April 2011 Archives

By David Pierson | Los Angeles Times
April 28, 2011

Three years after China was rocked by a massive tainted-milk scandal, the country has again been hit by a wave of food scares in recent weeks.

The list includes diseased pigs used for bacon; noodles made of corn, ink and paraffin; rice contaminated with heavy metals, sausages made of rotten meat and fertilizer; and pork described as "Tron blue" because it glowed in the dark from bacteria.

That so many new scandals have emerged even after the central government implemented a sweeping food-safety law in 2009 speaks to the depth of the regulation's ineffectiveness, experts say.

An article Tuesday in the state-owned Global Times said food inspectors could be bribed to ignore diseased pork entering the food chain.

Li Duo, a food-safety and nutrition specialist at Zhejiang University, told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post that enforcement was too limp wristed.

"Officials have always been announcing plans to clamp down on illegal food production activities," Li told the newspaper. "But why have they failed to control it, and why are the scandals appearing so frequently? The main reason is that the punishment is too light for businessmen who break the law and officials guilty of dereliction of duty."

Although China's top leaders have responded with boilerplate promises to crackdown on the abuses, experts say they should consider the effect that inflation is having on food producers.

China's consumer price index hit a 32-month high last month, placing immense pressure on farmers and food makers to pay for costlier raw materials and distribution. Government price controls often mean those increased costs can't be passed on to consumers.

Under these worsening conditions, more may consider cutting corners to recoup costs and stay in business.

"Inflation probably increases the possibility street vendors or farmers sell tainted food or add illegal substances to make more profit or reduce costs," said Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology. "It would make it easier for them."

Yang Guoying, a former general manager of pork-processing companies featured in the Global Times story on diseased swine, likened China's crisis to the one exposed by Upton Sinclair in his 1906 muckraking novel "The Jungle," which led to an overhaul of the American meatpacking industry.

"I don't think this has anything to do with moral bankruptcy," Yang said in an interview. "The U.S. went through this 100 years ago. Taiwan went through it a few decades ago. This is about the market we're living in. It's about people trying to make money and trying to survive."

>> Original Source

By The Telegraph (Australia)
April 26, 2011

A REPORT by an American business group says Chinese protectionism has increased since the 2008 global economic crisis and US companies are being hurt by Beijing's policies aimed at developing its own technology industries.

The American Chamber of Commerce in China said in a report Tuesday that 26 per cent of its member companies responding to a survey said they already are being hurt by Chinese policies aimed at favoring domestic technology suppliers.

It said more companies said they expect to be hurt by those policies in the future.

Beijing has alarmed foreign companies by pushing them to hand over technology as a condition of winning contracts and licenses.

>> Original Source

By CNN World News | Stan Grant (trying to) report from Beijing
April 24, 2011

The site of a planned outdoor Easter service at one of China's largest independent "house" churches was eerily silent Sunday as police blocked more than 500 worshippers from leaving their homes and detained more than 36 for attempting to attend religious services in Beijing, church officials said.

The gathering place for worshippers was empty as church-like bells sounded in northwest Beijing. Hundreds of uniformed and plain-clothed police officers swarmed the site of Shouwang Church and prevented CNN journalists from accessing the area.

Authorities confiscated credentials from CNN crew members and detained them for half an hour.

Worshippers spent several months preparing for the Easter service, according to members who spoke with CNN. Police on the scene told CNN they were stationed there for "security reasons."

Shouwang Church's senior pastor Jin Tianming is currently under house arrest by the authorities.

"More police have come to stand watch in front of my door in anticipation of Easter," Jin told CNN in a phone interview. "I've spoken to several of my fellow worshippers who attempted to attend our planned service this morning," but some were detained, Jin said.

"But we will not change our plans. We will not change our decision to worship as this is a matter of faith," Jin said.

A few worshippers were seen praying with bowed heads near Shouwang's proposed site for the service, but the site itself was sealed off by law enforcement. Vigilant plainclothes officers filmed passersby.

Shouwang means "to keep watch" in Mandarin.

Usually hundreds of worshippers gather at this illegal "house" -- or unofficial -- church, which is one of the largest Christian gathering places in the country. Shouwang Church is an unregistered Christian group that was forced outdoors after authorities blocked the rental of its previous office space in November, the church said. It has not been able to obtain a new location since.

