Roger Altman Quotes

Chinese entrepreneurs have to implement their work under the leadership of the Party and the government - it is very clear.

Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know.

I think Chinese leadership is trying to tell the world they have another set of logic or reasoning or values which are different from yours. Of course, I don't think they believe that. It's just an argument that's made when you can't confront the truth and facts. They really want to maintain power.

The suppression of the Socialist press has actually been more rapid and efficient in this republic than it was in the German Empire after the declaration of war. And as for our celebrated Anglo-Saxon tradition of free speech—you can’t even collect your thoughts without getting arrested for unlawful assemblage!

Executing the massive transformation they [the Chinese reform leaders] envision will take most of their political capital and will require firm political control, even as the reforms generate strong forces for social and political change.

The surest way to make our youth suspect that there may be something in Communism would be for the government to outlaw it.

Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.

Domestically, a lot of people think Xi Jinping is becoming Mao Zedong. By giving Hong Kong democracy, people would look at them as enlightened leaders.

In 2014, we were opposing President Xi Jinping. Five years later, we are opposing Emperor Xi Jinping.

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values

State intervention in the literary realm went far beyond the blue-penciling of texts. It extended to the shaping of literature itself as a force at work throughout the social order. If states wielded such power in the age of print, what will restrain them from abusing it in the age of the Internet?

The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

It has to be good to live in Singapore because otherwise, nobody will stand for it.

As there is in Germany - as well as in Russia and Italy - no art which is not approved of by the government, any criticizing remark about the present policy made by me would easily be taken as a hostile act. I cannot have my name put up against an official report from Germany without risking very unpleasant consequences.

In the U.S., the country that has always been lecturing the world about the value of freedoms - of freedom of speech, of everyone's right to speak up - the U.S. has now become a beacon, a leader, in this movement to shut everyone up. That's so disappointing.

Given an opportunity, Modi has violated the freedom of press both in letter and spirit. He destroys freedom of the press whenever he gets a chance.

If the Chinese government gets carried away with denying basic rights, then there will be a pushback from within.

As the remaining voices for civil disobedience are suppressed, the political spectrum narrows even further.

I ask myself what is a dictator? I don't understand. It is some kind of terrible person, a bad person. But I am not frightening. I am not a bad person at all.

I believe in it so passionately because anywhere you look in the world, where governments become too big or become authoritarian, speech and expression is one of the first fundamental freedoms to go.

Xi has made plain that he will no longer tolerate hearing the words 'human rights' spoken out loud in the same sentence with the word 'China.'

What we're trying to do is to look at the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Xi for who they really are.

Politically, China suppresses its people, but because the government allows some freedom in economic matters, business has become the ultimate expression of individuality.

Leaders cling to power in a socialist state like Venezuela by buying votes and manipulating elections.

When [Vladimir] Putin, a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB, became Russia's president on December 31, 1999 - eight years after the failed coup attempt against (then Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev, and eight years after the people had torn down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the hated founder of the KGB, in Moscow - it was admittedly a shock. Nevertheless, I decided to give Putin a chance. He seemed dynamic and capable of learning. But I had to bury my hopes after just a few months. He proved to be an autocrat - and, because the West let him do as he pleased, he became a dictator.