December 2008 Archives
By Edward Wong | THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 23, 2008
More than 160 prominent writers, scholars and human rights advocates outside mainland China have signed an open letter to President Hu Jintao asking him to release a well-known intellectual and dissident who was detained this month. The letter was posted on the Internet on Tuesday.
The letter to Mr. Hu indicates that the case of the intellectual, Liu Xiaobo -- one of the driving forces behind a bold manifesto demanding democratic reforms that has received worldwide attention -- is quickly turning into the latest human rights cause célèbre in China. The call for his release could embarrass the Communist Party at a time when Chinese leaders are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the policy of "reform and opening up."
Among the writers signing the letter are three Nobel laureates in literature -- the South African novelist Nadime Gordimer, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney and the Nigerian novelist Wole Soyinka -- as well as other writers who regularly champion freedom of expression, including the Italian novelist Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie.
Just as notable is the fact that an array of foreign China scholars also signed the petition, possibly risking their access to the country. Academics specializing in Chinese studies are often cautious about taking stands on political issues deemed sensitive by the Communist Party because the Chinese government has a track record of denying visas to people who publicly oppose the party's views. Some of the scholars who signed the petition are already on the Chinese government's blacklist, but others still have regular access to the country.
The scholars include Geremie R. Barmé of Australian National University; Richard Baum of the University of California, Los Angeles; and Andrew J. Nathan of Columbia University.
Prominent scholars in Hong Kong, which is controlled by China but enjoys greater freedoms than the mainland, also signed the letter.
Mr. Liu, a 53-year-old literary critic who has directed the Independent Chinese PEN Center, a group of writers who advocate for broader free speech, was taken by security officers from his home on the night of Dec. 8 and has not been heard from since.
Human rights advocates say that Mr. Liu has been made a target because he was one of the driving forces behind Charter 08, the recent manifesto demanding democratic reforms and accountability from the Communist Party that was signed by more than 300 Chinese from various backgrounds and recently posted on the Internet.
Other people who signed the manifesto have also been detained and questioned by the authorities. All except Mr. Liu have been released.
The officers who detained Mr. Liu took computers, mobile phones and personal papers from his home. His wife and other family members have received no word of his whereabouts or condition.
The open letter to Mr. Hu that was posted on Tuesday says: "For the international community to take seriously China's oft-stated commitment to respect human rights and the rule of law, and for China's own citizens to trust the judicial system to redress legitimate grievances, it is urgent that China's central leadership ensure that no one be arrested or harassed simply for the peaceful expression of his or her views."
The letter notes that although Mr. Liu was detained in the past for several years, he has never been convicted of any crime.
Mr. Baum, the political scientist at the University of California, helped bring the petition to prominence by circulating it on Chinapol, a Listserv managed by Mr. Baum that is read by many scholars of China. In an interview via e-mail, Mr. Baum said that he usually tried to avoid using the Listserv for political causes but that this case was different.
"While I have always tried to maintain Chinapol's political neutrality, some violations are so egregious that I cannot, as a sentient being, remain neutral," he said in an e-mail message.
Bruce Jacobs, a professor of Asian languages and studies at Monash University in Australia, said he signed the petition because "Liu was clearly arrested because of Charter 08."
"That concerned me," he said, "I've been very concerned with human rights in China for a long time, and recently it's gotten worse."
Mr. Liu has been a pillar of political dissent in China for years. He supported the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and continued his dissident writings afterward, work that led to his detention by the authorities. Starting in 1996, he spent three years doing hard labor for having "repeatedly stirred up trouble and disrupted public order." Since 1999, he has been allowed to continue his activism, presumably with the permission of the country's leaders, but has been under surveillance.
Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that if Mr. Liu is formally arrested and charged, then that would mean Chinese leaders want to show intellectuals that the Communist Party is hardening its line and unwilling to tolerate any dissent.
"He's been detained before," Mr. Bequelin said. "But if they send him to jail, that sends a political signal."
