June 2008 Archives

By Ben Hurley | Epoch Times Australia Staff
June 27, 2008

Somewhere in the world, the warm fire crackles as giggling children adorn their Christmas tree with the colourful lights that William Huang made in jail.

A United States living room is coloured with the ornamental flowers he put together, glitter sticking to the sweat on his body, bursting calluses on his hands.

Others, somewhere in Europe, chat and munch on the pistachio nuts that he pried open with pliers, or clambered over to use the open toilet, in the bedroom-sized production room that was home to over 20 prisoners.

Surely greater things awaited William when he graduated from China's prestigious Tsinghua University in July 1999, than slaving seven days a week, for more than 16 hours per day, producing cheap Chinese goods in a Chinese "re-education through labour" center.

At least he can choose his destiny now, living and studying in the United States. But memories of electric batons, brainwashing sessions and sleep deprivation don't easily fade. Nor do the memories of his colleagues who are still in jail.

William Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Kui, came to America in March this year, with fresh memories of what had happened to the first group of The Epoch Times workers in China, who suddenly disappeared on December 16, 2000.

He and around ten others, mostly Falun Gong practitioners, had rented a flat in Zhuhai city, in Guangdong province, which became the underground office for the fledgling online publication. There were people in other cities helping as well, pitching in with time, or money, or both. His job was researching and writing international news articles, while others focussed on weighty domestic issues, especially the state's full-scale persecution of the Falun Gong meditation practice.

He has no idea how the police found them, but one day without warning more than ten policemen burst in, arresting everyone and seizing all equipment. 48 hours of sleep deprivation and interrogation followed. He and the others were charged with "subverting the political power of the state" because they had published articles exposing the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) human rights crimes.

William was moved to the 2nd detention centre in Zhuhai whilst awaiting sentence, and he was interrogated almost every day for half a year, sometimes until 2am. He was then put to work, laboring at least 16 hours each day making ornamental flowers, Christmas lights, pearl decorations, and prying open pistachio nuts.

At first they used pork oil for part of the flower-making process, but the guards soon ordered them to stop, as it would attract bugs that would damage the goods while in transit to the United States. He remembers the cold November days of 2001, when large, painful cracks formed on his hands.

After three months he had still not been sentenced. Lacking any formal appeal mechanism, he refused to eat. After five days without food or water, the guards chained him to a cross made of wooden planks. They pried his teeth open with metal pliers, pinched his nose, held his throat open with chopsticks and threw lumps of rice porridge into his stomach.

>> Read complete report

By Joe McDonald, Associated Press Business Writer | The San Francisco Chronicle
June 26, 2008

The government has ordered China's fast-growing phone companies to stop adding new customers in August so they can better focus on ensuring service for the Beijing Olympics, company employees said Thursday.

The moratorium on new phone and Internet connections adds to sweeping measures, including traffic bans and factory shutdowns, that are meant to provide better conditions for the games, a major prestige event for the communist government.

"We simply won't touch the network any more to ensure its stability for the Olympic Games," said an employee of China Telecom Ltd., China's main fixed-line carrier, who said he had seen an internal company memo on the subject. He asked not to be identified further because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

>> Read complete news

Original reporting by Ding Xiao for RFA's Mandarin service. Service director: Jennifer Chou. Written and produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.

RADIO FREE ASIA
23 June 2008

Chinese authorities have demolished a Uyghur mosque in remote and restive Xinjiang amid mounting tension over security ahead of the Beijing Olympics, according to a Uyghur exile group and local officials.

"The mosque was illegal in the first place," a Uyghur government official said by telephone. Asked for details, he replied, "It's difficult to talk about it. It falls under classified information. I cannot give you any detailed information."

A village elder who asked not to be named said village youths had been gathering for Friday prayers at the mosque in secret, angering local officials.

"They reject these prayers at government-registered mosques," the elder said.

The mosque was built  in 1999, without a permit, 80 kms from the Upper Kumtagh village in Kalpin [in Chinese, Keping] county, he said, adding, "The mosque was illegal."

Local authorities recently learned of the secret gatherings, he said, after "two members of the local youth community were arrested when they went to inner China to learn kung fu, and they talked about the Friday prayers."

According to exiled World Uyghur Congress spokesman Dilxat Raxit, the mosque was targeted because it resisted pressure to publicize the Beijing Olympics.

The county government Web site said the mosque had been demolished because it was illegally built and has been conducting illegal religious activities. It also said those who violate religious laws and regulations will face punishment.

Resistance to curbs

"China is forcing mosques in East Turkestan to publicize the Beijing Olympics to get the Uyghur people to support the Games [but] this has been resisted by the Uyghurs," Raxit said in a statement distributed by e-mail.

Raxit said the mosque, which had been renovated in 1998, was accused of illegally renovating the structure, carrying out illegal religious activities and illegally storing copies of the Muslim holy book the Koran.

Education campaign

The Web site also said local authorities have mobilized people from all walks of life to study Communist Party policy on ethnic minorities in a bid to curb the infiltration by separatists and terrorists.

