October 2006 Archives
By Reuters | washingtonpost.com
31 October 2006
Despite its rising power and wealth, China may not be willing or ready to play a responsible role in an international system aimed at encouraging peace and stability, a commission set up by Congress said in a report released yesterday.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission accused China of failing "to meet the threshold test of international responsibility in the area of non-proliferation" by aiding Iran's nuclear, missile and chemical programs and refusing to effectively use its leverage to bring North Korea back into nuclear arms negotiations.
It said China in recent years has allowed the transfer of weapons and technology across its territory from North Korea to Iran and even if Beijing wanted to control such transfers, this would be very difficult.
Beijing's adherence to World Trade Organization obligations remains "spotty and halting" five years after it attained membership, while its hunt for oil and gas holdings overseas could "substantially affect U.S. energy security," the report added.
By REPORTERS SANS FRONTIERES - REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
October 28, 2006
Wung Huo, the Beijing correspondent of the Hong Kong-based Oriental Daily newspaper, was beaten by security guards in the Chinese Congress in Beijing yesterday while covering an international beauty contest taking place inside the People’s Congress.
“This latest incident, involving security guards inside one of China’s leading institutions, illustrates the kind of risk reporters will be exposed to during the Olympic Games,” Reporters Without Borders said. “There is an urgent need for sanctions to be taken against police officers and security guards who deliberate attack journalists.”
Security guards told the accredited photographers covering the Miss International contest they were too close to the stage and began to push them back by force. Wung was pushed into a corner and beaten by at least one guard, sustaining head wounds and a nose fracture. The blows only came to an end when another guard shouted: “Stop the beating! The guests are arriving.”
By The European Parliament
October 26, 2006
In the resolution on Tibet, adopted by 66 votes to 0 with 0 abstentions, Parliament condemns the events of 20 September this year, when more than 70 unarmed Tibetan civilians were fired upon by the Chinese police, killing at least one person.
The Tibetans were attempting to cross the Nangpa Pass in the Himalayan region of Tibet, to seek refugee status in Nepal. The Chinese People’s Armed Police fired upon the Tibetans, who included women and children. Video and photographic evidence shows that the group was moving slowly away from the Chinese forces firing upon them and did not represent a threat. A seventeen-year-old nun was killed and there are unconfirmed eyewitness accounts of other deaths. A group of Tibetans, including children, were arrested after continuing to flee.
The Chinese authorities have thus far not officially recognised that the incident at Nangpa Pass took place or that any individual was killed by Chinese forces.
In its resolution, Parliament "condemns the excessive use of force by the Chinese People’s Armed Police in firing upon unarmed Tibetan civilians, including children". It "strongly condemns the killing of an unarmed civilian who, being under 18 years of age, was also considered a child under international law" and "expresses its dismay at the imprisonment of Tibetan civilians, nine of whom are children".
By Human Rights in China | 中国人权
October 25, 2006
Human Rights in China (HRIC) has learned that Shandong-based dissident Li Jianping has been sentenced to two years in prison, more than half a year after he went to trial and more than 500 days after he was first detained. On October 25, the Zibo City Intermediate People's Court found Li guilty of "incitement to subvert state power" on the basis of articles he wrote that were posted on overseas Web sites. Li reportedly plans to appeal the verdict.
Li Jianping, 40, participated in the 1989 Democracy Movement as a founder of the Independent Federation of Shanghai Universities. In recent years he had run a medical supplies business in Zibo City, and also posted many articles on overseas Chinese Web sites. Police officers from the local Public Security Bureau (PSB) reportedly came to Li's home on May 27, 2005 to carry out an "Internet security inspection," and after finding "indecent" images in Li's computer, detained him on suspicion of libel. He was formally arrested on June 30, 2005 after a search on his home, during which police seized manuscripts, communications and bank records, and overseas checks in payment for his articles.
