growth. What would happen if—perhaps in response to an epidemic, but more likely following a massive financial collapse—China’s economy were to suffer a long period of even slower growth? What would be the impact of such developments on China’s political stability, on its attitude toward the rest of the world, and to the global balance of power?

China’s financial markets are probably more dangerous in the long run than China’s wildlife markets. Given the accumulated costs of decades of state-driven lending, massive malfeasance by local officials in cahoots with local banks, a towering property bubble, and vast industrial overcapacity, China is as ripe as a country can be for a massive economic correction. Even a small initial shock could lead to a massive bonfire of the vanities as all the false values, inflated expectations and misallocated assets implode. If that comes, it is far from clear that China’s regulators and decision makers have the technical skills or the political authority to minimize the damage—especially since that would involve enormous losses to the wealth of the politically connected.

We cannot know when or even if a catastrophe of this scale will take place, but students of geopolitics and international affairs—not to mention business leaders and investors—need to bear in mind that China’s power, impressive as it is, remains brittle. A deadlier virus or a financial-market contagion could transform China’s economic and political outlook at any time.

Many now fear the coronavirus will become a global pandemic. The consequences of a Chinese economic meltdown would travel with the same sweeping inexorability. Commodity prices around the world would slump, supply chains would break down, and few financial institutions anywhere could escape the knock-on consequences. Recovery in China and elsewhere could be slow, and the social and political effects could be dramatic.

If Beijing’s geopolitical footprint shrank as a result, the global consequences might also be surprising. Some would expect a return of unipolarity if the only possible great-power rival to the U.S. were to withdraw from the game. Yet in the world of American politics, isolation rather than engagement might surge to the fore. If the China challenge fades, many Americans are likely to assume that the U.S. can safely reduce its global commitments.

So far, the 21st century has been an age of black swans. From 9/11 to President Trump’s election and Brexit, low-probability, high-impact events have reshaped the world order. That age isn’t over, and of the black swans still to arrive, the coronavirus epidemic is unlikely to be the last to materialize in China.

Coronavirus Proves One Thing: China's Rise Is Built on Quicksand

"We may not build hospitals in 10 days with forced labor, but we are better able to create conditions where we don’t have to."

Despite China’s incredible economic success as of late, it’s important to remember that it is still fundamentally a communist country. Recent events have been a stern reminder.

Freedom can be messy, but it’s nothing like the mess an authoritarian regime creates when it fears losing power. The disturbing outbreak of the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China and the communist government’s response to it should be a reminder of the consequence of a system based on state control, without rule by the people and a vibrant civil society. Many are impressed by the fact that China built a 1,000-bed hospital in 10 days—by employing about 7,000 people who worked around the clock.

However impressive that feat might be, it’s important to consider how dangerous the virus has become and the lack of communication and coordination that could have taken place to avoid having to take such extreme measures.

The virus initially broke out on Dec. 8 in China’s Wuhan province. Instead of immediately informing the public and bringing awareness to a potential outbreak of a highly contagious disease, the local governmental authorities waited three weeks to inform residents.

The Chinese government also actively attempted to suppress information about the outbreak as it escalated sharply.

“That’s clearly unacceptable, especially in light of the SARS experience, when a Chinese cover-up also occurred, and in light of the high domestic and international travel rates of the Chinese people today,” wrote Peter Brookes, a senior fellow for national security affairs at The Heritage Foundation. “To minimize the spread of any potential epidemic, a host country must not only respond rapidly, but provide full transparency to advise not only its own citizenry, but the international community as well.”

While these actions (or inactions), so far at least, have mostly affected the people of China alone, a raging pandemic could have global consequences.

A century ago, a flu epidemic killed more people than died on all the battlefields of World War I combined. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that some estimates suggest about one-third of the entire world population was infected at some point.

We may be better at treating and containing disease these days, but this is still serious stuff. The Chinese government in Beijing was clearly more focused on saving face for the regime than efforts to successfully contain the virus. Even now, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening in China as the economy is being roiled by shutdowns and infection and death rate numbers seem untrustworthy.