This education campaign, the Uyghur official said, "has nothing to do with the Beijing Olympics. We are in a remote area and the demolition of the mosque has nothing to do with the Olympics."

A primary school official in Kalpin county said Monday that the local education bureau had instructed every school to make and distribute Olympic-related pictures and artworks.

Olympic torch

The Olympic torch relay passed through Xinjiang last week under tight security.

Residents were told to remain indoors with few exceptions and gatherings were banned. Foreign media were under tight controls, and large-scale traffic restrictions were also in place during the torch rally there.

Beijing has said it fears Muslim separatists may be planning "terrorist activities" around the Olympics, vowing to tighten security in the region, where anti-Beijing sentiment is rife.

Six decades of tension

Both Tibetans and Uyghurs have chafed under Beijing's rule for the last six decades, and Chinese authorities have faced persistent accusations of repression and abuse.

China has waged a campaign over the last decade against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists who aim to establish an independent state in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which shares a border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Beijing took the position that Uyghur groups were connected with al-Qaeda and that one group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), was a "major component of the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden." The ETIM has denied that charge.

By David Barboza | The New York Times
June 24, 2008

The plush lobby of Beijing's Kerry Center Hotel is usually crowded with foreign guests, many of them listening to jazz and sipping martinis in Centro, the hotel's fashionable bar, or lining up for taxis after dinner at the Horizon restaurant.

But Thursday evening, Centro had only a sprinkling of guests in a hotel whose occupancy rate is typically close to 100 percent this time of year. That night, the duty manager, said it was 63 percent.

"Something strange has been going on," said Sun Yin, the duty manager. "I really don't know what happened."

With the Beijing Olympics less than two months away, hotel operators, travel agencies, and foreign businessmen say new Chinese visa restrictions are proving bad for business, casting a pall over Beijing during what was supposed to be a busy and jubilant tourist season leading up to the Olympic Games.

Chinese authorities acknowledged putting new visa restrictions in place in May -- after foreign embassies reported fewer visas being granted and tighter, sometimes seemingly arbitrary, restrictions. The government did not release guidelines detailing the changes in policy; it often does not. But a foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said in May that they would be temporary.

On Monday, Hu Bin, a visa official at the foreign ministry, said the ministry had no statistics on the number of visa denials, but that the new policies were put in place for "security considerations."

Travel business analysts had forecast that the Games would bring 500,000 foreign visitors and an extra $4.5 billion in revenue to Beijing this summer. But now, even though some five-star hotels are fully booked for the Olympics, many economists are beginning to doubt the city will get the kind of economic windfall it was hoping for.

Many hotels in Beijing are struggling to find guests; some large travel agencies have temporarily closed branches; and people scheduled to travel here for seminars and conferences are canceling. The number of foreign tourists visiting Beijing fell sharply in May, dropping by 14 percent, according to the city's statistics bureau.

Beijing residents, meanwhile, are complaining that heightened security measures could spoil what was supposed to be Beijing's long anticipated coming-out party. Despite years of careful preparation -- including teaching taxi drivers English and instructing locals in how to wait in a line (not common here), and spending billions on mammoth building projects for these Games -- Beijing is starting to appear less welcoming to foreigners.

"Business is so bleak," said Di Jian, the sales manager at the Capital Hotel in Beijing. "Since May, very few foreigners have checked in. Our occupancy rate has dropped by 40 percent."

Many other cities in China are also feeling the pain of fewer tourists, including Shanghai, where some hotels say occupancy rates are down 15 to 20 percent.

>> Continue reading..

By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
22 June 2008

The visit of the Olympic torch to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, came and went in about two hours on Saturday. Leaders of the ruling Communist Party probably exhaled once the flame was trundled onto an airplane without incident and flown out of a city that only three months ago had erupted in violent anti-Chinese protests.

But if Chinese leaders were anxious to avoid protests, they did not avoid using the torch relay as a stage to again lash out at the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party secretary of Tibet, stood beneath the Potala Palace, the historic seat of the Dalai Lama, and bid farewell to the flame with a speech that at times was itself fiery. "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," Mr. Zhang said, according to Reuters. "We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique."

The broadside against the Dalai Lama punctuated an abbreviated torch relay in Lhasa that was partly broadcast on state television and that quickly brought criticism from pro-Tibetan groups outside China. For months, advocates for Tibet have demanded in vain that China not take the torch through Lhasa.

"The torch relay in Lhasa is China's latest episode in a series of betrayals of everything the Olympics represent," Kate Woznow, campaign director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in a statement. "Parading the torch through Lhasa while Tibetans live under virtual martial law is China's most egregious exploitation of the Games yet."

The Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan regions of western China have been under a security crackdown since March, when violent protests broke out in Lhasa and spread. China has accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the uprising, a charge he denies. Last week, he called on Tibetans not to protest when the torch passed through Lhasa.

Only a few months ago, the controversy in Tibet appeared likely to cast a pall over the Summer Olympics in Beijing. China had designed the global torch relay as the longest and grandest ever. But it had become the occasion for large protests in London, Paris, San Francisco and elsewhere, as pro-Tibet advocates clashed with Chinese supporters. Talk of boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Games spread through European capitals.

