October 2009 Archives

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
October 31, 2009

A self-taught filmmaker who spent five months interviewing Tibetans about their hopes and frustrations living under Chinese rule is facing charges of state subversion after the footage was smuggled abroad and distributed on the Internet and at film festivals around the world.

The filmmaker, Dhondup Wangchen, who has been detained since March 2008, just weeks after deadly rioting broke out in Tibet, managed to sneak a letter out of jail last month saying that his trial had begun.

"There is no good news I can share with you," he wrote in the letter, which was provided by a cousin in Switzerland. "It is unclear what the sentence will be."

As President Obama prepares for his first trip to China next month, rights advocates are clamoring for his attention in hopes that he will raise the plight of individuals like Mr. Wangchen or broach such thorny topics as free speech, democracy and greater religious freedom.

With hundreds of lawyers, dissidents and journalists serving time in Chinese prisons, human rights organizations are busy lobbying the White House, members of Congress and the news media. In some ways, the pressure has only intensified since Mr. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, raising expectations for him to carry the torch of human rights.

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said Mr. Obama had an obligation to press Mr. Wangchen's case and the cause of Tibetan autonomy in general, given his decision not to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington this month.

That move, which some viewed as a concession to China, angered critics already displeased with what they say was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's failure to press human rights during a visit to China in February.

"Beijing is emboldened by such moves," Ms. Tethong said. "They see a weakness in the U.S. government, and they're going to exploit it. This idea that you'll gain more through some backroom secret strategy does not work."

>> Full report

By Radio Free Asia
October 28, 2009

A Chinese student runs into trouble when he refuses to renounce Christianity.

HONG KONG--A high-school student who refused to renounce Christianity has been expelled from a Han Chinese military production corps school in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang, an overseas rights group said.

Second-year high-school student Chen Le said he was expelled by the Huashan Middle School in the 2nd Agricultural Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps on Oct. 20, the U.S.-based China Aid group said in a statement.

"Chen Le ... was found by Bazhou Public Security Agency and other related agencies to have engaged in Christian gatherings," read a copy of the expulsion letter posted on the China Aid Web site.

"Efforts from the class advisor and some leaders from the school in educating him have all failed and this student persists in his belief that he should not renounce his Christian belief," it said.

"Given the above situation, this school advises him to transfer to other related schools," the letter said.

Student refused

The People's Liberation Army production companies, or bingtuan, are units of command that enable Beijing to maintain key areas and exploit rich resources in the largely Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghurs, who are native to the Xinjiang region, have also complained that young people under 18 have been barred from attending mosques in Xinjiang, and are expected to eat during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Chen said he was asked by the head of the agricultural division whether it was true that he had attended Christian meetings. "I just told him the truth," Chen said. "He asked me to write a letter guaranteeing that I wouldn't do it again, but I refused."

"So it took from Oct. 14 to last Tuesday, when the school wrote me a letter telling me to leave," he said.

Communist Youth League

Chen said he told the school he would prefer not to attend school than to write a self-criticism or "examine his error."

"Now I am just sitting at home," he said.

School Party secretary Sun Fu said Chen's Christian beliefs were incompatible with his membership in the Communist Party Youth League.

"He is a member of the League and an official in the student assembly," Sun said.

"We just wanted him to write an ideological report recognizing the problem, because he acts on behalf of the Party in the League."

"That is an atheist organization," Sun said.

"Either that, or he could resign from the League. There are documents about this from the Party Organization Department at the national level. You can look it up yourselves."

But Chen said he had been willing to resign from the League.

"They told me that no student would be allowed to take part in religious activities, and that the school would kick me out," he said.

"I offered to resign from the League, but that I would hold on to my beliefs as was provided for in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. Citizens are supposed to have the freedom of religious belief," Chen said.

Barred from exams

China Aid said Chen had subsequently also been barred from taking the university entrance exam, crucial for any Chinese student wishing to pursue higher education.

"He was expelled on Oct. 20, and they won't let him attend class," spokesman Bob Fu said.

