China Building Another Great Wall

Do good fences make good neighbors?

China thinks so.

From the Associated Press:

China has been building a massive barbed wire and concrete fence along parts of its border with North Korea in the most visible sign of Beijing's strained ties with its once-cozy communist neighbor.

Scores of soldiers have descended on farmland near the border-marking Yalu River to erect concrete barriers 8 to 15 feet tall and string barbed wire between them, farmers and visitors to the area said.

Last week, they reached Hushan, a collection of villages 12 miles inland from the border port of Dandong.

"About 100 People's Liberation Army soldiers in camouflage started building the fence four days ago and finished it yesterday," said a farmer, who only gave his surname, Ai. "I assume it was built to prevent smuggling and illegal crossing."

Though the fence-building appears to have picked up in the days following North Korea's claimed nuclear test last week, experts said the project was approved in 2003. Experts and a local Hushan official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the project, said the military was in charge of the building.

...The fence marks a noticeable change in China's approach to North Korea. In the decades following their shared fight against U.S.-led U.N. forces in the Korean War, China left their border lightly guarded, deploying most of its forces in the northeast toward its enemy, the Soviet Union.

But the border became a security concern for Beijing in the past decade, as North Korea's economy collapsed and social order crumbled in some places. Tens of thousands of refugees began trickling across the border into northeast China, fording the Yalu and Tumen rivers or walking across the ice in winter.

Professor Kim Woo-jun, of the Institute of East and West Studies in Seoul, said China built wire fences on major defection routes along the Tumen River in a project that began in 2003, and since September this year, China has been building wire fences along the Yalu River.

..."The move is mainly aimed at North Korean defectors," Kim said. "As the U.N. sanctions are enforced ... the number of defectors are likely to increase as the regime can't take care of its people. ... I think the wire fence work will likely go on to control this."

Where is the outrage on the Left?

Where is the condemnation from so-called human rights organizations like Amnesty International?

China is doing the unthinkable and the inhumane -- securing its borders.

Why aren't liberals organizing pilgrimages to the construction site of China's wall?

Shouldn't the libs build a human chain to prevent the People's Liberation Army soldiers from fencing the North Korean refugees out of China?

At the very least, shouldn't they encourage their comrades to stop building the fence because it will be ineffective?

What gives a sovereign nation like China the right to secure its borders?

I thought that was wrong.

Isn't the Left's standard that any and all people should be allowed to spill into a country in violation of the law and then be granted the rights and privileges of that country's legal citizens?

Are we going to see massive protests in our streets over China's fence? Shouldn't all the ILLEGAL immigrants and supporters of the ILLEGAL immigrant movement in the U.S. stand in solidarity with North Koreans choosing to move into China?

Will supporters of ILLEGAL immigrants like Jim Doyle and Kathleen Falk invite North Koreans to come to Wisconsin so the taxpayers can pay for their education and grant them in-state tuition at the UW system?

Doyle and Falk want incentives in place so ILLEGAL immigrants are drawn to Wisconsin. It would follow that they would welcome North Koreans with open arms, unlike the evil Chinese.