>> Continue reading

By Juliet Macur | The New York Times
June 21, 2008

FENGCHENG, China -- As a reward for winning an Olympic gold medal in flatwater canoeing four years ago, Yang Wenjun -- the son of peasant rice farmers -- was handed the deed to a three-bedroom apartment here in a neighborhood called Sunny City.

The local government bought and decorated it, hanging giant scrolls in the living room that announce in Mandarin: "Yang Wenjun won gold in the Olympics. It brings good luck here." But his mother, Nie Chunhua, said Yang had been anything but lucky. She wiped away tears with hands dark and swollen from farming.

"If I had better economic condition, I would not like him to do sports," Nie, 49, said this spring. "Every time I think about him training, I feel so sad that my heart hurts. For him, and for me, there is so much pain."

Yang, one of China's most successful water sports athletes, has never lived in his apartment. He has not seen his parents in three years. At 24, he lives 250 miles away at his sport's training center, where he is preparing for the Beijing Olympics.

Yang said he could not stand his life.

For nearly a decade, he has tried to quit canoeing, he told The New York Times during an interview at the training center. He said he would rather attend college or start a business, but acknowledged that he was ill-equipped to do either one.

Many Chinese sports schools, in which more than 250,000 children are enrolled, focus on training at the expense of education. Critics, like the former Olympic diving coach Yu Fen, are calling for changes. They say athletes are unprepared to leave the sports system that has raised them.

"I do not want to work as an athlete, but as an athlete here I have no freedom to choose my future," Yang said, speaking through the team's official interpreter. "As a child, I didn't learn anything but sport, and now what do I do? I can't do anything else. I have my own dreams, but it is very difficult. I don't have the foundation to make them come true."

Officials refused to let Yang retire, even after he won Olympic gold in the C-2 500-meter race with Meng Guanliang at the Athens Games in 2004. He described how they had threatened to withhold his retirement payment if he did not compete through the Beijing Games.

"It is not possible to survive without those benefits," said Yang, whose parents say he receives a monthly stipend of $230 and performance-based bonuses.

>> Read complete article

By Agence France Presse
June 21, 2008

It is unacceptable for China to block Internet content, a European Commissioner said Friday, calling the Internet a free and open medium.

"We say for instance to the Chinese, very clearly so, that their blocking of certain Internet content is absolutely unacceptable," said Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

"So Europe speaks up in this sense, and is fighting for the freedom of speech and the freedom to receive the news," she said.

Her comments to the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Singapore came after she was asked what concerns she had about freedom of expression in Asia.

China maintains some of the strictest Internet censorship in the world with its "Great Firewall" regularly blocking any kind of information or content that the ruling communist party views as improper, unhealthy or anti-China.

An activist said in Tokyo on Thursday that Chinese censorship of the Internet and restrictions on reporting have worsened despite Beijing's pledge to improve media freedom ahead of the August Olympic Games.

China has actually tightened control of the Internet as the Olympics approaches, said Zhang Yu, a member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, a branch of International PEN, a writers' association.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
18 June 2008

A retired Chinese schoolteacher who criticized the construction of schools that collapsed in last month's powerful earthquake has been detained, a Hong Kong-based human rights organization said Wednesday.

Police detained Zeng Hongling in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, on charges of ''inciting state subversion,'' according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Zeng wrote three articles for an overseas Web site that criticized the shoddy construction of many schools that collapsed during the devastating 7.9-magnitude quake centered in Sichuan, killing hundreds of children.

The series of articles titled ''My personal experience in the earthquake'' appeared on www.ObserveChina.com, a Chinese-language Web site hosted in the United States. One was titled ''Earthquake relief efforts fully reveal the true face of Party officials,'' which questions the role of Sichuan officials in relief efforts.

School collapses have become one of the most heated issues in the earthquake recovery process -- and one that local communist leaders seem anxious to suppress.

State-controlled media have largely ignored the topic and parents and volunteers who have questioned authorities have been detained and threatened.

>> Read complete article

By Cara Anna - The Associated Press - via ABC NEWS
June 15, 2008

A photograph hinting at shoddy school construction was pulled from an exhibition about last month's devastating earthquake, an apparent indication of rising government sensitivity over an issue that has already prompted angry protests from parents of children killed.

The photo showed a hand clutching a twisted piece of steel rebar that looked no thicker than a pencil, taken from the ruins of the middle school in the town of Juyuan that was one of 40 that collapsed in the May 12 quake.

The picture featured prominently among a collection of quake artifacts when it opened to the public last week. By the weekend, though, it was gone. Organizers were reluctant to say exactly why.

"We don't know if we were told to remove the photo," said Wu Zhiwei, assistant to the general manager of Museum Cluster Jianchuan, the organizer of the exhibit and the largest privately run museum in China. "And if we were told to remove the photo, we're not sure we could tell you."

School collapses have become one of the most charged issues in the quake recovery process, and one that local communist leaders seem anxious to suppress.

