REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Exclusive: TIME Meets Taiwan Presidential Hopefuls Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen

Global Spin

A blog about the world, its people and its politics

This is a guest post from Asia Editor Zoher Abdoolcarim.

The presidency of Taiwan is an underrated yet critical job whose impact extends beyond the shores of the island. Taiwan is regarded by Beijing as a renegade province that must return to the mainland, by force if necessary. Indeed, China has, by some estimates, nearly 2,000 missiles pointed at Taiwan. Washington is obliged, through Congress's 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, to help arm the island—a commitment that brings the U.S. into potential conflict with China. During Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's first four-year term, however, relations between Taipei and Beijing have been the warmest since the Nationalists lost to the Communists in 1949 and decamped to Taiwan. The two governments abide by the notion of “one China,” the definition of which they deliberately leave vague so as to reduce bilateral tension. Ma, 61, has developed reciprocal trade, investment and banking ties with the mainland. Academic and cultural exchanges have become commonplace. An average of 3200 Chinese tourists visit Taiwan daily. There are now even direct flights between cities on both sides of the strait.

Yet, as Taiwan gears up for its Jan. 14 presidential election, Ma—leader of the Grand Old Party of Taiwan, the Kuomintang (KMT)—is struggling to keep power. His China policy has brought stability to Taiwan. The economy rebounded in 2010 with GDP growth of 10.8% after shrinking in 2009, and is forecast to grow 4.5% this year. Inflation is under 2% and unemployment just a tick over 4%. These are figures that any Western country today would die for. But many Taiwan citizens think Ma has sold out the island to China, pandered to the establishment, particularly big business, and devoted insufficient attention to income inequality. That's why voter polls have Ma in a statistical dead heat with his chief opponent Tsai Ing-wen, 55, head of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party. When led by former president Chen Shui-bian, the DPP defied Beijing by advocating independence. Under Tsai, the DPP has moderated its China stance; it has also tackled internal party corruption, and focused on the grassroots, especially livelihood, issues, thereby boosting its popularity.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/11/25/exclusive-time-meets-taiwan-presidential-hopefuls-ma-ying-jeou-and-tsai-ing-wen/#ixzz1ejyYMHj4

228 Massacre was covered up during decades of ROC martial law in Taiwan

Michael Richardson Boston Progressive Examiner

February 28, 2009 -

228 Massacre rioting in 1947 Taipei                   Wiki Commons photo

Tensions around the '228 Massacre' show how deeply the tragic events of 1947 continue to haunt political life in Taiwan today.

On February 28, 1947, the KMT troops of the Republic of China began a repressive crackdown of a popular uprising on Formosa against the Chinese-imposed local government, which the United States permitted to rule following Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.

Four decades of martial law following the massacre kept the truth of the war crimes from being known. Now the anniversary of the start of the massacre is a solemn national holiday.

The actual number of victims will never be known as bodies were buried in mass graves and thrown out to sea but numbered, by almost all reports, in the tens of thousands. Because strong feelings on the island over the still painful trauma dominate discussion of the killings, it is helpful to look outside Taiwan for independent information.

Canadian scholar Craig Smith of the University of British Columbia has studied the 228 Massacre.

"The importance of the 228 Incident cannot be underestimated by politicians in Taiwan. In the divisive politics of the island, the symbolism of a massacre perpetrated by mainlanders against Taiwanese is of crucial importance. And the use of this massacre in Taiwanese politics and nationalism is a sacred and sensitive event that binds Taiwanese together and divides them from the mainlanders makes the incident an important topic for historians. It is strange then to see that it has been ignored by many."

"Violence against mainlanders spread across the island. As demonstrated in Hou Hsiao-hsien's iconic film (City of Sadness 1989) , Taiwanese would speak to strangers in Japanese, Taiwanese or Hakka to determine whether or not they were mainlanders. If they could not respond, the victims were beaten, often fatally. Many mainlanders were caught unaware and had no idea why they were being attacked, while others quickly fled the cities. In total, more than one thousand mainlanders were killed in violent attacks."

Chiang Kai-shek ordered KMT troops to the island to quell the uprising. By the time the soldiers arrived the violence had subsided but that didn't matter.

"Even before the troops reached the shore they began shooting. Once in the cities, the soldiers shot indiscriminately at anyone on the street. This was especially true in Keelung, Taipei, Chiayi, and Kaohsiung, where fighting was at its worst. This terrifying method of controlling rebellions was standard for the Kuomintang, who had been desperate in their fights on the mainland for many years. However, the policy went to new extremes in Taiwan as the battle-hardened troops were facing the frustration of a language barrier in their attempts to control the Taiwanese."

"When the Kuomintang forces arrived in Taiwan in 1945, they had been fighting against the Japanese for eight years. This war had drained their resources and their spirits. However, Taiwan had been under Japanese colonial rule since 1895 and great efforts had been made to assimilate the Taiwanese into Japanese culture. Therefore, in the eyes of the Kuomintang forces, the Taiwanese had been collaborating with the enemy, were tainted not to be trusted."

"The Kuomintang army then attacked with swift ferocity in order to secure the island quickly and enable the troops to continue the war on the mainland."

"Kuomintang official policy on the incident has since been that the uprising was a result of corruption among officials, and unruly soldiers and local officials were to blame for the ensuing violence."

examiner

United States order on Formosa surrender set stage for 228 Massacre

General Order #1 issued by General Douglas Macarthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II, established the surrender schedule of Japanese military forces in the Pacific.

President Harry Truman’s War Department was eager to get American soldiers and sailors back home after the fighting stopped but had large numbers of Japanese soldiers to process across the far reaches of the Pacific battlefield.

Formosa, now more commonly called Taiwan, was Japanese territory at war’s end and had been a colony of Japan for a half-century,  During the war the United States was the only country to battle the Japanese on the island with aerial bombardment.  Under international rules of war the U.S. was the principal occupying power of Formosa as the only combatant nation.