"This means that he won't get the chance to sit the university entrance examinations."

"The bingtuan are in breach of China's Constitution," he said.

Chen said he wasn't sure what to do about his studies.

"I believe in God, and Jesus, so all I can do is wait and see what God has in store for me," Chen said.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Qiao Long. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original source

By Sharon LaFraniere | The New York Times
October 26, 2009

HUANGPING, China -- All the students at Luolang Elementary School, a yellow-and-orange concrete structure off a winding mountain road in southern China, know the key rules: Do not run in the halls. Take your seat before the bell rings. Raise your hand to ask a question.

And oh, yes: Salute every passing car on your way to and from school.

Education officials promoted the saluting edict to reduce traffic accidents and teach children courtesy. Critics, who have posted thousands of negative comments about the policy on China's electronic bulletin boards, beg to differ. "This is just pitiful," wrote one in a post last year. Only inept officials would burden children with such a requirement rather than install speed bumps, others insisted.

This is hardly the only nation where local bureaucrats sometimes run a bit too free. But in China, where many local officials are less than well trained and only the party can eject them from office, local governments' dubious edicts are common enough that skewering them has become a favorite pastime of China's Web users. Even the state-run media join in, although they rarely report who was behind the rules or suggest that they indicate a lack of competence to govern.

Often, the skewering gets results. In April, one county in Hubei Province in central China drew nationwide ridicule after officials ordered civil servants and employees of state-owned companies to buy a total of 23,000 packs of the province's brand of cigarettes every year. Departments whose employees failed to buy enough cigarettes or bought other Chinese brands would be fined, the media reported.

County officials said the increased revenue from the cigarette tax would buoy the local economy. After several weeks of embarrassment, Gongan County officials posted a short message on the government's Web site that read: "We have decided to remove this edict."

Officials of Hanchuan, a city in Hubei Province, tried a similar ploy, with the same effect. Determined to boost the local brand of baijiu, a sinus-clearing distilled clear liquor, they ordered state workers to buy a total of about $300,000 worth in a year. Reporters calculated that each employee would have had to buy three bottles a day to meet the quota. The rule was later rescinded.

Another county in Guizhou Province in southern China compelled state workers last year to help inflate the number of tourists visiting the ruins of an ancient village. Every government office was ordered to organize field trips to the site so the county could report 5,000 visitors within two months.

The involuntary visitors had to take several buses to get to a village 20 miles from the county seat. From there, they hired motorcycles to carry them another nine miles down dirt roads, the newspaper Guangzhou Daily reported.

The Guizhou Commercial News reported that some government offices were left unattended while state employees served as tourists. The next month that order, too, was repealed.

But a 2003 regulation that bars male officials in Sichuan Province from hiring female secretaries may still be on the books. China Youth Daily reported then that the official who initiated the regulation wanted "to ensure that work can be carried out."

An official in the Communist Party's provincial office said in an interview that she was not aware of a written rule.

No one ever precisely pinned down the origin of an order this May to kill all dogs in the town of Heihe, on the Russian border in the far northwest. Media reports suggested one town official became irate after a dog bit him as he strolled along a river. But the official refused to confirm that.

Town leaders organized teams of police officers and ordered them to beat to death any dog who ventured into a public space. China National Radio, a state-run agency, broadcast the citizens' outrage. "When we need to walk our dogs now, we have to first go out and look for cops," one dog owner lamented.

Scholars say the proliferation of such regulations stems from a lack of professionalism among some local officials.

The Communist Party has been trying in recent years to correct these problems by providing better training and more channels for public feedback. Party schools that groom officials now stress administrative skills as well as ideology. Job evaluations are supposed to be based on concrete results.

Some local officials who used regulations to bilk the public have been dealt with harshly. The party secretary of Feicheng, a town in northeastern China, was fired after imposing a fine of $73 on any farmer who cut down a corn stalk without a license. Farmers complained that they could not harvest their corn without fear of being penalized.