"This is the worst time in terms of religious freedom across the board in two decades," said Bob Fu, a former independent church pastor and founder of the non-governmental organization China Aid. Fu has been speaking with Shouwang worshippers unable to attend the service.

"[Worshippers] are not a threat to stability, not a threat to society, and not a threat to China's harmonious society," Fu said. "By cracking down on these hundreds of thousands of worshippers, it will only create the opposite effect. To the churches, I would encourage them to stand firm."

Over the past month, more than 200 Shouwang churchgoers have been arrested and detained, according to the church. The leaders of the church remain under house arrest amid a wider government crackdown on dissidents throughout China over the past three months. Calls to local police regarding their exact violations went unreturned.

Shouwang Church representatives had vowed to defy Communist government mandates to cancel outdoor public services on Easter Sunday. According to a notice from the Governing Committee of Shouwang Church on Saturday evening, the outdoor worship service location would remain the same despite pressure from authorities.

On Shouwang's Google Buzz page, Jin warned that police would likely detain those gathering at a set meeting site but that it was important that members stood up for their faith.

"Each believer may act in accordance to his or her own faith, whether to be taken away quietly (by police) or to meet in a nearby location," the statement read.

The number of practicing Christians in China is disputed. Recent official data states there are approximately 15 million Protestants and five million Catholics worshipping at official churches in China, but unofficial estimates are as high as 130 million.

Authorities have cracked down hard on dissidents, activists and rights lawyers since anonymous Internet calls emerged in February for regular "Jasmine" protests. Prominent artist Ai Weiwei has been detained for approximately three weeks by police.

Sunday's worship ban came just days before an annual human rights dialogue between U.S. and Chinese diplomats scheduled for later this week in Beijing.

>>  Original Report

By Radio FREE Asia
April 22, 2011

A Chinese social critic detained by his government draws widespread support from abroad

Detained Chinese artist and social critic Ai Weiwei has been named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, amid growing calls for his release.

"Ai Weiwei is the kind of visionary any nation should be proud to count among its creative class," read the magazine's introduction to Ai, written by outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Beijing Jon Huntsman.

"Ai, 53, has shown compassion for his fellow citizens and spoken out for victims of government abuses, calling for political reforms to better serve the people," Huntsman wrote.

"It is very sad that the Chinese government has seen a need to silence one of its most innovative and illustrious citizens."

Whereabouts unknown

Ai's sister Gao Ge said the family, who has had no official information about his whereabouts since his detention 20 days ago, was proud of the honor.

"The sad thing is that you shouldn't be hearing this from his sister, but from the man himself," Gao said.

She said that for "very particular reasons," there has been no news of her brother.

Gao said Ai is now paying the price for his previous choices.

"There was no way he was going to ignore the plight of the least privileged, no way he would refuse to speak up for them," she said.

"It is very said that Ai Weiwei can no longer speak out because of the current situation of China's government."

Support from abroad

Ai's detention has drawn criticism from the United States, Australia, Britain, France, and Germany, as well as Amnesty International and other international rights groups.

But Beijing has brushed off international criticism, saying only that Ai is under investigation for "economic crimes" and publishing articles critical of his "maverick" attitude in official media.

The social action website Change.org hosted a petition calling for the release of detained artist Ai Weiwei that garnered more than 90,000 signatures, but later came under attack from hackers traced to IP addresses in China.

Others on Time's 100 list of influential people included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British actor Colin Firth, and Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reported by He Ping for RFA's Mandarin service and by Grace Kei Lai-see for the Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

>> Original Source

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
April 17, 2011

It has all the trappings one would expect from the capital's most well-heeled and prestigious Christian congregation: a Sunday school for children, nature hikes for singles and clothing drives for the needy. Last year, the church, called Shouwang, or Lighthouse, collected $4 million from its 1,000 members to buy its own house of worship.

But Shouwang, according to China's officially atheist Communist Party leadership, is technically illegal. It is a so-called house church, which in recent years had come to symbolize the government's wary tolerance for big-city congregations outside the constellation of state-controlled churches. The church has been a release valve for an educated elite seeking a nonpolitical refuge for its faith.

That is, until now.

Evicted yet again from its meeting place by the authorities, Shouwang announced this month that its congregants would worship outside rather than disband or go back underground. Its demands were straightforward but bold: allow the church to take possession of the space it had legally purchased. Officials responded with a clenched fist.