By RADIO FREE ASIA
December 22, 2008
More jail terms are handed down to Tibetans implicated in widespread anti-China protests earlier this year.
KATHMANDU--Authorities in China's southwestern province of Sichuan have handed down further prison terms to Tibetans detained in anti-China protests earlier this year, according to sources in the region.
The sentences follow a wave of jailings last month in which a court employee said that detained Tibetan protestors were being sent to prison "one after another," and promised "More will be sentenced."
Many of those recently sentenced are said to have taken part in a March 18 protest in Kardze [in Chinese, Ganzi] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture that a source there described as "major" but "peaceful."
"Recently, two monks, Orgyen Tashi and Tenzin Ngodrub, were sentenced by the Kardze People's Intermediate Court to three years' imprisonment," the source said. The fate of a third monk, Lobsang, who had at first been detained with the others, remains a "mystery," he said.
"His family members have no information about his health or place of detention, and they are extremely worried," he said.
Three-year terms were also handed to four other Tibetans involved in the March 18 protest, said another source. The four--Pema Deshey, Tashi Palden, Goga, and Sangpo--were "severely beaten during three months of detention in Kardze," the source said.
"Later, they were moved to Nyagrong [in Chinese, Xinlong] county prison and detained for a little over six months. Even during this detention, they were subjected to torture and severe beatings."
Relatives believe that all four may have been taken to a facility in Kardze Prefecture's Dartsedo [in Chinese, Kangding] county after sentencing, the source said, though "they could have been moved to a larger prison in China," the source said.
Truckload under guard
A truckload of Tibetan prisoners was seen being taken to China under heavy guard, the source said, and the personal belongings of some of the prisoners were being returned to family members.
More than 200 Tibetans were detained following protests throughout Kardze earlier this year, according to another source in the region.
"About 20 were released, while the rest are still being held. About 70 percent of those are said to have been sentenced to prison terms of different lengths."
"Recently, the Kardze People's Intermediate Court secretly sentenced Sherab, a monk of the Khangmar monastery, to three years in prison," a third source said.
"Tsering Phuntsog, also a monk from Khangmar, was given 2-1/2 years, and a lay youth named Palden Wangyal, 19, was given a three-year term."
"All these sentences were given secretly for fear of Tibetan reaction," the source said.
Reached for comment, a court official in Dartsedo confirmed the ongoing sentencing of Tibetan protesters, adding that only "serious cases" were being brought to the Dartsedo court, while "other cases are tried in their respective counties of the Kardze Prefecture."
Kardze [in Chinese, Ganzi] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and other Tibetan regions of Sichuan saw a crackdown on Tibetans by Chinese security forces in the wake of the Lhasa protests, which turned to violent riots on March 14.
Tibet's government in exile said more than 200 Tibetans were killed in the subsequent region-wide Chinese crackdown. China has meanwhile reported police as having killed just one "insurgent" and blames Tibetan "rioters" for the deaths of 21 people.
Original reporting by Norbu Damdul and Lobsang Choephel for RFA's Tibetan service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Service director: Jigme Ngapo. Written in English by Richard Finney. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
By Edward Wong | THE NEW YORK TIMES
18 December 2008
A court in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang has sentenced two men to death for an attack in August that killed 17 paramilitary officers, according to a report on Wednesday by Xinhua, the state news agency. The assault was one of the deadliest against security forces since at least the 1990s.
The court determined that the men, who were sentenced in the attack on Aug. 4 in the remote oasis town of Kashgar, were trying to "sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games that began Aug. 8," Xinhua reported. The men, Abdurahman Azat, 33, and Kurbanjan Hemit, 28, are ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people. Some Uighurs advocate independence in Xinjiang and resent what they call discriminatory policies put in place by the ruling ethnic Han Chinese.
Most, if not all, of the paramilitary officers killed or wounded on Aug. 4 were Han Chinese.
