April 2009 Archives

By Andrew Jacobs | THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 28, 2009

In the decade since the Chinese government began repressing Falun Gong, a crusade that human rights groups say has led to the imprisonment of tens of thousands of practitioners and claimed at least 2,000 lives, the world's attention has shifted elsewhere.

The drive against the spiritual group has eliminated its leadership, decimated the ranks of faithful and convinced many Chinese that the group is an "evil cult," as the government contends. But 10 years on, the war on Falun Gong remains unfinished.

In the past year, as many as 8,000 practitioners have been detained, according to experts on human rights, and at least 100 have died in custody. Among them were Yu Zhou, 42, a popular Beijing musician, and Cao Changling, the 77-year-old vice director of a paper plant in Wuhan, whose bruised body was returned to his family by the police last summer just as China was reveling in the glory of the Olympic Games.

In recent months, scores of practitioners have been given long prison terms, including Zhang Xingwu, a retired physics professor from Shandong Province who last week was sentenced to seven years after the police found Falun Gong literature in his apartment, according to family members.

The continued crackdown highlights the difficulty of eradicating a movement whose adherents stubbornly cling to their beliefs, but it also provides a window into the psyche of an authoritarian government that, despite its far-reaching power, remains deeply insecure.

From the outset, the group, which at its peak claimed to have millions of followers around China, insisted that it wanted only legal recognition, not political power. But the country's top leaders were alarmed by the group's ability to attract a devoted following from so many citizens -- from retired functionaries to pimple-faced college students.

The decision to ban the group entirely was made after 10,000 Falun Gong adherents staged a silent protest outside the gates of Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party's leadership compound in Beijing, to complain about reports in the state-run media that the group said were defamatory. Security forces apparently had no advance knowledge of the demonstration, which took place on April 25, 1999, and they began treating the group as a threat to national security.

"Even a soccer team with an organization like Falun Gong might have produced the same reaction," said T. Kumar, the Asia advocacy director for Amnesty International.

Although the propaganda juggernaut has eased in recent years, Falun Gong remains a toxic subject in China. Few academics will speak about it on the record, and the Internet is scoured clean of information that might be construed as sympathetic to Falun Gong, an amalgam of Buddhism, mysticism and qigong, the traditional exercise regimen that remains broadly popular here.

For the Falun Gong devotees who practice in secret, the only glimmer of hope has come from a small but growing number of lawyers who have dared to take on their cases. Even if the legal efforts have mostly come to naught, until recently Falun Gong detainees were denied even the right to a lawyer.

Last week, Jiang Yu, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, reiterated the government's long-held stance that Falun Gong warrants suppression because it emphasizes meditation and the paranormal over modern medicine. "The Falun Gong cult violates human rights by controlling people's minds," he said in response to a reporter's query.

Among experts based outside the country, there is broad consensus that the government's efforts have not done much to advance its own interests, at least internationally, where it has been dogged by allegations that it uses torture to crush believers into submission.

'The excesses and the savagery have really lowered the quality of the government and harmed its reputation abroad," said Jerome Cohen, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on Chinese law. "They're paying a high price for the cruelty to these people."

According to Falun Gong followers and Chinese lawyers who take on their cases, that cruelty continues unabated.

Among those swept up in the purge were Yu Zhou, the musician, and his wife, Xu Na. They were stopped for speeding in January 2008, according to their lawyer. After the police found Falun Gong materials in their car, both were detained. Ten days later, Mr. Yu's sister was told that he was gravely ill, the result, she was told, of a hunger strike complicated by diabetes. His sister, Yu Qun, says her brother did not have diabetes. She contends that he died at the hands of his captors.

The family's efforts to investigate Mr. Yu's death have been thwarted by the police and prosecutors, who refuse to allow an autopsy or even issue a death certificate.

Ms. Xu, who is a well-known poet and painter, was given a three-year term.

"I don't understand why this happened to them because they didn't do anything to break the law and they weren't promoting the group," Ms. Yu said.

According to former detainees and human rights organizations, Falun Gong detainees are frequently subjected to harrowing abuse, particularly those who refuse to swear off their faith. Bu Dongwei, 41, a longtime adherent who spent three years in a labor camp, said he was forced to share a room with about 30 people, most of them petty thieves and drug addicts who were encouraged to abuse the Falun Gong detainees.

