December 2010 Archives

By Xiyun Yang and Edward Wong | The New York Times
December 28, 2010

The photograph is so graphic that it appears cartoonish at first glance.

A man lies on a road with his eyes closed, blood streaming from his half-open mouth, his torso completely crushed under the large tire of a red truck. One arm reaches out from beneath the tire. His shoulder is a bloody pile of flesh. His head is no longer attached to the flattened spinal cord.

The man in the photograph, Qian Yunhui, 53, has become the latest Internet sensation in China, as thousands of people viewing the image online since the weekend have accused government officials of gruesomely killing Mr. Qian to silence his six-year campaign to protect fellow villagers in a land dispute. Illegal land seizures by officials are common in China, but the horrific photographs of Mr. Qian's death on Saturday have ignited widespread fury, forcing local officials to offer explanations in a news conference.

It is the latest in a string of cases in which anger against the government has been fanned by the lightning-fast spread of information online. In late October, the son of a deputy police chief in central China drunkenly drove his car into two college students, killing one and injuring another. His parting phrase as he drove away from the scene of the crime -- "Sue me if you dare, my father is Li Gang!" -- has since become a byword for official corruption and nepotism.

Officials in the city of Yueqing in Zhejiang Province, which supervises Mr. Qian's home village, insist that the photographs show nothing more than an unfortunate traffic accident. They made their case in a hastily arranged news conference on Monday afternoon, as the images of Mr. Qian's death continued proliferating on the Internet. Mr. Qian's family, some Chinese reporters and residents of Zhaiqiao Village cite the photographs as proof of foul play and a sloppy cover-up.

It is unclear who took the photographs, but they first appeared Sunday afternoon on Tianya, a popular online forum for discussing Chinese social issues.

Within 36 hours, the initial post attracted nearly 20,000 comments. It has since been deleted. Tianya and two other Web sites that reported on the case together got 400,000 hits, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The Chinese government goes to great lengths to block servers here from accessing information it deems harmful to political stability, but censors have apparently failed to keep up with the proliferation of blog posts related to Mr. Qian. Once the information had spread, higher authorities apparently found it necessary to show the public they were looking into the matter -- officials from the nearby city of Wenzhou ordered police officers from there to go to Yueqing to assist the investigation, Xinhua reported.

Chinese Internet users were drawn not only to the gruesome images, but also to the fact that the land dispute involving Mr. Qian is a common narrative in China.

In 2004, the city government approved construction of a power plant in Zhaiqiao Village. The company building the plant got virtually all the arable land in the village, and the 4,000 or so villagers received no compensation, according to a blog post on Tianya that was written four months ago under Mr. Qian's name. At the time, Mr. Qian and other villagers went to government offices to protest the land grab, and riot police officers beat more than 130 people and arrested 72, the post said.

Mr. Qian, the former Communist Party representative in the village, traveled to Beijing to file a petition with the central authorities. In the news conference on Monday, city officials said that Mr. Qian had been arrested, found guilty of criminal conduct and imprisoned at least twice. Mr. Qian continued his crusade after recently being released from prison. Before his death, he was the overwhelming favorite of the villagers in a coming election for village chief, according to local media reports.

Around 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, Mr. Qian received a call on his cellphone and walked out as he was talking, according to a report by Chinese Business News that cited Mr. Qian's wife, Wang Zhaoyan.

An hour later, he was run over by the red truck, his body crushed beneath the left front tire. The driver, Fei Liangyu, has been detained, according to a statement on the Yueqing city government Web site.

Chinese news reports said another villager, Qian Chengwei, told people that he had watched as the victim was held down in the road by several men wearing security uniforms. One of the men waved his hand, and a truck then drove slowly over Mr. Qian, the reports said. Villagers arriving at the scene were immediately suspicious. They refused to allow the police to remove Mr. Qian's body, and a scuffle ensued.

The witness and the victim's family members were detained, according to Southern Daily, a newspaper based in Guangdong Province. Government officials told the newspaper that the witness was a drug user.

Local news organizations reported Tuesday that Mr. Qian's family members have been released. Phone calls to Mr. Qian's home were not answered.

Internet users and Chinese reporters have continued to question the explanation by city officials, pointing to discrepancies revealed by the photos. Why does the front of the truck show little sign of impact or blood? Why, if Mr. Qian had been accidentally hit while walking upright, is his body lying completely perpendicular to the truck's tire? Why was a brand-new security camera at the intersection where Mr. Qian killed not working on Saturday? Who called Mr. Qian on that fateful morning?

"A few years ago, there were other people petitioning with my dad," one family member, Qian Shuangping, told China Business Daily. "Some of them were bought off. Some of them got scared. We said: 'Just take some money and forget it. What if something happens to you?' My father wouldn't listen to us."

>> Original Report

By Radio Free Asia
December 22, 2010

Experts say that convictions in Tibet reflect a pattern of secrecy and judicial abuse.

Three high-ranking Tibetan Buddhist monks are unaccounted for after being sentenced to long prison terms by Chinese authorities earlier this year, a Tibetan advocacy group says.

The three men, affiliated with Drepung monastery located outside Lhasa in the Tibet Autonomous Region, were detained in April 2008 following a peaceful protest march by Drepung monks on March 10.

Police blocked the demonstration, sparking rioting in Lhasa and leading to further protests across Tibet and in Tibetan-populated areas of western China.  A subsequent regionwide crackdown by Chinese security forces lasted for much of the year.

The sentenced monks--whose names were given as Jampel Wangchuk, 55, Konchok Nyima, 43, and Ngawang Choenyi, 38--were handed prison terms of life, 20 years, and 15 years respectively, according to a Dec. 21 statement by the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT).

