July 2011 Archives

By Michael Wines and Sharon LaFraniere | The New York Times

July 28, 2011

"After all the wind and storm, what's going on with the hig-speed train?" read the prophetic message posted last Saturday evening on the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo. "It's crawling slower than a snail. I hope nothing happens to it."

They were a few short sentences, typed by a young girl with the online handle Smm Miao. But five days later, the torrent that followed them was still flooding this nation's Internet, and lapping at the feet of government bureaucrats, censors and the state-controlled press.

The train the girl saw, on a track outside Wenzhou in coastal Zhejiang Province, was rammed from behind minutes later, killing 40 people and injuring 191. Since then, China's two major Twitter-like microblogs -- called weibos here -- have posted an astounding 26 million messages on the tragedy, including some that have forced embarrassed officials to reverse themselves. The messages are a potent amalgam of contempt for railway authorities, suspicion of government explanations and shoe-leather journalism by citizens and professionals alike.

The swift and comprehensive blogs on the train accident stood this week in stark contrast to the stonewalling of the Railways Ministry, already stained by a bribery scandal. And they are a humbling example for the Communist Party news outlets and state television, whose blinkered coverage of rescued babies only belatedly gave way to careful reports on the public's discontent.

While the blogs have exposed wrongdoers and broken news before, this week's performance may signal the arrival of weibos as a social force to be reckoned with, even in the face of government efforts to rein in the Internet's influence.

The government censors assigned to monitor public opinion have let most, though hardly all of the weibo posts stream onto the Web unimpeded. But many experts say they are riding a tiger. For the very nature of weibo posts, which spread faster than censors can react, makes weibos beyond easy control. And their mushrooming popularity makes controlling them a delicate matter.

Saturday's train disaster is a telling example -- an event that resonated with China's growing middle class, computer-savvy, able to afford travel by high-speed rail, already deeply skeptical of official propaganda.

As state television devoted Saturday evening to reports of mass murder in Norway, Sina Weibo weighed in four minutes after the train accident with a post from the crash scene, by a passenger reporting a power blackout and "two strong collisions." Nine minutes later, another passenger posted a call for help, reposted 100,000 times: "Children are crying all over the train car! Not a single attendant here!" Two hours later, a call for blood quickly clogged local hospitals with donors.

Then the reaction began to pour in. "Such a major accident, how could it be attributed to weather and technical reasons?" blogged Cai Qi, a senior Zhejiang Province official. "Who should take the responsibility? The railway department should think hard in this time of pain and learn a good lesson from this."

From a Hubei Province blogger: "I just watched the news on the train crash in Wenzhou, but I feel like I still don't even know what happened. Nothing is reliable anymore. I feel like I can't even believe the weather forecast. Is there anything that we can still trust?"

There is no clearer sign of the rising influence of microblogs than their impact on government itself.

Last weekend, Wenzhou bureaucrats ordered local lawyers not to accept cases from families of victims without their permission. After weibos exposed them, they withdrew the order and apologized.

Railway workers had quickly buried the first car of the oncoming train at the site of the accident. On Monday, after an online outcry charging a cover-up, they unearthed it and took it to Wenzhou for analysis. China Daily, the state-controlled English-language newspaper, noted that they had met the request of "many netizens."

"I call it the microblogging revolution," Zhan Jiang, a professor of international journalism and communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said in an interview on Thursday. "In the last year, microbloggers, especially Sina and Tencent, have played more and more a major role in coverage, especially breaking news."

The few newspapers and magazines here that consistently push back at censors with investigative journalism are not just printing the results of their digging into the train wreck, but posting them on weibos for millions to see. So were hundreds of more traditional state-controlled news outlets.

Even the Communist Party organ People's Daily maintains a weibo. But the field is dominated by two players. Sina Holdings Ltd.'s Sina Weibo (pronounced SEE-nah WAY-bo) counts 140 million users, generally better-educated and more interested in current events than those at competitors. Tencent Inc.'s weibo hosts 200 million generally younger users who are more interested in socializing.

In some ways, the Chinese weibos replicate their Western counterparts: they limit posts to 140 characters (though in Chinese, where many characters are words by themselves, much more can be said). Posts can be re-tweeted, too, although in China, tweeting is called knitting, because the word "weibo" sounds like the word for scarf.

There are also differences. Bloggers can comment on others' posts, turning a message into a conversation. Users also can include photographs and other files with their posts, to telling effect: on Thursday, fact-checking bloggers posted photos of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's recent official activities to counter his assertion at a Wenzhou news conference that illness had kept him from visiting the disaster site earlier.