That’s not to mention the smattering of images and videos coming out of the country, some of which may be fake or misinformation, but it’s hard to trust any official pronouncements, given Beijing’s clear attempts to suppress news from shining a light on the situation.

It’s notable—given China’s clear economic advancements of the past few decades, thanks to its abandoning communist economic theories—that the regime has not let go of its absolute power over society.

China is still communist, and communism, as it’s practiced in the real world, is about absolute control. If anything, the economic advancements are now working alongside an authoritarian retrenchment as President Xi Jinping seizes more power and the Chinese Communist Party uses its increased technological prowess to create more tools for tyranny.

So, while China has more economic and technological ability to treat a disease, it’s more tightly controlled system makes Chinese society less able to counter a controllable outbreak. That factor distinguishes Chinese society under communism from the American system, in which free speech is a protected right and a vibrant civil society allows information to spread quickly. 

“The government has tightened its grip on the internet, the media, and civil society. It has deeper pockets and a greater ability to control the flow of information across the country,” wrote Li Yuan in The New York Times, comparing China of today to how it was during the SARS outbreak. “As a result, many of the media outlets, advocacy groups, activists and others who held the government accountable in 2003 have been silenced or sidelined.”

We may not build hospitals in 10 days with forced labor, but we are better able to create conditions where we don’t have to.

As with the repression of likely millions of Muslim Uighurs and the crackdown on Hong Kong protesters, the coronavirus outbreak is a reminder—especially for those around the globe who are indifferent to the threat of China—of just how different a free society is from the Chinese communist one.

Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. He is also the author of the new book, "The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past."

ABCs of trade

The annual 2019 trade figures for the United States came out last week, heralding some encouraging news. America’s enormous international trade deficit actually declined slightly from 2018. This was the first decrease in six years, with the deficit in goods and services dropping 1.7%, to $616.8 billion.

Better yet, America’s bilateral trade deficit with China fell for the first time in four years, dropping a hefty 17.6%, to $345.6 billion.

These are promising numbers and they show that tariffs on Chinese products are successfully moving the needle on U.S. trade flows. In fact, America’s 2019 imports from China actually fell $87.4 billion from the all-time high set in 2018.

At the same time, America’s trade deficits with other competitors did increase in 2019. The U.S. goods deficit with the EU rose 5.4%. The deficit with Mexico climbed 26.2%. And the deficit with Canada increased 41.9%.

Overvalued dollar

Companies like mine — that manufacture goods in America’s industrial heartland—would like to see these trade deficits begin to decline as well. But that will require more than just tariff action, since America’s overvalued dollar BUXX, +0.04%   continues to make U.S. exports more expensive overseas.

Clearly, though, economists were wrong in predicting that tariffs would kill global trade, increase inflation, or cause a recession. My company, which competes directly with China in fabricated metal parts and assemblies, has seen firsthand that the tariffs are helping domestic industry.

There are two key justifications for the tariffs.

First, they’re providing relief for domestic companies like mine that have suffered from subsidized import competition. America’s steel companies are currently investing some $13 billion in new steelmaking across the nation. That investment is creating higher-paying jobs in rural areas.

Advanced industries are seeing benefits as well. Roughly a dozen solar manufacturers are now investing in U.S.-based production. First Solar, FSLR, +1.19%   for example, has announced a $1 billion facility in Ohio that’s expected to create 500 jobs.

Geopolitical strategy

Second, the tariffs underpin an important geopolitical strategy. Now that Beijing has become a major strategic competitor—and is making a bid for global hegemony—the tariffs can help to reduce the trade profit that keeps driving China’s rise.

With the tariffs underway, the United States should pursue an “ABC” strategy: “Anywhere But China.” The tariffs are already helping to drive production out of China and into other countries. That’s a good thing. But in order to constrain China’s rise, the United States should continue to encourage manufacturing to move away from mainland China.

Since 2001, the United States has suffered trillions of dollars in cumulative trade debt with Beijing. That has cost an estimated 3.7 million U.S. jobs and reduced the quality of employment in America’s workforce.

