REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Imitation Outrage: Faking Concern for the Chinese Masses

from Peking Duck

Original Article at Huffington Post

Do Westerners care about human rights in China?

This journalist clearly believes they do not.

Let’s stop jacking the Chinese around. We do not care a whit now — nor have we ever cared — about their human rights or any other aspect of their lives as long as they satiate our unbridled appetites. To pretend otherwise is to deny centuries of exploitative history in which the West drugged the Middle Kingdom and plundered it for its resources and cheap labor while obliterating any sign of popular resistance to our imperial sway.

From the Opium Wars to the contemplation of using nuclear weapons to bomb China back to the Stone Age because of our differences with it over Korea and Vietnam, the response of the West has been one of brute intimidation. Never have we been willing to acknowledge that China, for all of its immense contradictions, upheavals, sufferings and errant ways, represents the most complex and impressive example of national history.

Instead we intrude upon China in fitful moments of pique or treat it as a plaything. Who owns China? That was the question that marked the first period of U.S. involvement, when we joined other Western imperialists in carving up China into economic zones. And then came the bitter argument in the U.S. in the late 1940s and the ’50s about “Who lost China?” Now Americans find themselves preoccupied with how best to exploit China’s amazing economic prowess while feigning interest in the well-being of its people.

My problem with the article is the use of the word “We,” as if this lack of interest in human rights in China is monolithic and universal. Is it not possible that many of us care about human rights violations in China? Who is the “We” that doesn’t “care a whit” about the subject? Who are these “Americans” who feel this way? Are they to a large degree strawmen?

I would probably agree that most of the government and the oligarchy of multinational companies don’t care much if at all. But there are many sincere people in the West who do truly care. They are probably the same people who care about human rights in other countries, the kind of people who were appalled at the treatment by the US military of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and who spoke out against atrocities committed in the name of the “war on terror.” Most Western journalists I know in China care deeply about the plight of dissidents in China. I know I do, just as I care about the repression of women in Saudi Arabia, or the arrest and torture and murder of innocents in Syria.

Read more at Peking Duck

U.S., China grapple with trust gap amid Chen fallout

Ananth Krishnan

Chinese police officers watch over journalists outside the hospital where Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng is recuperating in Beijing on Thursday. Photo:AP

United States and Chinese officials on Thursday called for measures to deepen trust at the start of an annual strategic dialogue, a day after the two countries grappled with a major diplomatic crisis over the case of Chinese lawyer and activist Chen Guangcheng.

The fate of the visually challenged rights campaigner remained unclear on Thursday after it emerged that he had expressed strong reservations about a deal reached by U.S. and Chinese officials to arrange his leaving of the American Embassy in Beijing, following a six-day stand-off with Chinese authorities.

U.S. officials came under strong criticism from activists on Wednesday after Mr. Chen revealed that he had actually wanted to leave China along with his family, and only agreed to exit the embassy after Chinese officials threatened to send his wife back to their home village in Shandong, where she had been beaten by local security personnel in recent days.

Mr. Chen spent Thursday at Beijing's Chaoyang hospital, which was surrounded by dozens of police personnel. He is receiving treatment for injuries sustained during his daring escape from Dongshigu village, where he had been kept under illegal house arrest for more than a year and a half on account of his legal activism against forced abortions.

U.S. officials on Thursday mounted a defence of the deal they reached with Chinese officials, saying Mr. Chen had changed his mind after agreeing to a deal to enroll in a university in China following assurances given by Chinese authorities over the safety of his family.

Read more at The Hindu 

Activist: U.S. will help me leave China



Chen Guangcheng regrets leaving U.S. Embassy

BEIJING (CNN) -

Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese activist at the center of a diplomatic firestorm, reiterated his intention to leave China and said he expects U.S. assistance.

"I believe they will help me," he told CNN in an interview early Friday, but declined to elaborate.

The activist, who left the refuge of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing after he escaped house arrest in his eastern China hometown, said Thursday that he regretted the move and now wants U.S. officials to help get him and his family to the United States.

Now in a hospital, Chen told CNN in an interview early Friday that he spoke with U.S. representatives by phone Thursday. They also met with his wife, Yuan Weijing.

When Chen left the embassy Wednesday, it was announced that the United States and China had worked out a deal for his future.

Read more at (ONE OF FIVE PAGES) KOAT

Blind activist goes free after promises of safety

BEIJING — A blind Chinese activist who fled persecution by local officials in his rural town and sparked a diplomatic standoff by holing up in the U.S. Embassy for six days emerged Wednesday after U.S. officials said China had assured his safety.

Chen Guangcheng's escape from illegal house arrest in eastern China and his flight into the protection of U.S. diplomats in Beijing last week had threatened to derail annual U.S.-China strategic talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton starting Thursday.