Officials of China's 637,001 villages seem especially prone to excess regulatory zeal. Until being overruled by higher-ups in 2005, for instance, officials of a village in Chongqing forced unmarried women to pass a chastity test before receiving compensation for farmland appropriated by the government. They argued that only virgins deserved compensation.

In comparison, Huangping County's policy of roadside salutes is arguably benign. Education officials say compliance is strictly voluntary. Asked whether they follow it, elementary students here tend to burst into nervous giggles.

The rule's purpose is twofold: to keep children safer on the county's corkscrew mountain roads and to teach manners. Nearly 30 schools are located along roads without sidewalks or speed bumps. Signs posting speed limits are few and far between; virtually no signs indicate a school nearby.

Long Guoping, deputy chief of the county education bureau, said those measures were coming. "Little by little, the government is installing them," he said. In the meantime, the salute "might avoid some accidents," he said. "It allows the drivers to notice the children and the children to notice the drivers."

Luo Rongmei, who teaches first grade at Luolang Elementary School, is all for it. "Since they started saluting there has not been one traffic accident," she said, as the students ran and shouted in the yard.

Guo Yuozhang, 63, whose grandson attends the Loulong school, said he was more ambivalent. If the cars come from one direction, "that is not too bad," said.

Cars coming in both directions is a bigger hassle. "Sometimes they are just turning in circles and they get kind of stuck," he said. He spun around to illustrate the point, smiling slyly.

Xiyun Yang and Sun Huan contributed research from Beijing.

>> Original source

The Sacramento Bee | Paul Krugman

October 24, 2009

Senior monetary officials usually talk in code. So when Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, spoke recently about Asia, international imbalances and the financial crisis, he didn't specifically criticize China's outrageous currency policy.

But he didn't have to; everyone got the subtext. China's bad behavior is posing a growing threat to the rest of the world economy. The only question now is what the world - and, in particular, the United States - will do about it.

Some background: The value of China's currency isn't determined by supply and demand. Instead, Chinese authorities enforced that target by buying or selling their currency in the foreign exchange market - a policy made possible by restrictions on the ability of private investors to move their money into or out of the country.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with such a policy, especially in a still-poor country whose financial system might all too easily be destabilized by volatile flows of hot money. In fact, the system served China well during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. The crucial question, however, is whether the target value of the yuan is reasonable.

Until around 2001, you could argue that it was: China's overall trade position wasn't too far out of balance. From then onward, however, the policy of keeping the yuan-dollar rate fixed came to look increasingly bizarre. First of all, the dollar slid in value, especially against the euro, so that by keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, Chinese officials were, in effect, devaluing their currency against everyone else's. Meanwhile, productivity in China's export industries soared; combined with the de facto devaluation, this made Chinese goods extremely cheap on world markets.

The result was a huge Chinese trade surplus. If supply and demand had been allowed to prevail, the value of China's currency would have risen sharply. But Chinese authorities didn't let it rise. They kept it down by selling vast quantities of the currency, acquiring in return an enormous hoard of foreign assets, mostly in dollars, currently worth about $2.1 trillion.

Many economists, myself included, believe that China's asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China's insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.

Although there has been a lot of doomsaying about the falling dollar, that decline is actually both natural and desirable.

America needs a weaker dollar to help reduce its trade deficit, and it's getting that weaker dollar as nervous investors, who flocked into the presumed safety of U.S. debt at the peak of the crisis, have started putting their money to work elsewhere. But China has been keeping its currency pegged to the dollar - which means that a country with a huge trade surplus and a rapidly recovering economy, a country whose currency should be rising in value, is in effect engineering a large devaluation instead.

And that's a particularly bad thing to do at a time when the world economy remains deeply depressed due to inadequate overall demand. By pursuing a weak-currency policy, China is siphoning some of that inadequate demand away from other nations, which is hurting growth almost everywhere. The biggest victims are probably workers in other poor countries. In normal times, I'd be among the first to reject claims that China is stealing other peoples' jobs, but now it's the simple truth.

