The World : China Hardens Crackdown

China’s new hard-line leadership, consolidating its crackdown on pro-democracy activists, has issued sweeping orders adding political crimes to legal violations and specifying punishments from imprisonment to execution. The orders, in a circular issued over the weekend by the Communist Party Politburo and the State Council, China’s Cabinet, are seen as preparation for tough legal action against thousands of people being rounded up nationwide by security forces. Meanwhile, an editorial in the People’s Daily, the official party newspaper, accused the United States and other foreign forces of harboring a “wild ambition” to subvert communism and using political and economic weapons to support that goal.