U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke escorted Chen to Chaoyang Hospital, where he was reunited with his family as he awaited medical treatment for injuries suffered during his escape. On the way, the activist called his lawyer, Li Jinsong, who said Chen told him: "'I'm free. I've received clear assurances.'"

Chen, 40, also received a call from Clinton, whom he thanked in Chinese for raising his case, a U.S. official said. Chen then told Clinton in halting English, "'I want to kiss you,'" the official said.

A close friend of Chen's gave a sharply different account, saying Chinese officials forced Chen to choose between going into exile alone or staying in China with his family.

Zeng Jinyan said she spoke by phone with Chen and his wife while he was in the hospital. A disappointed-sounding Chen told her that his wife's life had been threatened, she said.

"He said what he wanted was totally different but because no one can protect his wife and children" he had to accept, Zeng said via Skype.

Read more at STATESMAN

Chinese activist leaves U.S. Embassy on 'own volition'

Human rights activist Chen Guangcheng appears on YouTube after slipping away from house arrest

Beijing (CNN) -- A Chinese human rights activist who escaped house arrest and took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing left for a hospital Wednesday, opening a new chapter in the life of a man at the center of a controversy between the United States and China.

Chen Guangcheng's presence in the U.S. Embassy prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity between the United States and China. It threatened to overshadow U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's scheduled meetings with senior Chinese leaders this week.

The situation has presented a complex test for the Obama administration's approach to relations with China, creating a strain between upholding human rights and maintaining steady ties with Beijing.

Chen departed the embassy "of his own volition" after spending six days there, reported Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news agency. He will be treated at a medical facility in the Chinese capital, where he will be reunited with his family, a senior U.S. official said.

Read more at CNN

How Chongqing People View Bo Xilai

One April day in my birth city of Chongqing, I encountered a rare quarrel in People’s Park. The park is one of several places in downtown Chongqing that offer low-cost “baba cha” (open-space tea), where retirees and others with time on their hands lounge under leafy banyan trees with their teacups and bird cages for a good part of the day. Two fiftyish men sat at a plastic table drinking tea and chatting about Bo Xilai, their city’s ousted leader. One of the men said that Bo’s promotion of “people’s livelihood” had been a fake show, because during his four-year rule, prices of meat, food, and other daily goods had risen steeply in Chongqing. Two young women, who happened to be nearby, cellphones in hand and apparently waiting for someone, did not like what they heard and started to argue that Bo made Chongqing better. The man got very upset; his face reddened and he raised his voice, which attracted the attention of onlookers, including me. I asked the man whether his criticism was formed after Bo’s downfall. He was insulted. “This has always been my opinion! I’m not brainless, I was once a journalist!” he yelled.

Tea-drinkers in People's Park, Chongqing (April 2012)

This scene is rare because, seemingly illogically, in the weeks since his downfall, Bo’s local dissenters have been much quieter than his supporters.

Chongqing people’s attitudes toward Bo Xilai range from supportive to condemnatory to “who cares” and everything in between, a broad spectrum with two heavy ends. (For the indifferent, a typical expression I often heard was “The gods fighting is none of our business.”) So far, however, foreign journalists seem to have a hard time penetrating the famous fog of the river-mountain city to find more than one stratum of views. In the English media it is easy to see headlines such as “Bo Xilai Still Admired Locally in China” and “Bo Xilai Remains Popular in Megacity He Once Oversaw.” In those reports quoting “the average people on the street,” the term “average people” generally does not include intellectuals, writers, journalists, academics, and so forth.

In fact, among local intellectuals, professionals, and the middle class, there has been an overwhelming sentiment against Bo’s doings in Chongqing since 2009, according to a dozen such men and women I have spoken to this month, all of whom requested anonymity. One reason their opinions have not been widely reflected in the foreign media is that they are much more reluctant to speak than the “stick men” (棒棒, or porters-for-hire) who roam the streets. When I asked why they were still afraid of speaking up even after Bo was gone, a local journalist told me that the government had issued orders forbidding them from talking to foreign journalists.

Read more at INSIDE-OUT CHINA

They Choose China

In this feature documentary, Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Shuibo Wang (Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square) aims his camera at the astonishing story of 21 American soldiers who opted to stay in China after the Korean War ended in 1954. Back home in the United States, McCarthyism was at its height and many Americans believed these men were brainwashed by Chinese communists. But what really happened? Using never-before-seen footage from the Chinese camps and interviews with former PoWs and their families, They Chose China tells the fascinating stories of these forgotten American dissidents.

Uploaded by freespeechtv on Dec 20, 2011

Liu Xiaobo’s Plea for the Human Spirit

In absentia: An image of Liu Xiaobo in Oslo during the ceremonies marking his winning of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

By JONATHAN MIRSKY

Published: December 30, 2011

“I have no enemies, and no hatred.” Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, spoke those words on Dec. 23, 2009, just before he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “incitement of subversion of state power.” It was his fourth jail term since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Liu is the only Chinese citizen to win any Nobel while living in China and, as Perry Link notes in introducing a new collection of Liu’s writings, one of only five Nobel Peace Prize winners unable to appear in Oslo to receive the gold medal: “In 1935, Carl von Ossietzky was held in a Nazi prison; in 1975, Andrei Sakharov was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union; in 1983, Lech Walesa feared he would be barred from re-entering Poland if he went to Oslo; and in 1991, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest in Burma.”