While Western social networks like Twitter and Facebook are blocked here, their Chinese counterparts thrive, largely because their owners consent to government monitoring and censorship -- and perhaps because the government fears the reaction should it shut them down. The outpouring over the rail tragedy appears to have enjoyed at least some official approval; many analysts believe the government sees microblogs as a virtual steam valve through which citizens can safely vent complaints.

If needed, the weibos have literally dozens of electronic levers they can press to dilute, hide or delete offending posts, according to one Tencent Web editor who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of dismissal in disclosing that information. Yet the weibos also play cat and mouse with the censors.

"If we did not have any free speech then this company would not have any influence, so the company must act proactively to safeguard our space," he said. "So that's why they must go through this process of bargaining with the government departments."

And even dedicated censors find the weibos hard to restrain. Government minders can electronically delete posts with offending keywords like "human rights" and "protest." But like Twitter, the ability to instantly forward posts to dozens of fellow users means that messages can spread, well before censorship orders can be implemented.

And there are always screenshots to preserve posts that are deleted, such as this one by Ge You, one of China's most distinguished actors:

"If a higher-level leader died," he wrote, "there would be countless wreaths; however, when many ordinary people died, there was only endless harmony" -- a euphemism for censorship. "If a higher-level leader died, there would be nationwide mourning; however, when many ordinary people died, there was not a single word of apology. If a higher-level leader died, there would be high-end funerals; however, when many ordinary people died, there were only cold numbers."

By Saira Syed | BBC World News

July 28, 2011

As China mourns lives lost in last week's high-speed rail crash near Wenzhou, there is also a tone of anger in the air.

"The people don't need this world number one or that world title. All we want is safety!," commented one reader of a news story posted on the popular Sina portal.

But the crash's other casualty is likely to be China's ambitions for its railway technology, which it has been developing rapidly and had high hopes of making an export success.

Before the crash, all talk had been of the government's drive to break records. The high-speed rail network was to be the largest in the world, as well as being completed in record time.

Those accolades are no longer being thrown around, as some blame that urgency and ambition for the death of at least 39 people.

The first of China's bullet-train lines opened in 2007 with plans to lay 16,000 km (10,000 miles) of high-speed track by 2015, making it the biggest high-spped rail network in the world. 

First because of allegations of mass corruption that went all the way to top of the railway ministry, then later for delays caused by power shortages.

But some say that this latest incident could have been prevented, had authorities heeded the alarms raised.

"The Japanese say they have warned the Chinese for years about scaling up on this rapid pace," says Allistair Thornton from IHS Global Insight.

This is regarded as significant as some of the technology which Chinese companies say they 'reinnovated' was bought from Japan's Kawasaki, as well as from Canada's Bombadier and Germany's Siemens.

The other allegation is that the construction period was shortened unnecessarily.

"There is criticism on this kind of acceleration of the construction, experts warned there could be some problems in later operations," says Ingrid Wei, infrastructure analyst for Credit Suisse in Shanghai.

But Chinese companies were thinking even further ahead, past completion date.

Chinese train companies CSR Corp, CNR Corp and China Railway Group were hoping to sell the new technology to foreign countries, directly competing with the likes of Siemens and Bombadier.

But the crash has shaken public faith in China's rail system both inside and outside of the country.

Experts say that means potential clients such as Malaysia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia who were looking into replicating China's rail expansion plans will be putting those ambitions on hold.

And potentially highly lucrative markets for China such as the US, will no longer be options.

That poses an even bigger financial problem for the state-owned rail companies.

The Chinese government has invested huge amounts of money into developing the high-speed rail network.

"It's not clear whether they will now be able to turn this into a profitable enterprise," says Mr Thornton.

Not least because ticket prices are too high for many Chinese consumers to afford. And after the crash, many others will be deterred from taking the high-speed trains.

However, Ms Wei says the high-speed rail network project is a state asset and will be strongly supported by the central government.

Before then, the government will have to answer some tough questions: why the systems failed and why safety was not the top priority.

>> Original Source

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times

July 26, 2007

New regulations that require bars, restaurants, hotels and bookstores to install costly Web monitoring software are prompting many businesses to cut Internet access and sending a chill through the capital's game-playing, Web-grazing literati who have come to expect free Wi-Fi with their lattes and green tea.

The software, which costs businesses about $3,100, provides public security officials the identities of those logging on to the wireless service of a restaurant, cafe or private school and monitors their Web activity. Those who ignore the regulation and provide unfettered access face a $2,300 fine and the possible revocation of their business license.

"From the point of view of the common people, this policy is unfair," said Wang Bo, the owner of L'Infusion, a cafe that features crepes, waffles and the companionship of several dozing cats. "It's just an effort to control the flow of information."

It is unclear whether the new measures will be strictly enforced or applied beyond the area of central Beijing where they are already in effect. But they suggest that public security officials, unnerved by turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa partly enabled by the Internet, are undaunted in their efforts to increase controls.