So what are we going to do? U.S. officials have been extremely cautious about confronting the China problem, to such an extent that last week the Treasury Department, while expressing "concerns," certified in a required report to Congress that China is not - repeat not - manipulating its currency. They're kidding, right? The thing is, right now this caution makes little sense. Suppose the Chinese were to do what Wall Street and Washington seem to fear and start selling some of their dollar hoard. Under current conditions, this would actually help the U.S. economy by making our exports more competitive.

In fact, some countries have been trying to support their economies by selling their own currencies on the foreign exchange market. The United States, mainly for diplomatic reasons, can't do this; but if the Chinese decide to do it on our behalf, we should send them a thank-you note. The point is that with the world economy still precarious, beggar-thy-neighbor policies by major players can't be tolerated. Something must be done about China's currency.

>>original source

By Michael Bristow | BBC World News
October 21, 2009

Dozens of ethnic Uighurs have disappeared since being detained in the wake of the riots in China's Xinjiang region, a human rights group has said.

Human Rights Watch said the 43 men and teenaged boys were taken in police sweeps of Uighur districts of Urumqi, and had since vanished without a trace.

The riots and protests in the city in early July left nearly 200 people dead.

China's central government declined to answer questions about those detained by the authorities in Xinjiang.

MalaysiaNews(.net)
October 19, 2009

Besides issuing separate visas to Indian passport holders from Jammu and Kashmir, an issue that has irked New Delhi, China is now showing the state as if it is an independent country.

Visitors to Tibet, especially journalists invited by the Chinese government, are given handouts where Kashmir is indicated as a country separate from India. Media kits providing 'basic information' about Tibet - which China attacked and annexed in the 1950s - says Tibet 'borders with India, Nepal, Myanmar and Kashmir area'.

Except the 'Kashmir area', the other three are sovereign countries. Maps too, available in China, Myanmar and Nepal, show an India denuded of Kashmir.

Also, China's policy of extending assistance to only the government of a country indicates it considers Pakistan to be in control of Pakistan-administered Kashmir by offering financial assistance to build a dam on the Indus river there.

China, now locked in a border row with India, is also asking for the tightening of the open border between India and Nepal that, it says, is abetting anti-China activities and demonstrations by Tibetans crossing into Nepal from India.

China, which fought a war with India in 1962, says Arunachal Pradesh belongs to it. India says it is an integral and inalienable part of India. On the eve of the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh in November, China has been hurrying Nepal to deploy armed security forces along the border between northern Nepal and Tibet.

Both Nepal's Home Minister Bhim Rawal and Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal recently visited Mustang, the northernmost district in Nepal to assess the security plan. Mustang was once both part of an ancient Tibetan kingdom and later the base of anti-China guerrilla attacks by Tibet's Khampa warriors.

>> Original source

By Adam Nossiter | THE NEW YORK TIMES
October 14, 2009

Guinea's military government, facing international sanctions and heavy strictures over a mass killing of unarmed demonstrators, is highlighting a recent agreement with a Chinese company that could provide it with billions of dollars.

Mamadi Kallo, the military junta's secretary of state in charge of public works, confirmed Tuesday that the deal had been in the works for months, but he said it was signed only over the weekend, well after the civilian killings and rapes on Sept. 28.

China has yet to confirm the deal, leading some analysts to suggest that the Guinean government was trying to bolster its legitimacy in the face of international condemnation. But if the deal has progressed as Guinean officials have described, it could clash with the tough positions laid out by the junta's critics, including France and the United States.

Many nations condemned the massacre and swiftly backed away from any agreements with the military government after its soldiers fired upon protesters in a stadium in the capital, Conakry. On Tuesday, a group comprising the European Union, the African Union and the United Nations, among others, called for the junta's "withdrawal," and some of Guinea's neighbors in West Africa have threatened sanctions.

For the second straight day, shops, businesses and offices stayed shut in Conakry, as residents observed a call by unions to stay home to protest the killings. There was little traffic, and the city was quiet, residents said.