Li's case was referred to the Zibo Procuratorate on August 30 that same year, but the procuratorate sent the case back to the PSB on October 12 and again on December 26 for supplementary investigation because of insufficient evidence. The PSB submitted Li's case to the procuratorate again on January 26, 2006, and he was formally indicted on March 7. During his two-and-a-half hour trial on April 12, the prosecution presented as evidence the titles of 31 articles Li had written criticizing the Chinese authorities and expressing concern over China's human rights situation. However, no verdict was announced at the time.
In "major" or "complex" cases, China's Criminal Procedure Law provides for a maximum of one and a half months for an indictment to be issued (Article 138), with extensions for further investigation if necessary, and a maximum of two and a half months for the announcement of a judgment (Article 168). These time limits were exceeded throughout the proceedings against Li Jianping. In addition, sources in China told HRIC that Li was not allowed to see his family or lawyer throughout his detention, and has been almost completely cut off from communication with them since April 13, on several occasions relying on others to pass letters to his family requesting a meeting with his lawyer.
HRIC is deeply concerned that Li Jianping's case is yet another example of a citizen being subjected to excessive detention and denied access to his lawyer and family after peacefully exercising rights guaranteed by Chinese domestic law and international human rights law. The foundation for a harmonious society must include a fair and independent legal system, and the right of citizens of that society to peacefully express their views.
By Quentin Sommerville | BBC News
October 26, 2006
At the editorial meeting at the influential newspaper Beijing Youth Daily, the morning news list is put together without too much discussion.
The editorial team already know the most important stories to include, thanks to the government's powerful news agency, Xinhua.
But according to Zhao Wei, the paper's home news editor, the only official requirement on her and her colleagues is to be responsible journalists.
"You might call it censorship, but it's not," she said.
"Editors get a lot of training, so they know where the boundaries are. What you can and can't print, you can't violate the constitution, you can't break the law and you can't publish stories that aren't true or affect social stability."
But Li Datong, the former editor of a high-profile magazine, Freezing Point, takes a different view.
"Editors in China don't edit, they're censors," he said.
"Every day, they make decisions on what not to publish, rather than what to publish. They have to attend at least one meeting a week at the central propaganda department where they're told what not to report," he added.
The Epoch Times
23 October 2006
Pastor Wang Zaiqin receives a two-year sentence for printing Bibles and other Christian literature
Giving away Bibles for free is a crime in China, according to a verdict recently handed down in the case of a House Church leader.
Pastor Wang Zaiqing, a prominent Chinese House Church leader in Anhui Province was sentenced on Oct. 9 to two years in prison on the charge of "Illegal Business Practices," and fined 100,000 Yuan ($12,500.00). In addition, all the books in his home, and the funds used to print them, were confiscated.
Pastor Wang was crippled at the age of 5. He became a Christian in 1993, and later became very well-known House Church for preaching and starting House Churches in several provinces around Anhui Province.
He had been printing and distributing Bibles and other Christian literature to fellow believers free of charge, which resulted in his detention by the local Public Security Bureau on April 28, 2006. Wang was formally arrested June 26, 2006.
On Sept. 4, 2006 the People's Prosecutor filed in the local People's Court the case to prosecute Wang Zaiqing for committing the crime of "Illegal Business Practices."
The indictment of the People's Prosecutor states Wang Zaiqing violated Chinese Criminal Law Article 225, Items 1 and 4, by printing Bibles and other Christian literature.
Wang's defense lawyer, Mr. Sun Hongye, stated: First, from a legal standpoint, the crime of Illegal Business Practices requires the accused to make a profit, and Wang Zaiqing's books were distributed at no cost. So Wang Zaiqing is innocent of this crime.
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
October 22, 2006
THE corruption scandal in Shanghai that had already taken down one of China’s most powerful officials claimed two smaller scalps last week: the chief of the national statistics bureau was fired, and an official with the Formula One racing circuit was hauled in for questioning. The contrast between the statistician and the racing executive may have been incidental, but it underscored the perception, fair or not, that official corruption is everywhere in China.
To some extent, the ruling Communist Party does not disagree.
