Author Dick Morris wrote a brilliant piece in “The Hill” today about a journalist who has decided to trade in his PC for an M16.

“His is a story of a patriotism and commitment underscored and emphasized by the lessons he has learned living in one of the most politically repressive societies on the planet. There is so much we can all learn from him about China and about our own country.

“The regime in China,” Matt contends, “is held up by two props: economic advancement and control of news and information. The government is very good at both.”

How can a modern government police how 1.3 billion people who use the vast resources of the Internet? Pottinger explains: “The authorities spend countless man hours, involving tens of thousands of officials, monitoring what the Chinese people are accessing online.”

And, he adds, Western companies facilitate their task by selling the sophisticated equipment and software that Beijing uses to maintain the new wall of China – its Internet firewall.

Pottinger says that living up close and personal under an authoritarian government made him value freedom all the more. He remembers once interviewing Chinese workers who were protesting official corruption only to be approached by a government thug – at a Starbucks in Beijing, no less – who punched him and said: “You will get f- – -ing out of the country. Right now.”

Matt, however, defied the warning and remained in China and continued trying to report the truth despite official intimidation.”