Mr. Kallo said the deal had been signed with a private company, not with the Chinese government. He said the company had agreed to invest "up to $7 billion" in electricity and aviation infrastructure -- an enormous sum for a country whose gross domestic product is only $4.5 billion. Electric service in Guinea's capital is shaky at best, and the country of 10 million people, about the size of Oregon, is virtually without internal air links.

"How the Chinese are to be compensated hasn't been decided," Mr. Kallo said.

China has been determined in its pursuit of minerals in Africa, often without consideration of how countries are governed, and analysts said a number of Chinese had been seen in recent months at Guinea's ministry of mines.

The Chinese approach has made serious headway on a continent where governments are routinely implicated in human rights violations; over the weekend, the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, praised China for "investing in infrastructure and building roads" and criticized the West for merely "handing out development aid."

Mr. Kallo did not name the company involved in the agreement, but news reports have identified it as the China International Fund, which one expert described as a "semi-independent operator." Mr. Kallo said the Angolan state oil company, Sonangol, was also part of the deal.

"This has nothing to do with the current situation," Mr. Kallo said of the deal. "They came here well before the death of the former president," he said, referring to Lansana Conté, the longtime dictator whose death last December gave rise to the military junta that rules the country.

But the government's sudden promotion of the agreement, an effort led by the country's minister of mines in interviews in recent days, has led analysts to say it is an attempt by the military regime to demonstrate that it is not an international pariah. State television has also repeatedly broadcast allusions to the Guinean-Chinese friendship.

Several human rights leaders in Conakry said the quasi public relations offensive would be ineffective because Guineans were still angry, and grieving, over the stadium massacre.

One expert on Africa-China relations, David H. Shinn, a former United States ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, said "the announcement remains something of an embarrassment to China and plays into its policy of emphasizing state sovereignty and avoiding interference in governance and human rights issues in other countries."

Mr. Shinn said the deal "clearly complicates the ability of those in the international community who want to put pressure on Guinea."

"Certainly the timing of this is unfortunate," he said. "Obviously, it puts Guinea in a much stronger position than it would have been."

In Conakry, human rights campaigners had a different view, drawing a sharply unfavorable comparison between the Chinese approach and heavy American criticism of the junta, which they said had broad popular appeal.

The Chinese are "perceived as supporting the dictatorship and the junta and against the will of the people," said Mamadi Kaba, president of the Guinean branch of the African Assembly for Human Rights. "Guineans are convinced there will never be development unless there is a lot more democracy. So the American support is much more important."

Thierno Baldé of the Institut de Recherche sur la Démocratie et l'État de Droit, a Conakry good-government group, said: "What the deal signifies is, 'Since the Western companies don't want to work with us, we'll turn to the Chinese and loosen the grip.'

"But people's preoccupations are definitely elsewhere now," Mr. Baldé said. "People are definitely more preoccupied with the killings."

>> Original source

Indo-Asian News Service | Hindustan Times
October 13, 2009

India expressed disappointment over China's protest against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, whose ownership is disputed by Beijing.

"We express our disappointment and concern over the statement made by the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs since this does not help the process of ongoing negotiations on the boundary question," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.

He said that the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders Tibet, was an "integral and inalienable part of India" and its people are "proud participants in the mainstream of India's vibrant democracy".

He said China was "well aware of this position" of the Indian government.

External Affiars Minister SM Krishna added: "I have said it in parliament that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India. We rest it at that."

Their comments followed a Chinese foreign ministry statement that Beijing "is strongly dissatisfied with the visit to the disputed region by the Indian leader disregarding China's serious concerns...

"We demand the Indian side address China's serious concerns and not trigger disturbance in the disputed region so as to facilitate the healthy development of Sino-India relations," spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in Beijing.

>> Original source

By Christopher Walker and Sarah Cook | Far Eastern Economic Review
October 12, 2009

The Chinese government's effort to prevent dissident authors from taking part in the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair, an international showcase for freedom of expression, has offered Germany a close-up view of China's intolerance of dissent.