The first Americans to land on Formosa after the Japanese surrender to General Macarthur were special operatives working with the Republic of China secret police.  U.S. spy operations on the island predated the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Recognition of American responsibility over occupied Formosa was later ratified into treaty law with the San Francisco Peace Treaty that ended World War II between Japan and the Allied Powers.

However, General Order #1 left Japan in control of Formosa until October 25, 1945, when the Japanese would formally surrender to Kuomintang troops of Chiang Kai-shek.  The U.S. Navy landed Chiang’s troops on the island ten days before the surrender ceremonies.

The Republic of China was permitted to occupy Formosa despite American concerns about ROC corruption under Chiang’s despotic rule.  Sovereignty of the island was left undetermined even though the ROC was permitted to control day-to-day life in Taiwan.

When early reports of harsh treatment of islanders by the Chinese reached Washington, D.C. they were ignored in favor of supporting the ROC which was waging a losing civil war with the Chinese Communists for control of China.

America’s hands-off policy emboldened Chiang Kai-shek and his occupation forces.  Because of Formosa’s half-century status as a Japanese colony the official language of the island was Japanese.  China had suffered at the hands of the Japanese during World War II and the Kuomintang regime left in control of the island by the Americans treated the Taiwanese or Formosans harshly.

Read more at Taiwan Tati

JACK LONDON

by Daniel A. Métraux

The Adventurer-Writer who Chronicled Asian Wars, Confronted Racism—and Saw the Future

He stood among the Japanese soldiers wearing a weather-beaten visored cap over his short, dark hair and a rough hewn jacket covering his broad soldiers, a cigarette angling away from his square jaw and a camera dangling from his gloved hand. As they studied documents, the Japanese troops contrasted with Jack London in their box hats and high collared uniforms. A photographer present immortalized London looking like the adventurer and writer that he was, one drawn to the battle like a missionary to his calling, who skillfully recorded the machinations of great powers while sympathizing with the underdogs who struggled to survive.

Jack London (1876-1916), easily the most popular American writer a century ago, is still praised for his Yukon novels and short stories such as The Call of the Wild, White Fang and To Build a Fire. However, his visits to Japan, Korea and Manchuria; his factual, hard hitting coverage of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05); his astute short stories about Sino-Japanese competition; his prophetic essays predicting the rise of the Pacific Rim, and his call for respect and constructive interaction between Americans and Asians over "yellow peril" hysteria are undeservedly forgotten. These salient aspects of London's life deserve to be remembered and respected. They evidence his keen intelligence, painfully accurate vision of the future and the progressive and humane values that are still needed to bridge the East and West.

London negotiates passage with a Japanese officer in Korea during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. I explained that I was going to Chemulpo. “In a moment,” said the interpreter. I showed my ticket, my passport, my card, my credentials; and always and invariably came the answer, “In a moment.” Also the interpreter stated that he was very sorry. He stated this many times. He made special trips upstairs to tell me that he was very sorry.

The Yellow Peril Threatens the West?

Today the term “The Yellow Peril” — but not necessarily the fears and fantasies that it engenders — has gone out of fashion. But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Westerners' dreams about the "superiority" of their civilization competed with their nightmares of Oriental hordes swarming from the East to engulf the advanced West. This was a popular theme in the day's literature and journalism, which London knew well. The term “Yellow Peril” supposedly derives from German Kaiser Wilhelm II's warning following Japan’s defeat of China in 1895 in the first Sino-Japanese War. The expression initially referred to Tokyo’s sudden rise as a military and industrial power in the late nineteenth century. Soon, however, its more sinister meaning was broadly applied to all of Asia. “The Yellow Peril” highlighted diverse Western fears including the supposed threat of a military invasion from Asia, competition to the white labor force from Asian workers, the alleged moral degeneracy of Asian people and the spectre of the genetic mixing of Anglo-Saxons with Asians.¹

Many writers and journalists in the early 1900s wielded an unflattering pen when writing about Asians, boasting of Anglo-Saxon superiority over the “yellow and brown” Asians. The Hearst newspapers stridently warned of the “yellow peril”. So did noted British novelist M. P. Shiel in his short story serial, The Yellow Danger. One finds similar views in Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” and in some of his stories and novels.

The Russo-Japanese War saw Japan alter the world balance of power that the West once dominated, triggering viceral fears of a yellow peril

Read more at Voices Education Project

 

I See a War

I see a war, an invisible war
Being waged in everyone's facial expression
Being waged in countless loudspeakers
Being waged in the ever-frightened look in everyone's eyes
Being waged in the nerve stems beneath everyone's cerebral cortex
It is devastating everyone   Devastating every part end element of people's
      bodies and minds
It uses invisible weapons to press the attack, invisible bayonets, cannons
      and bombs to press the attack
This is an evil war
It is the intangible extension of a tangible war.
It is being waged in the front windows of bookstores
Waged in libraries, and in every song that is taught and sung
Waged in the first year textbooks of grade-schools
Waged in every actor's actions and lines and ever performer's posturing,
      all exactly the same
I see bayonets and soldiers patrolling the lines of my poems
To search into everyone's consience
A stupid, benighted and harsh power oppresses all, dominates all
In face of this terrible unprecedented attack
I see sexual relations in decay
The living in a state of mental disorder
Schizophrenia spreading unchecked, individuality eliminated
Ah, you invisible war, you evil war
You are the continuation and extension of 2,500 years of war to
      consolidate feudal power
You are the concentration and expansion of 2,500 years of war
      to enslave people's minds
You bomb   You blast   You kill   You slaughter
But human nature does not die, conscience does not die, people's
      freedom of spirit does not die
The natural instincts and desires of man's body and soul
Can never be wrenched away or wholly destroyed

Huang Xiang

Huang Xiang was born in Hunan Province in China in 1941.