The entire state-controlled media have almost completely ignored the issue, apparently under the instructions of the propaganda bureau. Parents and volunteers helping them who have questioned authorities about the issue have been rounded up, detained, and threatened.

>> Continue reading

By Edward Wong | The New York Times
June 13, 2008

Parents who lost children in a particularly horrific school collapse during the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province scrapped their plan for a one-month mourning ceremony on Thursday after local officials warned them not to go through with it, two of the parents said.

In telephone interviews, the two parents said the group's members were told not to contact one another and not to stay in the town of Juyuan, the site of the collapse of a middle school that left hundreds of children crushed to death.

Officials spoke to some parents on Wednesday night to persuade them to cancel the memorial service, said the two parents, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal by the government.

On Thursday, the government used buses to take different groups of parents to different sites outside town, the two parents said. There, the parents were given food and water.

Officials have offered the parents who lost a child the equivalent of $1,740 on behalf of the central government and $435 on behalf of the local education department, the two parents said. The parents have been told that they will get more than $4,600 from the central government, but that the money will be distributed in stages.

Government officials could not be reached on Thursday evening for comment.

An estimated 10,000 students died in school collapses during the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that ravaged southwest China. In late May, parents from several schools began holding vigorous protests to denounce corruption and to call for investigations into the collapses. The protests spiraled into the biggest political challenge to the government in the aftermath of the earthquake.

So starting last week, local officials and police officers began clamping down on the protests. More than 100 parents who lost children in Juyuan protested in front of the courthouse in the nearby town of Dujiangyan on June 3, only to be surrounded by police officers. Several crying mothers clutching framed portraits of their dead children were hauled off to a neighboring building while journalists were barred from covering the event.

Police officers and soldiers also set up cordons around the most prominent collapsed schools and prevented journalists from approaching.

The night before the June 3 protest, officials in Juyuan persuaded six of seven parent leaders not to attend the rally, one mother said.

Chinese journalists said the central government had ordered Chinese news organizations to stop reporting on the school collapses.

>> Read complete report

By Dan Martin - Agence France Presse | via (uncensored) Yahoo! News
June 12, 2008

Police on Thursday kicked foreign journalists out of a city where the collapse of several schools in China's earthquake drew charges of corruption from parents of dead children.

The action, which came one month after the May 12 quake, followed a promise the day before by China that foreign reporters would be allowed unfettered access to report on the disaster aftermath.

The reporters' expulsions appeared to underline government unease over smouldering parent anger following the collapse of schools in the quake, which many parents blame on corruption that led to shoddy construction of buildings.

Two AFP staff members were among at least six foreign media representatives held by police when they tried to report at collapsed schools on Thursday.

Police grabbed the AFP staff and roughly threw them into a police van, damaging a camera, near the Juyuan Middle School where hundreds of students died in the quake.

They were later taken to government headquarters in Dujiangyan city and held there for more than an hour before being ordered out of the city.

"You cannot report anywhere in Dujiangyan. You must leave," a police officer said to the pair as they were being held.

Despite promises of free reporting, authorities have displayed increasing unease over the issue of the roughly 7,000 collapsed schools, many of which crumbled while adjacent buildings held firm.

Over the past week, the ruins of several such schools have been sealed off after increasingly vocal demands by parents for an investigation.

Parents said earlier this week they had received condolence letters and offers of "comfort money" from the Sichuan provincial government, but what they wanted was a full investigation and justice for their dead children.

"We refuse to accept the money until the government investigates what happened," a parent who gave only his surname, Liu, told AFP on Thursday.

The man's 13-year-old son, his only child, died at Juyuan Middle School. Parents say about 500 children died there.

Liu said parents had been offered amounts ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 yuan (2,900-4,300 dollars).

"Corruption was definitely involved in these cases," he said.

On Wednesday, a top national official denied to some of the same journalists who were expelled that China was tightening up on media coverage in the disaster zone.

>> Continue reading

By Dan Southerland | The Christian Science Monitor
June 11, 2008

China's media covered the country's earthquake tragedy more openly than any past disaster. But the Chinese government still maintains a blackout over news from Tibet, which experienced its biggest uprising in decades this spring.

The blackout explains why you probably haven't heard about continuing sporadic protests by Buddhist monks and nuns in eastern Tibet, along with further arrests by the Chinese police. As China consolidates control of territory it considers its own, many Tibetans are placing their hopes on a Chinese offer of talks, now postponed, with representatives of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader-in-exile.

Previous talks have failed - and not just because of calcified mistrust. Rather, China appears to see its "Tibet problem" as a question of economic development, and seems unable to grasp the centrality of Buddhism to the Tibetan people's national and cultural identity.

One high-ranking Communist Party official this spring called the Dalai Lama "a wolf in a monk's robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast." Such language deeply offends many Tibetans.

Still, optimists are watching for signs that Beijing is serious this time about discussing the Dalai Lama's proposal for "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet. At the heart of this hope is a belief that a newly confident China, bolstered by its relatively open and rapid response to the earthquake and then by the Beijing Olympics, will agree to loosen its hold over the region.