The Intermediate People's Court of Kashgar sentenced the men for "intentional homicide and illegally producing guns, ammunition and explosives," Xinhua reported.
Chinese officials said the day after the attack that the men, a taxi driver and a vegetable vendor, had rammed a truck into a group of about 70 officers from the People's Armed Police who were out for morning exercises and had then attacked the officers with machetes and homemade explosives. At the time, the authorities said 16 officers were killed and 16 others injured. The attackers were arrested, the authorities said.
The assault was the first and deadliest of four in Xinjiang in August for which officials blamed Uighur separatists. The violence killed at least 23 security officers and one civilian, according to official tallies.
In interviews in September, three foreign tourists who were in the Barony Hotel, across the street from the site of the assault, gave details of the attack to The New York Times that appeared at odds with aspects of the official version. The tourists confirmed that the truck plowed into the officers, leaving many dead and injured. But they said they did not hear multiple explosions afterward.
Furthermore, they said they saw paramilitary officers using machetes to attack what appeared to be other men with the same green security uniforms. The men with the machetes mingled freely with other officers afterward, the tourists said.
The Xinhua report on Wednesday provided more details of the assault to back up the earlier official version. The report said that the two men, armed with guns, explosives, knives and axes, drove a heavy truck that they had stolen to the site of the assault at 6 a.m. and waited for the officers to emerge from their compound. About 8 a.m., Mr. Azat drove the truck into the officers when they came out for their exercises, killing 15 and wounding 13, Xinhua reported.
When the truck turned over, he detonated explosives to kill another person, according to Xinhua.
At the same time, the Xinhua account said, Mr. Hemit tossed explosives toward the gate of the security compound and brandished a knife at the police officers who had been felled by the truck. Mr. Hemit killed one officer and wounded another, Xinhua said.
One of the foreign tourists, a man who provided photos of the assault to two Western news organizations, said in September that he had seen a severely injured man tumble out of the driver's seat after the truck rammed the officers. The driver crawled around and did not appear to be in any condition to carry out further attacks, the tourist said.
The Xinhua report did not give any details on what kind of evidence was reviewed by the court in Kashgar during the trial of the two men. It also did not mention the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a shadowy organization that Chinese officials have long cited as the main separatist threat in Xinjiang. The day after the assault, the party secretary of Kashgar, Shi Dagang, told reporters that it appeared that the two men were members of that group.
By Jason Mick | DAILYTECH.COM
December 18, 2008
Just when you thought
However, with its bid for the summer Olympics on the line,
With the glow of the Olympics fading, though,
Reporters Without Borders slammed
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao defended his country's decision this week, saying that foreign news agencies have broken Chinese laws. Among their alleged offenses was calling
By REUTERS | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
December 16, 2008
China's foreign ministry said on Tuesday the country was within its rights to block websites with content illegal under Chinese law, including websites that referred to China and Taiwan as two separate countries.
China regularly blocks sites it finds unsavory, particularly those related to Tibet or critical of the Communist Party.
It considers self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.
Access to the Chinese-language versions of the BBC, Voice of America and Hong Kong media Ming Pao News and Asiaweek has been blocked since early December, according to a report by Asiaweek this week. They remained blocked on Tuesday.
"We can't deny that some websites continue to have problems that violate Chinese law," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.
"For instance, if a website refers to 'two Chinas' or refers to mainland China and Taiwan as two independent regions, we believe that violates China's Anti-Seccession Law, as well as other laws," he said.
By Centro de Medios Independientes Valparaiso (Chile)
December 13, 2008
Is China about to collapse due to hidden crises and corruption? Is global financial crisis impacting China? Is a runaway government corruption destroying Chinese economy and peace? What is really behind Chinese finance, politics, trade, politics and society? Has China's ongoing reform altered the nation's political-economic landscape as far as government corruption is concerned? What is the next if this corruption goes deeper? Get the most powerful reports on Chinese politics, government amid global financial meltdown.
