Photo, above:   Chinese police attacked the Christians gathered outside of Wenzhou Salvation Church last month, beating them with electric batons. At least 14 and as many as 50 worshippers — some elderly — sustained wounds, including a fractured skull, broken bones and internal injuries. Their crime? Rallying to guard their church cross, government-slated for demolition. It was just the latest in the intensifying persecution in Zhejiang Province, one of China’s most Christian regions. Since January, Communist officials there have toppled the crosses of at least 229 churches. The government has also torn down some churches entirely, and issued demolition notices to over 100 more. And the crackdown may foreshadow a national shift in official policy on religion, a bid by President Xi Jinping to shore up political stability. It’s a risky game: In targeting the church, the Communist leaders also target a crucial source of social stability, and may end up politicizing a large and growing part of the population. For decades under Mao, the Communists banned all religion — enforced with brutality, prison and even . . .   See: Hour 2, Block D:  Jillian Kay Melchior, National Review Online, on China’s chancy cross crackdown

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-host: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com

Hour One

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 1, Block A:  Peter Navarro, professor at University of Irvine, California and producer of the documentary Death by China, in re: China Criminalizes Info Collection in Glaxo Case. On Friday, the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court tried Briton Peter Humphrey and his American wife, Yu Yingzeng, and found both of them guilty of “illegally obtaining private information.”  At 11:00 P.M. Humphrey received a two-and-a-half-year sentence and a fine of 200,000 yuan, about $32,500.  Five minutes later, Yu learned she would spend two years in prison and pay 150,000 yuan.  He will be deported at the end of his term.  She will not.

Even by the standards of Chinese criminal justice, the one-day disposition of the case, from opening statement to sentencing, was unusually swift.  Perhaps that was to make up for the lengthy pre-trial incarceration.  The pair, well-known in the foreign business community in China, was taken into custody last July amid the GlaxoSmithKline sex, lies, and videotape furor.

Glaxo had retained the couple’s firm, ChinaWhys, to look into the origins of a secretly filmed sex tape showing Mark Reilly, then head of the pharmaceutical firm’s China business, and his Chinese girlfriend.  Someone had e-mailed the video and allegations of systematic wrongdoing to Glaxo’s chief executive and the company’s board members in London.  Apparently, similar e-mails were sent to Chinese officials.  Humphrey and Yu were detained . . .

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 1, Block B:   Kelley Currie, senior fellow with the Project 2049 Institute, in re: U.S. seeks to safeguard progress in Burma. The Obama administration claims the rapid shift away from military dictatorship in Burma as a rare foreign policy success, both for the advance of democratic principles and in the shadowy contest with China for influence and market share.  But the shift is uneven and incomplete, and as Secretary of State John F. Kerry heralds the country’s progress during a two-day visit this weekend, signs of backsliding on human rights and political freedoms are mounting.

Human rights groups and a growing list of congressional critics say the administration is overeager and its enthusiasm misplaced. U.S. leverage to encourage democratic advances has declined since the lifting of major punitive sanctions, although significant economic restrictions remain in place. Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote to Kerry on Thursday to warn against too warm an embrace of the nominally civilian government. The military remains largely in charge behind the scenes, and the senators charged that . . .

US defends John Kerry stay in blacklisted Myanmar hotel. The US has defended Secretary of State John Kerry's decision to stay in a blacklisted hotel in Myanmar (also known as Burma).  Mr Kerry and his delegation stayed at the Lake Garden hotel in Naypyidaw on Saturday night while attending the Asean Regional Summit.

The hotel is owned by U Zaw Zaw, who is blacklisted for having close ties to the country's former military junta.  But hotels are not included in these sanctions, a US official has said.  However, the slight whiff of hypocrisy is a reminder of the difficulties foreign companies face trying to find Burmese business partners who are not somehow connected to the old regime, says . . .