Mr. Bu, a trained geneticist, left China in December and now lives in Los Angeles.

While the group's initial goals were official legitimacy and an end to persecution, the ceaseless campaign against them has radicalized many adherents, especially those living outside China. In cities around the world, Falun Gong devotees -- and their offbeat re-enactments of torture and gory visual aids -- have become a common sight. The group has dedicated itself to the demise of the Communist Party, which has complicated the lives of adherents inside China.

Falun Dafa, the organization that oversees the movement from its headquarters in New York, is led by Li Hongzhi, a former grain clerk who began spreading his mystical brand of qigong in 1992 but fled China before the crackdown began. Once known for charismatic preaching, he has spent much of the past decade living a reclusive life in Queens.

David Ownby, the author of "Falun Gong and the Future of China," said that Mr. Li and his followers may have made a tactical mistake by massing in Beijing, but that the Communist Party erred by interpreting their actions as a threat to its rule.

"If either side had played their cards more intelligently, Falun Gong could have been co-opted by the government," said Mr. Ownby, who is a professor of East Asian studies at the University of Montreal. He added, "This horrific loss of life could have been avoided."

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting.

>> Original source

By David Barboza | THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 28, 2009

The phone's sleek lines and touch-screen keyboard are unmistakably familiar. So is the logo on the back. But a sales clerk at a sprawling electronic goods market in this Chinese coastal city admits what is clear upon closer inspection: this is not the Apple iPhone; this is the Hi-Phone.

"But it's just as good," the clerk says.

Nearby, dozens of other vendors are selling counterfeit Nokida, Motorla and Samsung phones -- as well as cheap look-alikes that make no bones about being knockoffs.

"Five years ago, there were no counterfeit phones," says Xiong Ting, a sales manager at Triquint Semiconductor, a maker of mobile phone parts, while visiting Shenzhen. "You needed a design house. You needed software guys. You needed hardware design. But now, a company with five guys can do it. Within 100 miles of here, you can find all your suppliers."

Technological advances have allowed hundreds of small Chinese companies, some with as few as 10 employees, to churn out what are known here as shanzhai, or black market, cellphones, often for as little as $20 apiece.

And just as Chinese companies are trying to move up the value chain of manufacturing, from producing toys and garments to making computers and electric cars, so too are counterfeiters. After years of making fake luxury bags and cheap DVDs, they are capturing market share from the world's biggest mobile phone makers.

Although shanzhai phones have only been around a few years, they already account for more than 20 percent of sales in China, which is the world's biggest mobile phone market, according to the research firm Gartner.

They are also being illegally exported to Russia, India, the Middle East, Europe, even the United States. "The shanzhai phone market is expanding crazily," says Wang Jiping, a senior analyst at IDC, which tracks technology trends. "They copy Apple, Nokia, whatever they like, and they respond to the market swiftly."

Alarmed by the rapid growth of counterfeits and no-name knockoffs, global brands are pressing the Chinese government to crack down on their proliferation, and are warning consumers about potential health hazards, like cheap batteries that can explode.

Nokia, the world's biggest cellphone maker, says it is working with Beijing to fight counterfeiting. Motorola says much the same. Applre Inc. declined to comment.

Even Chinese mobile phone producers are losing market share to underground companies, which have a built-in cost advantage because they evade taxes, regulatory fees and safety checks.

>> Complete news

By RADIO FREE ASIA
April 22, 2009

As the 20-year anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown approaches, Chinese netizens find ways to work around government censorship.

HONG KONG

An article criticizing China's deadly 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing has appeared on an official Web site ahead of the incident's 20-year anniversary, but it was quickly deleted from the public eye.

The article was published Sunday on the Changde Dang Jian Wang Web site, which is hosted by the Communist Party committee in Changde city in China's southern Hunan province. It was deleted later the same day.

Chinese authorities have forbidden mention of the June 4, 1989 anniversary, and analysts say the appearance and removal of the article suggest a conflict between China's government and its netizens over what happened 20 years ago, and how to remember it.

The article, titled "The Anecdotes of the 38th Army Commander Xu Qinxian," recalls how People's Liberation Army Lt. Gen. Xu Qinxian refused to lead his troops into Beijing on the eve of the crackdown. Xu was given a five-year jail term for refusing to follow orders.