At the same time, the United States has become progressively more reliant on China for prescription drugs, key industrial metals, and military hardware. And Chinese companies brazenly hack U.S. steel companies and wind turbine manufacturers while Chinese agents steal America’s research in biomedical science, wireless technology, and aerospace engineering.

Predatory trade

China happily uses this predatory trade to fund a brutal regime that persecutes religious and ethnic minorities. It also uses forced labor to boost manufacturing output. It rarely enforces weak labor standards. And lax environmental regulations have allowed Chinese factories to continue releasing ozone-depleting carbon tetrachloride into the atmosphere, in violation of international agreement.

In the face of such wanton behavior, the United States should do everything possible to limit China’s rise. That in itself would justify tariffs on Chinese exports. “Anywhere but China” should be the overriding approach as the United States reduces its dependence on China and encourages increased production at home.

If something can’t be manufactured in the United States, it should be made somewhere other than in China. That common-sense approach should be the “ABC” of future U.S. geopolitical strategy.

Zach Mottl is chief alignment officer of Atlas Tool Works, in Lyons, Ill. He serves on the board of directors of the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) and is a past chairman of the Technology and Manufacturing Association of Illinois.

Not Your Father's Cold War

Key point: Beijing and Washington seem to be set on a path of confrontation that will only be heightened by social media and new technologies. The question is who can out compete who?

The United States and China are locked in a rivalry over trade, technology, military control of the South and East China seas, and increasingly over ideology and human rights. The two countries have been in a cyberwar for years already, featuring Chinese attacks on the Pentagon’s personnel system and the U. S. Navy’s ship maintenance records. There is a military build-up on both sides in the direction of great power conflict. Yet, neither side sees it remotely in its self-interest to initiate a violent clash. In short, this is a cold war, but vastly different from the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

China’s cultural genius and geographical capacity surpass that of the Soviet Union. Whereas the northern coastline of the Soviet Union was ice-blocked for much of the year, and historic Russia has been a frigid and insecure land power with few natural frontiers, infusing an all-encompassing and debilitating “cynicism” into its national spirit, as Joseph Conrad observed, China, with a shoreline in the temperate zone extending 9,000 miles along one of the world’s major shipping lanes, constitutes a mineral-rich continent, able to be both a land and sea power. Moreover, China’s 3,500-year-old succession of dynasties, of which Mao Zedong’s is only the most recent, has bequeathed it with a legacy of institutional order and self-confidence appreciably greater than Russia’s. Russia produces few exportable consumer goods, even as China’s fifth-generation mobile network, led by Huawei Technologies, constitutes stiff competition for our own, with a revenue of $122 billion in 2019. There is, too, China’s key role in supply chains for the world’s most desired electronic products; famously the Apple iPhone. There is not the old Soviet Union that could produce hydrogen bombs and little else.

Whereas the original Cold War was principally about gaining an advantage in the game of nuclear annihilation, this cold war will be principally about cyber and computer dominance, ranging from a plethora of consumer products to naval warfare, since naval engagements of the future will be about which side’s intelligent battle system can incapacitate the other’s first. The first Cold War was about bigness: tank battalions and nuclear warheads. This second one will be about microscopic smallness: silicon chips and electronic circuitry.

While the original cold war signaled the apex of the Industrial Age, the U. S.-China cold war heralds the second phase of post-industrial globalization. The globalization which lasted for three decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall had the effect of unifying the globe and creating new middle classes through free trade and the exchange of ideas - from management practices to scientific knowledge. This second phase, more friendly to pessimists, will be about dividing the globe into different political, trade, consumer, and technological domains. After all, globalization was never a conflict-free security order, as originally advertised, but merely a value-neutral, temporary stage of economic development.

In the original Cold War, President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger moved closer to Communist China in order to balance against the Soviet Union. This time there is less hope of moving closer to Russia to balance against China, since China and Russia are now allying, rather than on the brink of military conflict with each other as in 1969, two years before Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing.