In NO ENEMIES, NO HATRED: Selected Essays and Poems (Belknap/Harvard University, $29.95), the well-­translated collection edited by Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao and Liu Xia — Liu’s wife — Liu demonstrates a considerable amount of anger while retaining his Gandhian nonviolent spirit. Taken together, his essays offer the best analysis I have read of what’s wrong in the People’s Republic of China.

Liu was the prime mover (although not the originator) of Charter 08, the petition signed by several thousand Chinese who demanded an accountable government and freedoms of speech, assembly, press and religion. The petition was the main evidence the Chinese government used against Liu when it sent him to prison in 2009, but his accusers might have reached further still, through his hundreds of articles and poems, and his 17 books. Even his 1988 Ph.D. dissertation, “Aesthetics and Human Freedom,” was “a plea for liberation of the human spirit,” as Link explains in his introduction.

Liu has always been most animated by democracy. This concern underlies his essays on Taiwan, Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union, the failures and lies of the Mao era, the “miracle” of the Deng Xiaoping reforms after Mao’s death in 1976 and, perhaps most emotively, Tibet. Even while Beijing condemned the Dalai Lama as “a wolf in monk’s clothing,” Liu breathtakingly suggested in 2008 that China could solve its ethnic unrest by inviting “the Dalai Lama back to China to serve as our nation’s president. . . . Such a move would make best use of the Dalai Lama’s stature in Tibet and around the world.”

An accomplished poet, Liu pays close attention to the power of language. Noting that the party charged him with “incitement of subversion of state power,” he said this was an excellent example “of treating words as crimes, which itself is an extension into the present day of China’s antique practice called ‘literary inquisition’ ” — a practice exemplified by the 18th-century emperor Qianlong’s purge of subversive books.

Read more here

China dissident-lawyer Gao jailed in far west: brother

BEIJING | Sun Jan 1, 2012 10:30pm EST

(Reuters) - Chinese authorities have jailed the prominent dissident-lawyer Gao Zhisheng in the remote far west, his brother said Monday, the first confirmation of Gao's whereabouts in nearly two years in a case that has fanned criticism about secretive detentions.

Gao has been imprisoned in the Shaya County Prison in Xinjiang region on charges of "inciting subversion of state power," his brother, Gao Zhiyi, told Reuters by telephone from his home in Shaanxi province, citing a court notice.

"Now we finally know where he is, I hope we can visit him in a few days, but it's a long way to travel," said Gao Zhiyi.

The court notice amounted to the clearest information of Gao Zhisheng's location since April 2010, when he briefly made contact with friends and foreign reporters after being held in secretive detention for more than a year.

Read more at REUTERS

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

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

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

China's web users are powering dissent

Tens of thousands of people have responded to Ai Weiwei's internet appeal for financial support

This week has seen an extraordinary surge in support for the artist and government critic, Ai Weiwei, from people around China.

By midday on Friday, one of his staff members says, 7.57m yuan (£740,000; $1.19m) had been donated to help the artist fight his tax demand from the government.

That is over a million dollars raised in little more than a week.

Without a doubt it is the appeals for help that have gone out over the internet that are behind this.

They have been posted by Ai Weiwei and others on China's microblogs.

More than 26,000 people have come forward.

Many of them are convinced the tax demand is an attempt to silence Mr Ai and they want to show their backing for him.

Famous for helping design Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium for the Olympics, Ai Weiwei has become of the most vocal critics of the ruling Communist Party.

Before his arrest the internet was the tool that he used to spread his thoughts.

He would spend hours avidly posting on Twitter or his Chinese microblogs.

Some of Ai Weiwei's supporters sent cash in envelopes, others used paper aeroplanes to launch it over a wall into his garden

Since he was held in secret detention earlier this year, then presented with his tax demand, he has been confined to Beijing and is officially banned from giving interviews.

But he has returned to the internet and that is what has enabled Ai Weiwei to reach out to those sympathetic to him.

The numbers responding seem to have surprised even the artist himself.

China's authorities have demanded that he pay 15.22 million yuan. To fight the claim he has to put down half that sum as collateral.

Read more at BBC

China orders Ai Weiwei to pay $2.4 million for "tax evasion"

By Sui-Lee Wee

BEIJING | Tue Nov 1, 2011 1:52am EDT

(Reuters) - China has ordered dissident artist Ai Weiwei to pay 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) in back taxes and fines allegedly due from the company he works for, Ai said on Tuesday, a case supporters said was part of Beijing's efforts to muzzle government critics.