China's coming collapse: corruption, finance, trade, outsourcing, politics, leadership, government, law, and society
Has China's ongoing reform altered the nation's political-economic landscape as far as government corruption is concerned? What is the next if this corruption goes deeper?
A compelling new report says that runaway corruption in China poses a lethal threat to the nation's economic development and "undermines the legitimacy of the ruling Chinese Communist Party."
Evidence from official audits, press articles and law enforcement data, the report says, indicates that "corruption in China is both pervasive and costly."
Bribery, kickbacks, theft and fraud, particularly by government officials, are said to be rampant.
Pei Minxin (裴敏欣) wrote the report issued last month by the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, based in Washington. Pei is a political scientist educated at the Shanghai International Studies University. He earned his PhD at Harvard and his work has been widely published in the US.
The report asserts that corruption in China "has spillover effects beyond its borders" that hurt US, Japanese and other foreign investors.
"Illicit behavior by local officials could expose Western firms to potentially vast environmental, human rights and financial liabilities," the report says.
Public statements by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) and other senior Chinese officials suggest that China's leaders are well aware of the widespread problem but have been unwilling to curb it.
The report says: "The odds of an average corrupt official going to jail are at most 3 out of 100, making corruption a high-return, low-risk activity."
If Hu comes down too hard on corruption, he risks losing support of the delegates at the recently held party Congress who elected him. Those delegates are drawn largely from party officials at the local and provincial level.
Pei is not alone in assessing corruption in China. George Zhibin Gu ( 顾志斌), an investment banker who was educated at Nanjing University and earned a doctorate at the University of Michigan, has suggested that corruption may destroy China's economy, which has been growing at 8 percent to 10 percent a year. In the West, a 3 percent growth rate is respectable.
Much more systematic analysis and information is contained in Gu's two new books: 1. China and the new world order: how entrepreneurship, globalization, borderless business are reshaping China and the world; 2. Chin's global reach: markets, multinationals, globlization. Gu is based in Guangdong, China. His two books contain field investigations and a number of interviews with Chinese officials, business managers, farmers, scholars and researchers. There are surprising findings throughout the work.
Moreover, China's Xinhua news agency frequently details specific instances of corruption. Last week, the Chinese government was reported to have banned fire department officials from receiving sexual favors from companies seeking their protection.
Scrutinized through a wide-angle lens, corruption is just at the forefront of the internal ills that jeopardize China's economic and political strength. Unemployment and under-employment, in which a worker has only one or two days of work a week, may be over 25 percent. Paradoxically, China has begun to experience shortages of the skilled labor needed for its expanding industries. Economic progress has been uneven, with coastal cities leaving the rural interior far behind.
"Corruption in China is concentrated in the sectors with extensive state involvement," the Pei report says.
That includes construction of dams, roads and electrical grids. The sales of land or granting user rights are susceptible, as are financial services and heavily regulated industries.
"The absence of a competitive political process and a free press in China makes these high risk sectors even more susceptible to fraud, theft, kickbacks and bribery," the report says.
Pei cites a study done last year asserting that about half of those engaged in corruption were involved in infrastructure projects or land transactions.
Even so, the report says: "Beijing punishes only a very small proportion of party members or government officials tainted by corruption."
US, Japanese and other foreign investors may be put at a competitive disadvantage by rivals who engage in illegal practices to win business in China, the report says.
"Corruption puts Western firms' intellectual property rights particularly at risk because unscrupulous local officials routinely protect Chinese counterfeiters in exchange for bribes," it says.
While the report doesn't say so, US firms that pay bribes may violate the US Foreign Corruption Practices Act of 1977 that forbids kickbacks and bribery abroad, no matter what the customs of other nations.
The report also says: "Corruption in China affects other countries through the spread of cross-border crimes such as drug trafficking, human smuggling and money laundering."
But what is really behind China's deadly corruption? Pei is short on this deeper issue, but George Zhibin Gu in his books pinpoints on the root-causes: "unlimited bureaucratic power, which is based on cults and terror, is the root-cause of this ongoing China's corruption. And as long as this bureaucratic power remains in place, corruption can hardly be contained in any practical way."