But not everything is different than during the first cold war and not everything is harder. Some things are eternal. Diplomacy remains paramount and human rights remain a critical, underappreciated tool of leverage.

Indeed, the original Cold War featured summit meetings, nuclear weapons treaties, hotlines, and the Helsinki human rights process. Precisely because the United States and the Soviet Union could not agree on the question of which side history itself was on, they decided to draw rules and boundaries around their struggle, to keep it from literally going nuclear. However, President Donald Trump has thus far eschewed traditional diplomacy with China in favor of a narrow dialogue over trade. Because Trump has obsessively reduced the U. S.-China cold war to one contentious topic, he has exchanged general confidence building across a range of issues for a zero-sum stare-down on just one issue, thus undermining progress on the South China Sea, the oppression of the Muslim Uighur Turks in western China, and so forth.

The plight of millions of Muslims in Xinjiang Province is instructive. The U. S. Congress is uniting across partisan lines to condemn the Chinese regime’s treatment of this minority. But while a laudable action, it may also be a sterile one, since it will only encourage Beijing to dig in its heels. Given an on-again, off-again trade war coupled with the absence thus far of a general, continuous dialogue between the two adversaries, Congress’s action will appear to President Xi Jinping as just another American assault on China’s legitimacy. After all, while the Muslims in western China represent a human rights issue to us, to the Chinese they represent a strategic issue: because for centuries western China was the weakest and most unstable part of China’s internal empire, and stabilizing it along with China’s other border regions is what gives China the luxury, rare in its history, to concentrate on sea power. Thus, China’s brutal clampdown in Xinjiang and its aggressive naval expansion in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean are integrally linked.

The benefit of a wide-ranging and confidence-building dialogue with China, of the kind pursued by Washington throughout the middle and latter parts of the Cold War with both Beijing and Moscow, is that a human rights issue like the treatment of the Uigurs can be brought up and discussed, with the possibility of some improvement in the situation that will not be seen as a concession by the Chinese, and not trumpeted as such by us.

Moreover, absent such a sustained, wide-ranging dialogue with Beijing – which to its credit, the Trump Administration is now poised to establish - our posture toward China will gradually assume a purely military aura. This could alienate liberal elites which largely bought into the original Cold War. But an emphasis on human rights and personal freedoms – given  China’s high-tech Orwellian system - will rescue us from this fate. It will also provide an edge in a struggle that will be more difficult than the one against the Soviets - since as technology dominates the new cold war, and, as supply chains decouple, China’s ability to satisfy global consumers will likely be equal to ours.

This second cold war, conducted on a teeming planet whose anxiety is intensified by the passions and rages of social media, is only in its beginning stages. The aim, like in the first Cold War, is negative victory: not defeating the Chinese, but waiting them out, just as we waited the Soviets out: because at some point, as its middle class matures and continues to expand, mainland China may face its own equivalent of the internal upheavals that have roiled Hong Kong, Latin America, and the Middle East.

There are fundamental differences between the two cold wars. But in order to prevail we must concentrate on the similarities: the need for open-ended dialogue and focusing on our strong suit - liberal values in the face of increasingly intrusive technologies. For this cold war could end with echoes of 1989: with one side’s domestic order proving more resilient than the other’s.

Robert D. Kaplan is a managing director for global macro at Eurasia Group. His most recent book is The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century. This first appeared earlier in January 2020.

转：李文亮被训诫书曝光 为众人抱薪者已冻毙于风雨

北京时间，2 月 6 日，因感染新型肺炎，武汉市中心医院医生李文亮抢救无效去世。

李文亮这个名字出现在公众的视野不足一个月。2019年12月30号，李文亮在同学群里提到，“华南水果海鲜市场确诊了7例SARS”“最新消息是冠状病毒感染确定了，正在进行病毒分型”。

2020年1月1日，武汉警方发布通报称，一些网民在不经核实的情况下，在网上发布、转发不实信息，造成不良社会影响。公安机关经调查核实，传唤8名违法人员，并依法进行了处理。两天后，李文亮收到警方的训诫书，警方认定“华南水果海鲜市场确诊了7例SARS”的言论，不属实。