In an economic boom gilded with excess and profiteering, official corruption is so widespread, and increasingly so brazen, that it is almost taken for granted. The latest World Bank governance survey found that China had seriously backslid in the category of “containing corruption” when much of the rest of the world, if not improving, was basically unchanged on the issue.
President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have warned that corruption threatens the credibility and legitimacy of Communist Party rule and have vowed to stamp it out. But many experts say that truly stamping out corruption would involve the type of broad political reform and a full embrace of the rule of law that the party has long resisted. The current corruption sweep authorized by Mr. Hu in Shanghai and other cities is widely viewed as more of a purge of allies linked to his predecessor, President Jiang Zemin, than an unfettered crackdown.
“The problem with China today is that if you want to pursue corruption, so many people are tainted,” said Minxin Pei, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. As a result, Mr. Pei noted, Mr. Hu could never investigate corruption solely on its merits because it would topple so many of his own political allies.
By RADIO FREE ASIA
October 18, 2006
HONG KONG—Two people are critically ill and dozens of others are injured following clashes between villagers and police in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, local residents said.
Around 900 residents of Xingtan township arrived in the provincial capital of Guangdong at about 10:30 a.m. Sunday by the busload to stage a protest outside the offices of the provincial government.
They planned to spend the night in adjacent streets and stage a sit-in at provincial government headquarters Monday in protest against alleged corruption surrounding the sale of their land by local officials.
The same evening, the authorities mobilized around 2,000 police officers and riot police with orders to force the villagers back onto their buses and back to their hometown.
“That evening, the police beat up anyone staging a protest, whether they were male or female, young or old,” a villager surnamed Leung told RFA's Cantonese service Tuesday.
By REUTERS | The New York Times
October 16, 2006
A Chinese university aiming to produce ''socially elite'' graduates is to make golf compulsory for students, state media reported on Tuesday.
Golf was once reviled in Communist China as a symbol of western decadence, but has become hugely popular among the newly affluent since the first golf course opened on the mainland in the early 1980s.
Students majoring in management, law, economics and software engineering at Xiamen University in China's southeastern Fujian province would be required to take a course in golf ``to achieve their elite ambitions,'' the China Daily newspaper said.
``Golf is not only good exercise, but will teach students communication skills and benefit their future careers,'' the paper quoted the university's president Zhu Chongshi as saying.
``The highest embodiment of the education system is producing socially elite people with the best education.''
Zhu said a bachelor's degree used to be respected but that higher education had grown into ``an industry designed to fulfil market demand'' and that there was a ``need for elite education.''
The university, which according to Zhu would open ``a most beautiful'' driving range in two months, had drawn some fire, the paper said.
``To try to make golf compulsory is rather vulgar,'' Alex Jin, president of the Center for International Education Group, was quoted as saying.
``China can ill afford golf,'' Jin said, adding that some regions in China needed investment in better primary health care.
by REUTERS | via yahoo.com (censored in Communist China)
July 16, 2006
Video footage shot by a Romanian television station appears to show Chinese soldiers firing at a group of Tibetans as they attempt to cross a mountain pass into Nepal, days after China defended the soldiers' action.
The video, taken by Romania's Pro TV, shows a line of people trekking through the snow when sounds of gunfire are heard and one of the figures crumples to the ground.
The footage is shot from too far away to make out identities, but a voice can be heard saying in English, "They are shooting them like dogs."
A group of climbers from Britain and Australia told Reuters last week that on September 30 they watched Chinese border guards take aim at a group of 20 to 30 people as they prepared to cross from Chinese territory into Nepal.
Tibet has been ruled by China since Communist troops invaded in 1950, and the government deals harshly with Tibetans who press for greater political and religious freedoms.
AFP via yahoo.com (censorend in Communist China)
by Verna Yu
October 15, 2006
The United States has lodged a protest with China over an incident where Chinese border soldiers killed one person trying to flee Tibet into Nepal, a US embassy spokeswoman said.
"The US ambassador on Thursday had gone to the foreign ministry to officially protest the September 30 shooting incident," the spokeswoman told AFP.