By Andrew Jacobs | THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 11, 2008
China celebrated International Human Rights Day on Wednesday with newspaper editorials and television commentaries hailing what they called the country's "unremitting efforts" and "nonstop progress" in promoting free speech and individual rights.
The day was busy for public security officials, sent to quell a protest by about 40 people who rallied outside the gated headquarters of the Foreign Ministry. After about 30 minutes of calling for free elections and demanding a crackdown on corruption, the demonstrators were herded onto buses and taken away.
Wednesday was the third day of detention for Liu Xiaobo, one of China's most prominent dissidents. Friends and relatives said he was being held for his role in drafting a bold public letter that demands political, legal and constitutional reform.
The letter, posted on the Internet and signed by 303 Chinese academics, artists, farmers and lawyers, coincided with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a product of the United Nations and a foundation for human rights laws around the world.
In recent days, the police have also detained several other signers, including Zhang Zuhua, a political theorist and rights advocate, who was told the letter was a serious affront to the ruling Communist Party. After 12 hours of questioning, Mr. Zhang was sent home, although the authorities kept his passport, four computers, some books and money.
"I told them, this is just a civilian proposal and there's nothing to be afraid of," he said by phone shortly after his release. "But they said senior officials attach great importance to it. I don't think this is the end of it yet."
Human rights advocates said they were especially worried about the fate of Mr. Liu, who may be charged with "inciting subversion of state power," a more serious crime that carries a three-year term. It would not be his first experience in the Chinese penal system. He spent 20 months in jail for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. In 1996, he was sentenced to three years of hard labor for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party.
By Andrew Jacobs | THE NEW YORK TIMES
09 December 2008
Local officials in Shandong Province have apparently found a cost-effective way to deal with gadflies, whistle-blowers and all manner of muckraking citizens who dare to challenge the authorities: dispatch them to the local psychiatric hospital.
In an investigative report published Monday by a state-owned newspaper, public security officials in the city of Xintai in Shandong Province were said to have been institutionalizing residents who persist in their personal campaigns to expose corruption or the unfair seizure of their property. Some people said they were committed for up to two years, and several of those interviewed said they were forcibly medicated.
The article, in The Beijing News, said most inmates were released after they agreed to give up their causes.
Sun Fawu, 57, a farmer seeking compensation for land spoiled by a coal-mining operation, said he was seized by local authorities on his way to petition the central government in Beijing and taken to the Xintai Mental Health Center in October.
During a 20-day stay, he said, he was lashed to a bed, forced to take pills and given injections that made him numb and woozy. According to the paper, when he told the doctor he was a petitioner, not mentally ill, the doctor said: "I don't care if you're sick or not. As long as you are sent by the township government, I'll treat you as a mental patient."
In an interview with the newspaper, the hospital's director, Wu Yuzhu, acknowledged that some of the 18 patients brought there by the police in recent years were not deranged, but he said that he had no choice but to take them in. "The hospital also had its misgivings," he said.
Xintai officials do not see any shame in the tactic, and they boasted that hospitalizing people they characterized as troublemakers saved money that would have been spent chasing them to Beijing. There is another reason to stop petitioners who seek redress from higher levels of government: they can prove embarrassing to local officials, especially if they make it to Beijing.
The Xintai government Web site noted that provincial authorities had recently referred to Xintai as "an advanced city in building a safe Shandong." They said that from January to May this year, the number of petitioners who went over the heads of local authorities was 274, a 4 percent drop from the same period in 2007. Although China is not known for the kind of systematic abuse of psychiatry that occurred in the Soviet Union, human rights advocates say forced institutionalizations are not uncommon in smaller cities. Robin Munro, the research director of China Labor Bulletin, a rights organization in Hong Kong, said such "an kang" wards -- Chinese for peace and health -- were a convenient and effective means of dealing with pesky dissidents.