 

湖北，武汉，市中心医院，李文亮医生，已经确认去世了。下图这是他的病房前……他的妻子，在湖北老家，健康没有问题。（记者 李微敖）

1月12日，李文亮因发烧、咳嗽在武汉中心医院呼吸与重症医学科监护室接受隔离治疗。直到2020年的2月 1 日，李文亮才在个人微博公布了确诊感染的消息，“今天核酸检测结果阳性，尘埃落定，终于确诊了”。

这则确诊的消息何尝不是李文亮对自己吹哨人身份的一个自证。

可如今他去世了，身后还有一个也不幸感染的妻子和一个还没出生的孩子。

“那美好的仗我已经打完了，应行的路我已行尽了，当守的道我守住了。 从此以后，有公义的冠冕为你留存。”

蛾摩拉城配不上义人。

再见英雄，为众人抱薪者，已冻毙于风雨。

开心一刻

一青年找禅师诉求：我爱上一个女孩儿， 她有很多优点，也有很多缺点。我希望您能给我指点，让她只有优点没有缺点。

    禅师说：“你能给我找一张只有正面而没有反面的纸吗？”

    青年默默地从兜里掏出一张《人民日报》

    禅师无言以对。

-------------------

不查都是天灾，一查全是人祸； 不查处处鲜花，一查全是豆腐渣； 不查都是中国人，一查全是外国籍； 不查都是孔繁森，一查全是王宝森；不查个个人模人样，一查全都男盗女娼；不查问题都在后三排，一查根子在主席台；不查都为人民服务，一查全被人民服务；

中国人，了不起，汽油—用不起，桥梁—走不起，学校—上不起，生病—看不起，住房—买不起，猪肉—吃不起，房贷—还不起，状子—告不起，官员—惹不起，娃娃—养不起，爱心—伤不起，死了—葬不起。

1、取消交通管制，让官员感受堵车之苦才能真正治堵；2、取消食品特供，让官员品尝有毒食品才有食品安全；3、取消公务员福利分房，让官员体会买房难，民众才能安居乐业；4、取消公车消费，官员才知油价之高养车之难；5、取消高干特护病房，官员才知看病难、看病贵.

检查+罚款=管理；扯皮+刁难=服务；实干+技术=白忙；跳舞+喝酒 =业务；听话+奉承=可靠； 大话+做秀=政绩；送礼+关系=提拔；工龄+造假=职称；文凭+拼爹=招聘；和谐 +赞成=民主；联播+歌声=幸福；卖地+盖楼=财政；套话+瞌睡=开会；造假+蒙骗=经营；截访+维稳=安定；贿赂 +人情=法制…

1.贪官不是群众选举出来的，是上级领导选拔出来的；2.贪官不是反贪局捉出来的，是内部互掐抖出来的；3.贪官不是人民监督出来的，是小偷不慎偷出来的；4.贪官不是纪检审查出来的，是小三争风吃醋闹出来的；5.贪官不是百姓举报出来的，是网上日记不慎自爆出来的。

“组织”就是在你遇到困难时，他说无能为力；在你遇到不公时，他说要正确对待；在你合法权益受到侵害时，他说要顾全大局；在你受到诬陷时，他说你要相信组织；在需要有人做出牺牲时，他说组织考验你的时候到了；当需要有人冲锋陷阵时，他说是你坚强后盾；在你取得成功时，他说是组织培养的。

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《论十大关系》
1、一下台就断了的，是工作关系。
2、死了也断不了的，是亲戚关系。
3、有事才想起的是利用关系。
4、有事没事约吃饭的是朋友关系。
5、有快乐让分享的是患难关系。
6肉包子砸狗的是爷孙关系。
7、蒙蒙胧胧的是初恋关系。
8、担惊受怕的是情人关系。
9、粗茶淡饭的是夫妻关系。
10、经常联系的那可不是一般关系

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美国人说：我们上午投票，下午就能公布总统的选举结果了。 

 