Pessimists note that China may have agreed to the talks simply to deflect international pressure prior to the Olympics while pursuing a harsh policy of arrests and "patriotic education" campaigns inside Tibet.

I saw all this two decades before as a reporter covering three Tibetan uprisings in Lhasa in 1987, 1988, and 1989.

Then, as now, it began with Buddhist monks protesting and shouting slogans. The police then detained and beat up some of the monks. Other Tibetans reacted violently. Blaming the Dalai Lama for causing all the trouble, Beijing finally reacted with massive force.

Western governments urged talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama, and Beijing ultimately agreed. But in the end those talks led nowhere.

The two sides reopened "informal" talks on May 4, and what the Tibetans describe as a more formal meeting was set to begin June 11, but China has now postponed that meeting.

>> Continue reading

By Edward Cody | The Washington Post
June 10, 2008

Party Vows Reform but Moves Slowly

When Zhang Zhiguo took over as Communist Party leader in Xifeng county, he was determined to make his mark, to push this impoverished corner of northeast China into the mainstream of swift economic development.

By some measures, he succeeded. During the five years of his hard-charging leadership, Xifeng's gross domestic product tripled, to more than $50 million in 2007, and Zhang was headed for promotion in the party hierarchy.

But Zhang's career came to a crashing halt in January. That is when party leaders in Beijing found out that Xifeng police had traveled 500 miles to the capital to arrest a woman who had authored a magazine article that Zhang found unflattering. On further investigation, the party leadership had other concerns as well -- about Zhang's overbearing style, for instance, and the rough treatment of homeowners who had to make way for a multimillion-dollar commercial center that seemed to make little economic sense.

A party investigating team showed up in early February. Soon afterward, Zhang was fired, with no public explanation. The night he left town in disgrace, Xifeng residents said, they set off fireworks in celebration.

Zhang's stormy passage through Xifeng was in some ways extraordinary. But in many other ways, his exercise of absolute power was typical of the way China's Communist Party operates in thousands of cities, towns and counties across the country. Despite three decades of widely heralded economic reforms, the party has clung tenaciously to its Leninist-inspired monopoly on politics. As a result, most of China's 1.3 billion people still live under the thumb of local party secretaries who are responsible only to the higher-level party officials who appoint them.

China's leaders have said the country is evolving politically, without setting any timetable for reforms. In the meantime, they have interpreted their hosting of the Olympic Games in August as an international endorsement of their contention that the pace must be slow. For the moment, as Zhang's time in Xifeng showed, the top-down Communist system still insists on concentrating power in the hands of party functionaries who manage local politics and finances beyond challenge from the law.

The party has carried out numerous reforms in recent years to improve the competence of such officials and guarantee their honesty. The May 12 earthquake in central China has become an obvious test of these reforms; leaders have warned that party officials will be judged by their response to the disaster.

With President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao providing strenuous leadership from the top, the party apparatus pushed hard to mobilize help in quake-hit zones as soon as the scale of the catastrophe became clear. Participation was broad, but it was all under the guidance of party officials. Ultimately, governance in Sichuan province differs little from that of Xifeng and other localities: The party refuses to allow outside powers, such as an independent judiciary, a probing press or a genuine legislature, that could keep tabs on bureaucrats.

"The Xifeng case was very typical of China," said Su Chunyu, a Liaoning province lawyer who has followed events here closely. "It was typical of the way politics work and typical of the way the law works."

Zhang, in his mid-50s, parted his jet-black hair smartly near the middle and seemed almost always to wear a suit and tie, residents recalled, setting him off as an important figure in this little town.

According to Liang Yunfei, head of the party's Propaganda Bureau in Xifeng county, Zhang had arrived here in 2002 as a county administrator and, by the following year, had been appointed party secretary.

Liang described him as a charismatic leader who quickly demonstrated a determination to think big even in a small arena. He was doing what China's modern party secretaries are assigned to do: forge alliances between government and business to promote investment and improve the economic standing of those living under the secretary's sway.

But detractors said Zhang was shadowed from the start by corruption rumors linked to his previous job running a grain bureau in Tieling, a city 60 miles southwest of here. Moreover, he seemed eager to succeed spectacularly in Xifeng to get his party career back on track. His manners were abrupt and he showed an unwillingness to listen to subordinates, including those on the party's local Standing Committee, critics said.

Residents also said he once bragged during dinner at a local hotel that he was the only law in town.

The county's deputy administrator, Jiang Yongku, tried to caution Zhang against overstepping, residents said. But Zhang had him removed and shunted over to the county's purely advisory Political Consultative Conference.

>> Read complete report

By RADIO FREE ASIA
June 06, 2008

Parents across southwestern China are struggling to hold local officials accountable for allegedly shoddy construction standards in school buildings that collapsed during the May 12 earthquake.

Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have prevented journalists from gaining access to a school that collapsed during the May 12 earthquake, amid widespread calls for investigations into the quality of school buildings.