"Once a detainee has been officially diagnosed as dangerously mentally ill, they're immediately taken out of the criminal justice system and they lose all legal rights," said Mr. Munro, who has researched China's practice of psychiatric detention.
In recent years practitioners of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement, have complained of what they call coerced hospitalizations. One of China's best-known dissidents, Wang Wanxing, spent 13 years in a police-run psychiatric institution under conditions he later described as abusive.
By Ben Blanchard - REUTERS - via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
December 08, 2008
Milk, toothpaste, cough syrup, pet food, eels, blood thinner, car parts, pork, eggs, honey, chicken, dumplings, cooking oil and rice -- if you can fake it or taint it, you can almost guarantee it's happened in China.
A string of product safety scandals, including contaminated infant formula that is believed to have killed six babies and sickened thousands of others, have rocked the faith of shoppers, making them wary of buying products made in China despite the often cheaper price tag.
"I was physically disgusted when I saw it on the TV," said Sally Villegas, a mother of two in Australia, referring to the melamine - tainted infant formula scandal that came to light in September.
"If I'm shopping and I pick up a product made in China, yes I would put it back."
The melamine scandal was the latest in a string of recent high-profile safety problems that included lead paint on toy cars and contaminated Chinese-made blood thinner heparin which was blamed for fatalities in the United States and Germany and prompted a global recall early this year.
After each scandal, Beijing seemed to have the same response: launching a crackdown, destroying tainted goods on television, jailing a few officials and saying they "pay great attention" to the problem.
Trouble is, for all the government's efforts and exhortations, the scandals keep happening, and will likely keep on happening, due to lax rule enforcement, fragmented industries, widespread poverty and the sheer size of China, analysts say.
"I'm sure that there will be more. It's a near certainty. Not only in the fields that we've seen already, but in other ones," said Duncan Innes-Ker, a China analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing.
"China faces a lot of problems because it is developing into a big but very poor economy, and obviously you can't have Western-style safety mechanisms in an economy where half the population doesn't earn much more than a couple of dollars a day," he added.
CHINESE PRODUCTS SHUNNED
Jin Biao, vice president of Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group, one of China's largest dairy producers, admitted the melamine problem had dented the country's already badly tattered reputation overseas.
"The contamination was our management problem. We must first resolve it without trying to pass the blame on to the farmers, or to society, or the country," he told Reuters.
Yili was named as one of 22 companies found to have produced drinking milk contaminated with melamine, though after thorough inspections China now insists the problem has been effectively removed from the dairy industry.
Melamine, a chemical used to make plastics, was added to infant formula to cheat quality control tests on protein levels. The scandal led to bans around the world on food containing Chinese dairy products.
The United States last month issued an import alert for Chinese-made food products, calling for foods to be stopped at the border unless importers can certify that they are either free of dairy goods or free of melamine.
By EUbusiness.com
December 07, 2008
Chinese state media on Sunday blasted French President Nicolas Sarkozy's meeting with the Dalai Lama as an "unwise move" that has undermined relations with Beijing.
Sarkozy, who currently holds the EU presidency, met the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader in Poland, risking a new flare-up of Chinese anger after mass demonstrations picketing French stores earlier this year.
"This development is indeed an unwise move which not only hurts the feelings of the Chinese people, but also undermines Sino-French ties," said a commentary by the official Xinhua news agency.
Sarkozy is the only European head of state to meet the Dalai Lama -- whom Beijing accuses of seeking independence for his Chinese-controlled Himalayan homeland -- while holding the EU presidency.
China's foreign ministry declined to issue an immediate response to the meeting on Sunday.
However, the talks at a gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates were preceded by repeated Chinese warnings that Sino-French ties, including their burgeoning trade relationship, could be harmed.
"The Chinese government and people... stand firmly against any foreign leader's contact with (the Dalai Lama) in any form," Xinhua said.