At the end of the article, apparently written 10 years after the Tiananmen incident in 1999, the anonymous writer asks, "Now two five-year periods have already passed, but where is Gen. Xu?"

Article deleted

A staff member of Changde Dang Jian Wang, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed that the article had been deleted by late Sunday.

"The article had to be deleted because its content is somehow...untrue. The original posting date for the article was Aug. 15, 2006 though," he said.

The staff member said the article had been forwarded on to the Web site by a Changde resident "a long time ago," but was blocked. He said the person responsible for eventually publishing it Sunday would be held accountable.

"My colleague will be held liable for his posting, and this was not a mistake. It shocked the management, who gave a lot of attention to it and reported the incident to higher-level authorities," he added. 

On Monday, an online search into content accessible within China revealed three articles with the same title about Gen. Xu, but none could be accessed.

A sensitive topic

Zhang Boshu, a scholar with the Institute of Philosophy at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said Chinese authorities are putting serious effort into blocking online information related to the June 4 Incident.

"From the government's point of view, June 4 is a sensitive topic," Zhang said.

"No matter who the original writer might be, no matter if the views of the deleted article about Gen. Xu Qinxian are objective or not, even if the article is critical of the [pro-democracy] students of June 4, it will make somebody nervous," he said.

But Zhang added that with the increase in public access to information, Chinese authorities would be unable to block related content indefinitely.

"It has been 20 years since the June 4 incident -- it is impossible for the truth to be hidden forever," he said.

Flow of information

Chinese authorities currently block access to online versions of foreign media by disabling proxy software used by netizens to bypass government firewalls.

Authorities have also been deleting an increasing number of blogs containing words and phrases banned by the government and shutting down Web sites they perceive to be harmful to social harmony.

But U.S.-based computer scientist Zhou Shiyu said that Chinese authorities' efforts "are to no avail."

"The Chinese government cannot completely block the flow of information unless it cuts off the cyber connections between China and the outside world. This is physically impossible," Zhou said.

However, Zhou said that by allocating a large amount of resources, Chinese authorities "might be able to block more [content] on a temporary basis."

Li Yuan, another U.S.-based computer scientist, believes that blocking information will only prompt a backlash against the Chinese government by its netizens.

"Blocking [information] will certainly make people dislike the government even more. It reminds people of how bad their social circumstances are," he said.

Growing online activity

China had 253 million Internet users by mid-2008, according to official statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center.

They spend more time online than netizens in any other country with the exception of France and South Korea.

Chinese Web surfers are also more likely to contribute to blogs, forums, chat rooms, and other social media such as photo and video-sharing sites.

China's 47 million bloggers are frequently subjected to censorship by their Internet service providers, but politically sensitive material also routinely falls through the cracks as individual companies interpret government guidelines in their own way.

In a report focusing on user-generated content on social media and blogging platforms, Hong Kong University new media professor Rebecca MacKinnon found that censorship levels across 15 different Chinese blogging platforms varied even more than expected.

The report, titled "China's Censorship 2.0: How Chinese Companies Censor Bloggers," also said "a great deal of politically sensitive material survives in the Chinese blogosphere, and chances for survival can likely be improved with knowledge and strategy."

Original reporting in Mandarin by Wen Jian and Qiao Long. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated by Chen Ping. Written for the Web in English by Joshua Lipes. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original source

By Howard W. French | The New York Times (Books of the Times)
April 23, 2009

It is the awkward fate of China, more than any other country, to be arriving late to any number of parties where most other revelers are either long gone or leaving, having declared the celebrations déclassé. Such is the case with China's booming smokestack economy and with its ardent new fling with the automobile, with its desire for a deep-water navy built around aircraft carriers, and with its ambition for a space program that will land on the Moon.

China is also just beginning to grapple with the creation of what most in the developed world would recognize as a modern legal system and acceptable standards for human rights, and it is in much the same position with its cobbling efforts to reinvent the welfare state.

Most anachronistic of all, though, is the country's treatment of its two largest minorities, the Tibetans and Uighurs, both old, non-Han indigenous civilizations that claim meaningful autonomy in China's vast, resource-rich and sparsely populated west. Our Western legacy of land expropriation and slaughter of native peoples by European settlers and imperial armies may give us little to cluck about, but in today's world the rights and interests of native peoples have rightly won greater recognition.