Tibetan rights groups last week said Chinese border troops had opened fire on a group of about 70 Tibetan refugees, including children, women and monks, who were trying to enter Nepal.
China's state news agency admitted Thursday that its soldiers killed one person and injured another near Mount Everest, but said they were acting in self-defense.
By BBC News
October 15, 2006
China has launched a fresh drive to clamp down on bad English in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Previous attempts to wipe out Chinglish - the mistranslated phrases often seen on Chinese street signs and product labels - have met with little success.
Emergency exits at Beijing airport read "No entry on peacetime" and the Ethnic Minorities Park is named "Racist Park".
Beijing city authorities will issue new translation guides by the end of the year, Xinhua news agency said.
Running joke
The booklets would be handed out to hotels and shopping malls, on public transport and at tourist attractions.
Chinglish has become a running joke among many foreigners in China, and several websites have been set up listing humorous examples of mistranslation.
A road sign on Beijing's Avenue of Eternal Peace warns of a dangerous pavement with the words: "To Take Notice of Safe; The Slippery are Very Crafty".
Menus frequently list items such as "Corrugated iron beef", "Government abuse chicken" and "Chop the strange fish".
The mistranslations arise because many Chinese words express concepts obliquely and can be interpreted in multiple ways, making translation a minefield for non-English speakers.
The municipal government in Beijing first tried to stamp out the problem just a month after being awarded the 2008 Olympics back in 2001.
A year later the Beijing Tourism Bureau set up a hotline for visitors and residents to tip off examples of bad English, and said results would be reviewed by a panel of English professors and expatriates
By REUTERS | The New York Times
October 12, 2006
China has arrested outspoken human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng on charges of inciting subversion, his lawyer said on Thursday, extending a government campaign to curb activists challenging its authority.
Gao was arrested on September 21 ``on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power,'' lawyer Mo Shaoping said, adding that he had only now learned of the decision from prosecutors.
``In fact, it should be the public security bureau that notifies us. But I asked them repeatedly and got no reply, and only then went to the prosecutors,'' Mo told Reuters.
Gao, in his early 40s, is a famously combative rights lawyer who has taken up the causes of dispossessed oil investors, labor activists and -- most controversially -- members of Falun Gong, an outlawed spiritual sect.
His arrest marked another step in the ruling Chinese Communist Party's campaign to stifle an expanding nationwide ''rights defense'' network seeking to expand citizens' rights through courts and publicity campaigns, said activists.
``Right now, the government's number one enemy is the rights defense movement, and Gao Zhisheng has been one of its leading figures,'' Hu Jia, a Beijing-based dissident who knows Gao, told Reuters.
By RADIO FREE ASIA
October 11, 2006
KATHMANDU—Members of a group of 43 Tibetans have described their terrifying flight to Nepal under deadly fire from Chinese border guards who took several dozen other Tibetans into custody.
Witnesses said at least one person was killed and at least one wounded by gunfire Sept. 30 near the Himalayan pass at Nangpa La in the Mount Everest region. Others set the death toll higher. Another 36 or 37 Tibetans were detained, witnesses told RFA’s Tibetan service.
The group, which originally numbered around 80 Tibetans, began their journey out of Chinese-controlled Tibet on Sept. 30-Oct. 1, according to members of the group—41 asylum-seekers and two Tibetan escorts—who arrived in Kathmandu on Oct. 10.
“When the Chinese fired at us, I was so tense and frightened. It is still difficult for me to explain what happened,” one man said in an interview after arriving at the Tibetan Reception Center in Kathmandu.
“It was so tense and confusing that I just thought of staying alive and escaping. I couldn't think of anything else or help the others.”
“I think the Chinese fired for about 15 minutes. I felt bullets whizzing past my ears. In fact I felt about five bullets pass by me and luckily they missed me. I was so frightened that I crawled in the snow using my hands and feet. The snow was about knee-deep,” he said.
The man, who asked not to be named, said the group initially thought the gunshots were fireworks, because there were many Western visitors who had come to climb the mountains in the area.