The Sichuan provincial Public Security Bureau has ordered all media to stop covering Juyuan Middle School, where buildings collapsed during the quake, killing 280 students and teachers, a local official said.

"On June 2, the Sichuan provincial Public Security Bureau ordered all media to leave Juyuan Middle School alone," an official at the Dujiangyan Disaster Relief Information Center said.

She said police had cordoned off the area. "Some parents are very emotionally disturbed and they are not emotionally stable. So for the time being, authorities have to make some temporary rules," she said.

Police have cordoned off the school site and escorted two foreign journalists away from the school, grieving parents at the site said.

"The school site has been sealed off. No media are allowed," a woman surnamed Dong who lost a child in the collapse of the school said. "More than 100 police are present at the scene. Today, Australian journalists were expelled from the school site," she added.

Lawyers hard to find

She said local officials had pledged to give each victim's family 32,000 yuan (U.S. $4,600) in comfort money--higher than the standard 5,000 yuan compensation for other quake victims.

Dong said some parents had already received 12,000 yuan. "The government has pledged to take care of our health care and retirement, but it never said anything about seeking justice for our innocent children," she said.

She said the parents had hoped to band together and find a lawyer to sue the government for negligence, but so far no lawyer had been willing to take it on in the absence of an expert evaluation of the school's construction.

"No one dares to take the case," she said. "It all depends on how government defines the nature of the school buildings. If they say it was shoddy construction, then it was shoddy construction, but if they say it wasn't then it wasn't."

"If the court takes the case, it is like government suing itself. Therefore that's unlikely to happen. We don't want to withdraw our case by simply taking the 32,000 yuan from the government. We are hoping that a volunteer lawyer may take our case."

The story is being repeated in cities, towns, and villages around the quake-hit zone, where 10,000 schoolchildren are believed to have died in collapsed school buildings when the 7.9 magnitude tremor hit.

Call for investigation

In Shifang city, more than 200 parents called on the municipal government to publish a conclusion about safety standards in the collapsed school buildings.

"We want the government to tell us whether it was the earthquake or man-made factors that brought down the school buildings," grieving parent Wang Zhenfu said. "The township government told us that experts would come to investigate on June 5, but no one showed up either yesterday or today."

"They told us that the experts were very busy. They are just dragging out the issue as long as they can."

>> Read complete report

By Michael Bristow | BBC World News
June 05, 2008

Parents fear there will not be a proper investigation into why so many schools collapsed in last month's earthquake in China.

Many complain that although local authorities have promised to investigate, they are slow to give out information and worried that contractors and officials responsible for shoddily-built classrooms will not be held accountable.

Their concerns are voiced as China once again promises to investigate the schools issue, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

Nearly 70,000 people died when the magnitude-8 earthquake struck south-western Sichuan Province on 12 May.

Children paid a heavy price in the disaster, although there is still no overall government figure of how many thousands of school pupils perished in the rubble.

Quality problems

Parents immediately demanded to know why so many school buildings collapsed, and the government initially responded to that call with officials promising within days of the quake to conduct a thorough investigation.

"If quality problems do exist in school buildings, we will deal with the persons responsible strictly," said Han Jin, an education ministry spokesman.

He added that parents who had lost children would get answers, Xinhua reported.

That message was repeated again on Wednesday when the State Council, China's Cabinet, said all collapsed school buildings would be appraised.

But parents whose children died when Juyuan Middle School fell down complain they have been told little about any investigation.

Zhao Deqin's twin 15-year-old daughters died when the school, near the city of Dujiangyan, collapsed killing at least 270 children.

She said: "Officials are not answering questions. They are just playing for time."

Another parent said he had visited the local government offices many times, but had been told only that the "relevant authorities" were investigating.

"The school fell down after 10 seconds. What else do you need to know," he said.

'Broken Lego'

There does appear to have been a problem with the Juyuan Middle School.

US structural engineer Kit Miyamoto inspected the school while he was in Sichuan checking other buildings for clients.

On a website posting, he concluded that the school's concrete floors collapsed because they were not supported properly.

"Just imagine building a Lego house, but using Lego blocks that have no protruding nubs to tie the Legos together," he wrote.

"This Lego house would not be able to resist lateral shaking. The school building is like these weak Lego houses."

An expert from China's Ministry of Construction also came to a similar conclusion, according to China's Southern Weekend newspaper.

He said there were problems with the school's location, structure and with the materials used to build it, it was reported.

But despite the complaints, Juyuan's local authority is saying little.

No-one was available when the BBC asked for an interview with a senior official.

And officials appear to be attempting to tone down public displays of grief and anger.

The school was sealed off earlier this week. Police guard the entrance, preventing people from going in.

By The Associated Press | USA TODAY
06 June 2008

China on Friday denied allegations that its operatives secretly copied the contents of a U.S. government laptop computer and used the data to try to hack into Commerce Department computers.

U.S. authorities say they are investigating whether surreptitious copying took place when a laptop was left unattended during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez for trade talks last December.

Shortly afterward, three serious attempts at data break-ins at the Commerce Department were reported, according to U.S. officials.