On Sunday, for the second week in a row, the police rounded up scores of parishioners who tried to pray outdoors at a public plaza. Most of the church's leadership is now in custody or under house arrest. Its Web site has been blocked.

"We are not antigovernment, but we cannot give up our church family and our faith," Wei Na, 30, the church choir director, said last week just before more than 160 congregants were corralled onto buses and detained. "Satan is using the government to destroy us, and we can't let that happen."

The move against Shouwang, as well as other house churches, coincides with the most expansive assault on dissent in China in years, one that has led to the arrests of high-profile critics like the artist Ai Weiwei, but also legions of little-known bloggers, rights lawyers and democracy advocates who have disappeared into the country's opaque legal system. The crackdown, now in its second month, was prompted by government fears that the Arab revolts against autocracy could spread to China and undermine the Communist Party's six-decade hold on power.

Although many congregations continue to hold services unhindered, in recent weeks the pastors of two large unofficial churches in the southern city of Guangzhou have been detained and their congregations rendered homeless. In Shanxi Province, a house church organizer said the police attacked him with electric batons, and religious leaders in places like Xinjiang in the far west and Inner Mongolia in the north have reported increased harassment, according to China Aid, a Texas-based Christian advocacy group. Last year, the organization reported 3,343 instances in which house church members or leaders were detained or beaten, a 15 percent increase over 2009. Bob Fu, the group's president, said such incidents were part of the latest government campaign to try to force house church members into state-run congregations.

"I'm not optimistic a peaceful solution will be found to this crisis," he said. "The government's moves are forcing nonpolitical churches to commit acts of civil disobedience, which the government is not likely to tolerate."

Global Times, a state-owned newspaper that broke new ground last year by writing positively about house churches, gave voice to the most recent shift in official attitude with an editorial last week that condemned Shouwang as trying to "twist Chinese society by politicizing religion" and suggested that overseas Christian groups were using the church to subvert the government.

"All Christians, as well as those of other faiths, are Chinese citizens first and foremost. It is their obligation to observe discipline and abide by the law," it wrote.

Although house church leaders are careful to say that they have no interest in politics, their insistence on independence from state supervision and their real or imagined associations with foreign churches have stoked deep-seated fears among China's authoritarian leaders, who have been suspicious of Christianity since 1949, when the Communists took power, branded missionaries as agents of imperialism and threw them out of the country.

"The bottom line is that house church members believe in Jesus, not the party's version of Jesus," said Zhang Minxuan, a pastor and president of the Chinese House Church Alliance, who says he has been detained 41 times.

>> Complete Report Here

By Austin Ramzy | TIME magazine | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
April 15, 2011

When people write on Chinese websites that they "love the future," it should be a sentiment the government can get behind. After all, the authorities in Beijing have pressed their subjects to embrace the country's bright economic prospects. But of late, "love the future" has taken on a new meaning. Online, people have begun to use the phrase, which is ai wei lai in Mandarin, as a code for the artist and political activist Ai Weiwei, whose name became too sensitive to post or search for on many Chinese websites after his detention by police on April 3.

Ai is the country's best-known modern artist, with a current exhibition of 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds at London's Tate Modern museum. His collection of bronze animal heads - replicas of those looted from Beijing's Summer Palace by French and British troops in 1860 - is set to go on display outside New York City's Central Park next month. A son of Ai Qing, a beloved revolutionary poet whose words Premier Wen Jiabao can quote from memory, Ai Weiwei is a burly online oversharer with 78,000 followers on Twitter. And he has emerged as one of the most prominent critics of China's ruling Communist Party, drawing public focus to some of China's most tragic events. (See the top 10 political prisoners.)

After the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, Ai began to ask how many children were killed in collapsed schools, eventually organizing volunteers who canvassed mountain towns and tallied nearly 6,000 dead children. Chastened, the government finally released its own total of student deaths. Ai also produced a documentary film about a man who killed six Shanghai police officers, apparently in revenge for abuse the man had suffered while in custody. More recently, Ai began to look into the case of Qian Yunhui, a village chief in Zhejiang province who some people in China suspect was murdered at the behest of corrupt officials. Now, after years of raising sensitive questions and tweeting his nearly every move and thought, Ai has gone uncharacteristically quiet. He has been held incommunicado at an undisclosed location as Beijing police investigate him for suspected economic crimes. His silence raises a sensitive question: How much - if any - dissent is the Chinese government willing to tolerate?