Mauvais goût:  Lake Garden Hotel, East Nay Pyi Taw

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Sid Perkins, Science Magazine, in re: Climate
- No wind chill on Mars. Earth
Could Pulses in Earth's Magnetic Field Forecast Earthquakes?

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 1, Block D:  Michael Auslin, AEI, in re: The New Normal in Asia.  Beijing will continue asserting itself in disputed territories. Its neighbors will continue to do little to challenge it. Compared to the chaos in Iraq and Ukraine, East Asia looks relatively peaceful. Yet lurking under Asia's apparent stability is a worrisome trend of power politics that eventually will reshape the face of the region. Events over the past week showed that China will continue pushing its claims in disputed territory in ways that are increasingly difficult to oppose. At the same time, America's influence in the region may be growing weaker.

Stoking the fires of a long-running dispute, Beijing announced last week that it will . . .

Hour Two

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen Yates, chairman of Idaho Republican Party, CEO of D.C. International Advisory, and former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, in re: At ASEAN, China Rejects US 'Freeze'. China is dismissing U.S. calls for a freeze on "provocative acts" in disputed waters of the South China Sea. Addressing reporters Saturday at a meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, also known as Burma, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi rejected calls by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to manage maritime disputes based on international law.

Calling the situation in the South China Sea stable, Wang restated China's position of protecting its regional sovereignty. As "responsible great power," Wang said, "China is ready to maintain restraint, but for unreasonable provocative activities, China is bound to . . .

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Nitin Gokhale, anchor at New Delhi Television and author of Beyond NJ 9842: The Saichen Saga, in re: India need not choose between US and China: Chuck Hagel. The United States and India must seize opportunities to collaborate more on defence development and not let government red tape and other problems stymie progress between the two nations, US defence secretary Chuck Hagel said on Saturday.

Capping two days of meetings here, Hagel's speech to New Delhi business leaders and scholars reflected the hopes and frustrations of America's struggles to forge weapons development agreements with India.  Hagel leaves India with few concrete agreements, acknowledging the two countries — the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest — must be "results oriented" and do more to . . .

China invites India to join its ambitious Silk Road projects The project is aimed at building a wide network of new silk roads on land and seas to enhance global connectivity.    Giving final touches to its most ambitious plan to build a wide network of new silk roads on land and seas to enhance global connectivity, China has invited India to join President Xi Jinping’s pet project that would revive the ancient trade route and benefit the region. “From historical point of view India is the converging point of maritime silk road (MSR) and the ancient silk road on land. For more than 2,000 years India had very good exchanges with China through the passage of the south silk road,” Gao Zhenting, councillor, department of international economic affairs, told PTI. “So in China we have a belief that China and India both placed the trail of silk roads and MSR and we both have benefited from the roads,” said Gao, who oversees the Silk Roads projects that involves a maze of highways on land and port connectivity by sea. The projects were expected to revive China’s trade links specially its sagging exports besides globally enhancing its sphere of influence. Throughout the history of silk road and maritime silk road many scholars and businessmen from India visited China and still many Chinese remember the names of many of them and stories, he said. Gao took a team of diplomats and journalists to . . .

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 2, Block C:  Gary Roughead, Hoover, in re: Don't Ignore the Indo-Pacific. A great deal of discussion surrounds the rebalance or pivot to Asia. Too often, that discussion is all about China. While China does loom large, our strategic view and the actions and means to support our objectives must have a broader perspective. The issues that typically drive our actions include Pacific trade, maritime claims, and the interaction (often disputes) of the countries of that region. As important as those matters are, we must base our strategy on a fuller, broader, and more long-term picture of Asia.

We must think about Asia, not from a China or Pacific perspective, but from an Indo-Pacific perspective. The energy supplies that fuel Asia and which will remain essential to its economic rise will continue to flow primarily from the Middle East, along the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean and then thread the Western Pacific littoral. In that regard India will matter. It will matter as a country protective of the ocean that it considers appropriately named. It will matter as a competing user of Middle East energy. It will matter as a strategic competitor to China in Asia. It will matter as its relationship with Pakistan shapes the dynamic in South and Central Asia. It will matter as a massive global market. It will matter as a vibrant democracy in Asia.