The 54-year-old artist, famous for his work on the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium in Beijing, was detained without charge for 81 days this year in a move that drew criticism from Western governments. He was released in late June.

Ai told Reuters he received the notice from the tax authorities that described his title as the "actual controller" for Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd., which has helped produce Ai's internationally renowned art and designs.

The company is owned by his wife, Lu Qing, who is the firm's legal representative.

"They made up this new title," Ai said. "I'm a designer for the company. I'm not a director, or even a manager. Of course, I know this matter is targeted at me.

"They said: 'We're fining the company, not you.' But I said: 'Why was my name singled out by the government, at the foreign ministry briefings?' But they still said to me: 'This has nothing to do with you.'"

Rights activists said the charges were a pretext for silencing the artist who has been a fierce government critic.

"It appears that the government is set to destroy him, if not economically then at least by setting up the stage to later arrest him for failing to pay back taxes," said Songlian Wang, research coordinator for Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Read more at REUTERS

China human rights activists beaten for trying to visit Chen Guangcheng

In China, human rights activists report being attacked by some 100 thugs Sunday when they tried to visit activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been illegally confined to his house.

Beijing

Liu Li knew he might not be able to get to see the blind barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng on Sunday. After all, Mr. Chen, a persistent thorn in the Chinese government’s side, has been under heavily guarded house arrest for more than a year. But Mr. Liu did not expect to return on crutches from his attempted visit.

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In this undated file photo released by his supporters, blind activist Chen Guangcheng, right, sits in a village in China.

“About seven or eight men rushed up to me, kicked me to the ground, stole my cellphone, smashed my ankle and knocked me out,” Liu recalled Tuesday. “And the police did nothing when I reported what had happened.”

Liu was one of a group of around 40 activists who were attacked and beaten by more than 100 thugs on Sunday afternoon outside the village of Dongshigu in the eastern province of Shandong where Chen has been illegally locked up in his house with his family since being released from jail in September last year.

“I did not think the situation was so dark,” said Liu. “There is no law in that area.”

The violence marked the second weekend in a row that unidentified thugs have violently broken up efforts by human rights activists and ordinary citizens to visit Chen in a burgeoning campaign to win his freedom.

“Though it is extremely costly for the activists, [the campaign] is bringing a lot of attention to Chen’s case and there are chances that it could ultimately succeed if the pressure continues,” suggests Nicolas Bequelin, a China analyst with Human Rights Watch.

Chen has been under round-the-clock guard in his home village since being released at the end of a 51-month jail sentence he had incurred on charges of disrupting traffic. Human rights activists say the real reason he was imprisoned was his vigorous defense of women who had been forcibly sterilized in abuses of China’s one child policy.

Instead of being freed, Chen was put under house arrest with his wife and daughter, and forbidden to contact the outside world. Local and foreign activists doing their best to monitor his situation say they fear he has been regularly beaten.

Foreign journalists and European diplomats are among those who have been violently turned back when they have tried to visit Chen, and in recent weeks a growing number of courageous Chinese activists have risked being beaten up or detained trying to reach his house.

Read more at The Christian Science Monitor

The Real Deng

Fang Lizhi

When a scientific experiment uncovers a new phenomenon, a scientist is pleased. When an experiment fails to reveal something that the scientist originally expected, that, too, counts as a result worth analyzing. A sense of the “nonappearance of the expected” was my first impression of Ezra Vogel’s Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. The term “human rights” does not appear in its index, and it turns out that this omission was not an oversight of the indexer. Systematic nonconsideration of human rights is one of the book’s features.

Mao Zedong died in September 1976. From 1979 until the years just before Deng Xiaoping’s own death in 1997, Deng was, in fact if not always in title, the top leader of the Communist Party of China, of the People’s Liberation Army, and of the Chinese government. He is known outside China, especially in the West, mainly for his decision in 1989 to send field armies with tanks into the heart of Beijing to carry out what came to be known as the “Tiananmen Massacre”: a bloody suppression of unarmed students and other citizens who were demonstrating peacefully in and around Tiananmen Square. Not everyone in the world has looked unfavorably on Deng’s decision. On February 22, 2011, at the height of the “Arab Spring,” Libya’s dictator Muammar Qaddafi had this to say about it:

People in front of tanks were crushed. The unity of China was more important than those people on Tiananmen Square…. When Tiananmen Square happened, tanks were sent in to deal with them. It’s not a joke. I will do whatever it takes to make sure part of the country isn’t taken away.

Deng’s example of the utility of massacre had not been lost on Qaddafi.