In September, two Chinese writers, journalist Dai Qing and poet Bei Ling, had their invitations to the fair revoked by German event organizers after China's organizing committee complained. The Chinese delegation threatened a boycott over invitations to the writers for a September symposium promoting the Frankfurt Book Fair, which begins on October 14. In the face of this pressure, the event's organizers withdrew the invitations. The writers' participation was ultimately enabled when the German PEN club of independent writers invited the two Chinese dissidents.

While Beijing's coercive behavior caught many Germans off guard, it should not have come as a surprise; the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) censorship ambitions are neither new, nor limited to Germany. In fact, this action is just the latest example of an ongoing pattern of interference, cooptation and intimidation beyond China's borders used to muzzle voices critical of the Chinese government.

Two days after the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair, a film festival in Taiwan's second largest city, Kaohsiung, will begin. It, too, has come under pressure to censor. In this instance the issue is a planned screening of "The 10 Conditions of Love," a documentary about exiled Uighur rights activist Rebiya Kadeer. Chinese authorities assert Kadeer has terrorist links, unsubstantiated claims not accepted by most Western countries or independent analysts. Despite pressure to shelve the film--linked to fears that the city's growing industry servicing mainland tourists could be hurt--the Kaohsiung Film Archive and the organizing committee of the 2009 Kaohsiung Film Festival announced on September 27 that it would go ahead with the screening. A similar series of events unfolded at the Melbourne Film Festival this summer.

In September, Uighur activist Dolkun Isa, who holds German citizenship, was denied entry into South Korea, to take part in a conference on democracy. China is South Korea's largest trading partner. Isa, who fled China in 1997 and obtained asylum in Germany, was held at the Seoul airport without explanation for two days after being denied entry to South Korea.

The Chinese authorities have developed an elaborate arsenal of censorship, including an extensive domestic apparatus of information control. Less appreciated and understood are the methods of interference and intimidation employed to muzzle critical voices abroad. Some of the modern authoritarian techniques the Chinese authorities use for this purpose beyond its borders are detailed in a study, "Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians," recently released by Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.

Economic coercion is a principal line of attack in the transnational suppression of issues deemed sensitive by China's rulers. The coercion is applied directly and indirectly.

Instances of direct economic coercion and censorship typically occur when an event has already been planned or already begun. Pressure is then applied by Chinese government representatives on the organizers or local authorities to suppress certain activities or appearances deemed undesirable by the CCP. In such instances, explicit or implicit threats of boycotts, trade sanctions, or withdrawal of Chinese government funding have been used to force the hand of those in charge. The CCP's Frankfurt Book Fair gambit fits this model, given the financial implications of the Chinese government's $15 million investment in the event.

More insidious has been an indirect form of economic intimidation, whereby publications, event organizers or governments engage in self-censorship on topics deemed sensitive to the mainland, a dynamic some have dubbed "pre-emptive kowtowing." Given their small size, proximity and relationship to the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon.

This June, the Hong Kong edition of Esquire magazine, published by South China Media, pulled a feature story by journalist Daisy Chu on the Tiananmen Square massacre slated to run on the 20th anniversary. In 2008, a prominent legal journal in Hong Kong made a last-minute decision not to publish an article on Tibetan self-determination. A blackout on independent coverage of the Falun Gong is believed to be practiced among certain Hong Kong and Taiwanese outlets whose owners have close ties to Beijing or significant business interests on the mainland.

As China's economic clout and role on the global stage grows, it will inevitably exert greater influence beyond its borders. However, the issue is not whether China--which features one the world's least hospitable environments for free expression--will project influence but what shape this growing power will take. The CCP plans, for instance, to spend billions of dollars on expanding its overseas media operations in a potentially massive show of "soft power." But whether this enormous investment will simply project the deeply illiberal values that characterize China's domestic media scene to a wider playing field is a question advocates of free expression should seriously ponder.

This critical question, so far, does not provide an encouraging answer.

China's attempts to insinuate itself into Taiwan's media sector, and Beijing's ongoing efforts to limit the vitality of Hong Kong's media, are among the examples of this phenomenon in Asia. The CCP has recently demonstrated its willingness to suppress open expression in Germany and Australia. The United States is not immune to this pressure. The Dalai Lama will be waiting a bit longer for his meeting with President Obama.