“I thought they were playing with fireworks. But then we realized it was gunshots and about 30 to 40 rounds were fired. In the confusion, we split into two groups. Those of us who were in the front managed to escape and the later group of about 30 or more Tibetans could not escape,” he said.
Another Tibetan, who hid in the mountains for two nights before crossing into Nepal, said: “I saw a small child…There was another young boy who was shot in the foot and an old man. They were detained in the area until late afternoon and then the Chinese police took them away.”
Buddhist nun shot dead
“Those who escaped later saw the body of the nun who was killed. She was Kalsang Namtso, 17 years old from Ngachu Dri-ru (in Chinese, Biru Xian) county. They gave a local yak herder 100 yuan and asked him to take body away but we heard that he didn’t do it. So we don’t know what happened later,” the second man said.
A Western climber who witnessed the incident told RFA’s Tibetan service that two others in his group had been contacted by the Chinese Embassy in Nepal and asked to attend a meeting there.
“They have since left Nepal and gone home” without visiting the Chinese Embassy, the climber said.
“We heard five shots very, very quickly,” the climber said. “We saw a line of refugees making their way up the pass and obviously the Chinese army coming with guns.”
Tibetans working as cooks at the climbers’ base camp reported that seven people had been killed and their bodies left in a crevasse, the climber said, although this information couldn’t be confirmed.
Residents in the mountainous area of Solokhubum, on the Nepal side of the border, confirmed the shootings had occurred.
“There were about 77 Tibetans who escaped in a group, and the Chinese police shot at them on Sept. 30,” one resident said in an interview.
One group escaped
“Forty of them managed to escape and about 37 were arrested by the Chinese police. Among them seven were either injured or killed. Again on Oct. 1, three more Tibetans crossed the same pass and the Chinese again fired at them but they managed to escape unhurt. There were about eight or nine armed Chinese police who fired on the escaping Tibetans.”
The resident said escape across the mountains was becoming more difficult as what were previously Tibetan border guards were gradually being replaced with Han Chinese.
“Chinese officials recruit Tibetans who are paid to spy and inform on the escapees. Spies in the area are paid 300 yuan a month, and they get a special bonus for tracking and informing on Tibetan escapees,” the resident said.
No comment from Chinese officials
An official at the Tibet Autonomous Region’s Foreign Liaison Office declined to comment on the incident when contacted by RFA’s Mandarin service.
“On this matter, we are not very clear. We don’t know about it. I have never heard of it,” the official said. “I can tell you nothing,” he said, before hanging up.
Phone calls on Wednesday by RFA’s Cantonese service to both the external affairs office of the Tibetan exile government in Dharamsala and the Chinese Embassy in Nepal went unanswered.
In recent years, thousands of Tibetans have risked the illegal border crossing into Nepal and India in search of better educational opportunities and religious freedom.
Many end up in Dharmasala, a town in northern India where their exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, has lived since 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. More than 20,000 Tibetan refugees currently live in Nepal, although those who arrive now are required to travel on to neighboring India.
Original reporting by RFA's Tibetan service. Director: Jigme Ngapo. Translated and edited by Karma Dorjee. Additional reporting by Lillian Cheung of RFA’s Cantonese service, Xin Yu and Xi Wang of RFA’s Mandarin service, and Richard Finney. Produced in English by Luisetta Mudie and edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
Special to WORLDTRIBUNE.COM
October 10, 2006
China’s Communist Party has ordered media outlets to tone down reporting on the financial scandal that led to the dismissal of Shanghai Communist Party leader Chen Liangyu.
The scandal is expected to implicate other senior Communist Party officials, including possibly even members of the eight-member ruling Standing Committee of the Politburo, the collective dictatorship that controls the government and military.
The Central Propaganda Department instructed Mainland media to take a low profile in reporting the case. In a memo, the department prohibited media from discussing “the party line and party connection” in covering the case.
Only news of the scandal released by the official news agency Xinhua should be published.