Vogel, an emeritus professor of social sciences at Harvard, retells the story of the massacre in a chapter he calls “The Tiananmen Tragedy,” which ends with a meticulous—and, it seems, angst-ridden—review of all the ways one might evaluate the “tragedy.” In the end Vogel comes down to the following:

What we do know is that in the two decades after Tiananmen, China enjoyed relative stability and rapid—even spectacular—economic growth…. Today hundreds of millions of Chinese are living far more comfortable lives than they were living in 1989, and they enjoy far greater access to information and ideas around the world than at any time in Chinese history. Both educational level and longevity have continued to rise rapidly. For these reasons and others, Chinese people take far greater pride in their nation’s achievements than they did in the previous century.

With these words Vogel indicates that he basically accepts an argument that the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department has been making for the past twenty years: that “stability” and economic growth show that the repression at Tiananmen was justified in the long run. When foreign dignitaries or journalists have asked about the massacre, the response of Party leaders has been consistent: if Deng Xiaoping had not taken “resolute” (i.e., murderous) measures, China could not have had the stable society or flourishing economy that it enjoyed in the ensuing years.

Other aspects of government rhetoric, however, suggest that even the sources of such statements do not quite believe them. If it were really true that Deng’s “resolute action” led to economic growth, and that this causal connection is plain for Chinese people to see, one would expect Party propaganda to be highlighting “the suppression at Tiananmen.” But they do the opposite. Over the years, the official description of the massacre events has steadily shrunk from “counterrevolutionary riot” to “turmoil” to “incident” to “flap.” The leaders are well aware that what happened is an extremely ugly mark on their historical record, and they have been eager to have the world forget it as soon as possible.

Read more at  The New York Review of Books

The activists shining light on China’s dark corners

China’s 'netizens’ skip censorship and brave beatings to expose the torment of a blind lawyer, Chen Guangcheng.

Chinese activist Wang Xuezhen buying stationery for Kesi the daughter of blind lawyer activist Chen Guangcheng using donation collected from concerned online users Photo: Peter Foster

By Peter Foster, Dongshigu

The policeman’s hand slapped the woman’s face with an audible crack. Standing only five feet tall in her trainers, barely the height of her assailant’s epaulettes, she took the blow without a cry.

This scene was witnessed by The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday in a small police station near a village in Shandong province, north-east China, that has become a magnet for activists of all stripes protesting against a dark corner of the Chinese state that operates beyond the law.

The woman who took the slap, 30-year-old Wang Xuezhen, is one of a stream of people who have marshalled themselves over the internet and travelled to Dongshigu village to support a man they believe is being persecuted, a blind lawyer named Chen Guangcheng.

Stumbling out of the police station and holding her stinging face, Miss Wang bitterly observed a truth about contemporary China: the country’s lawlessness begins with the law itself.

Then she turned on her mobile phone and asked a friend to post a message on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, relaying the news of the assault to the world.

Almost immediately, her supporters began passing on the message and posting their own messages of support. By the evening the slap had been picked up by an Asian television channel.

“These animals, they lack all humanity, I hate them so much. I wish I could go and join your fight!” wrote one of her followers.

The power and speed of China’s social networks has alarmed the government, which announced plans on Wednesday to police the buzz of messages more tightly, in the name of maintaining what it calls “social stability”.

In the two years since it was launched, the Weibo platform has attracted more than 200 million Chinese, creating a chorus of commentary on the failings of an authoritarian state that often questions and contradicts the output of the tightly-controlled state media.

Even though the Weibo microblogs are carefully policed, with censors blocking and deleting content deemed seditious, the controls are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of outpourings by the so-called “netizens” – a “Chinglish” coinage for online activists and contributors.

“Operation Free Chen Guangcheng” is perhaps one of the clearest examples of what frightens the Communist Party. It began earlier this year when activists began suggesting online that people should go as “tourists” to visit the 39-year-old blind lawyer, who has been kept under illegal house arrest for more than a year.

Read more at The Telegraph

Women Of The Country

 

 

 

There have been radical changes for women in China in just a century. Here we profile some extraordinary women working to improve human rights, the environment and AIDS education. You may also nominate your own candidates to be added to our gallery.

  MORE AT PBS

Ai Weiwei is named ArtReview's 'most powerful artist'

The artist has spoken out against human rights abuses in China

Continue reading the main story

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been named the most powerful person in the art world, according to a poll compiled by ArtReview magazine.

But Mr Ai, who was released in June after being detained for more than 80 days by Chinese authorities, told the BBC he does "not feel powerful at all".

The magazine said he was chosen by the panel because of his political activism, as much as his artwork.

China criticised the selection saying it was based on "political bias".

In a statement, ArtReview magazine said: "[His] activities have allowed artists to move away from the idea that they work within a privileged zone limited by the walls of a gallery or museum."

"It's expanding the possibilities of what you can do with art, and as an artist how you can use your voice," it added.

Read more at BBC

Chinese artist Ai weighs future as activist - Austrian radio

(Reuters) - In fear for his life and abandoned by many peers during weeks of detention, dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is considering his future as a rights activist, he said in an interview with Austrian radio broadcast on Saturday.