The Chinese government's position at the vanguard of efforts to monitor and filter Internet content, using its wealth and technical acumen to devise methods to limit the free and independent flow of information online, also has serious transnational implications for free expression. China effectively serves as an incubator for new media suppression; authoritarian governments around the world carefully watch China's censorship techniques and learn from its innovations.

The community of democratic states must acknowledge the Chinese government's growing media ambitions and efforts to censor beyond its borders. Acquiescence in this challenge will only embolden the Chinese authorities.

>> Original source

Gulf Daily News - The Voice of Bahrain
October 07, 2009

Sixty years ago, his army victorious, Mao Zedong stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square and announced a new era for China after a terrible civil war and the horrors of Japanese occupation.

The new national anthem urged the Chinese: "Stand up, those who refuse to be slaves!" and the Communists confidently proclaimed the People's Republic of China, "the people's government".

As Mao's doctor, Li Zhisui, later wrote in her memoirs, the leader was "China's saviour, the messiah in the flesh".

But revolutions, like Saturn, devour their own children. By a cruel irony of history, there followed 30 years, when the Chinese people were crushed and repressed, with a debauched and brutal Mao presiding over the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which between them claimed tens of millions of lives.

The whitewashed Mao now being presented to Chinese people is a myth based on lies.

The China of today was made not so much by the advent of Mao in 1949, but by that of Deng Xiaoping 30 years later.

It was Deng who in 1979 had the courage and vision to introduce economic reforms that put China on the road to the free market, giving it wealth at home and influence abroad. It should be a subject of great joy and celebration, not just to the Chinese but to people around the world, that hundreds of millions have been lifted out of misery to new lives of health, wealth and, at least in material terms, choice.

Yet Deng himself, fearful that reform would lead to the collapse of Communism, perpetuated the founding myth of Mao by declaring in 1981 that 70 per cent of what the "Great helmsman" had done was right, even if 30 per cent of it was wrong. This, too, was not just a lie but an absurd oversimplification.

A nation that cannot debate its past and cannot be candid about its present failings and achievements will struggle to make the most of its future and, in the case of China, build a society worthy of a 21st-century superpower.

Many younger Chinese are not taken in by the airbrushed cult of Mao the revolutionary hero. They are more interested in opportunities to get rich offered by the market economy - sometimes to the point of capitalist excess. For them, Mao is simply a face on kitsch mugs and T-shirts.

China's current rulers cling to the belief that they can combine Mao with McDonalds, capitalism with one-party rule, for which the official euphemism is "socialism with Chinese characteristics".

But they do not trust their own people: 60th anniversary regimented parade took place in streets cleared of all but approved spectators, with residents of Beijing told to watch the celebrations on television behind closed doors.

China's leaders were desperate to prevent any repetition of the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests of 20 years ago. They have still not learnt to tolerate dissent or to treat all citizens equally, from Tibet to the ethnic Uighurs of the Xinjiang region. President Hu Jintao's China can take pride in its huge advances. But it is not confident enough to give the Chinese people freedom of choice in a democratic vote. Until the rule of law is introduced, it will lack full legitimacy.

China also has to face up to its world role. Mr Hu made a good start at the UN General Assembly by taking the lead on climate change, and Beijing has another chance to pull its weight by helping the West to confront Iran over its nuclear programme.

Unless Beijing accepts the need for a firm stand on Iran, Zimbabwe or Darfur, it will fail to live up to the world power status it craves.

Too often it sees the world purely in terms of its interests and economic advantage. If this is to be "the Chinese century", it must put aside myth and confront its responsibilities.

The Chinese people have stood up - but for what?

>> Original editorial

By Radio Free Asia
01 October 2009

Cell phone technology provides a new method for exchanging information in Internet-censored China.

As Beijing redoubles its efforts to censor Internet content during sensitive National Day celebrations, netizens are turning to an existing form of mobile technology to exchange information, according to residents in southern China.