In this memoir, "Dragon Fighter," part defiant political tell-all, part engrossing personal saga, Rebiya Kadeer paints a vivid picture of her life as a mother of 11 and a businesswoman who spent nearly six years in prison on her way to becoming the Uighur people's most prominent dissident.

Since its Communist revolution of 1949 China has employed a brimming catalog of tactics to bring its western region to heel. These include invasion; disappearing of political leaders; gerrymandering to disperse minorities across new, eccentrically redrawn provinces, flooding the cities with subsidized Han immigration; limits on worship, government control of clergy, desecration of temples and harsh repression.

Even Westerners who pay relatively little attention to China will be at least vaguely familiar with the plight of Tibetans, whose religious leader, the Dalai Lama, has been lionized by the Nobel committee and received at the White House.

Such is not the case with the Uighur, a central Asian people who are distant relatives of the Turks and native to what China calls the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, or the New Frontier, an area three and half times as large as California, whose indigenous people look all but set to join the ranks of history's great, overrun losers.

One thing the Uighur, spelled Uyghur in this book, have never had is a leader with great recognition outside China, like the Dalai Lama, who has contributed a brief introduction for this memoir of Ms. Kadeer. She writes: "Politicians and human rights organizations from all over the world were active on behalf of Tibet. The conditions in the Uyghur nation were much the same. But interest from abroad in the two, though literally we were next-door neighbors sharing a common border and both under Chinese occupation, could not have been more dissimilar."

Nor, she might have added, scarcely could the plight of these two neighboring peoples, both of which have long maintained cultural and often political autonomy on the periphery of imperial China, be more fundamentally similar. That the Uighur have never enjoyed anything like the global sympathy extended to Tibetans stands out as a historical oddity that may have something to do with their predominantly Muslim culture, which evokes little of the warm feeling engendered by Tibet's red-robed, incense-burning, sutra-chanting Buddhists.

In the end, though, even this may not matter. Ms. Kadeer writes perceptively about the many humiliations imposed by Beijing on the Uighurs, including routine business harassment and forced abortions, massacres and barriers to trade and contact with other central Asian neighbors. Beijing makes it hard for the Uighurs to believe in anything but ultimate submission to the grand, centrally conceived plans of a powerful China.

On one level Ms. Kadeer's book is a routine account of recent Chinese history. Much more interesting is its core autobiographical story: the remarkable rise from modest roots to a life as, the author claims, the wealthiest woman in China and a politically prominent member of the National People's Congress.

Here, though, the book is marred by language that betrays limited modesty and perhaps even limited self-knowledge. We are constantly reminded of the author's qualities: she is chaste, smart, beautiful, clever, strong, indomitable, selfless, moral, wise and fearless -- especially fearless.

By the end of the book, however, the last of these claims will leave few readers in doubt. Through sheer force of personality Ms. Kadeer overcomes a bad marriage to an abusive husband, then seeks out and marries a former political prisoner and poet, telling him flatly that "after our wedding, our first task will be to liberate the land."

Years, several children and many arduous commercial voyages across China later, having built a fortune (and a big reputation) in department stores and real estate, while she and her second husband dreamed of liberating the land, Ms. Kadeer begins to attract the wooing calls of the party. Her big moment comes in a speech before the Congress in Beijing, in which she boldly switches the approved text to ask: "Is it our fault that the Chinese have occupied our land? That we live under such horrible conditions?"

If not the first time she had spoken truth to power, it was certainly the beginning of the end. Soon afterward Ms. Kadeer was arrested on her way to a meeting with a member of the United States Congress. She was tried, imprisoned for nearly six years and exiled to the United States.

This remarkable life is now added to the saga of the Uighur people, a people without leaders.

>> Original source

*** lakh is a unit in the Indian measuring system 1.9 lakh = 190,000

Thus title means 190,000 killed in China's nuclear tests
The Times of India - April 19, 2009

The nuclear test grounds in the wastes of the Gobi desert have fallen silent but veterans of those lonely places are speaking out for the first time about the terrible price exacted by China's zealous pursuit of the atomic bomb.