中国人说：我们5年前就知道谁是下届主席了。

 

朝鲜人说：我打小就知道我们下届委员长还姓“金”。

 

俄罗斯人笑了：我们的总统当累了当总理，总理当烦了又当总统。

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1.让领导开心，做假！2.让同级开心，做哑！ 3.让群众开心，做秀！4.让老婆开心，做饭！5.让朋友开心，做东！6.让儿女开心，做牛！7.让全家开心，做官！8.让自己开心，做梦！ 

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美国：富人喜欢到中国领养小孩；
中国：富人喜欢到美国去生小孩。
美国：高工资、低物价;
中国：低工资、高物价。
美国：三亿人口有两亿人口有枪，社会稳定连政府门前都不设岗；
中国：十三亿人口只限军警有枪，老百姓买一把菜刀都要实名制。
美国：在向中国的传统学习；
中国：在向美国的现代学习。
美国：少年运动员业余时间运动；
中国：少年运动员业余时间学习。
美国：市长见了谁都要讨好;
中国：谁见了市长都要讨好。
美国：老百姓可以搞婚外情，当官的不可以；
中国：当官的可以搞婚外情，老百姓搞不起。
美国：公共知识分子以批判政府为使命;
中国：公共知识分子以歌颂政府为使命。
美国：批判政府最厉害的知识分子得大奖;
中国：歌颂政府最厉害的知识分子得大奖。
美国：学校没有政治教育，而精英都很爱国;
中国：学校强调政治教育，但精英纷纷移民。
美国：电台报纸书刊都是民办的，说啥写啥都由人民做主；
中国：电台报纸书刊都是党办的，说啥写啥都由党来审定。
美国：国穷民富，政府宁愿借中国的巨款，也要去保民生的福利;
中国：国富民穷，政府宁愿牺牲民生，也要去买美国的贬值国债！
美国政府：外悍内善，对哪个国家都不怕得罪，只是怕得罪本国人民;
中国政府：外善内悍，对哪个国家都不想得罪，就不怕得罪本国百姓！！
中美的区别——剖析的真是精辟！

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赵本山：请听题，世界上毕业生犯罪率最高的学校是哪一所?
范伟：职业技术学校
高秀敏：错！ 中央党校.
赵本山：请听题，中国当官要精通哪四种语言？
范伟：英语、法语、俄语和日语。
高秀敏：错！假话、空话、大话和套话。
赵本山：请听题，什么东西要藏起来暗地里用，用完之后再暗地里交给别人?
范伟：照相底片。
高秀敏：错，是潜规则。
赵本山：听题，边做假药广告、边说假药效果、边痛斥假药危害的是什么？
范伟：江湖骗子。
高秀敏：错，是CCTV。
赵本山：请听题，你只有10平米的房屋，邻居从0平米换到100平米，你的居住面积有没有增加？
范伟：没有。
高秀敏：错，你在平均住房面积里被增加了45平米。
赵本山：请听题，一个永远要你对她负责而她却不对你负责的是谁？
范伟：二奶。
高秀敏：错！是银行。
赵本山：请听题，从小就听说有，但你现在一直没有见过的是什么？
范伟：鬼。
高秀敏：错！是共产主义社会。
赵本山：请听题，外面看着豪华、干净 ，实则是宽衣解带、藏污纳垢的地方，这是哪里？
范伟：公厕。
高秀敏：错！是演艺圈。
赵本山：请听题，刚被人打了一棒，马上潜入水中，过一会在不远处穿着马甲又探出头来的是什么？
范伟：乌龟。
高秀敏：错！是免职官员。
赵本山：请听题，“中国城市环境污染不是由汽车造成的，而是由自行车造成的。自行车的污染比汽车更大”。这句话谁说的？
范伟：精神病人。
高秀敏：错！是中国专家。
赵本山：请听题，有一个人经常要代表你说话，但你从来没有见过面，为什么？
范伟：是私生子他亲爹。
高秀敏：错！是人大代表，不认识你也要代表你

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