I returned from Hong Kong a few weeks ago. Ironically, it was refreshing to read the semi-free news while I was there.

The supposedly free American media is shameful by comparison. The news is controlled in the U.S. not so much by what is said, but by what the press refuses to say. There are events that are never reported. There are topics that are never brought up. There are many ideas, indeed even words and phrases, which never see the light of day.

Imagine this Hong Kong story appearing in the American media: "Experts puzzled by how to cut emissions." This article stated that China hopes to cut its greenhouse gas emissions as it figures out how to do it.

It pointed out that China has signed the Kyoto Protocol, but is not required to set binding emission targets because it is a "developing nation." It admitted China is the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and plans to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP.

A similar American story would read like this. "President Obama announced today that he wants to implement a plan that would save the world from greenhouse gases. The White House initiative was created by Obama and his top scientific advisers, and will reduce America's (the world's greatest polluter) dangerous emissions to levels agreed upon in the Kyoto Protocol rejected by the Bush Administration."

Note that the American story tells you nothing at all except that we are destroying the world and it's all Bush's fault. No mention of energy consumption and GDP. Such a discussion would be beyond the educational capacity of the average citizen and far above the knowledge level reached by American reporters.

Here is another interesting news item out of the Hunan province of China. Evidently, family planning authorities offered money to pregnant prostitutes for abortions. This is a scandal, but why?

The province evidently was not reaching its abortion quota, so local officials waited outside local hospitals and paid women to have abortions under names provided by the government. Officials who fail to meet their quotas may not be promoted and could even be demoted.

China has a very restrictive birth control policy. According to some documents, one city had 12,200 "birth control" operations, which one official judged to be a "fruitful effort."

American politicians are much less forthright. They are likely to say something like, "I want to make my position crystal clear. I abhor abortion, but I will fight to the death for every woman's right to have one."

Or, "I never want a woman to have an abortion. That is why I have voted every single time to increase government abortion spending."

How does the press handle this? Like all government dominated medias, they praise the politicians who make such statements and condemn as moral reprobates any pol who makes a clear statement.

Zhao Ziyang was the premier of China from 1980 to 1987, and general secretary of the Communist Party from 1987 to 1989. In his memoirs he said the following: "It is western parliamentary democratic system that has demonstrated the most vitality. This system is currently the best one available."

He went on to say, "If we don't move toward this goal, it will be impossible to resolve the abnormal conditions in China's market economy: issues such as an unhealthy market, profiting from power, rampant social corruption and a widening gap between rich and poor. Nor will the rule of law ever materialize."

After the failed Tiananmen Square protests, he was put under house arrest for the rest of his life.

How ironic that Obama and his apologists are currently building the economic system Zhao rejected, while our press already follows the model set by the Chinese media that could not recall at Zhao's death in 2005 that he was once the leader of their nation.