They talk of picking up radioactive debris with their bare hands, of sluicing down bombers that had flown through mushroom clouds, of soldiers dying before their time of rare diseases, and children born with mysterious cancers.

These were the men and women of Unit 8023, a special detachment charged with conducting atomic tests at Lop Nur in Xinjiang province, a place of utter desolation and -- until now -- complete secrecy. "I was a member of Unit 8023 for 23 years," said one old soldier in an interview. "My job was to go into the blast zone to retrieve test objects and monitoring equipment after the explosion.

"When my daughter was born she was diagnosed with a huge tumour on her spinal cord. The doctors blame nuclear fallout. She's had two major operations and has lived a life of indescribable hardship."
Hardship and risk counted for little when China was determined to join the nuclear club at any cost. Soldiers galloped on horseback towards mushroom clouds, with only gas masks for protection. Scientists jumped for joy, waving their little red books of Maoist thought, while atomic debris boiled in the sky. Engineers even replicated a full-scale Beijing subway station beneath the sands of the Gobi to test who might survive a Sino-Soviet armageddon.

New research suggests the Chinese nuclear tests from 1964 to 1996 claimed more lives than those of any other nation. Jun Takada, a Japanese physicist, has calculated that up to 1.4 million people were exposed to fallout and 190,000 of them may have died from diseases linked to radiation. The victims included Chinese, Uighur Muslims and Tibetans, who lived in these remote regions.

It is the voices of the Chinese veterans, however, that will resonate loudest in the nation. One group has boldly published letters to the state council and the central military commission -- the two highest government and military bodies -- demanding compensation. China has already responded to pressure from the groups. Last year Li Xueju, the minister of civil affairs, let slip that the state had started to pay "subsidies" to nuclear test personnel.

>> Original source

By SHARON LaFRANIERE | THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 11, 2009

AP IMPACT - via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
By Brian Skoloff and Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writers
with contribution by Joe McDonald, AP Writer in Beijing

April 11, 2009

At the height of the U.S. housing boom, when building materials were in short supply, American construction companies used millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap.

Now that decision is haunting hundreds of homeowners and apartment dwellers who are concerned that the wallboard gives off fumes that can corrode copper pipes, blacken jewelry and silverware, and possibly sicken people.

Shipping records reviewed by The Associated Press indicate that imports of potentially tainted Chinese building materials exceeded 500 million pounds during a four-year period of soaring home prices. The drywall may have been used in more than 100,000 homes, according to some estimates, including houses rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina.

"This is a traumatic problem of extraordinary proportions," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat who introduced a bill in the House calling for a temporary ban on the Chinese-made imports until more is known about their chemical makeup. Similar legislation has been proposed in the Senate.

The drywall apparently causes a chemical reaction that gives off a rotten-egg stench, which grows worse with heat and humidity.

Researchers do not know yet what causes the reaction, but possible culprits include fumigants sprayed on the drywall and material inside it. The Chinese drywall is also made with a coal byproduct called fly ash that is less refined than the form used by U.S. drywall makers.

Dozens of homeowners in the Southeast have sued builders, suppliers and manufacturers, claiming the very walls around them are emitting smelly sulfur compounds that are poisoning their families and rendering their homes uninhabitable.

"It's like your hopes and dreams are just gone," said Mary Ann Schultheis, who has suffered burning eyes, sinus headaches, and a general heaviness in her chest since moving into her brand-new, 4,000-square foot house in this tidy South Florida suburb a few years ago.

She has few options. Her builder is in bankruptcy, the government is not helping and her lender will not give her a break.

"I'm just going to cry," she said. "We don't know what we're going to do."

Builders have filed their own lawsuits against suppliers and manufacturers, claiming they unknowingly used the bad building materials.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating, as are health departments in Virginia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida and Washington state.

Companies that produced some of the wallboard said they are looking into the complaints, but downplayed the possibility of health risks.

"What we're trying to do is get to the bottom of what is precisely going on," said Ken Haldin, a spokesman for Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin, a Chinese company named in many of the lawsuits.

The Chinese ministries of commerce, construction and industry and the Administration of Quality Supervision Inspection and Quarantine did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Chinese news reports have said AQSIQ, which enforces product quality standards, was investigating the complaints but people in the agency's press office said they could not confirm that.