"All we are hearing is accounts of their sentencing," ICT president Mary Beth Markey said in an interview.

"We have no idea of their whereabouts. And there are concerns among the Drepung community that they were picked up merely because they are authorities--senior, prominent monks--and not because they were in fact involved in what the Chinese would consider political activity."

Pattern of abuse

Markey said that the Chinese government's handling of the monks' case underscores a wider pattern of official abuse in Tibetan areas.

"Overall, our concern is that the post-2008 uprising period is being played out before us in a manner that is completely devoid of accountability."

Notable problems include Tibetan prisoners' access to family and to lawyers and widespread violations of the rule of law, Markey said.

ICT's concern now, Markey said, is that the sentenced Drepung monks are being "scapegoated" because of their influence within the religious community, "and not for involvement in any of the demonstrations or protests that happened in and around Lhasa in March of 2008."

Charges still unclear

Separately, Tibet expert Robbie Barnett confirmed the sentences handed down to two of the men, Jampel Wangchuk and Konchok Nyima, citing his own sources in Tibet.

The men had been convicted at the end of an "unannounced trial" in June, said Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University.

Charges made against the men remain unclear, though, he said.

"There's no information in Lhasa about the trial, about where these people are held, or about what they were accused of. "

"Even by Chinese standards, this is absolutely extraordinary," Barnett said.

But the sentenced monks would not have to have had a visible role in the protests to come to the attention of the authorities, Barnett said.

"We know that the Chinese penal system works by looking for organizers, and particularly people who might spread ideas ... When you get a long sentence in China, it means the authorities think you've suggested or organized something."

Reported in Washington by Richard Finney.

>> Original Report

Editorial | The New York Times
December 23, 2010

For years, Chinese officials have promised to improve their protection of intellectual property. But the infringement of copyrights, patents and trade secrets has, in many instances, gotten worse. Last week, they made some new promises. While we welcome China's willingness to utter commitments in this area, we remain skeptical of its ability or desire to protect foreign innovation.

At the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in Washington, Chinese officials promised better protection for foreign software. They promised not to discriminate against foreign intellectual property in government procurement. They even agreed to keep talking about improving how they award patents, a crucial step to prevent the proliferation of parasitic patents of little merit.

Yet for all the new agreements, stringent protection of foreigners' intellectual property is at odds with China's development strategy. Foreign companies operating in China complain that Beijing views the appropriation of foreign innovations as part of a policy mix aimed at developing domestic technology.

Bootleg copies of the "Dark Knight" and Shenzen sweatshops churning out fake Louis Vuitton bags are only part of the problem. Last March, the United States International Trade Commission banned imports of cast steel railway wheels made by the Chinese group Tianrui. Tianrui had hired nine employees from the Chinese licensee of Amsted Industries of Chicago, a maker of railway parts. They came with an armful of trade secrets that allowed Tianrui to muscle into the business.

This type of intellectual property theft is increasingly common, according to American companies operating in China. In fact, they say, it is tacitly supported by Beijing, and includes forcing foreigners to disclose their technology in order to gain contracts.

China's new antimonopoly laws would allow compulsory licensing of foreign technologies in some cases and require foreign companies that wanted to merge with or buy a Chinese company to transfer technology to China. Several foreign companies have found themselves competing against Chinese firms using a slight variation of the foreign technology.

In 2005, the China National Railway Signal and Communication Corporation invited Germany's Siemens to join in building trains for the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed railway. Most of the technology came from Siemens, which trained 1,000 C.N.R. technicians in Germany. But most of the trains were built in China. For the next project -- the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail -- the Ministry of Transportation decided it wanted domestic technology, and C.N.R. bumped Siemens out. CSR Corporation, another Chinese train builder, did the same with Kawasaki Heavy Industries of Japan.

China's attempt to move up the tech ladder is natural. Many countries in history have pursued technological progress by first trying to piggyback on foreign inventions -- tweaking and improving -- before blazing their own trails. Still, intellectual property misappropriation cannot be a government policy goal, especially in a country the size of China, which can flood world markets with ill-begotten high-tech products.

The United States has made some progress at the World Trade Organization against the theft of intellectual property in China. But it must be much more vigilant and aggressive.

>> Original Report

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
December 21, 2010

Thirty years after it introduced some of the world's most sweeping population-control measures, the Chinese government continues to use a variety of coercive family planning tactics, from financial penalties for households that violate the restrictions to the forced sterilization of women who have already had one child, according to a report issued by a human rights group.

The report, published Tuesday by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, documents breadwinners who lose their jobs after the birth of a second child, campaigns that reward citizens for reporting on the reproductive secrets of their neighbors and expectant mothers dragged into operating rooms for late-term abortions.

Not uncommon, according to the report, are the experiences of women like Li Hongmei, 24, a factory employee from Anhui Province who was at home recovering from the birth of her daughter when a dozen men employed by the local government carried her off to a hospital for a tubal ligation. "I promised I would have the surgery when I got better but they didn't care," Ms. Li said in a telephone interview. "I screamed and tried to fight them off but it was no use."

Although most of the abuses documented in the report are not new, its authors are seeking to highlight the darker side of birth-control restrictions at a time when the public debate has largely focused on whether China's family-planning policy has been too successful for its own good. This year as the nation marked the 30th anniversary of the so-called one-child policy, officials have been praising such measures for preventing 400 million births. A smaller population, they argue, has helped fuel China's astounding economic growth by reducing the demands on food production, education and medical care.

Some demographers, however, argue that plummeting fertility rates and a rapidly aging population are reasons enough to ease the rules. Sociologists fret about the surfeit of unmarried men -- the result of selective abortions that favor sons -- and the demands on only children forced to care for elderly parents.