Huang began writing poems in the 1950s. In 1978, he founded Enlightenment, China's first underground writers’ society during this era, and started a literary magazine with the same title. From 1959 to 1997, Huang was incarcerated six times and spent a total of 12 years in jail. He continued to write even though he was tortured for his work, which was completely banned.

He has lived in exile in the United States since 1997. Huang has published poems and essays, and a bilingual edition of his Out of Communist China was published in 2003. 

He currently lives in Pittsburgh where he is the writer-in-residence for Cities of Asylum/Pittsburgh.

PEN

Qiu Jin

A Chinese poet and a revolutionary, Qiu Jin was born in 1875 into a moderately wealthy family. While growing up she enjoyed riding horses and playing with swords. She also liked to read. Her family insisted that she receive good education and she was able to socialize with other well-educated people.

At the age of twenty-one Qiu Jin was married to an older man. He had a more conventional outlook on life than she did and she felt stifled in this relationship. She left her husband in 1903 and went to study in Japan where she was vocal in her support for women's rights and pressed for improved access to education for women. To provide female role models, she wrote articles about historical Chinese women.

In 1906 she returned to China and started publishing a women's magazine in which she encouraged women to gain financial independence through education and training in various prefessions. She encouraged women to resist oppression by their families and by the government. At the time it was still customary for women in China to have their feet bound at the age of five. The result of this practice was that the feet were small but crippled. Women's freedom of movement was severely restricted and left them dependent on other people. Such helpless women were, however, more desired as wives, so their families continued the practice to protect their daughters' future security.

Qiu Jin felt that a better future for women lay under a Western-type government instead of the corrupt Manchu government that was in power at the time. She joined forces with her male cousin Hsu Hsi-lin and together they worked to unite many secret revolutionary societies to work together for the overthrow of the Manchu government. On July 6, 1907 Hsu Hsi-lin was caught by the authorities before a scheduled uprising. He confessed his involvement under interrogation and was executed. Immediately after, on July 12, the government troops arrested Qiu Jin at the school for girls, where she was a principal. She refused to admit her involvement in the plot, but they found incriminating documents and she was beheaded. Qiu Jin was acknowleged immediately as a heroine and a martyr who died fighting enemies of the Chinese people and she became a symbol of women's independence.

Source: Distinguished Women of Past and Present, contributed by Danuta Bois, 1997; http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/qiujin.html

References:
Herstory. Women Who Changed the World, edited by Ruth Ashby and Deborah Gore Ohrn, Viking, 1995. Qiu Jin profile by Lynn Reese.

While Qiu Jin (秋瑾) is mainly remembered in the West as revolutionary and feminist, one aspect of her life that gets overlooked is her poetry and essays. Having received an exceptional education in classical literature, reflected in her writing of more traditional poetry (shi and ci) Qiu composed verse with a wide range of metaphors and allusions; mixing classical mythology along with revolutionary rhetoric.

 Read more at Voices

 

Misty Poets

Road to East Asia

 A journal on contemporary East Asian literature in English

Written by students of FC1750.06
at Founders College, York University

Vol.2, no. 3, June-August, 1997

 

Voices from Today's China

by Jessica Martin

 

One thing China has not known is light . . . Soon the bright day will dawn . . .

 

--by Xiang Yang, from Trees on the Mountain

There is an extraordinary group of young poets and writers from China who have carved a respected space for themselves in the literary world. Ironically, whatever they have written on paper is subject to government scrutiny and is often grounds for criminal prosecution. Most of them have left the country, opting to pursue their careers in lands more receptive to their work while a few remain behind to struggle against the hostile barrier the government presents when a poet tries to get published. As is evident in the short excerpt from Xiang Yang's poem, there is determined spirit amongst these literary revolutionaries, one that does not let oppression stop their work.

The group responsible for inciting this spirit of rebellion founded and contributed to the Today magazine during its short period of publication from 1978 to 1980. Three of the most famous writers of that period were Bei Dao, Gu Cheng, and Shu Ting, best known for their so-called "misty" poetry. In the broad sense of the word, it means "vague," "indirect," and "elusive." Despite the diverse stylistic approaches, three common themes recur--individualism and self expression, human relationship with the natural worlds, and the struggle against oppression.

In the late 1970s, Zhao Zhenkai (Bei Dao), then an aspiring poet, got together frequently with friends and colleagues and talked about starting a literary magazine that would give voice to the emerging authors. The future of China's cultural tradition would rest in their hands. At that time, the Cultural Revolution was just ending and the situation was volatile, with various politicians hoping to be Mao Tsetung's successor. Deng Xiaoping was poised to receive this honor, and in order to gain the support of the people, Deng fully endorsed the Democracy Wall Movement in 1978. This movement allowed the people to express their grievances with the government and their discontent with the outcome of the Cultural Revolution.

Under such circumstances, Zhao Zhenkai's plan for a literary journal flourished. The pages of the first issue of Today (Jiantian) were among the initial writings on the Wall, and from 1978 to 1980, the magazine continued publishing, giving new talents a voice to be heard. Publishing under the pseudonym Bei Dao, Zhao Zhenkai's literary career took off.

In 1980 Deng Xiaoping came into power, and he put a stop to the "spiritual pollution" caused by this magazine. The writers then had to take their work underground. In an interview with Siobhan La Pianan (1994, online), Bei Dao noted that there were periods during the next eight or nine years when his poetry was published in official journals as a source for discussion and debate but the attitude of the government towards his work was so unpredictable that it was hard to know how it would be taken. Finally, in 1989 the magazine resumed publication, this time out of Stockholm. Bei Dao and Gu Cheng were banished from China, giving them the unfortunate position of being writers in exile. Shu Ting still lives incognito in southern China. (See "Writers-in-exile after Tiananmen," Road to East Asia.)

All these poets have a strong sense of self and repeatedly focus on this aspect in their work. It transmits spontaneously personal feelings and a desire for free expressions as an individual rather than as a group or a nation. In this way, their work appears to be far less politically motivated since they do not focus on class struggle or class character.

