Hard-nosed political cops who use medieval methods to extract information or punish incorrect behavior were much reduced in number in Europe by the Soviet Union's collapse. But they are still thick on the ground in China. Torquemada, the 15th-century Spanish grand inquisitor, would no doubt marvel at how efficiently the Chinese security services conduct their nasty thought-control assignments.

[...]

[...]. Last Friday, wire services and human-rights monitors were reporting the death of 33-year-old Li Changjun, who was arrested in Wuhan in May for printing information dealing with the persecution of members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Witnesses who viewed the corpse claimed that he had obviously been brutally tortured during his 40 days in custody. A Falun Gong information center charges that 258 practitioners have died in police hands since Beijing launched its terror campaign against the group two years ago. The campaign also has included crackdowns on "unofficial" Roman Catholic congregations and other believers who meet informally outside the confines of officially authorized churches.

As in police states everywhere throughout history, the security services in China attract sadists who enjoy wreaking mayhem on helpless victims. But it is doubtful that China's is a case of a security service that has gone out of control. There is evidence that the terror is being directed from Beijing with the full knowledge and support of the highest political leaders. Protestors of the death of Li Changjun report that they were told by the Wuhan city officials that they were only following the policies of the central government. A lot of ink has been spilled on theories about why the smiley, innocent-looking President Jiang Zemin has seen fit to unleash mass murder and the imprisonment of Americanized scholars on flimsy charges of "spying." [...]

[...] China's [party's name omitted] has followed enlightened policies when compared to these three sinkholes, but it still retains the instruments of a police state. And over the past two years it has clearly demonstrated that it is willing to use them.

[...] The Chinese security services compile dossiers on Americans of Chinese descent and accuse them of working against Chinese interests. Because the U.S. is a free country, not much is stopping the Chinese cops from finding out all they want to know about Chinese-born academics in order to concoct their spying charges. They cast the Falun Gong as a foreign influence despite its typically Chinese origins, because its leader happens to live in the U.S.

What the Chinese leaders fail to recognize is that in using the secret police for their purposes, they are employing methods that have become increasingly distasteful to the modern world. In so doing, they are revealing how far China still has to go to become a civilized state.