In Beijing's first comments on the allegations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Chinese officials knew nothing about the laptop cited in the reports. He repeated China's claim that it too was a victim of cybercrime.

"These reports are totally groundless," Qin told reporters at a briefing for a new round of U.S.-China trade talks later this month.

The reported incident is the latest in a series of cybersecurity problems blamed on China. Reports last year cited officials in Germany, the United States and Britain as saying government and military networks had been broken into by hackers backed by the Chinese army.

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By Lucy Hornby | REUTERS | via (uncensored) Yahoo! News
June 5, 2008

Nineteen years after a brutal crackdown against student protesters at Beijing's Tiananmen Square, China's youth are more focused on iPods, designer jeans and buying their first car than political reform.

Most of all they are worried about getting well paid jobs and a share of the newfound wealth that many Chinese professionals are enjoying as the economy surges ahead with double-digit growth.

That is easier said than done. Last summer, China had to provide jobs for nearly 5 million college graduates. This summer, 5.6 million more are getting ready to move out of dormitories and into the job market.

Often the first in their family to get higher education, these graduates of colleges and vocational schools have high expectations that are not being met despite soaring economic growth as there are more graduates than jobs in China.

"There's a saying, 'as soon as you graduate, you are unemployed'," said Xia Ding, who got his degree last year and, like many of his classmates, decided to apply for a master's programme when a job didn't come up.

The average employment rate of recent graduates was 73 percent in autumn 2007, the China Daily said, citing Ministry of Education figures.

"The birthrate in the 1950s through early 1970s was very high. The baby boomers born in those years are now adults," said Ha Jiming, chief economist at China International Capital Corp.

"Now it's the second wave, of baby boomers' babies. Their children are now in their twenties and many are in college," said Ha, whose research shows China will have a labor surplus through 2015.

Wide-ranging economic reforms in the last 30 years have allowed students to dream of college rather than a factory job.

Colleges have built new classrooms and brushed up their campuses, but their graduates often cannot compete with the rush of students returning to China from overseas.

"College graduates want higher salaries but they have no experience," Ha said, adding that companies would rather poach workers than take a chance on a fresh graduate.

"Part of the problem is the local education system, whether it has produced students who are suitable for society or just those who know some basic concepts and can memorize," he said, referring to the system of rote learning that is standard in China.

JOB INSECURITY

Most Chinese college students were barely toddlers in the spring of 1989, when a frustrated earlier generation gathered in Tiananmen Square to demonstrate for political reform before a bloody crackdown on June 4.

Inflation was one of the protesters' concerns in 1989. Today, inflation hovers above 8 percent -- well below the peak reached in 1994 but still worrying to central planners who fret about social stability.

Today's generation worries more about getting ahead than economic reform. Their activism is more likely to have nationalist overtones, as witnessed during demonstrations against Japan in 2005 or outside Carrefour stores this spring because of the French chain's rumored connection with pro-Tibet activities.

But the government doesn't take any chances.

Internet access at China's prestigious Peking University is more tightly controlled than it is at residences in Beijing, while other Beijing universities are ending term a few weeks early this summer to make sure students clear out of the city before the Olympic games in August.

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June 4, 2007

June 4, 2008

By Associated Press | via ABC World News
June 03, 2008

DUJIANGYAN, China -- Chinese police dragged away more than 100 parents Tuesday while they were protesting the deaths of their children in poorly constructed schools that collapsed in last month's earthquake.

The parents, many holding pictures of their dead children, were pulled down the street away from a courthouse in Dujiangyan, a resort city northwest of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

"Why?" some of them yelled. "Tell us something," they said as black-suited police wearing riot helmets yanked at them.

The parents had been kneeling in front of the courthouse yelling, "We want to sue." Their children attended a high school in Juyuan, near Dujiangyan, where 270 students died.

Police dragged an Associated Press reporter and two photographers who were covering the protest up the steps into the courthouse, trying to prevent them from seeing the demonstration.

"The parents were here to give their report to the court," said one police officer who refused to give his name.

Calls to local police were not answered Tuesday.

Asked why reporters were removed from the courthouse, an official from the foreign affairs office of the local government, Zao Ming, said "this is not a good place to do interviews. ... In a disaster like this, there will be a lot of opinions. The government will solve their problems."

There were also several Japanese reporters at the courthouse. One witness who did not want to be identified said police told the parents: "The Japanese are reporting bad things about you."

The protest happened while Chinese leader Li Changchun, the country's fifth-ranked ruler, was touring other parts of the city. The official Xinhua News Agency said Li was checking heritage sites damaged in the earthquake.

The government says the May 12 earthquake destroyed 7,000 classrooms. Many parents have accused contractors of cutting corners when building the classrooms, resulting in schools that could not withstand the 7.9-magnitude quake. Pictures of collapsed schools surrounded by buildings still standing have fueled anger.

More than 270 students died when one high school collapsed in Juyuan, near Dujiangyan. The Southern Metropolis News quoted a rescuer as saying that rubble from the school showed that no steel reinforcing bars had been used in construction, only iron wire. 