The desire for self-expression is obvious in Shu Ting's poem "Gifts," anthologized in Trees on the Mountain:

 

Through the tree roots I'll enter the veins of their leaves
Yet when they wither I'll not be sad
For I shall have expressed myself
And gained life.

Read more at York University

Chinese Martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion

Chinese Martyrs is a name given to a number of members of the Catholic  and the Eastern Orthodox Churches who were killed in China during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They are celebrated as martyrs by their respective churches. Most were Chinese laity, but others were missionaries from various other countries; many of them died during the Boxer Rebellion.

The Eastern Orthodox Church recognizes 222 Albazinians (Chinese of Russian descent) who died during the Boxer Rebellion as "Holy Martyrs of China." They were mostly members of the Chinese Orthodox Church, which had been founded by Russian Orthodox missionaries in the 17th century and maintained close relations with them, especially in the large Russian community in Harbin. They are called new-martyrs, as they died under a modern regime. The first of these martyrs was Metrophanes, Chi Sung.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes 120 Catholics who died between 1648 and 1930 as its "Martyr Saints of China". They were canonized by Pope John Paul II on 1 October 2000. Of the group, 87 were Chinese laypeople and 33 were missionaries; 86 died during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The Chinese Martyrs Catholic Church in Toronto, Ontario is named for them. Many Protestant Christians also died during the Uprising, including the "China Martyrs of 1900", but there is no formal veneration or a universally recognized list. 

Metrophanes

Metrophanes, Chi Sung (his Chinese name is also sometimes translated as Tsi Chung) or Mitrophan (December 10, 1855 – June 11, 1900) was the first Chinese Eastern Orthodox priest to be martyred. He was killed with his family members and church followers in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. He is the best known of some 222 Holy Chinese Martyrs glorified in August 2000 by the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Metrophanes was stabbed in the chest by a crowd of rebels. Also considered martyrs are his wife Tatiana, whose Chinese name was Li, his sons, twenty-three year-old Isaiah and eight-year-old John, and Isaiah's nineteen-year-old fiancee Maria, who were all killed with him.

Metrophanes was raised by his mother, Marina, and grandmother, Ekaterina, after his father died when he was a child. He was a shy, unassuming man who was educated for the priesthood at a Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China. Church authorities urged him to become a priest, but they persuaded him to do so with difficulty because he didn't believe he had the talents necessary. "A man of poor talent and little virtue, how dare I accept this great rank?" he said. Metrophanes was ordained by Nikolai, Bishop of Japan in 1880. He helped with translation of liturgical books into Chinese from Russian and proofreading. Eventually he suffered a breakdown and settled outside the mission, receiving half of his salary. Many people took advantage of his goodwill or mocked him.

During the Boxer Rebellion, the Boxers burned down his print shop and church site. He tried to encourage fellow members of the church during the rebellion. On the night of June 10, rebels surrounded his house and killed Metrophanes along with many of the 70 people inside. Metrophanes was stabbed to death under a date tree.

Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrophanes,_Chi_Sung  

Read more at voices

 

A New Era of Gunboat Diplomacy

IT may seem strange in an era of cyberwarfare and drone attacks, but the newest front in the rivalry between the United States and China is a tropical sea, where the drive to tap rich offshore oil and gas reserves has set off a conflict akin to the gunboat diplomacy of the 19th century.

The Obama administration first waded into the treacherous waters of the South China Sea last year when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared, at a tense meeting of Asian countries in Hanoi, that the United States would join Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries in resisting Beijing’s efforts to dominate the sea. China, predictably, was enraged by what it viewed as American meddling.

For all its echoes of the 1800s, not to mention the cold war, the showdown in the South China Sea augurs a new type of maritime conflict — one that is playing out from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean, where fuel-hungry economic powers, newly accessible undersea energy riches and even changes in the earth’s climate are conspiring to create a 21st-century contest for the seas.

China is not alone in its maritime ambitions. Turkey has clashed with Cyprus and stoked tensions with Greece and Israel over natural-gas fields that lie under the eastern Mediterranean. Several powers, including Russia, Canada and the United States, are eagerly circling the Arctic, where melting polar ice is opening up new shipping routes and the tantalizing possibility of vast oil and gas deposits beneath.

“This hunt for resources is going to consume large bodies of water around the world for at least the next couple of decades,” Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview, describing a global competition that sounds like a watery Great Game.

Such tensions are sure to shadow President Obama this week, as he meets with leaders from China and other Asian countries in Honolulu and on the Indonesian island of Bali. Administration officials said they expected all sides to tamp down disagreements, though that won’t mask the coming conflicts.

“Underlying all of this is the recognition that an increasing share of oil resources is offshore,” said Daniel Yergin, an energy expert and author of a new book, “The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World.” “When you have energy resources on land,” he said, “you know where things stand. When they’re offshore, things can get murkier.”

Twenty-nine million barrels of oil a day, one-third of global production, now come from offshore fields, Mr. Yergin said, a share that will rise steadily. The South China Sea alone is estimated to have 61 billion barrels of petroleum — oil and gas — plus 54 billion yet to be discovered, while the Arctic is projected to have 238 billion barrels, with possibly twice that in undiscovered sources.

Read more at The New York Times

Robert A. Scalapino, a Scholar of Asian Politics, Dies at 92

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: November 12, 2011

Robert A. Scalapino, an eminent scholar of Asian politics who achieved prominence during the Vietnam War for his strong defense of American policy as opposition to it was growing, died Nov. 1 in Oakland, Calif. He was 92.

Associated Press                Robert A. Scalapino in 1966

The cause was complications of a respiratory infection, the University of California, Berkeley, said. Professor Scalapino taught there from 1949 to 1990 and founded its Institute of East Asian Studies in 1978.