On Monday, the director of the National Population Family Planning Commission sought to put to rest any speculation about a change in the status quo, saying the current policies would remain in place through 2015.

Groups like Chinese Human Rights Defenders say the current family-planning policies should be abolished altogether. "The state's role in shaping the population should be through incentives and by encouraging couples to have fewer children through education," said Wang Songlian, a researcher who worked on the report. "They should not be using coercion and violence."

>> Please Read Complete Report

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
December 18, 2010

A human rights organization has called on the Chinese government to publicly account for the fate of 20 ethnic Uighurs who were deported to China from Cambodia one year ago as they awaited a determination on their asylum applications with the United Nations.

Until now Beijing has refused to provide any information about the Uighurs -- men, boys, a woman and two infants -- who were sent back to China on Dec. 19 [2009] over the objections of the United States, the European Union and United Nations officials. They were forcibly returned the day before Chinese Vice President Xi Jinpin arrived in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, for a visit that yielded a package of loans and grants worth $1.2 billion.

The Uighurs, who made their way to Cambodia with the help of Christian missionaries, said they were fleeing a crackdown that followed deadly ethnic rioting in the China's far western Xinjiang region in July 2009. Many of the 197 people dead were Han Chinese migrants killed during two days of violence in the regional capital, Urumqi. An unknown number of Uighurs were also killed or injured in a brief spasm of Han vigilante attacks that followed.

Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people, have long complained about Han migration to the West that they say dilutes their numbers, culture and language. The Chinese government, in turn, often accuses Uighurs of engaging in "separatism" when pressing their demands for expanded religious freedom and political autonomy.

In its only statement to date about the fate of the deportees, the Chinese Foreign Ministry suggested in February that the Uighurs had been tried or were set to face trial. "China is a country ruled by law," Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, wrote in response to questions sent by The New York Times. "The judicial authorities deal with illegal criminal issues strictly according to law."

China has insisted the Uighurs were wanted in connection with the rioting, although they did not publicly provide any evidence of their involvement. In the months that followed the violence in Urumqi, hundreds of Uighurs were detained and at least nine were executed.

Human Rights Watch said they feared that those deported faced torture, long prison terms or worse. "Both China and Cambodia should be held accountable for their flagrant disregard of their obligations under international law," Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch's Asia advocacy director, said in a statement.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said 22 people initially applied for asylum in their Phnom Penh office but two disappeared before the group was handcuffed and forced onto a Chinese plane. In their statements, the applicants said they feared harsh punishment if returned to China.

"I can tell the world what is happening to Uighur people, and the Chinese authorities do not want this," one man, a 27-year-old teacher, wrote. "If returned, I am certain I would be sent to prison.' "

>> Original Report

By Radio Free Asia
December 16, 2010

One of China's 'most promising' young poets has not returned after being forcibly detained ahead of Human Rights Day.

A prominent young poet from the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou has yet to return after being taken from his home last week by authorities, a fellow poet in Germany says.

Germany-based poet Xu Pei, who appeared in a cage at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair to protest the Chinese government's detention of writers, said that Wang Zang was among those targeted by police in the clampdown on members of the Guizhou Human Rights Forum last week.

"Every year around Dec. 10 in Guizhou, people who care about human rights, including the poet Wang Zang, are harrassed by the Chinese Communist Party," she said.

Authorities detained a number of local activists ahead of Human Rights Day and the award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo on Dec. 10.

"This year, we have news that [Wang Zang] has been illegally forced to leave his home, has been held under unofficial detention, and has now been missing for seven days," Xu said.

"We have heard no new information about his whereabouts," she said.

"He was taken away many days ago, but I did receive a poem from him," she said.

Harassed, detained

Wang's poem, titled "Wang Zang's Actions Are His Art," reads in part:

"The Red Terror rises like a flood.
The machinery of tyranny continues its madness.
This natural enemy of mankind sees enemies in everything."

Another line reads:

"If my bones become part of the landscape, may they load a barrel of anger, and a handful of sorrows."

Xu said that Wang was born in 1985 and is one of China's most promising young poets, but that his support of human rights has earned him harassment and detention from the ruling Communist Party.

Guizhou authorities have detained or placed under house arrest at least four activists who planned to hold a conference on human rights in the provincial capital, according to the organizers.

Wang spoke to RFA's Mandarin service on the day that police came to take him away.

"I am in the bathroom right now," Wang said. "There are six or seven of them, and they're going to take me away out of town."

"It's because of Human Rights Day, and also because of the Nobel prize ceremony, so the crackdown this year is particularly harsh," he said at the time.

Event blocked

Last week, activist Mo Jiangang said the event had been planned to coincide with Human Rights Day and with the award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, but that authorities had pre-empted it by detaining several participants.

Apart from Mo himself, Chen Xi, Liao Shuangyuan, Wu Yuqin, and Chen Xi were forced to "take a holiday" out of town, though the activists all expected to return home by Monday.

Beijing stepped up pressure on political activists after Liu, currently serving an 11-year jail term for subversion, was named the Nobel Prize recipient on Oct. 8.

It has hit out at the award as an insult to the country's judicial system, refused to attend the ceremony, and put pressure on diplomats from other countries to boycott the prestigious event.

Large numbers of lawyers, rights activists, and writers were also prevented from leaving China ahead of the event.

Reported by Tian Yi for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

>> Original Report

By Shirong Chen | BBC World News
December 15, 2010

Social discontent in China has markedly increased this year, according to one of the country's top think tanks.

People in small towns and rural areas are becoming especially dissatisfied with their lives, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences says.

Some key indicators show that in China overall satisfaction with jobs, social security, and leisure provisions has reached the lowest point since 2006.

People are worried about inflation and their personal future, researchers say.