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By SHARON LaFRANIERE | THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 11, 2009

A bias in favor of male offspring has left China with 32 million more boys under the age of 20 than girls, creating "an imminent generation of excess men," a study released Friday said.

For the next 20 years, China will have increasingly more men than women of reproductive age, according to the paper, which was published online by the British Medical Journal. "Nothing can be done now to prevent this," the researchers said.

Chinese government planners have long known that the urge of couples to have sons was skewing the gender balance of the population. But the study, by two Chinese university professors and a London researcher, provides some of the first hard data on the extent of the disparity and the factors contributing to it.

In 2005 , they found, births of boys in China exceeded births of girls by more than 1.1 million. There were 120 boys born for every 100 girls.

This disparity seems to surpass that of any other country, they said -- a finding, they wrote, that was perhaps unsurprising in light of China's one-child policy.

They attributed the imbalance almost entirely to couples' decisions to abort female fetuses.

The trend toward more male than female children intensified steadily after 1986, they said, as ultrasound tests and abortion became more available. "Sex-selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males," the paper said.

>> Complete report

By SHARON LaFRANIERE | The New York Times
April 07, 2009

Last Saturday was tomb-sweeping day, when the Chinese traditionally honor the dead. Sun Wenguang, a 75-year-old retired professor, was one of many to visit the cemetery.

Apparently, though, he chose the wrong death to commemorate. He came to remember Zhao Ziyang, a former prime minister and Communist Party general secretary who lost his party position and his freedom after sympathizing with student-led, pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Mr. Zhao, who died in 2005, is a martyr to some democracy advocates.

As Mr. Sun entered the cemetery in Jinan, a city about 230 miles south of Beijing, he said, four or five men attacked him and beat him severely. He is now in a Jinan hospital with three broken ribs and injuries to his spine, head, back, arms and legs, according to China Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong-based group. The group said the attack on Mr. Sun was part of a concerted effort by the Chinese government to head off any efforts to memorialize the deaths of hundreds of Tiananmen Square protesters on June 4, the 20th anniversary of the government's crackdown.

"Chinese authorities are staging a campaign of terror to intimidate and suppress expressions of commemoration for the 1989 Tiananmen massacre," the group said in a statement. The attack on Mr. Sun "is part of the overall campaign," it said.

>> Complete report

By Andrew Jacobs | THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 05, 2009

The thieves often strike at dusk, when children are playing outside and their parents are distracted by exhaustion.

Deng Huidong lost her 9-month-old son in the blink of an eye as a man yanked him from the grip of his 7-year-old sister near the doorway of their home. The car did not even stop as a pair of arms reached out the window and grabbed the boy.

Sun Zuo, a gregarious 3 1/2-year-old, was lured off by someone with a slice of mango and a toy car, an abduction that was captured by police surveillance cameras.

Peng Gaofeng was busy with customers when a man snatched his 4-year-old son from the plaza in front of his shop as throngs of factory workers enjoyed a spring evening. "I turned away for a minute, and when I called out for him he was gone," Mr. Peng said.

These and thousands of other children stolen from the teeming industrial hubs of China's Pearl River Delta have never been recovered by their parents or by the police. But anecdotal evidence suggests the children do not travel far. Although some are sold to buyers in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, most of the boys are purchased domestically by families desperate for a male heir, parents of abducted children and some law enforcement officials who have investigated the matter say.

The demand is especially strong in rural areas of south China, where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and the country's strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business.

Su Qingcai, a tea farmer from the mountainous coast of Fujian Province, explained why he spent $3,500 last year on a 5-year-old boy. "A girl is just not as good as a son," said Mr. Su, 38, who has a 14-year-old daughter but whose biological son died at 3 months. "It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you don't have a son, you are not as good as other people who have one."

The centuries-old tradition of cherishing boys -- and a custom that dictates that a married woman moves in with her husband's family -- is reinforced by a modern reality: Without a real social safety net in China, many parents fear they will be left to fend for themselves in old age.

The extent of the problem is a matter of dispute. The Chinese government insists there are fewer than 2,500 cases of human trafficking each year, a figure that includes both women and children. But advocates for abducted children say there may be hundreds of thousands.

Sun Haiyang, whose son disappeared in 2007, has collected a list of 2,000 children in and around Shenzhen who have disappeared in the past two years. He said none of the children in his database had been recovered. "It's like fishing a needle out of the sea," he said.