The author of 39 books on Vietnam, China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, Professor Scalapino was also editor of Asian Survey, a scholarly publication, from 1962 to 1996 and advised the State Department and other government agencies.

In 1965, he wound up arguing the Johnson administration’s case for escalating the war at what was billed as a national teach-in on Vietnam policy. The event was a debate by a panel before an audience of 5,000 in Washington and more than 100,000 people at more than 100 campuses who had gathered to hear the debate by radio hookups.

McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson, had been scheduled to attend, and many participants had hoped to hear his pro-war views and confront him. When he canceled at the last minute, it fell to Professor Scalapino, who had also been invited to join the panel, to take the lead in defending the White House’s policy. He argued that the United States was fighting communism, not Asian nationalism, and that China would regard the United States as a “paper tiger” if it abandoned the war.

Read more at The New York Times

 

There Is No Protectionism In China.

Posted by Dan on November 12, 2011

Now that I have your attention with my Global Times-ish headline, I am going to backtrack. 

The protectionism that people attribute to China is wrong. I have become convinced that the protectionism that people tend to attribute to China does not really exist, or at least barely so. The Chinese government does not care nearly as much about its domestic companies as widely believed, at least those that are not State Owned Entities (SOEs). Instead, the Chinese government cares almost exclusively about the Chinese government. Once you understand this, you will be better able to know where you, as a foreigner, stand.

I just read a China Hearsay post noting how China's Ministry of Commerce's recent approval of Yum! Brand's purchase of Little Sheep Restaurant should put everyone's fears to rest about China using its M&A review for protectionist purposes. China Hearsay was not the least bit surprised by this approval, nor was I. I figured the approval would come because the buy-out was not going to impact much (if at all) the things China's government really cares about.

The Chinese Government is still uncomfortable with private business and it rarely, if ever, steps in to assist them just to assist them. Therefore, if you as a foreign business are going to be competing with private businesses, you likely will do okay. If you are going to be doing business in an arena dominated by SOEs there is a much better chance of your facing problems.

Read more at China Law Blog

Liu Xiaobo: new book lifts China's gag on jailed Nobel peace prizewinner

Liu Xiaobo, winner of Nobel peace prize, will have his collected writings published in English for the first time

Read 'Your Lifelong Prisoner' – Liu Xiaobo's poem from prison

 
Liu Xiaobo’s book contains a moving tribute to his wife, the poet Liu Xia. Photograph: EPA

The collected writings of Chinese Nobel prizewinner Liu Xiaobo have been translated into English for the first time, but there will be no interviews, bookshop signings or appearances at literary festivals. The author is not even aware of the English translation, because he remains incarcerated in a Chinese jail and his wife is under house arrest.

Liu, who won last year's Nobel peace prize, is serving an 11-year sentence that began in 2009 for "inciting subversion of state power". Friends have been unable to contact his wife, Liu Xia, even though she has not been charged with anything.

The 55-year-old former professor at Beijing University has repeatedly been detained or arrested and sentenced over the years for his relentless but peaceful political activities, calling for democratic reforms, including freedom of expression, and condemning China's treatment of Tibet. He was barred from attending the Nobel ceremony, and at the funeral of his father earlier this year he was forbidden from talking to anybody.

But, although silenced in China, his voice will be heard again in the west with the first English-language collection of his essays and poetry, which Harvard University Press will publish in January under the title No Enemies, No Hatred.

Read more at The Guardian

Whose Economy Has It Worst?

It's no wonder that global markets are so jittery. The world's three largest economies can't continue along their current paths, and everybody knows it. Investors watch nervously for signs that China is headed toward a hard landing, that America will sink back into recession, and that the euro zone will simply implode.

In all three cases, kicking the can down the road has staved off disaster so far, but the cans are getting bigger and heavier. Which economy will be the first to stumble on its problems?

In Europe, the tough decisions have been put off because the principal players don't agree on how or why the trouble began. Germany and the other better-off countries blame the profligacy of Greece, Portugal and Italy and fear that an early bailout would relieve pressure on them to mend their ways. For their part, the debtor nations believe that the entire euro zone is out of balance and that more prosperous countries like Germany should export less and consume more to set things right.

Other Europeans say that a shared currency cannot survive indefinitely when monetary policy is centrally managed but each government decides how much to tax and spend. Still others warn that access to market capital requires a form of collective insurance, preferably in the form of a euro bond. Not surprisingly, Germany resists this solution because it implies a gradual transfer of wealth from the core economies to the periphery, a "transfer union" from rich to poorer states.

Yet another European view holds that the austerity plans now envisioned by Germany and the European Central Bank are worse than the disease. The Continent needs growth, not just reform and belt-tightening, they argue, and only a surge of stimulus across the entire euro area can achieve it.

The 17 countries and four European institutions now entangled in the euro zone crisis will continue trying to muddle through, but their dawdling can't be sustained. Markets are already losing confidence in piecemeal reform. Doubts about Italy, an economy too big to bail, will only add to the volatility.

Europe will be the first to drop out of the game of kick the can: Expect a disorderly debt default in Greece, more trouble for European banks and a sharp recession across the continent.

In China, the need for economic reform also has become obvious. It has been four years since Premier Wen Jiabao first warned that the country's economic model is "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and ultimately unsustainable" and three years since the financial crisis made clear that China's growth remains dangerously dependent on exports to Europe, America and Japan.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

The Ancient Chinese Game of Go

Weiqi, known in English as Go or Encirclement Chess, is one of the four most refined skills that an ancient Chinese intellectual could possess. It has a history of well over 4000 years in China and remains popular to this day in China, Japan and South Korea. Culturally, this may be one activity that really is "more than just a game".