A Subtle Rebellion
Ai was born in Beijing in 1957 during the first wave of Mao's antirightist campaign, when hundreds of thousands of intellectuals were persecuted for their suspected opposition to radical economic reforms. His family was exiled to the western region of Xinjiang, where his father was forced to clean toilets. The family returned to Beijing in 1976, and a few years later Ai moved to New York City, where he began to paint, take photographs and produce subtly rebellious works, like a violin with a shovel handle. He went on a hunger strike after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown but remained outside China until his father's poor health drew him back in 1993. "This is your country," his father told him as he was dying. "Don't be polite." (See pictures of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.)

Ai hardly needed encouragement. One of his most famous works from that period was a photo series titled "Study of Perspective," which showed him flipping off cultural and political monuments like the White House and Tiananmen Square. Another series showed him dropping a Han dynasty urn to symbolize the widespread destruction of history in China. He oversaw the construction of maps of China made from the wood of old temples, sculptures built from bicycles and massive chandeliers that mocked the ostentation of Communist officialdom. The unifying theme was "asking questions through objects," says Philip Tinari, a Beijing-based expert in modern Chinese art. And then Ai decided to ask more and more of the questions himself.

Detained Artist Ai Weiwei Under Investigation for "Economic Crimes."

Watch TIME's video "TimeFrames: An Eye on China, Old and New."

At first his prominence seemed to offer him a measure of protection that other activists didn't enjoy. Ai wasn't punished for publicly denouncing the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a propaganda display. But that illusion of safety disappeared in 2009, when he was assaulted by police officers in Chengdu while attempting to attend the trial of Tan Zuoren, an activist who helped tally the students who died in the earthquake. Ai later underwent cranial surgery in Munich to treat internal bleeding. The assault did little to thwart his willingness to vent criticisms. "Everybody has worries, but being scared will not help the situation," he told TIME last year. "More people need to speak out and participate so social change can be possible."

Now Ai's unrelenting activism has run up against a broad crackdown on dissent in China. After the popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, an anonymous declaration on an overseas Chinese-language website pledged to follow them with protests in China. That would have been enough to trigger a crackdown, but there are other factors in play. The country's top leadership is due to change next year, and officials don't want to be seen as too lenient. Activists and lawyers are considered particularly at risk, says Eva Pils, an associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "There is a perception that these people are threatening," Pils says. "Over the past one or two years, the political faction within the leadership that wants to deal with [them] in a very repressive way has won out." (See China stamp out democracy protests.)

China has seen plenty of politically tense periods in recent years, such as the 20th anniversary in 2009 of the Tiananmen massacre or the months after jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. But the current crackdown is particularly worrisome, says Renee Xia, international director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, because its targets include people who avoided calls for outright political change and were generally more tolerated in the past. "They're not outright political activists," Xia says. "The detained and disappeared are artists, civil-society activists and citizens who are drawing attention to social and economic issues." Since mid-February, security services across the country have put at least 200 activists under some sort of detention or house arrest and formally arrested 26 people, while 30 others, including seven lawyers, have disappeared into police custody, according to Xia.

Ai was one of the last to be grabbed. He was stopped with an assistant while attempting to board a flight to Hong Kong, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed four days later that he is suspected of unspecified "economic crimes" (which often means tax evasion). Little else has been made public. "It's hard for us to tell what's happening," says Jennifer Ng, the assistant who was with Ai when he was detained. Ng was allowed to fly to Hong Kong. Ai's mother Gao Ying says the family has received no notice of his detention. "How could a mother not be worried?" she says. "We want to go to the authorities, but we don't even know where he is." (See "Human Rights Lawyers on Defense in China.")

It's possible that the authorities are still deciding their next steps. "They may not actually know how they'll proceed with Ai's case," says Joshua Rosenzweig, a Hong Kong - based senior manager for the Dui Hua Foundation, a human-rights group. "One thing is certain: saying he's suspected of economic crimes is intended to defuse critics who'll want to frame this as a politically motivated prosecution." Investigators have sought to interview all of Ai's studio staff, and one associate, Wen Tao, also remains in custody.