"No unauthorized or sensational reports shall be allowed. All speculative and exaggerative reports on Chen should stop," noted the nine-point circular from the Central Propaganda Department.
By JUDITH SHAPIRO | The New York Times
October 08, 2006
CHINA's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, caused an estimated one million unnatural deaths. It is widely viewed as one of history’s most horrific political cataclysms. Yet there is a peculiar amnesia at play in China, where the regime, whose legitimacy depends on protecting the record of the Communist Party and its founder Mao Zedong, suppresses discussion of the past. Ordinary Chinese, influenced by Confucian traditions that emphasize social harmony, are complicit in the silence, preferring to withhold blame for the violence and to avoid reflecting on personal responsibility. Indeed, in the context of today’s rapidly changing China, the nightmare of denunciations by Red Guards, widespread torture, Mao worship, book burnings and government-orchestrated mass relocations seems a distant memory. Yet until China comes to terms with the root causes of the Cultural Revolution, it is unlikely that a genuinely open polity and legal system will emerge to support the economic freedoms that have dramatically transformed Chinese lives.
Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals’s book, “Mao’s Last Revolution,” the first major history of the elite politics of the period, may generate a wave of Cultural Revolution scholarship within China and encourage healthy debate over state manipulation of historical memory. It is not, however, a book for those lacking some knowledge of recent Chinese history. Its cast of characters includes relatively well-known figures like Mao Zedong, his wife, Jiang Qing, and the other members of the ultraleftist Gang of Four, as well as the top military leader Lin Biao, the beloved Premier Zhou Enlai and the Cultural Revolution’s top-ranking victims, President Liu Shaoqi and General Secretary Deng Xiaoping. But it also features numerous others who are unknown in the West except among specialists. With little hand-holding from the authors, readers are likely to confuse similar-sounding Chinese names, purges and counterpurges, and unfamiliar events whose significance is unclear.
Yet the book is an important first effort to establish the facts.
By Human Rights Watch
October 06, 2006
“How will China’s pervasive censorship and control of domestic and international media and the Internet play out when thousands of international journalists descend on Beijing? How are the Olympic Games being used to justify the violent forced evictions of thousands of people from their homes? As international businesses reach out to the world’s largest consumer market, how do China’s restrictions on labor rights affect workers on the ground? Human Rights Watch hopes that the 2008 Olympics will be an impetus for China to demonstrate greater respect for the human rights guaranteed to all under international law."
So wrote Human Rights Watch on August 24, 2004, a few days before the city of Athens, host to the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, handed the Olympic flag to Beijing, the 2008 host city. During the intervening two years, as our concerns have deepened, we have continued to ask ourselves, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and China’s leadership the same questions.
Will there be censorship at the Bejing olympics?
Chinese laws and regulations narrow the space for free expression by domestic and foreign press. Contrary to international law, which calls for “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers,” news (Article 19, 1976) reports must largely repeat the government’s factual account and analysis, e-mail is selectively monitored and courts regularly sentence Chinese editors, webmasters, reporters and bloggers alleged to have leaked “state secrets,” “incited subversion,” or “colluded with hostile foreign forces” to prison terms as long as 12 years. Members of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) may not be charged with those offenses but they risk harassment and detention every time they try to cover what Chinese authorities consider a sensitive story, which can include a major traffic jam or an ozone-filled atmosphere (“Widespread Detentions of Foreign Journalists…”, 2006). Existing regulations already restrict where journalists can go and what stories they can cover.
For the 20,000 foreign journalists expected to cover the Beijing Olympics, the most pressing issue will be their freedom to report and analyze the Games without government interference (Kahn, 2006; Wu, 2006). Official accreditation of journalists for the Olympics might be used, as in the past, to reward journalists uncritical of Chinese government policies and to punish critics. Government ownership of almost all Olympic-related media infrastructure – outgoing and incoming wire-line and wireless communications, including telephone and Internet connections, international radio and television signals for broadcasting rights holders and transmission hardware for all television and radio broadcasts destined for international rights holders – will enable Chinese editing of offending broadcasts and interference with their transmission.