Go is a game of encirclement and capture, which takes place on a board of 361 squares. The object of Go is not to capture the opponent's actual pieces but rather to surround empty territory on the board. This is done by building encircling "walls" around these empty spaces. The game is played by two people, with a black and white set of pieces, just as in chess.
It's pretty certain that Go was invented by Chinese ancestors, yet nobody knows exactly when. The Encyclopedia Britannica records that the game originated from China in 2306 B.C. According to legend, a Chinese ruler of some 2200 years ago, Emperor Yao, invented Go to help enlighten his son Dan Zhu.

Wu Yulin is a Go professional, and coach for young players in the National Go Team. He explains how the game is historically another high-brow art-form. 

"In ancient China, Go was mostly favored by intellectuals, especially those from the upper class and the bureaucracy. The ordinary people would seldom take a liking to this game. However, now we have people from all circles playing Go, as a result of government efforts to popularize this ancient art."

Secretary General of the China Go Association, Hua Yigang, explains the reason why this game has predominantly been played by intellectuals.

"Only those with some degree of education can approach this game, because it's so complicated. It has too many variations of play and requires a great deal of calculation. An ancient scientist once calculated that the board positions in a single game can be a number that is 768 digits long."

Read more at China.org.cn

American Prisoners of War in China! Part 1/5

View all five episodes (5) on the sidebar. DIRECTOR'S CHAIR

Uploaded by boycottyourmom on Apr 19, 2008

It is January 1954. The Korean War is over. Captured UN soldiers held in POW camps are free to return home. Those who refuse repatriation to their homeland are transferred to a neutral zone and given 90 days to reconsider their decision. Among them are 22 American soldiers who decide defiantly to stay in China. Back in the United States, McCarthyism is at its height. Many Americans believe these young men have been brainwashed by Chinese communists through a new form of thought control. But what really happened? Featuring never-before-seen footage from the Chinese camps as well as interviews with former POWs and their families, They Chose China tells the fascinating stories of these forgotten American dissidents. With the Cold War fading into memory, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Shuibo Wang (Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square) aims his camera on this astonishing story. In They Chose China, we meet and begin to understand a group of courageous men who fought for and then cut ties with the USA.

Ties that bind grow stronger

Far from reconsidering its commitment to the US relationship, the Gillard government is tightening the embrace.

After Bruce Stokes had finished giving testimony before two US congressional committees in Washington last week, a peculiar remark about Australia stayed on his mind.

The Congress had called Stokes, an American trade expert, to tell them about the risks of the US being dragged under by a drowning euro zone. So it struck him as oddly off-topic when one member of Congress remarked to him privately that "the US doesn't want another Germany in Australia".

What did he mean by that? "A country that's a defence ally of ours but has become dependent on China for its trade," says Stokes, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington.

"He was critical of Germany because it's become so heavily dependent on China for its exports that it's hard to get them to co-operate on anything with the US any more."

This is a foretaste of the jealous rivalry that will come with the contest for power between the reigning superpower and the potential one. Is Australia about to be torn between the two?

China's economy at about $US6 trillion last year is still not even half the size of America's at $14.5 trillion. But already the gravitational pull of the lucrative opportunities of the Middle Kingdom is being seen as a test of nations' loyalties.

And on the face of it, you can see why the congressman, whom Stokes prefers not to name, might be concerned. Australia exported goods worth $9 billion to the US latest financial year, and $65 billion worth to China, a ratio of seven to one.

And look at the trend line. Australia's sales to the US fell 5 per cent in the year while sales to China rose by a startling 39 per cent.

But the US legislator can relax. The logic of the dollars may seem compelling but it has had zero discernible effect on Australia's strategic policy.

Far from reconsidering its uniquely deep commitment to the US - Australia is the only nation that has fought alongside the Americans in every major war of the past century - the Gillard government is tightening the embrace.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/ties-that-bind-grow-stronger-20111111-1nbrv.html#ixzz1dQua1MYD

Chinese recruited for war had secret passage through Canada

Capt. Harry Drummond Livingstone, of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, examining would-be recruits in Shandong Province in 1917. Livingstone examined men for diseases that could disqualify them, including tuberculosis, venereal disease and trachoma, a bacterial eye disease that can cause blindness. (Livingstone family)

YPRES, Belgium — Under pristine, white tombstones in the British military cemeteries dotting the landscape throughout Belgium and northern France, the graves of thousands of Chinese labourers can be found.

Some 140,000 Chinese men were recruited by the Allies during the First World War to fill a critical labour shortage at the Western Front. While their contributions have often been overlooked or even forgotten, there is evidence of their work everywhere in and around Ypres and along the coast of north-west France, not far from the site of the Battle of the Somme.

You just have to know where to look.

The Chinese Labour Corps unloaded cargo ships and trains, chopped down trees for timber, and maintained docks, railways, roads and airfields. Skilled mechanics repaired vehicles and even worked on tanks. Later, after the Armistice, the Chinese stayed behind to clean up the mess. As late as 1919, Chinese labourers remained in France and Belgium to help clear the rubble, bury the dead and clean up the battlefields.

Though the Corps was the largest ethnic minority group to participate in the Great War, their story is often left out of the history books, said Belgian historian Philip Vanhaelemeersch.

"In the West, the labourers were no war heroes. They fought no battles, they had no share in any of the great victories during the war," said Vanhaelemeersch, a Sinologist at University College West-Flanders in Bruges. "Their presence in Europe during the war was, at best, a footnote in the history books on the war."

Crucial link between China and the West

The Chinese recruits "figured importantly as messengers between Chinese and Western civilizations," wrote Xu Guoqi, author of "Strangers on the Western Front," a new book published this year on the Corps.

"Although most of the Chinese labourers were illiterate farmers with no clear ideas about China or the world when they were selected to go to Europe, they had a part in developing that new national identity and would play an important role in China's internationalization," Xu wrote.

Vanhaelemeersch agreed. "Chinese labourers to Europe during the war was China's first ever entering the international political scene," he said. "Today, the increasing interest in the Corps perfectly fits in the international agenda of the new superpower which China wants to be."