"They can make me disappear. I have no protection, no lawyer," he said in a rare media interview conducted in connection with the opening of an exhibition of his work in Austria.

"So I have to be careful with (my actions) because I may lose my life," he added from his studio in China.

"I don't think there is any form of law (that) can protect me."

China's leading social critic has been under close watch as part of the strict terms of his release from custody in late June after 81 days.

Despite this, the artist, 54, has spoken out on his Twitter account on behalf of detained dissidents and his associates who were held at the same time as he was and have since been released.

Asked about calls by his family to take a break from activism and relax for a while, Ai said: "Frankly everybody said so -- friends, family and relatives.

"So I have to really examine and think. I have been trying to find a way to deal with the rest of the time."

Ai endured intense psychological pressure during his secretive detention and faces the threat of prison for alleged subversion, according to a source familiar with his detention.

Ai's incarceration ignited an outcry from many Western governments about China's tightening grip on dissent that started in February, when dozens of rights activists and dissidents were detained and arrested.

In the interview, Ai said there were thousands of professional artists in China but not one had piped up to ask what was happening during his detention.

"Nobody dared ask one question," he said, adding he was advising young artists to leave China because "this is crazy".

Read more at REUTERS

Ai Weiwei breaks gagging order in scathing attack on China's human rights

Dissident artist speaks out after weeks of muted criticism

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

China's best-known dissident, the artist Ai Weiwei, delivered a calculated and outspoken attack about repression in Beijing, in an apparent rebuke to the regime that had sought to secure his silence by detaining him for nearly three months.

Mr Ai criticised the police, judiciary and the unfairness of Chinese society despite controls imposed on his release on bail in June that were designed to minimise his ability to embarrass the leadership.

In a commentary for Newsweek magazine's website, Mr Ai – best known for designing the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing – called the capital a "city of violence" where nobody could speak out because they were denied basic human rights. He also damned the legacy of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which has been trumpeted as a victory of Communist Party organisation and source of national pride.

"None of my art represents Beijing," he wrote. "The Bird's Nest – I never think about it. After the Olympics, the common folks don't talk about it because the Olympics did not bring joy to the people." The commentary appeared to stretch the terms of his release on 22 June after 81 days in custody for alleged tax evasion. He was ordered not to use Twitter or other social media and not to give interviews to foreigners. Many human-rights activists believe the tax charges against him were trumped up to remove a long-term thorn in the side of the Communist Party.

If so the commentary – headlined "The City: Beijing" – suggests that they failed and raises the prospect that he could be returned to prison. Since his release he has started tweeting again, with some critical comments and support for dissidents.

Read more at The Independent

China's plan for secret detentions alarms rights activists

China proposes a change in its criminal code that would allow authorities to detain suspects for up to six months in a secret location. Such a measure would increase the risk of torture, a Human Rights Watch spokesman says.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Beijing—

A proposed change in the Chinese criminal code that would allow authorities to detain suspects for up to six months in a secret location is a dangerous step backward for the country, activists charged Saturday.

The change would effectively enshrine what has become a common practice for silencing dissidents, many of whom have disappeared for months without formal charges being filed. Under the change, the suspects can be held without notice to their family members or lawyers.

The proposed change in the law was disclosed earlier in the week in the respected Legal Daily.

"This new amendment will legalize 'forced disappearance,'" Beijing attorney Liu Xiaoyuan tweeted Saturday. Liu was briefly detained himself around the same time as his friend and client Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist whose disappearance earlier this year made international headlines.

Under current law, a person suspected of a crime but not formally charged could be put under house arrest for six months.

Read more at The Los Angeles Times

PEASANTS - MY KINSMEN

Peasants, you are the bearers of my being.
How much hardship and labor you had endured for sake of bringing me up!
In winds and rains, you work without counting the springs and autumns
Stars and moon above thee, you never escape from the winters and summers.
The wrinkles on thy foreheads are records of the life experiences
The drops of sweating fertilizing the small patch of land below.
Thy youth is already melted into ashes
And hot blood frozen into hard bones.
You had raised a family of 100 million
But why do you still work so hard, year in and year out?
 
Peasants, you are my brothers and sisters
For sake of survival
You had come into cities and towns sacrificing thy youth and sweating.
Look
High on the construction sites are nobody else other than countryboys,
Bending over the sewing machines are nobody else other than countrygirls.
Just for sake of not getting hungary
You have to sustain hazards, bitterness, bullies and tears !
What parents would not care about their children (who wondered around the cities).
For whom had you sacrificed thy golden youth in remote lands?
My brothers, whatever in the cities do not belong to thee
My sisters, do not get sad leaving the cities you had come to like.
Because thy household registers, with the ironed word "peasants",
Had predestined thy returning to the countryside you love and hate so much
And stay there just like thy grandparents and ancestors.
You paved the wide lanes of city roads and built the piercing skyscrapers,
You brought about the prosperity of the markets and the benefits of life.
But why would you possess utterly nothing
Other than humility and hard labor?
 