In their annual Book of China's Society, the researchers paint a picture that is a far cry from the harmonious society the country's leadership trumpets.

Despite China's phenomenal growth, there has been a drop in people's confidence in the economy and in the government's ability to manage economic, social and international affairs.

The researchers put this down to the impact of the international financial crisis, rather than any widespread abuse of power or increasing restriction on moving up the social ladder.

They say that China is fast moving from an agricultural society to an industrial one, with more farmers leaving the land for the cities.

On the sensitive issue of income distribution, the researchers say the rate of wealth growth for the rural population will outstrip that of the cities this year, but the gap between rich and poor is still widening.

>> Original Report Here

By Associated Press | via UNCENSORED Yahoo!
December 14, 2010

SHANGHAI - State owned China Oilfield Services has announced a contract with Norway's Statoil for drilling in the North Sea, despite Beijing's hard feelings over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo.

The Dec. 9 deal, seen Tuesday on China Oilfield Services' website, calls for one of its drilling rigs to operate in the North Sea for up to five years. It says the newly commissioned rig is to begin drilling next summer.

The long-term impact of Beijing's ire over the prize, awarded to Liu last week in absentia, remains to be seen.

China reacted with fury, suspending trade talks with Norway in retaliation and pressuring foreign nations not to attend the awards ceremony. It has run daily tirades in state media berating the Norwegian Nobel Committee as misguided and inherently opposed to China's development.

Liu is serving an 11-year prison sentence for sedition, after co-authoring a bold appeal for human rights and multiparty democracy known as Charter 08. It is his fourth period of incarceration since 1989.

But business is business.

>> Complete Report

By Karl Taro Greenfeld | TIME Magazine issue of December 6, 2010

On that afternoon in 2003, Hong Kong looked like a scene from a zombie movie -- deserted streets, empty storefronts, even a bus seemingly abandoned in an intersection. I was the only shopper on the fourth floor of the Landmark, one of Hong Kong's most fashionable malls. The shop attendants, wearing surgical masks, leaned on the glass-topped counters and stared vacantly at racks of on-sale clothes; an employee at Kenzo told me the shop was averaging two customers a day. And she was counting me as one of them.

As the SARS virus exploded in early 2003 out of southern China, infecting thousands of people and killing hundreds, it was hard at first to piece together what was happening. We journalists focused on the biological and epidemiological aspects of the outbreak -- the symptoms, the number infected, the path of the epidemic, which we traced on maps with our fingers. Yet as we tried to understand, there always seemed to be an obfuscating layer: something or someone was working against comprehension.

There were powerful forces, it would turn out, that from the start were intent on hiding as much about the disease as possible. Those forces permeated the Chinese government, from local functionaries all the way to Beijing. At the time, China's reasons for dissembling about the emerging virus seemed relatively easy to understand: a leadership transition from Communist Party Secretary Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao was under way, bad news was seen as a threat to economic growth, and it was embarrassing to be seen as the source of a disease epidemic. The mistaken conclusion in the West, however, was that the global outcry over China's SARS cover-up would turn the Middle Kingdom into a more open society.

On the contrary. Rather than showing a country in transition, the SARS episode revealed one far more resistant to change than the West understood. In fact, China's response to SARS offered a virtual guidebook to all the elements of its closed nature, marked by its refusal to own up to domestic problems, acknowledge the human rights of its citizens or deal openly with the media. The ruling Communist Party elite acted in a manner that would become increasingly familiar as more and more global attention came to bear on the world's fastest-growing superpower. When this year's Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo on Oct. 8, the Chinese government removed his name from all search engines operating in China and placed his family under house arrest.

It all seems clearer now, but at the time of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, we were struggling to understand a new phenomenon, how a modern city experiences an epidemic. In Hong Kong, we would go through all the stages of a typical outbreak response: denial, fear, panic and, finally, rational response. For those of us who stuck it out -- and thousands, including my family, fled -- the sight of the abandoned city became familiar, but the experience of it remained novel. For a while, you could get a table at any restaurant at any time you wanted -- until the restaurants started shutting down. Hong Kong residents stayed in, hoarded staples, hoped for the best and waited for the worst. We dared not clear our throats in the presence of others for fear we would be accused of harboring the virus, whose first symptom was a dry, hacking cough.

I was the editor of TIME Asia, and our initial story asked the most basic question: What is it? At first, we heard vague reports of shops up the Pearl River delta in China running out of vinegar as panicked villagers in the Guangzhou area sought to boil the liquid and breathe its vapor -- a home remedy for respiratory ailments -- while local mainland newspapers reported that the outbreak was only a rumor.

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The False Opening
We were wrong. In that giddy post-SARS period, when it was a thrill to be able to dine in a restaurant again, we failed to recognize what had actually just occurred. We had seen the Chinese government fail to level with its people when it mattered most: when a killer was in their midst.

In the years since, the Chinese government's first response to any domestic crisis has been to hunker down behind the great firewall. In the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, in which nearly 70,000 died and shoddy construction of school buildings caused the deaths of hundreds of children, parents and other citizens who accused corrupt officials of condoning the unsafe buildings were themselves arrested and threatened. The repeated coal-mining disasters of the past decade, which have killed about 50,000 workers, have often gone unreported in the Chinese media. Earlier this year, reporters in Shanxi covering a relatively successful rescue operation -- in which more than 100 miners were pulled to safety after a flood in a mine shaft -- were still unable to talk with officials or family members. Should there be miners trapped underground in China for months, as there were in Chile, it's entirely possible the world's media will not even hear about it. In 2005 a benzene spill and explosion up the Songhua River from Harbin, a city of 10 million, was initially covered up by the local government. Officials insisted the city's water was still safe to drink, dismissed the spill as "only a rumor" (sound familiar?) and ordered local reporters not to cover the incident. Only after thousands of residents fled the city did government officials admit the spill had polluted the river.