Read more at CTV News

Dreaming of a Normal Life in China

BEIJING — One evening last month, I mentioned the name Chen Guangcheng in a speech I delivered at a university in Qingdao in eastern China. Chen, a well-known human rights lawyer, lives only a few hundred kilometers away from where I was speaking.

His life is anything but normal. As a price for his activism, Chen spent more than four years in prison. He was released in September of last year and promptly committed to house arrest, although officials deny he is a prisoner. For more than a year he has been under 24-hour surveillance by several hundred burly thugs — a prisoner in his own home. Chen, who turns 40 on Saturday, is blind and said to be in poor health.

After the speech a student asked me if I planned to visit Chen. I had never met him but I have felt an affinity for him for a long time: We both have legal backgrounds and I greatly admire his courage. I had talked about Chen on my blog but otherwise my support for him had been feeble. I felt ashamed that I did not respond one way or the other to the student’s question.

My calculations were simple: I don’t want my books banned; I don’t want my name on the government’s sensitive-word Internet filter; I don’t want my upcoming overseas trips jeopardized.

But most of all, I’m scared. I’m scared of being beat up, and I’m scared of losing my freedom. I live in a world in which freedom is scarce, and I treasure it a lot, even if that freedom is pathetically small.

You may ask, is visiting someone really that dangerous? This is a normal question that comes from normal people. But in the abnormal world that is modern China, an innocent visit can be dangerous.

The next day while eating lunch, four otherwise cowardly people found courage in companionship and decided to go to Chen’s village to visit the hero. We set off within an hour.

Early the next morning we arrived in Dongshigu. Near the entrance to the village there were houses filled with men on each side of the unpaved road. A short man wearing a gray-green jacket came out and blocked our way. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Is this Dongshigu village?” I smiled.

Read more at The New York Times

Yuan drain as China's rich move west

Up to half of China's millionaires considering emigrating for better education, cleaner air and greater stability

 

A gold-plated Infiniti sports car being tested in Nanjing. China is predicted to become the world's largest luxury goods market by 2020. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Sherry Wang misses many things about China. It's taken time to get used to western food, and day-to-day communication is harder; even requesting goods in a convenience store can be a struggle.

But the wealthy entrepreneur has no regrets about her decision to emigrate to North America two years ago.

The education system "makes my son happy every day", she said, by encouraging personal development, in contrast to Chinese schools' rigid focus on grades. And the family no longer fret about the safety of their food.

Wang's choice is part of a much broader trend: China's rich appear to be increasingly keen to go west. Almost half of China's millionaires are considering moving abroad, according to a survey released recently by Hurun – best known for publishing a Chinese rich list – and the Bank of China.

The report found that 46% of the 980 people surveyed had thought about emigrating; 14% had done so already or applied to do so. Most wanted a better education for their children. The findings chimed with research by China Merchants Bank and consultants Bain this spring which suggested that more than a quarter of those with more than 100m yuan (about £10m) had moved abroad and almost half were considering it.

Read more at The Guardian

Chinese told they've got to try a little kindness

The conscience of a nation has been pricked by tragedy, writes Barbara Demick in Beijing.

How do you turn bad Samaritans good?

The question has become a national obsession ever since the shocking death of a two-year-old named Yueyue who was ignored by 18 passers-by as she lay bleeding on the street after a hit-and-run last month in southern China.

Nearly every day brings a fresh outrage - an 88-year-old man suffocating in his own blood after falling and breaking a nose, people rushing to photograph a suicide attempt without helping - and another hand-wringing editorial about how to cultivate the kindness of strangers.

The latest example came on Wednesday, when a five-year-old boy playing on the pavement was struck by a wooden beam that had fallen from a construction site in the city of Linyi, in the eastern province of Shandong.

His mother begged motorists and bystanders to help bring him to a hospital but all refused - including the chengguan, low-level municipal police, who drove by and ignored her, local media reported.

An ambulance eventually arrived, but the boy, Longlong, died on his way to the hospital.

''With little Yueyue just departed,'' one outraged commentator wrote on Thursday on the Sina Weibo microblog, ''what happened to little Longlong again raises questions about people's morals and conscience.''

In almost every province, laws are being revised to indemnify ''Good Samaritans'' against being sued if their efforts fail - one of the main reasons Chinese say they are reluctant to get involved.

Groups with names such as China Kindness and Filial Piety Special Committee and the Office of National Spiritual Civilisation have launched special projects to encourage better behaviour by the public.

''Trust is one of the hottest topics at the moment,'' said Wu Yilin, a pollster at Renmin University of China in Beijing. Her department has been surveying people about the degree to which they would help a stranger.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-told-theyve-got-to-try-a-little-kindness-20111111-1nbly.html#ixzz1dQYEVXCc

Clinton declares "America's Pacific century"

By Paul Eckert

HONOLULU | Fri Nov 11, 2011 8:09am EST

(Reuters) - With the United States facing a multipronged challenge from China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on Thursday that the 21st century will be "America's Pacific century" and said the region's problems require U.S. leadership.

While stressing that the Obama administration will seek improved ties with China, Clinton used a speech ahead of an Asia-Pacific summit here to dissuade Beijing and others from thinking the United States is ceding its traditional role in the Pacific.

"There are challenges facing the Asia-Pacific right now that demand America's leadership, from ensuring freedom of navigation in the South China Sea to countering North Korea's provocations and proliferation activities to promoting balanced and inclusive economic growth," she said.

Clinton's remarks, in a speech at the East-West Center, were part of a campaign by President Barack Obama to "pivot" U.S. foreign policy to focus more intensely on Asia after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that, in the 21st century, the world's strategic and economic center of gravity will be the Asia-Pacific, from the Indian subcontinent to western shores of the Americas," she said.

"One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will be to lock in a substantially increased investment -- diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise -- in this region," Clinton told students and scholars at the East-West Center, a Honolulu think tank.