Many netizens are now making use of Bluetooth, an open wireless protocol for exchanging data, to create personal area networks with a range of up to 10 meters on their mobile devices and share information.

Xingzai, a netizen in China's southern Guangdong province, said the technology helps him to spread news from media organizations that are otherwise censored in China.

"I just want to spread the news to others...so they won't feel they have been left out. We download the news every day and transmit it to others," Xingzai said.

Most modern cell phones are equipped with Bluetooth technology, and when two or more cell phone users have the feature enabled, it is easy to share data such as downloaded audio or text files between devices.

Once a user offers to share files from his or her device, other devices in the area will receive a transmission request that they can either approve or reject.

If approved, the file will transmit to the device in a format that allows it to be read or listened to.

Xingzai said he offers to share files at bus stops and subway stations, where commuters are crowded together in an area serviceable by a Bluetooth network and are often looking for information to read as they wait.

"There are streams of people at bus stops or subway stations. Some of them are curious and want to receive real information... A good mobile phone can transmit data over a distance of 50 meters," he said.

Bluetooth is also an ideal method of sharing sensitive material anonymously, as no information about the sender is transmitted beyond what has been specified as a name for the device of origin.

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By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
October 2, 2009

CHANGCHUN, China -- Unlike in other cities taken by the People's Liberation Army during China's civil war, there were no crowds to greet the victors as they made their triumphant march through the streets of this industrial city in the heart of Manchuria.

Even if relieved to learn that hostilities with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Army had come to an end, most residents -- the ones who had not died during the five-month siege -- were simply too weak to go outdoors. "We were just lying in bed starving to death," said Zhang Yinghua, now 86, as she recalled the famine that claimed the lives of her brother, her sister and most of her neighbors. "We couldn't even crawl."

In what China's history books hail as one of the war's decisive victories, Mao's troops starved out the formidable Nationalist garrison that occupied Changchun with nary a shot fired. What the official story line does not reveal is that at least 160,000 civilians also died during the siege of the northeastern city, which lasted from June to October of 1948.

The People's Republic of China basked in its 60th anniversary on Thursday with jaw-dropping pageantry, but there were no solemn pauses for the lives lost during the Communist Party's rise to power -- not for the estimated tens of millions who died during the civil war, nor the millions of landlords, Nationalist sympathizers and other perceived enemies who were eradicated during Mao's drive to consolidate power.

"Changchun was like Hiroshima," wrote Zhang Zhenglu, a lieutenant colonel in the People's Liberation Army who documented the siege in "White Snow, Red Blood," a book that was immediately banned after publication in 1989. "The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months."

The 40,000 who survived did so by eating insects, leather belts and, in some cases, the bodies that littered the streets. By the time Communist troops took over the city, every leaf and blade of grass had been consumed during the final desperate months.

There are no monuments or markers recalling the events that decimated Changchun's populace. Most young people have no knowledge of the darker aspects of the siege, and the survivors, now in their 70s and 80s, are reluctant to give voice to long-buried trauma. "I've always heard that Changchun was captured without bloodshed," Li Jiaqi, a 17-year-old high school student, said as she sat on the steps in front of the city's Liberation Memorial.

Chinese scholars have largely steered clear of the subject. Several historians, when asked about the episode, declined to be interviewed. Zhou Jiewen, a retired nuclear physicist in Changchun who has become a self-taught expert on the siege, explained that many key details, if widely disseminated, would tarnish the army's reputation as defenders of the common man. Those include shooting civilians who tried to escape the city and ignoring the pleas of mothers holding aloft starving children on the other side of the barbed-wire barricades. "To cause so many civilians to die was a great blunder by the P.L.A. and tragedy unparalleled in the civil war," Mr. Zhou said.

While history is often written by the victors, the Communist Party has never been shy about shaping the past to serve its central narrative. Textbooks portray the revolution as the inevitable outcome of a popular uprising; the patriotic films that have flooded television in recent months are not subtle in their glorification of Mao's troops as munificent liberators. The unpleasant aspects of the revolution, including innocents caught in the cross-fire, are often omitted.

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