Ai's detention has put a global spotlight on the current bout of repression. The U.S., the E.U., Australia, Britain, France and Germany have all raised his case, and outgoing U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman specifically cited him in a farewell speech in Shanghai. "As a result of this, people realize that China can make people suddenly disappear," says Alison Klayman, a journalist and filmmaker who is producing a documentary about the artist titled Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. "That is what he has talked about, and now people will get it."

It's an irony that Ai would appreciate: his criticisms of the Chinese state can be heard loudest now that he can't be heard at all.

>> Original Source

By Andrew Jacobs and Sharon LaFraniere | The New York Times
April 11, 2011

The police detained more than 100 members of an underground Protestant church on Sunday after the congregation tried to pray in a public plaza in the north of the capital.

The raid on the church, which sought to pray outside after it was evicted from its building under government pressure, was part of a broad crackdown on dissent over the last seven weeks. The campaign has led to the jailing of scores of rights lawyers, writers and activists, as well as the repression of unauthorized worship.

The authorities have also clamped down on less obvious threats, canceling events as diverse as a St. Patrick's Day parade and a collegiate debate tournament this weekend.

The Protestant church, Shouwang, was evicted last week from the space it was renting after the government pressured the landlord not to renew the lease. The congregation, whose 1,000 members make it one of the largest unregistered churches in China, has been seeking legal recognition since 2006.

According to church members, the pastor, the Rev. Jin Tianming, church leaders and scores of other parishioners were blocked by the police from leaving their homes on Sunday. Others were seized as they emerged from the subway station at Zhongguangcun Plaza, where the services were to be held.

By 8 a.m., hundreds of police officers, both uniformed and in plain clothes, swarmed the area. They questioned passers-by and corralled church members onto buses.

At one point, a group of plainclothes police officers kicked and beat a group of four young people. As one of the buses pulled away, the congregants pulled out a prayer sheet and began to sing.

Church leaders said 169 people were detained throughout the day, with most taken to a nearby elementary school, where they were briefly questioned and photographed; most were released later in the day, although church leaders said that at least three people, including a pastor, were still being held as of Monday morning. A man who answered the phone at the Haidian police station, several blocks from the site of the planned prayer service, refused to answer questions about the detentions.

After years of tolerance by religious authorities, unregistered churches have faced pressure to either disband or join the system of state-controlled congregations. The government first forced Shouwang out of its rented quarters in 2008. In 2009, the church paid $4.1 million for a floor in an office building but the owner, under pressure from the authorities, has refused to hand over the keys. Until last week, the church had been meeting in a restaurant.

The church made no secret of its plans to gather outdoors, announcing the service on the Internet. During his final sermon last week, Mr. Jin warned his congregants they would likely meet resistance. "At this time, the challenges we face are massive," he said. "For everything that we have faced, we offer our thanks to God. Compared with what you faced on the cross, what we face now is truly insignificant."

The canceled debate tournament was to have drawn students from 16 universities to the Beijing Institute of Technology, where they were to have wrangled over the topic of China's 1911 revolution. The revolution against the Qing Dynasty, which helped cement Sun Yatsen's reputation as the founding father of modern China, may not seem controversial at first blush.

But authorities might have been concerned about the organizers' statement on the tournament's Web site, urging students to recognize not only "the inspirational revolutionary victory, but what is hidden deeper beneath: the awakening of the awareness of this country's people and the dissemination of a system of democracy."

The Web site also encouraged students to "think deeper about nationalism, democracy and livelihood, to continue to blaze new trails in a pioneering spirit, to keep fighting for the renovation and development of the nation."

Zhang Ming, a judge for the competition and a political science professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said the municipal Communist Youth League committee ordered organizers to cancel the event on Friday evening, a day before the opening debate.

"Everyone was pretty disappointed," Mr. Zhang said in a telephone interview on Sunday. "This is really hateful for them to do. The organizers said they tried to negotiate with the committee, but they couldn't change the decision."

>> Original Source Here

By Edward Wong | The New York Times
April 07, 2011

The investigation of the celebrity artist and social critic Ai Weiwei on suspicion of "economic crimes" is in keeping with "the rule of law" in China, a Chinese official said Thursday, defending Mr. Ai's detention in the face of growing condemnation by foreign nations and liberal Chinese of the detention.

