Pence China speech; Wang Qishan getting involved in US talks?; Xi's Russia trip; June 4

June 4.

The Chinese Communist Party is afraid of ghosts and incorrect memories. It has done a good job of reshaping the history for most people born after 1989, and yet every year around June 4 the security services and censors go into overdrive to prevent any discussion of what really happened in early June 1989.

30 years ago China was barely a decade past the end of the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao, poor, backward and teeming with frustration, respect for America, hope, and intellectual ferment.

30 years on, China is rich, powerful, ambitious and led by the Communist Party that responded to the aftermath of the crackdown with decades of nationalist education, hardening of its security services and the pursuit of politically correct intellectual homogeneity. The failures of other pro-democracy uprisings, the resulting chaos in many countries where they succeeded as well as the crises in established democracies have been a gift to the CCP and its propaganda efforts and furt…