Peasants, you are my kinsmen.
I don't know how to present my compatriotic red heart.
In face of cruel governance, vicious rascals, barbarity and poverty,
I have my full indignation and hatred, only.
I swear that there must be a day
All the unequalities in China will be wiped out!
How humiliated
I, as thy son,
Am in watching thy staggering steps under the pressure of hardship;
How ashamed
I, as thy brother,
Am to have allowed anyone to despise thee by calling the name of 'peasants'.
"Peasant" is not only thy final and ultimate occupation
But also the ironed mark of humiliation on thy body right after birth.
The land that you cannot disconnect with
Is afloat with the souls of thy forefathers.
How could it be transformed into the iron chains of the Devil
Tightly binding thy feet.
From then on, you never discover
That you are born a human being with inalienable rights to freedom, dignity and value!
While mankind had entered the doorframe of 21st century
And earth had been shrinking into a small village,
you, however, are still plowing the fields with the ancient tools
for providing the foods to the "villagers" of modern society.
 
I have a dream, from very early time on,
A dream that I believe would turn true someday for certainty:
A dream that peasants will be in possession of their own land.
As masters of the land, not slaves,
You operate the modern machinery
Freely plowing, planting and harvesting.
Thy occupation as peasants will become the envy of all
And the free world will be full of love and compassion.

Yang Zili (Chinese: 杨子立) (ca. 1971—), also known as Yang Zi, is a Chinese freelance journalist and webmaster, released in March, 2009 after having been imprisoned for eight years in the People's Republic of China for “subverting state authority.”^[1]

Wikipedia

Voices from the Bottom Rung of Society

Liao Yiwu

The Public Toilet Manager

Grandpa Zhou has handled human waste for almost all his life, first as an employee of the state in charge of cleaning public toilets and now as an independent toilet manager under contract with the city government of Chengdu to manage a large public toilet in the northwestern part of the city. “It’s serious business,” says Grandpa Zhou. He’s about seventy years old, but he looks pretty energetic.

I had known of Grandpa Zhou for quite some time. His toilet stands almost next door to my mother’s teahouse. But we were simply nodding acquaintances. One night I summoned up enough courage to get over my concerns about losing my social status as an intellectual and started a conversation with him.

 

GRANDPA ZHOU

 

Are you coming in to use the toilet or not? It’s already past midnight. Based on our rules I need to charge you extra. How else can I pay my taxes to the city’s Environment and Hygiene Department? But since you’re a regular client, I’ll waive the extra charge.

 

LIAO YIWU

 

I’m not here to use the toilet. I want to take you out for tea.

 

ZHOU

 

You don’t have to bother. I’m only a public toilet guard.

 

LIAO

 

Let’s go over to the teahouse, Grandpa Zhou.

 

ZHOU

 

You’re too nice. Is your mom’s teahouse still open? Actually, the more her customers drink, the better for my business. When their bladders are full they come to my place. It’s mutually beneficial.

 

LIAO

 

In this world there are rich people and poor people, aristocrats and common folks. But when it comes to the call of nature, everyone’s equal. Even the emperor has to take a shit.

 

ZHOU

 

I’ve never seen a royal family member taking a shit. If they did, they wouldn’t come to do it in this public toilet.

Hey, you’re a writer, you like to collect material for your articles. Did you know there was an attempted murder here not long ago? About two weeks ago a guy was chasing a young woman and she ran into this toilet. I tried to stop the guy at the door but couldn’t. All the female squatters were startled and began to scream. I sent my son to break it up, but the man took a knife out of his pocket. Nobody dared move. The guy seized the young woman and was about to slash her face. She went to her knees, begging for mercy.

You know how in many public toilets the fertilizer companies put plastic containers near the urinals to collect urine? I grabbed one of those containers and splashed its contents all over the guy. That stopped him. He was soaked. Later on someone called the police and they took both the man and the woman away.

Guess what happened the next day? I saw the man and woman walking on the street, hugging and kissing like lovers. I tried to dodge them, but they came up to me. The guy pointed his finger at my nose: “You motherfucker, how dare you pour all that pee on me?”

I didn’t reply. He continued swearing at me: “You fucker, why didn’t you mind your own damn business? Look what you did. My whole body smells like piss.”

When I heard that, I lost it. “If I hadn’t poured the urine,” I said, “you’d have killed someone!”

Then—I couldn’t believe it—the woman started to defend him. “So what if he killed me? It had nothing to do with you. You’re the stinking public toilet manager. We’ve been dating for almost three years. He’s tried to kill me more than ten times, but I’ve survived. Why call the police? We got detained yesterday and our families had to bail us out. When they saw us, they all covered their noses. Our neighbors laughed at us. Nowadays, everyone in China talks about the rule of law. We’ve been traumatized. We’re going to sue you.”