The catchall term "economic crimes" is frequently used as a legal cover by police officers who wish to detain or imprison someone whom Communist Party officials consider a political threat. Such crimes can include prosaic failures to properly comply with regulations on business registration or taxation.

As often happens in China when political troublemakers are involved, the exact crime Mr. Ai is being investigated for may be announced only at a later date, after the police have more time to look into his affairs and decide what crime to accuse him of committing.

"To my understanding, Ai Weiwei is suspected of economic crimes, and the Public Security Bureau is conducting an investigation according to law," Hong Lei, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a regular news conference in Beijing. "China is a country under the rule of law, and relevant authorities will work according to law."

Mr. Hong did not give further details, and he did not say why the authorities had yet to notify Mr. Ai's family members of the detention. His remarks followed a cryptic one-line report that was posted on the Internet by Xinhua, the state news agency, around midnight that said the same thing. The report was deleted hours later from the Chinese and English Web sites of Xinhua, deepening the mystery around Mr. Ai's detention.

The government has convicted citizens of financial fraud before when trying to silence them.

Mr. Ai's mother, Gao Ying, 78, denounced the government line in a telephone interview, saying: "Economic crimes! They say one thing now and another later. It's ridiculous."

"They must tell the family why and where they are holding my son," she added. "They have no right to keep us guessing. Where is the Constitution? Where is the law?"

Mr. Ai's case is the most prominent one to pit the Communist Party against liberal Chinese and Western nations since that of Liu Xiaobo, the dissident writer who was sentenced to 11 years in prison here and awarded a Nobel Peace Prize last year. In response to calls by Western governments for China to release Mr. Ai immediately, Mr. Hong said Thursday, "Other countries have no right to interfere."

Mr. Ai, 53, was detained at the Beijing airport on Sunday by border officers when he tried to board a flight to Hong Kong. The most well-known Chinese artist outside the country, he is a co-designer of the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium and has shown his work at the Tate Modern in London. He is also a harsh critic of the Chinese Communist Party. He had been presumed by many people to be somewhat shielded from retribution by the central security apparatus because of family connections. The order to detain him was almost certainly approved by someone at the top level of the government.

The detention of Mr. Ai comes during the biggest crackdown on progressive thought in many years, outside of the recent brutal suppression of ethnic dissent in western China. Scores of people have been detained or put under house arrest across China ever since Internet messages were posted in late February calling for protests across the country. No protests ever emerged, but the crackdown has angered and frustrated liberal Chinese.

Mr. Ai's assistants were also detained and questioned in the last few days, and the police raided his home, taking away computers and money. One close associate, Wen Tao, a former reporter for Global Times, remains missing. Mr. Wen has been working on a documentary about the case of Qian Yunhui, a villager crushed by a truck last December; many Chinese on the Internet say they believe that Mr. Qian was killed by corrupt officials.

Mr. Ai's detention has galvanized Chinese to denounce his captivity on microblogs and Web sites, and to circulate petitions demanding his release. One such person is Zhao Lianhai, who led a campaign for compensation in the wake of a tainted-milk scandal in 2008. Mr. Zhao was sentenced to two and a half years in prison last November for inciting social disorder, but he was released on parole shortly afterward.

>> Original Report Here

By Radio FREE Asia
April 04, 2011

Netizens launch blitz for the 'fat guy.'

Image Copyright: Agence France Presse

Ai holds a piece of debris after authorities demolished his newly built Shanghai studio, January 11, 2011.

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Chinese netizens braved official censorship to launch a campaign on Monday in support of detained prominent artist and social activist Ai Weiwei amid international calls for his release.

In spite of direct censorship of Ai's name on the popular microblogging platform Sina Weibo, netizens managed to launch an "event" titled "Looking for a fat guy called Ai," garnering dozens of followers within a short space of time.

"Sometimes, life throws mysterious and unexpected things our way. For example, you wouldn't expect someone suddenly just to disappear," the event description read a day after Ai was detained at a Beijing airport while trying to catch a flight to Hong Kong.

"Would you just relax and go with the flow, or would you go looking for him? I firmly believe that you will understand the meaning of this event," it said.