By Joseph Kahn *The New York Times*
October 04, 2006
A group of foreign academics, lawyers and human rights activists sent a open letter to President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urging him to “reverse a worsening crackdown on voices of dissent” in China.
The petition letter, organized by Human Rights Watch, called on Mr. Hu to take steps to enforce China’s public commitment to the rule of law and rein in officials who pursue retaliatory policies against lawyers, journalists and rights advocates.
“We note with concern the sharp increase in official retaliation against such advocates and their families through persistent harassment, banishment, detention, arrest and imprisonment,” the letter said. “We note, too, the frequent use of state secrets charges to discourage social activism.”
The joint letter by an array of prominent China watchers signaled an unusual level of concern about a sharp deterioration in political freedoms under Mr. Hu.
The letter was also signed by Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The experts cited four recent cases that they said suggested abuse of China’s legal system to persecute people who seek to defend the rights of Chinese citizens.
The four are Gao Zhisheng, an outspoken lawyer who is under detention by state security agents; Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal advocate who was convicted of charges of obstructing traffic and destroying property in August; Zhao Yan, an employee in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times who was convicted on a fraud charge in August; and Hu Jia, who has campaigned on behalf of numerous dissidents and was forcibly detained for interrogation in September.
The letter said each of those advocates probably faced retribution from the local or national authorities because they had sought to help people use China’s legal system to enforce their rights against the state.
“It is urgent that China’s central leadership not look the other way when local courts and law enforcement officials ignore China’s laws and legal procedures with impunity,” the letter said.
Chinese officials have said that all of the cases mentioned are being handled “according to law.” There was no immediate official response to the open letter.
By Joseph Kahn *The New York Times*
Otober 04, 2006
When Shanghai’s party boss was detained in an anticorruption probe last week, Chinese were rattled by news of the first purge of a high-ranking Communist Party leader since 1995. But the investigation’s scope and its ultimate goals are wider, as the party’s two most powerful officials aim to shake up the leadership and wipe out resistance to their policy agenda, party officials and analysts say.
The investigation, the largest of its kind since China first pursued market-style changes to its economy more than a quarter-century ago, was planned and supervised by Zeng Qinghong, China’s vice president and the day-to-day manager of Communist Party affairs, people informed about the operation said.
They said Mr. Zeng had used the investigation to force provincial leaders to heed Beijing’s economic directives, sideline officials loyal to the former top leader, Jiang Zemin, and strengthen Mr. Zeng’s own hand as well as that of his current master, President Hu Jintao.
Aside from frightening officials who have grown accustomed to increasingly conspicuous corruption in recent years, the crackdown could give Mr. Hu greater leeway to carry out his agenda for broader welfare benefits and stronger pollution controls, which may prove popular in China today.
Some critics fear that it may also consolidate greater power in the hands of a leader who has consistently sought to restrict the news media, censor the Web and punish peaceful political dissent.
By Friedrich Wu (reporting from Singapore)| The Japan Times
October 02, 2006
China's rulers rarely wash their dirty linen in public. So the arrest of Politburo member and Shanghai Communist Party boss Chen Liangyu on corruption charges has sent shock waves across the country. Some speculate that the arrest is really part of a power struggle, with President Hu Jingtao demonstrating his authority against a local power broker who had thwarted national policy.
Whatever the truth behind Chen's fall, and despite the widening corruption probe of other senior government officials, data and evidence recently released by the government and multilateral institutions suggest that the authorities are fighting a rear-guard battle against a rising tide of graft.
Consider the grim statistics recently released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP). More than 42,000 government officials on average were investigated for corruption every year from 2002 to 2005, with more than 30,000 per year facing criminal charges.
These startling figures do not include economic crimes outside the public sector. For example, in 2005 alone, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) unearthed irregularities involving misused funds of 767.1 billion renminbi (RMB), or $ 97 billion. The CBRC uncovered 1,272 criminal cases and disciplined 6,826 bank employees (including 325 senior managers).
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