"The French side, however, in total disregard of China's grave concern and the general situation of Sino-French relations, took an opportunistic, rash and short-sighted approach to handling the Tibet issue."
After the meeting, Sarkozy took pains to play down any split with China and stressed he was free to talk to whomever he wants.
"The Dalai Lama confirmed what I already knew, that he will not demand independence for Tibet, and I told him how important I thought it was to pursue dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Chinese authorities," he said.
He added: "I am free as the French president and the EU president, I have values and convictions. Let's not make things tense, the world doesn't need it and it doesn't correspond to reality."
By John Pomfret | The Washington Post | Newsweek
December 01, 2008
So the global economy is in meltdown, Europe and China are both facing the prospect of a seriously ugly downturn. They'd scheduled a summit for this week. You'd think both sides would want to participate. Not China.
China canceled it. The reason? Because several European leaders -- including French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- have recently met with the Dalai Lama. Whoa! Now there's a solid reason if I ever saw one. You meet with Buddhist spiritual leader, we blow off key meeting on future of the world.
There is still something of the petulant 3-year-old here, brazenly pursuing something that is decidedly not in her interests. It illustrates the fact that China's foreign policy, its strategy and its world view are anything but mature.
First, it's not like China doesn't need friends right now. It's economy is in crisis. More than half of all of China's toy manufacturers are belly up. The Federation of Hong Kong Industries says that one quarter of its members' 70,000 plants in China have closed or will soon close. After annual double-digit growth for the past decade, China's economy is only expected to grow by about 9 percent this year, if that. Next year could be a lot worse. Over the weekend President Hu Jintao told a gathering of Communist Party members that the global crisis could undermine the country's economy and threaten the party's capacity to rule China.
Europe is China's largest market. But the Europeans are restless. European businesses want to know why they sell more stuff to Switzerland than to China. Cancel a summit and these questions will only grow louder.
Second, it's not like a meeting between Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama is going to amount to much for the Tibetan cause anyway. It's not going to result in the withdrawal of Chinese troops from the Tibetan plateau or independence for Tibet, right? And it certainly won't resuscitate the moribund talks that representatives of the Dalai Lama have been holding with China for several years now. Those talks are practically dead.
So why did Hu really blow off Sarko?
The stated Chinese reason in this case bears scrutiny because of its brazen honesty. According to wire service reports, Qin Gang, a spokesman at the China's foreign ministry, acknowledged to reporters that France was being held to a higher standard than, say, the United States, whose leaders routinely huddle with the Dalai Lama and barely suffer a slap on the wrist.
"France keeps saying that China is a strategic partner. Then it should do more than other countries, mean what it says and set a high standard for its behavior," Qin said.
"We hope France will make efforts to honor its commitments and not do things that harm the feelings of the Chinese people or undermine the foundation for the two countries' cooperation."
Chinese tea-leaf readers have focused on another reason: They've wheeled out the old bogeyman of Chinese political calculus, claiming that unidentified "hard-liners" were behind the cancellation. That's rich.
The reality is that China just screwed this one up.
By Canadian Broadcasting Company | cbcnews.ca
November 29, 2008
A Belgian TV journalist and his crew have been assaulted while reporting on AIDS in Central China.
Belgian journalist Tom Van de Weghe and his team from the public television network VRT were attacked on their way to interview several AIDS groups, said a statement released Friday by VRT.
It echoes an incident in the spring in which journalists from the American news program 60 Minutes were assaulted while attempting to film a plant processing toxic waste near the South China town of Shenzhen.
Van de Weghe and his crew were beaten and then robbed of their cash as well as their microphones and batteries by a dozen men recruited by authorities in Henan province, said the statement.
Beijing promised free access to foreign media reporting in China starting a year before the Olympics and recently extended the rules.
The Belgian channel is demanding an apology from Chinese authorities and payment or compensation for the damaged equipment.
VRT also wants a guarantee that its accredited correspondent could work in China without interference.
There's no response yet from Chinese authorities.
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