Ai, 57, is a top artist who helped design Beijing's Bird's Nest Stadium for the 2008 Olympics, and is currently exhibiting his "Sunflower Seeds" installation at London's Tate Modern gallery.

An inveterate Twitter user himself, Ai has taken part in a number of campaigns to protect the most vulnerable in Chinese society, including an online memorial installation which recorded the names of thousands of children killed in the collapse of school buildings during the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

On Twitter, which is blocked by China's Great Firewall, hundreds of users still managed to sign up to a petition calling for Ai's release.

"Venerable Ai, the Venerable Ai is calling you home for dinner!," wrote user luanshifusheng on Sina Weibo, echoing recent campaigns to release detained activists across China.

"I asked my conscience, and I had to take part in this event," wrote user Yidaoyongchezhouhang on the Sina event listing.

"Often Climbs the Wall" wrote: "Fatty Ai, did you know that thousands of grass-mud horses [netizens against censorship] are worrying about you and looking for you?"

"Fatty" is considered a term of endearment in China.

"The best gift for us would be if Ai could return home," tweeted @yangguangsaner2011.

House search

Ai's wife said police had searched the couple's Beijing home cum studio after his disappearance on Sunday.

His assistant said in an interview on Sunday Ai was stopped by airport officials as he tried to board the Hong Kong flight with a group of employees.

He is believed to be most high profile activist detained so far in an ongoing government crackdown on dozens of bloggers, human rights lawyers and writers.

The crackdown on government critics was launched since anonymous calls for a "Jasmine Revolution" in China partly inspired by pro-democracy movements in the Middle East began circulating online in mid-February.

"After they were done searching, they confiscated some things and made me sign for them, and they took me down to the police station to make a statement," Ai's wife Lu Qing said on Monday.

"I asked them where he was, but they all said they didn't know."

Lu said the police had taken Ai's computer and some papers.

"Computer, DVDs, hard drive and papers. There was no way to carry on working after they took everything," she said.

Beijing-based rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, who was himself detained at the weekend, said it was still unclear whether Ai would be formally charged.

"Normally, they detain you for 12 hours for a summons," Liu said. "I don't know right now what legal process they have set in motion."

He said that detentions lasting more than 48 hours should result in criminal charges, but that the recent crackdown had seen a number of 'disappearances' with no charges brought against detainees.

"There are some people who have been held for more than 40 days without being formally detained," Liu said. "It's very hard to tell right now if they are subjecting him to some kind of house arrest."

Condemnation

Ai's detention made headline news around the world, sparking condemnation from the French and German governments.

"I appeal to the Chinese government to urgently provide clarification and I expect Ai Weiwei to be released immediately," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement on Monday.

France also called for Ai's release. "We are very concerned about the fate of the militant artist Ai Weiwei and we are following his situation and that of his family very closely," foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

"We hope he will be released as soon as possible," he told reporters.

Meanwhile, the Tate Gallery said in a statement: "We are dismayed by developments that again threaten [Ai]'s right to speak freely as an artist, and hope that he will be released immediately."

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it was concerned about Ai's fate.

"The Chinese government is stepping up its harassment of the remaining prominent dissidents and is trying to silence all of its critics," the group said in a statement on its website.

"We urge the international community to react firmly to the arrests of bloggers and cyber-dissidents that are taking place at an unprecedented rate," it said.

One of Ai's assistants told RSF that Ai was arrested at the airport as he was going through immigration, the group said.

The authorities separated him from the people accompanying him and turned off his mobile phone, it added.

Moving base to Germany

Police had visited Ai's studio in Beijing's Caochangdi district several times last week, prompting Ai to say he planned to move his work base to Germany.

"It's very discouraging what's happening here and if I want to continue to develop my work, I have to find a base," he told Agence France-Presse.

Eight of Ai's employees were held for questioning on Monday and later released, RSF said.

"When a Guardian reporter used a mobile phone to photograph the outside of Ai's studio, plainclothes police seized the phone and deleted the photo," RSF said. "They also told him to leave."

It said all mention of Ai's arrest has been deleted from Chinese news sites.

According to RSF, 77 cyber-dissidents and 30 journalists are currently being detained in China, which ranked 171st out of 178 countries in its 2010 press freedom index.

Reported in Mandarin by Xin Yu for RFA's Mandarin service, and by Grace Kei Lai-see for the Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

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