Or consider the lax consumer protections that allowed milk tainted with the toxic filler melamine to be widely sold in 2008, poisoning 300,000 children and killing six infants. Early reports that melamine had been mixed with milk were ignored by regulatory authorities. Even after public outrage forced the government to take measures, only middle-level employees were prosecuted. The initial cover-up prompted one Chinese author, Qin Geng, to say, "This was the interest of the ruling party above everything, even the safety of the people." In each similar case, the government's response was first to deny, then obfuscate and even imprison those who reported the truth. The same failure to regulate and disclose resulted in the export to the U.S. of poisonous toothpaste, deadly toys and toxic drywall.

Why hasn't China opened up, even as trade is booming? Because so much of its success has stemmed from its ability to pursue growth in spite of human collateral damage -- and because its ruling elite places its own preservation above all else. While the SARS virus has not significantly recurred, another crisis is likely to elicit a similar response. During SARS, we got a working glimpse of the new China, and it was very similar to the old China: bad news means there will be no news.

>> Please read ENTIRE report here

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
December 11, 2010

Liu Yang, a coal miner's daughter, arrived in the capital this past summer with a freshly printed diploma from Datong University, $140 in her wallet and an air of invincibility.

Her first taste of reality came later the same day, as she lugged her bags through a ramshackle neighborhood, not far from the Olympic Village, where tens of thousands of other young strivers cram four to a room.

Unable to find a bed and unimpressed by the rabbit warren of slapdash buildings, Ms. Liu scowled as the smell of trash wafted up around her. "Beijing isn't like this in the movies," she said.

Often the first from their families to finish even high school, ambitious graduates like Ms. Liu are part of an unprecedented wave of young people all around China who were supposed to move the country's labor-dependent economy toward a white-collar future. In 1998, when Jiang Zemin, then the president, announced plans to bolster higher education, Chinese universities and colleges produced 830,000 graduates a year. Last May, that number was more than six million and rising.

It is a remarkable achievement, yet for a government fixated on stability such figures are also a cause for concern. The economy, despite its robust growth, does not generate enough good professional jobs to absorb the influx of highly educated young adults. And many of them bear the inflated expectations of their parents, who emptied their bank accounts to buy them the good life that a higher education is presumed to guarantee.

"College essentially provided them with nothing," said Zhang Ming, a political scientist and vocal critic of China's education system. "For many young graduates, it's all about survival. If there was ever an economic crisis, they could be a source of instability."

In a kind of cruel reversal, China's old migrant class -- uneducated villagers who flocked to factory towns to make goods for export -- are now in high demand, with spot labor shortages and tighter government oversight driving up blue-collar wages.

But the supply of those trained in accounting, finance and computer programming now seems limitless, and their value has plunged. Between 2003 and 2009, the average starting salary for migrant laborers grew by nearly 80 percent; during the same period, starting pay for college graduates stayed the same, although their wages actually decreased if inflation is taken into account.

Chinese sociologists have come up with a new term for educated young people who move in search of work like Ms. Liu: the ant tribe. It is a reference to their immense numbers -- at least 100,000 in Beijing alone -- and to the fact that they often settle into crowded neighborhoods, toiling for wages that would give even low-paid factory workers pause.

"Like ants, they gather in colonies, sometimes underground in basements, and work long and hard," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Renmin University in Beijing.

The central government, well aware of the risks of inequitable growth, has been trying to channel more development to inland provinces like Shanxi, Ms. Liu's home province, where the dismantling of state-owned industries a decade ago left a string of anemic cities.

Despite government efforts, urban residents earned on average 3.3 times more last year than those living in the countryside. Such disparities -- and the lure of spectacular wealth in coastal cities like Shanghai, Tianjin and Shenzhen -- keep young graduates coming.

"Compared with Beijing, my hometown in Shanxi feels like it's stuck in the 1950s," said Li Xudong, 25, one of Ms. Liu's classmates, whose father is a vegetable peddler. "If I stayed there, my life would be empty and depressing."

While some recent graduates find success, many are worn down by a gauntlet of challenges and disappointments. Living conditions can be Dickensian, and grueling six-day work weeks leave little time for anything else but sleeping, eating and doing the laundry.

But what many new arrivals find more discomfiting are the obstacles that hard work alone cannot overcome. Their undergraduate degrees, many from the growing crop of third-tier provincial schools, earn them little respect in the big city. And as the children of peasants or factory workers, they lack the essential social lubricant known as guanxi, or personal connections, that greases the way for the offspring of China's nouveau riche and the politically connected.

Emerging from the sheltered adolescence of one-child families, they quickly bump up against the bureaucracy of population management, known as the hukou system, which denies migrants the subsidized housing and other health and welfare benefits enjoyed by legally registered residents.

Add to this a demographic tide that has increased the ranks of China's 20-to-25-year-olds to 123 million, about 17 million more than there were just four years ago.

"China has really improved the quality of its work force, but on the other hand competition has never been more serious," said Peng Xizhe, dean of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Given the glut of underemployed graduates, Mr. Peng suggested that young people either shift to more practical vocations like nursing and teaching or recalibrated their expectations. "It's O.K. if they want to try a few years seeking their fortune, but if they stay too long in places like Beijing or Shanghai, they will find trouble for themselves and trouble for society," he said.

A fellow Datong University graduate, Yuan Lei, threw the first wet blanket over the exuberance of Ms. Liu, Mr. Li and three friends not long after their July arrival in Beijing. Mr. Yuan had arrived several months earlier for an internship but was still jobless.

