The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that a federal immigration judge in New York City on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 ruled that 33-year-old Zhen Xing Jian, formerly of mainland China and now of Philadelphia, Pa. will be allowed to remain in the U.S.A. Ms. Jian entered the United States illegally in 1995 and helped her husband run a restaurant they owned. Arrested unexpectedly by immigration authorities on February 7, 2006, Jian suffered a miscarriage in the process of being deported but has two sons who were born in the U.S.A. and therefore are American citizens. Less significant than the decision was the context: Jian and her husband (whose case is pending) had applied for political asylum because they feared repercussions, because of the Communist dictatorship's "one child" birth-control policy, if they returned to the mainland.

So the next time a politician, corporate mogul, or economist attacks opponents of the U.S. trade policy with our "partner," remember the mainland's great social experiment in controlling their population: in the words of one geographer, "abortion, neglect, abandonment and even infanticide" of female infants. And that democratic China sits just across the Taiwan Strait.