Mr. Peng, who started an ad hoc group for parents of stolen children, said some of the girls were sold to orphanages. They are the lucky ones who often end up in the United States or Europe after adoptive parents pay fees to orphanages that average $5,000.

The unlucky ones, especially older children, who are not in demand by families, can end up as prostitutes or indentured laborers. Some of the children begging or hawking flowers in major Chinese cities are in the employ of criminal gangs that abducted them. "I don't even want to talk about what happens to these children," Mr. Peng said, choking up.

Police Indifference

Here in Shenzhen and the constellation of manufacturing towns packed with migrant workers, desperate families say they get almost no help from the local police. In case after case, they said, the police insisted on waiting 24 hours before taking action, and then claimed that too much time had passed to mount an effective investigation.

Several parents, through their own guile and persistence, have tracked down surveillance video images that clearly show the kidnappings in progress. Yet even that can fail to move the police, they say. "They told me a face isn't enough, that they need a name," said Cai Xinqian, who obtained tape from a store camera that showed a woman leading his 4-year-old away. "If I had a name, I could find him myself."

Chen Fengyi, whose 5-year-old son was snatched from outside her apartment building in Huizhou, said she called the police the moment she realized he was missing. "They told me they would come right over," she said. "I went outside to wait for them and they never came."

When she is not scouring the streets at night for her son, Ms. Chen and her husband go to the local police station and fall to their knees. "We cry and beg them to help," she said, "and every time they say, 'Why are you so hung up on this one thing?' "

Many parents take matters into their own hands. They post fliers in places where children are often sold and travel the country to stand in front of kindergartens as they let out. A few who run shops have turned their storefronts into missing person displays. "We spend our life savings, we borrow money, we will do anything to find our children," said Mr. Peng, who owns a long-distance phone call business in Gongming, not far from Shenzhen. "There is a hole in our hearts that will never heal."

The reluctance of the police to investigate such cases has a variety of explanations. Kidnappers often single out the children of migrant workers because they are transients who may fear the local police and whose grievances are not treated as high priorities.

>> Complete report

U.S. Naval Institute
March 31, 2009

With tensions already rising due to the Chinese navy becoming more aggressive in asserting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy seems to have yet another reason to be deeply concerned.

After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a "kill weapon" developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.

First posted on a Chinese blog viewed as credible by military analysts and then translated by the naval affairs blog Information Dissemination, a recent report provides a description of an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km.

The range of the modified Dong Feng 21 missile is significant in that it covers the areas that are likely hot zones for future confrontations between U.S. and Chinese surface forces.

The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike.

Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.

Supporting the missile is a network of satellites, radar and unmanned aerial vehicles that can locate U.S. ships and then guide the weapon, enabling it to hit moving targets.

While the ASBM has been a topic of discussion within national defense circles for quite some time, the fact that information is now coming from Chinese sources indicates that the weapon system is operational. The Chinese rarely mention weapons projects unless they are well beyond the test stages.

If operational as is believed, the system marks the first time a ballistic missile has been successfully developed to attack vessels at sea. Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.

Along with the Chinese naval build-up, U.S. Navy officials appear to view the development of the anti-ship ballistic missile as a tangible threat.

After spending the last decade placing an emphasis on building a fleet that could operate in shallow waters near coastlines, the U.S. Navy seems to have quickly changed its strategy over the past several months to focus on improving the capabilities of its deep sea fleet and developing anti-ballistic defenses.

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By AFP (Agence France Presse) | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
April 01, 2009

Police in southwestern China have detained an activist who was investigating whether shoddy construction caused school collapses in last year's massive earthquake, a rights groups said Wednesday.

The detention of Tan Zuoren comes amid a crackdown by authorities in Sichuan province ahead of the first anniversary of the devastating May 12 quake, Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in a statement.

Tan was taken away Saturday by police who also searched his home in the provincial capital Chengdu, confiscating some documents, the group said.

"It is believed that Tan was detained for mobilising volunteers to conduct an independent investigation (into) the causes of the collapsed school buildings," said the group, a network of domestic and overseas activists.

It said Tan was detained on "suspicion of subverting state power," a charge typically used to silence government critics.

Chengdu police refused comment when contacted by AFP.

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