"If you're not the son of an official or you don't come from money, life is going to be bitter," he told them over bowls of 90-cent noodles, their first meal in the capital.

>> Read Complete Report

New York Magazine
December 10, 2010

Photo: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

Liu Xiaobo remained imprisoned in northeastern China today while the Nobel Prize committee awarded him the Peace Prize in Oslo for fighting to bring human rights and democracy to China. But the suppression didn't stop with the jailed dissident himself. His wife, Liu Xia, who has been under house arrest since he received the prize, continues to have her telephone and Internet connection shut down. Activists have been barred from meeting in public. Beijing blocked broadcasts on CNN and BBC and blocked some texts with the words Liu Xiaobo and Nobel Prize from being delivered. This is only the second time a winner or family member has not been able to accept the award. In this case, that meant the $1.4 million cash that comes with it also remained uncollected. The last time a laureate couldn't pick up their prize was in 1936, when Carl von Ossietzky, a German pacifist, was imprisoned during the Nazi regime.

Congratulations, China. Your oppressive instincts just made Liu Xiaobo's win even more historic -- and won you a Nazi comparison in the process. Comparing people to Nazis is a common political tactic, it's just that, usually, you're not trying to invite the comparison on yourself. China's response also managed to justify the committee's choice. In Oslo this morning, chairman Thorbjørn Jagland told the crowd, who all had this creepy feeling this Chinese dude was staring at them, that Liu was not permitted to leave his jail cell. "Nor can his wife or closest relatives be with us ... This fact alone shows that the award was necessary and appropriate." Jagland was probably a little relieved that unlike last year, criticism was directed at an oppressive regime, and not his choice for winner.

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By Radio Free Asia
December 09, 2010

Beijing protests a U.S. resolution in support of a jailed Chinese Nobel prize recipient.

By Bjoern H. Amland and Anita Chang, Associated Press | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
Decembeer 07, 2010

China and 18 other countries have declined to attend this year's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honoring imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, Nobel officials said Tuesday as China unleashed a new barrage deriding the decision.

Chinese officials in Beijing called Liu's backers "clowns" in an anti-Chinese farce -- comments that came only three days before the Dec. 10 Nobel peace prize ceremony in Oslo.

Beijing considers Liu's recognition an attack on China's political and legal system, and says the country's policies will not be swayed by outside forces in what it calls "flagrant interference in China's sovereignty."

Liu, 54, is serving an 11-year sentence on subversion charges brought after he co-authored a bold call for sweeping changes to China's one-party communist political system known as Charter 08.

Countries that have turned down an invitation to Friday's ceremony include Chinese allies Pakistan, Venezuela and Cuba, Chinese neighbors such as Russia, the Philippines and Kazakhstan, and Chinese business partners such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Other countries not appearing at the Oslo City Hall ceremony include Ukraine, Colombia, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Serbia and Morocco.

But at least 44 of the 65 embassies that were invited have accepted the invitation, the prize committee said.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu accused the Nobel committee of "orchestrating an anti-China farce by themselves."

"We are not changing because of interference by a few clowns and we will not change our path," she said.

The tough talk came even as authorities were placing Liu's supporters, including his wife Liu Xia, under house arrest and stopping many others such as lawyers, academics and activists from leaving the country -- apparently to prevent them from traveling to Oslo for the ceremony.

So far, only one of about 140 Chinese activists invited by Liu's wife to attend the ceremony has said he'll be able to make it, according to organizers -- and he was not living in China.

Nobel committee secretary Geir Lundestad said countries gave various reasons for not attending but "some of them are obviously affected by China." He said the committee was pleased that two-thirds of embassies had resisted Chinese pressure and accepted the invitation.

"We are especially happy that important countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa are coming," Lundestad said.

Nobel officials said the peace prize will not be handed out Friday because none of Liu's family members will be able to attend. The prestigious $1.4 million award can be collected only by the laureate or close family members.

China is not the first nation to be rankled by a Nobel Peace Prize -- but its clampdown means the Nobel medal and diploma won't be handed out for the first time since 1936, when Adolf Hitler prevented German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from accepting the prize.

Even Cold War dissidents Russian Andrei Sakharov and Lech Walesa of Poland were able to have their wives collect the prizes for them. Myanmar democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi's award was accepted by her 18-year-old son in 1991.

Jiang's comments on Tuesday were the latest in a series of furious attacks against Liu, the Nobel committee and other supporters. Beijing was enraged by the awarding of the prize to the democracy campaigner and literary critic and has sought to dissuade foreign diplomats from attending the award ceremony.

Jiang maintained there were more than 100 countries and international organizations opposed to awarding the prize to Liu, but refused to provide a list to reporters.

China has also put ties with Norway on ice in retaliation for the prize, with Jiang saying Norway should take "total responsibility." A senior Chinese official has said Beijing believes Washington orchestrated the award, ostensibly to humiliate China.

Lundestad declined comment on the Chinese criticism but described this year's prize as "big and important" -- like previous awards in which laureates were prevented from coming.

"It reflects on the regimes," he said.

An empty chair will symbolize that both Liu and his family have been prevented by the Chinese regime from receiving the prize. "The empty chair will be the strongest argument for this year's prize," Lundestad said.

It is not unusual for some countries to skip the ceremony for various reasons. In 2008, when former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari was awarded the peace prize, 10 embassies did not attend.

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By James Glanz and John Markoff - The New York Times
December 04, 2010

As China ratcheted up the pressure on Google to censor its Internet searches last year, the American Embassy sent a secret cable to Washington detailing one reason top Chinese leaders had become so obsessed with the Internet search company: they were Googling themselves.

The May 18, 2009, cable, titled "Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship," quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China's top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country's senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google's main international Web site. When Mr. Li typed his name into the search engine at  google.com, he found "results critical of him."