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By Mary-Anne Toy | The Sydney Morning Herald
June 04, 2008

Of all the taboos in modern China, the violent quelling of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests on June 4, 1989, remains the most sensitive.

Nineteen years later, China is now the world's fourth-largest economy, and proud host of this year's Olympic Games. But unlike other touchy subjects - Tibet, Taiwan and the Falun Gong group banned as a cult - there is no public discourse on the Tiananmen Square "incident". The real death toll is a state secret; more than a dozen protesters from that time, plus hundreds more dissidents, are in jail.

Is it fair to raise Tiananmen Square during the Olympic golden year? When the nation is mourning the almost 70,000 dead in the Sichuan earthquake, and Chinese people around the world remain sensitive about perceived anti-China bias after violent protests in London and Paris against the torch relay?

Ding Zilin, whose teenage son was one of the students killed 19 years ago in and around the square, says the Government is hoping that time and material prosperity will make people forget; that the members of a group known as the Tiananmen Mothers will die of old age and their cause with them.

Mrs Ding's long fight for justice might be a sobering thought for grieving parents now demanding political accountability for why so many schools were built so poorly that they collapsed instantly during the Sichuan earthquake, killing and injuring thousands of children.

Mrs Ding's son, Jielian, was hiding behind a floral democracy market at a road bridge leading to Tiananmen Square when he was shot in the chest. Earlier, he and classmates had appealed to the soldiers, telling them there was no violent riot needing to be quelled, but a patriotic surge against corruption and unfairness by ordinary people who believed in a better China.

When supporters mistook him for a protester and gave him food, Jielian passed it on to the soldiers.

His mother wonders sometimes if the bullet that tore through his heart later that evening on June 3 or early in the morning on June 4, was fired by a soldier who had accepted her son's food.

Mrs Ding says that if the Government has become more open after the earthquake, this has been forced by the public. But the national mourning is a watershed, she says.

"It's the first time the national flag has been flown at half-mast for ordinary people in China. In the past this was only done for leaders like Mao Zedong.

"Nineteen or 20 years cannot alleviate any of my pain," she says. "I keep asking myself if I am doing the right thing, according to what he would have wanted. If so, I will do so no matter how high the price. My son was peaceful and rational even though he was only 17 years old and politically naive."

"I feel so tired ... I know that the Government is trying to postpone, postpone, postpone until people forget and the families all die. So I don't expect justice in my lifetime. The only thing I can do is to leave more and more truth for the people."

The Tiananmen Mothers group has just set up a bilingual website and published two maps, showing where the 188 known victims died and the hospitals to which their bodies were taken.

Repression is lifting - slowly, Mrs Ding concedes. Last year she was allowed for the first time to visit the site where her son died to mark the 18th anniversary. The 24-hour security guards shadowing her movements also melted away last year, although her phone is still tapped.

Last week, as the anniversary loomed, the local police rang to politely ask if Mrs Ding had her annual open letter to the authorities ready. She told him they had presented letters during the annual National People's Congress in March but there was one message he could pass up to his seniors and the central government: "When will the national flag be lowered for our children?"

By USA TODAY
June 02, 2008

Foreigners attending the Beijing Olympics better behave -- or else.

The Beijing Olympic organizing committee issued a stern, nine-page document Monday that covers 57 topics. Written in Chinese only and posted on the official website, the guide covers everything from a ban on sleeping outdoors to the need for government permission to stage a protest.

Visitors also should know this:

• Those with "mental diseases" or contagious conditions will be barred.

• Some parts of the country are closed to visitors -- one of them Tibet.

• Olympic tickets are no guarantee of a visa to enter China.

Fearing protests during the Aug. 8-24 Olympics, China's authoritarian government has tightened controls on visas and residence permits for foreigners. It has also promised a massive security presence at the games, which may include undercover agents dressed as volunteers.

The guide said Olympic ticket holders "still need to visit China embassies and consulates and apply for visas according to the related rules."

The government hopes to keep out activists and students who might stage pro-Tibet rallies that would be broadcast around the world. It also fears protests over China's oil and arms trade with Sudan, and any disquiet from predominantly Muslim regions in western China.

"In order to hold any public gathering, parade or protest the organizer must apply with the local police authorities. No such activity can be held unless a permit is given. ... Any illegal gatherings, parades and protests and refusal to comply are subject to administrative punishments or criminal prosecution."

The document also warns against the display of insulting slogans or banners at any sports venue. It also forbids any religious or political banner at an Olympic venue that "disturbs the public order."

The guidelines seem to clash with a pledge made two month ago by International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, who said athletes could exercise freedom of speech in China. He asked only that athletes refrain from making political statements at certain official Olympics venues.

"Freedom of expression is something that is absolute," Rogge said in Beijing in April. "It's a human right. Athletes have it."

The detailed document is titled: "A guide to Chinese law for Foreigners coming to, leaving or staying in China during the Olympics." This appears under the slogan of the Beijing Olympics: "One World, One Dream."

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