Policy makers, for the first time, must also deal with the changing geography of Asia. The sea routes of the Arctic will open creating new sea-lanes for products to market and critical resources that . . . 

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 2, Block D:  Jillian Kay Melchior, National Review Online, in re: China’s chancy cross crackdown. Chinese police attacked the Christians gathered outside of Wenzhou Salvation Church last month, beating them with electric batons.

At least 14 and as many as 50 worshippers — some elderly — sustained wounds, including a fractured skull, broken bones and internal injuries.

Their crime? Rallying to guard their church cross, government-slated for demolition.

It was just the latest in the intensifying persecution in Zhejiang Province, one of China’s most Christian regions. Since January, Communist officials there have toppled the crosses of at least 229 churches. The government has also torn down some churches entirely, and issued demolition notices to over 100 more.

And the crackdown may foreshadow a national shift in official policy on religion, a bid by President Xi Jinping to shore up political stability. It’s a risky game: In targeting the church, the Communist leaders also target a crucial source of social stability, and may end up politicizing a large and growing part of the population. For decades under Mao, the Communists banned all religion — enforced with brutality, prison and even . . .

Hour Three

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 3, Block A:  Adam Nossiter, NYT, in re:  ebola in Sierra Leone

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 3, Block B:  Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast, in re: Why Liberals Should Back Iraq Intervention  Yes, the United States helped create ISIS. But that hardly means we shouldn’t try to correct the error. In fact, it means just the opposite.

We once thought, mistakenly, that the collapse of communism would bring with it the end of internal arguments within the broad left about American interventionism and, to dust off the old word that still gets plenty of exercise in some quarters, imperialism. There was, during the Cold War, a mainstream liberal-left that was anti-communist, and that sometimes rightly (Turkey, which Truman helped keep out of Stalin’s hands) and sometimes very wrongly (Vietnam) supported American action, including the military kind, to check the Reds. . . .

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 3, Block C:  Clair McDougal, Al Jazeera, in re: Liberia’s Ebola nightmare.  Country contends with attacks on aid workers, slow government response and a weak health system. Outside her six-room house in New Kru Town, one of this city’s largest slums, Esther Doe cradles her grandson while dressing her granddaughter at the same time. Clotheslines hanging between the mango trees in her yard are strewn with baby outfits, cotton lapa fabric and tank tops.

As she tends to the children, a team of “animators” — the term used by aid groups for employees who provide public education — speaks to Doe about Ebola. The animators, from Community Development Services (CODES), a local group that works with UNICEF, have painted blue crosses with the organization’s name on the walls of surrounding houses, marking the homes they have visited.

Like many Liberians, Doe does not fully believe that Ebola is real; she is suspicious of hospitals and health workers and the government. “Government saying this and saying that,” she says, asking if Liberia is expected to come to a standstill in order to end the outbreak. Nevertheless, Doe, like some people here, is starting to take note of public health messages.

New Kru Town is on of the front lines of the fight against Ebola, a deadly hemorrhagic fever that in the past five months has swept across Liberia and two other West African countries, infecting an estimated 1,200 people and killing 729. This is the first time in the virus’s history that it . . .

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 3, Block D:  James Taranto, WSJ, in re: The Axelrod Doctrine   Foreign policy gets stuck on "stupid."

Hour Four

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 4, Block A: The Tao of War by Wang Chen and Ralph D. Sawyer  (1 of 4)

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 4, Block B: The Tao of War by Wang Chen and Ralph D. Sawyer  (2 of 4)

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 4, Block C: The Tao of War by Wang Chen and Ralph D. Sawyer  (3 of 4)

Wednesday  13 August 2014 / Hour 4, Block D: The Tao of War by Wang Chen and Ralph D. Sawyer  (4 of 4)