That cable from American diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray China's leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power -- and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States.

Extensive hacking operations suspected of originating in China, including one leveled at Google, are a central theme in the cables. The operations began earlier and were aimed at a wider array of American government and military data than generally known, including on the computers of United States diplomats involved in climate change talks with China.

One cable, dated early this year, quoted a Chinese person with family connections to the elite as saying that Mr. Li himself directed an attack on Google's servers in the United States, though that claim has been called into question. In an interview with The New York Times, the person cited in the cable said that Mr. Li personally oversaw a campaign against Google's operations in China but the person did not know who directed the hacking attack.

The cables catalog the heavy pressure that was placed on Google to comply with local censorship laws, as well as Google's willingness to comply -- up to a point. That coercion began building years before the company finally decided to pull its search engine out of China last spring in the wake of the successful hacking attack on its home servers, which yielded Chinese dissidents' e-mail accounts as well as Google's proprietary source code.

The demands on Google went well beyond removing material on subjects like the Dalai Lama or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese officials also put pressure on the United States government to censor the Google Earth satellite imaging service by lowering the resolution of images of Chinese government facilities, warning that Washington could be held responsible if terrorists used that information to attack government or military facilities, the cables show. An American diplomat replied that Google was a private company and that he would report the request to Washington but that he had no sense about how the government would act.

Yet despite the hints of paranoia that appear in some cables, there are also clear signs that Chinese leaders do not consider the Internet an unstoppable force for openness and democracy, as some Americans believe.

In fact, this spring, around the time of the Google pullout, China's State Council Information Office delivered a triumphant report to the leadership on its work to regulate traffic online, according to a crucial Chinese contact cited by the State Department in a cable in early 2010, when contacted directly by The Times.

The message delivered by the office, the person said, was that "in the past, a lot of officials worried that the Web could not be controlled."

"But through the Google incident and other increased controls and surveillance, like real-name registration, they reached a conclusion: the Web is fundamentally controllable," the person said.

That confidence may also reflect what the cables show are repeated and often successful hacking attacks from China on the United States government, private enterprises and Western allies that began by 2002, several years before such intrusions were widely reported in the United States.

At least one previously unreported attack in 2008, code-named Byzantine Candor by American investigators, yielded more than 50 megabytes of e-mails and a complete list of user names and passwords from an American government agency, a Nov. 3, 2008, cable revealed for the first time.

Precisely how these hacking attacks are coordinated is not clear. Many appear to rely on Chinese freelancers and an irregular army of "patriotic hackers" who operate with the support of civilian or military authorities, but not directly under their day-to-day control, the cables and interviews suggest.

But the cables also appear to contain some suppositions by Chinese and Americans passed along by diplomats. For example, the cable dated earlier this year referring to the hacking attack on Google said: "A well-placed contact claims that the Chinese government coordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems. According to our contact, the closely held operations were directed at the Politburo Standing Committee level."

The cable goes on to quote this person as saying that the hacking of Google "had been coordinated out of the State Council Information Office with the oversight" of Mr. Li and another Politburo member, Zhou Yongkang." Mr. Zhou is China's top security official.

But the person cited in the cable gave a divergent account. He detailed a campaign to press Google coordinated by the Propaganda Department's director, Liu Yunshan. Mr. Li and Mr. Zhou issued approvals in several instances, he said, but he had no direct knowledge linking them to the hacking attack aimed at securing commercial secrets or dissidents' e-mail accounts -- considered the purview of security officials.

Still, the cables provide a patchwork of detail about cyberattacks that American officials believe originated in China with either the assistance or knowledge of the Chinese military.

For example, in 2008 Chinese intruders based in Shanghai and linked to the People's Liberation Army used a computer document labeled "salary increase -- survey and forecast" as bait as part of the sophisticated intrusion scheme that yielded more than 50 megabytes of e-mails and a complete list of user names and passwords from a United States government agency that was not identified.

The cables indicate that the American government has been fighting a pitched battle with intruders who have been clearly identified as using Chinese-language keyboards and physically located in China. In most cases the intruders took great pains to conceal their identities, but occasionally they let their guard down. In one case described in the documents, investigators tracked one of the intruders who was surfing the Web in Taiwan "for personal use."

In June 2009 during climate change talks between the United States and China, the secretary of state's office sent a secret cable warning about e-mail "spear phishing" attacks directed at five State Department employees in the Division of Ocean Affairs of the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change.

The messages, which purport to come from a National Journal columnist, had the subject line "China and Climate Change." The e-mail contained a PDF file that was intended to install a malicious software program known as Poison Ivy, which was meant to give an intruder complete control of the victim's computer. That attack failed.

The cables also reveal that a surveillance system dubbed Ghostnet that stole information from the computers used by the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and South Asian governments and was uncovered in 2009 was linked to a second broad series of break-ins into American government computers code-named Byzantine Hades. Government investigators were able to make a "tenuous connection" between those break-ins and the People's Liberation Army.

The documents also reveal that in 2008 German intelligence briefed American officials on similar attacks beginning in 2006 against the German government, including military, economic, science and technology, commercial, diplomatic, and research and development targets. The Germans described the attacks as preceding events like the German government's meetings with the Chinese government.

Even as such attacks were occurring, Google made a corporate decision in 2006, controversial even within the company, to establish a domestic Chinese version of its search engine, called google.cn. In doing so, it agreed to comply with China's censorship laws.

But despite that concession, Chinese officials were never comfortable with Google, the cables and interviews show.