My son was incensed and got into a terrible argument with them. He grabbed a copper ladle and was ready to fight. I tried to hold him back, but that bitch jumped out in the street and screamed murder. All hell broke loose. We got quite a crowd. What pissed me off was that the guy pointed at my son in front of the crowd and said, “Did you just use that ladle to stir up the shit in the latrine? You’re a born toilet cleaner. You even use a shit ladle as a murder weapon.” So insulting! That was no shit ladle. It was for cooking. My son threw it at them. The people in the crowd thought it was covered with shit and ran away as fast as they could.

Let me tell you, there’s never been any shortage of these scoundrels in our city. They don’t have jobs, they just hang out on the street and make trouble. This jerk I was telling you about still shows up at my toilet. He always taunts me: “Since you’re not too well off I won’t seek any economic compensation for what you did to me. In return for our kindness, why don’t you allow me and my girlfriend to use the toilet free for one year?”

 

LIAO

 

He does sound like a jerk.

 

ZHOU

 

Yeah, but I’m not mad anymore. What goes around comes around. I used to go out of my way to help people, sometimes people used to make fun of me and call me The Shit Samaritan. Well, it took me half a month to go through the various bureaucratic hoops before I could obtain the contract to run this bathroom. All I’m going to do from now on is guard the toilet and collect the entrance fee. In the future, even if someone falls into the latrine, I won’t pull him out.

If I was born ten years later I would never have thought to make a living in the toilet business. When I was young you didn’t have to pay to answer the call of nature. All public bathrooms were under the supervision of the municipal Environment and Hygiene Department. Later, the department assigned each public toilet to its nearby street committee. The street committee then asked the local residents to take care of the toilets themselves. In the end, nobody was taking responsibility for their maintenance and they got dirty. When it rained the street flooded with human waste, and even cars couldn’t get through. When the sun was out the human waste dried up, and the moist stink could bring tears to your eyes. There are still a couple free toilets like that in the city, in the old residential areas. But nowadays most public bathrooms have been renovated and it’s a good business.

As you know, houses built before the 1970s didn’t have indoor plumbing. People had to rely on public bathrooms. Sometimes they had to walk quite far. At night, families had to use chamber pots. Chamber pots painted in red were popular items for bridal showers or dowries. A sturdy chamber pot could last over ten years. Every morning, in the old days, families used to dump their chamber pots into the public toilets or wait for the human waste truck. Those trucks were more punctual than public buses. While waiting for the truck people chatted and caught up with each other over the day’s gossip. It was quite harmonious.

Read more at Paris Review

Dissident Chinese Writer Flees to Germany

Liao Yiwu, one of the most persecuted writers in China, fled into self exile in Germany this week. While still in China, his writings on the plight of the country's downtrodden had earned him travel restrictions and threats from the police.

BEIJING — After being denied an exit visa 17 times, yanked off planes and trains by the police and threatened with yet more prison time, one of China’s most persecuted writers, Liao Yiwu, slipped across the border into Vietnam last week and then made his way, via Poland, to Germany, where he promptly declared himself an exile.

“I’m ecstatic, I’m finally free,” he said in a telephone interview from Berlin on Monday morning before plunging into a day of interviews and photo shoots. “I feel like I’m walking through a dream.”

Of course, his escape — arranged by friends whom he declined to name — has not brought unadulterated joy. By fleeing his homeland, Mr. Liao, 52, made the difficult decision to abandon the wellspring of his work, much of it journalistic explorations of China’s downtrodden: the political outcasts, impoverished farmers, death row inmates and others who have been traumatized by famine and Communist-inspired zealotry, then cast aside during the nation’s manic embrace of material wealth and collective amnesia.

He also leaves behind his family in southwestern Sichuan Province, including his mother, his son, two siblings and a girlfriend. “I’m trying to convince myself that I won’t be away from China very long, that things will change sooner than later,” he said.

In the West, Mr. Liao is best known for “The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up,” which was banned in China soon after it was published in Taiwan in 2001. The book, a collection of interviews with people he encountered in prison and during wanderings in the southwest, tells the unadorned stories of 27 people, among them a public toilet attendant, a persecuted landlord, and the men, known as corpse walkers, whose job it is to transport the dead back to their hometowns for burial.

After it was published, his already strained relationship with the authorities worsened. He was barred from traveling to literary festivals in Germany, Australia and the United States, and was forced last spring to sign a vow to cease publishing outside China. Breaking the pledge, he was warned cryptically, would bring even greater torment.

Given the predicament of his friend Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and writer who is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion, Mr. Liao knew what might await him. The threat gained greater urgency with the impending publication in the United States of “God Is Red,” a book by Mr. Liao about Chinese Christians, and a memoir about his time in jail, “The Witness of the 4th of June.” The memoir, whose title refers to the military suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, has been delayed several times by skittish publishers in Germany and Taiwan.

Read more at The New York Times