While saying China and the United States needed to cooperate to stimulate global economic growth, Clinton delivered criticisms of Beijing's human rights policies that were certain to anger China's leaders.

"We are alarmed by recent incidents in Tibet of young people lighting themselves on fire in desperate acts of protest, as well as the continued house arrest of the Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng," Clinton said, referring to recent cases in China.

Read more at REUTERS

The quiet path of poets

In a Shanghai stuck between an ancient past and modernity is the lane that once housed Tagore

Nothing seemed French about the French Quarter​, with its shops selling marinated barbecued meats and waiters setting afire the asparagus on my plate, and nothing seemed Chinese about the large mall, which could easily have been in any large Asian city. Nothing seemed authentic when a hawker offered me a Montblanc pen that looked exactly like the Montblanc pen in the shop behind him, where it was sold for a hundred times more. Nothing seemed ancient in a city where each building was a skyscraper taller than the one next to it, and shone like it had been just unwrapped. And nothing seemed modern in a city where on weekends in a public park hundreds of men and women talked animatedly, exchanging photographs of their sons and daughters, arranging their marriages the way their parents had arranged theirs, and their parents theirs, and so on, uninterrupted, generation after generation. Despite the apparent spontaneity of those conversations, the moves were rehearsed, the dialogue planned, a bit like the city itself, where the centrepiece at the museum of planning was a miniaturized model of the metropolis, as though everything, including this sudden growth, was exactly as the Party intended and the city had planned.

Modern times: In the Shanghai of high-rises, the past can be found in museums. By Thinkstock

You could see some of the old Shanghai at that museum—the Shanghai that was among the last to fall to the Communists, the city which provided China with many intellectuals, the city that looked to the East, but was China’s face to the West. And you discovered that old city in large canvases of old houses from the colonial era, with gardens and foliage implying a permanence which empires believe they possess, until one afternoon the revolutionaries arrive, razing everything (on the other side of the same hall, they displayed large photographs of its port, ships and construction activity, looking mechanical and prosaic. There are probably bureaucrats who are prouder of those photographs of modernity, and not of the stillness of the canvases recreating the old).

Read more at liveMint

A voice for China's bottom rung

Persecuted author Liao Yiwu tells stories of an underclass the outside world rarely gets to see. He talks to Chris Barton

The Chinese Government hopes that every Chinese will be like a pig or animal - just eating and making money without thinking.

When Liao Yiwu escaped the "colossal and invisible prison called China" in July, calmly walking across the border into Vietnam, he couldn't believe his luck. "They stamped my passport," he says on the phone from Chicago, via an interpreter.

In light of Liao's predicament - hounded everywhere by the Chinese police, repeatedly denied an exit visa, barred from travelling to literary festivals abroad, his books banned in China and forced to sign a guarantee to cease publishing outside China - the exit stamp was nothing short of a miracle. Which perhaps explains why he's so taken with saying "good luck to you" - one of the few phrases of English he has, and which he's delighted to use at every opportunity.

The valid stamp is one of the reasons the persecuted Chinese writer doesn't see himself as an exile. "I consider myself as a writer who has to leave China to pursue my freedom to publish and to write." The choice of "Freedom or Exile?" is also the title of Liao's Writers and Readers Festival talk in Auckland next Saturday.

Read more at nzherald

Should China bail out Europe?

BEIJING: Even though there are high expectations for China to play a role in relieving the ongoing global economic crisis, analysts have said that Beijing is not ready to take on such a role.

But China may have no choice but to take the lead.

The chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, was in China earlier this week warning that Asian economies are not immune to the European economic turmoil.

She also met Chinese leaders, hoping to seek clarity on whether Beijing will do more to resolve the economic crisis.

But so far, China has been reluctant to reveal or even confirm that it would take measures to support the European market. Beijing has only expressed confidence that the Europeans will find their way out of their temporary difficulties by stabilising their financial markets and pushing for growth and recovery.

And that reluctance, according to a veteran China watcher, is understandable.

"The West feels an urgent need for some help suddenly, curiously from China the former sick man of Asia. They are just not ready, by their own recognition, to step into and play this role. And if they did, I think the West would be suddenly quite unsettled to have China sort of, in any way seeming to reach for, grasp power, even to accept power in new ways, because this is a very delicate historical balance that's starting to shift," said Dr Orville Schell, a veteran China watcher.

Read more at Channel News Asia

How Will China Respond to a New U.S. Military Presence in Australia?



US Marines Humvee four-wheel drive vehicles and a US Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion position themselves for the Talisman Saber 2009 joint exercise on July 15, 2009 on Freshwater Bay Beach near Townsville, Australia. (Photo: Department of Defence / Getty Images)

U.S. plans to station troops in Australia to help counter China's growing clout might be expected to provoke cries of indignation from Beijing. But the development, which President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard are expected to formally announce on Nov. 17 during Obama's visit to Australia, has thus far generated little in the way of complaint from the Chinese government. That could change once the plan is formally outlined.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the deal would lead to increased exercises and allow the U.S. to place hardware in Australia, but would not lead to the creation of new U.S. bases. The Sydney Morning Herald added that U.S. Marines will be stationed at an existing Australian base near the northern port city of Darwin, which Obama and Gillard will visit next Thursday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei responded to the news Thursday by saying Chinese officials "hope relevant countries' bilateral cooperation will be conducive to the Asia-Pacific region's security, peace and stability," the Journal reported. Earlier this year China launched its first aircraft carrier, and it has been involved in increasingly heated disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines over overlapping claims to the South China Sea. The Global Times, a tabloid owned by China's Communist Party, quoted an unnamed expert yesterday who said that because the U.S. has seen China's increasing ability to threaten forces in the "first island chain"—the line of islands in the Western Pacific stretching from Japan to the Philippines, it is now focusing on defending positions further removed from China.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/11/11/how-will-china-respond-to-greater-u-s-military-presence-in-australia/#ixzz1dQ6BQgBE