The Chinese claimed that Google Earth, the company's satellite mapping software, offered detailed "images of China's military, nuclear, space, energy and other sensitive government agency installations" that would be an asset to terrorists. A cable sent on Nov. 7, 2006, reported that Liu Jieyi, an assistant minister of foreign affairs, warned the American Embassy in Beijing that there would be "grave consequences" if terrorists exploited the imagery.

A year later, another cable pointed out that Google searches for politically delicate terms would sometimes be automatically redirected to Baidu, the Chinese company that was Google's main competitor in China. Baidu is known for scrubbing its own search engine of results that might be unwelcome to government censors.

Google conducted numerous negotiations with officials in the State Council Information Office and other departments involved in censorship, propaganda and media licensing, the cables show. The May 18, 2009, cable that revealed pressure on the company by Mr. Li, the propaganda chief, said Google had taken some measures "to try and placate the government." The cable also noted that Google had asked the American government to intervene with China on its behalf.

But Chinese officials became alarmed that Google still did less than its Chinese rivals to remove material Chinese officials considered offensive. Such material included information about Chinese dissidents and human rights issues, but also about central and provincial Chinese leaders and their children -- considered an especially taboo topic, interviews with people quoted in the cables reveal.

Mr. Li, after apparently searching for information online on himself and his children, was reported to have stepped up pressure on Google. He also took steps to punish Google commercially, according to the May 18 cable.

The propaganda chief ordered three big state-owned Chinese telecommunications companies to stop doing business with Google. Mr. Li also demanded that Google executives remove any link between its sanitized Chinese Web site and its main international one, which he deemed "an illegal site," the cable said.

Google ultimately stopped complying with repeated censorship requests. It stopped offering a censored version of its search engine in China earlier this year, citing both the hacking attacks and its unwillingness to continue obeying censorship orders.

James Glanz reported from New York, and John Markoff from San Francisco. Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York.

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By Archer Wang | The New York Times
December 01, 2010

I still remember a question on one of the numerous physics tests I took in a middle school in China. "How many people of Chinese descent have been awarded a Nobel Prize?"

I guessed four. The correct answer was six, all science prizes. Not one was still a Chinese citizen when the prize was awarded.

"Our nation's future depends on you," the teacher said. "No Chinese person has received the Nobel Prize while they were still Chinese."

Like most Chinese, I think of the Nobel Prize as very different from other human rights awards, including the Congressional Gold Medal given to the 14th Dalai Lama in 2006. After years of hearing their government demonize the West and human rights, the vast majority of Chinese see these awards as the hostile gestures of foreign forces aimed at interfering in China's internal affairs. Yet, like me, many Chinese regard the Nobel as the highest honor presented to an individual.

That is why the Chinese authorities have made such astounding efforts to conceal from the public news of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo, the first "Chinese" Chinese to receive a Nobel. Mr. Liu is currently serving an 11-year sentence on trumped-up subversion charges.

Since the award, waves of pseudonymous commentaries have appeared in state-controlled newspapers and on popular Chinese Web sites condemning the Norwegian Nobel Committee for desecrating the prestigious prize by honoring a "criminal" and "traitor." "The Nobel Prize is remuneration to criminal Liu Xiaobo for his anti-Chinese articles attacking our government," said a commentary on state-run Web site people.com.cn. "We can all sniff out the malicious incentives and conspiracy behind it."

Yet I have seen a different reaction on many popular Chinese Internet forums and from the exchange of opinions with my compatriots. For many Chinese, the news of the release of another imprisoned democracy advocate and Nobel Prize recipient, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, came as a sign of hope.

There are fundamental differences between the two. Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won 59 percent of the vote in the 1990 general election, but the military nullified the result and placed her under house arrest. Over the past 21 years, 15 of which she has spent under house arrest, her popularity and moral authority has increased.

Because of China's ruthless attack on any challenge to the Communist Party's power, Mr. Liu has faded from the spotlight since the Tiananmen Square protest ended in bloodshed 21 years ago. Like most Chinese dissidents, Mr. Liu is an intellectual, not a politician, and lacks the political charisma of his Burmese counterpart.

However, the Nobel Committee's decision is changing everything, in a good way. It made us proud.

Moments after the decision to award him the Peace Prize was announced, countless Chinese Internet users and newspaper subscribers, ignorant of the pro-democracy movement, were asking, "Who is Liu Xiaobo?" Charter 08, Mr. Liu's pro-democracy manifesto calling for peaceful, comprehensive political reform reached a much wider audience. In some major cities, Chinese people gathered to celebrate the news before the police detained them.

The crackdown continues. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, is under house arrest. She has issued an online invitation to the awards ceremony in Oslo to 143 Chinese activists, academics and celebrities, but they have been denied permission to travel. The year 2010 may mark the second time in the prize's history that neither the recipient nor any of his representatives are present; the last time was in 1936, when Nazi Germany barred the imprisoned pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from collecting the prize.

China's booming economy benefited from the West's decision not to impose sanctions after the Tiananmen crackdown. The result was the rise of an increasingly assertive China, belligerent internationally and oppressive domestically. Yet liberalizing influences have already been planted in people's minds. We would love to see the highest honor bestowed on our countryman. The prospect that the ceremony might be postponed upsets us.

The release of Aung San Suu Kyi proves that even a repressive and isolated regime like Burma cares about its international image. So does the Chinese government.

If Mr. Liu, his family and Chinese colleagues cannot make it to Oslo, countries that enjoy human rights should represent them at the ceremony. Every time foreign leaders meet with the Chinese, they should raise the issue of Mr. Liu's imprisonment. Tiptoeing around it -- like the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, did recently at a meeting with President Hu Jintao -- will only make things worse. More countries should join the 36 nations that are sending ambassadors to the prize ceremony.

Go to Oslo! Make us prouder.

Archer Wang is a student at Duke University from China, majoring in political science and English.

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