China already has some of the world's most far-reaching online restrictions. Last year, the government blocked more than a million Web sites, many of them pornographic, but also Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Evite. Recent regulations make it difficult for individuals unaffiliated with a company to create personal Web sites.

When it comes to search engines and microblogging, dictates from the central Propaganda Department filter out topics and words that the Communist Party deems a threat to national stability or its reputation. At public cybercafes, where much of China's working class gains access to the Internet, customers must hand over state-issued identification before getting on a computer.

The new measures, it would appear, are designed to eliminate a loophole in "Internet management" as it is called, one that has allowed laptop- and iPad-owning college students and expatriates, as well as the hip and the underemployed, to while away their days at cafes and lounges surfing the Web in relative anonymity. It is this demographic that has been at the forefront of the microblogging juggernaut, one that has revolutionized how Chinese exchange information in ways that occasionally frighten officials.

"To be honest, I can get Internet at home or at work, but it's nice to just sit in a comfortable place and surf the Web," said Wang Fang, 28, an advertising sales agent who often conducts work from the leather wing chairs at Kubrick, a high-ceilinged, smartly designed cafe that unplugged its router earlier this month rather than pay for the software. "If there's no Internet, there's no reason to come here." The manager said the loss of Wi-Fi had already led to a 30 percent drop in business.

The Dongcheng Public Security Bureau did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, but according to its publicly issued circular, the measure is designed to thwart criminals who use the Internet to "conduct blackmail, traffic goods, gamble, propagate damaging information and spread computer viruses." Such nefarious activity, the notice says, "not only hurts the interests of the country and the masses, but has also caused some businesses to suffer economic losses."

The maker of the program, Shanghai Rain-Soft Software, declined to discuss how the product operates, but a company employee said it had already been delivered to public security officials in Beijing. Shanghai Rain-Soft was paid about $310,000 to design the program, according to a government Web site that announced its winning bid.

One bookstore owner said she had already disconnected the shop's free Wi-Fi, and not for monetary reasons. "I refuse to be part of an Orwellian surveillance system that forces my customers to disclose their identity to a government that wants to monitor how they use the Internet," said the woman, who feared that disclosing her name or that of her shop would bring unwanted attention from the authorities.

>> Please Read Complete Report Here

A New York Times Editorial

July 24, 2011

American technology companies are eager to do business in China, sometimes too eager.

Cisco Systems and others are working on a government project in the city of Chongqing, for example, that includes creating the biggest police surveillance system in the world. A year and a half after Google pulled its search engine out of China to avoid censorship, Microsoft's Bing still censors searches in China. Earlier this month, it agreed to provide search results in English for Baidu, China's leading -- and heavily censored -- engine.

The United States needs enforceable standards of ethical behavior when American companies work with authoritarian governments.

In May, Chinese practitioners of Falun Gong sued Cisco, accusing it of helping the Chinese government design and maintain the so-called Golden Shield system used to track and target dissidents online, including Falun Gong followers who were apprehended and tortured.

Cisco denies the accusation. It says it does not customize equipment to help any government censor content, intercept communications or track users. It says it only sells the Chinese government standard-issue equipment and that it is not selling cameras or image-management software in Chongqing, only general network equipment.

Nevertheless, Cisco's experience confirms that we need uniform principles to guide corporate behavior.

After Yahoo handed over data five years ago about a Chinese journalist who was condemned to 10 years in jail, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google joined in the Global Network Initiative to set principles that include protecting "the freedom of expression rights of their users when confronted with government demands, laws and regulations to suppress freedom of expression." Voluntary guidelines are insufficient. Just as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act establishes that companies cannot bribe foreign officials, legislation is needed in this area.

Internet companies should not keep user data inside countries where courts convict people for what they write, speak or think. They should warn users about their risks, and they should never censor content. American firms were barred from selling crime-control products to China after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. The list must be broadened and kept up to date. Firms could be barred from selling technology to eavesdrop on VoIP communications or powerful antispam systems that could be used to target political speech. Technology companies should be barred from tailoring goods to a repressive end.

An article this month about the Chongqing project in The Wall Street Journal quoted an executive at Hewlett-Packard, which is planning to bid on the project. "It's not my job to really understand what they're going to use it for," he said. That's not nearly good enough.

>> Original Source

By Steven Jiang | CNN

July 25, 2011

Nationwide outrage continued Monday in China over the government's response to a deadly bullet train collision last weekend, even as operations resumed on the affected high-speed rail lines.

A bullet train was struck from behind Saturday night by another train near Wenzhou in eastern Zhejiang province, killing at least 38 people -- including two American citizens -- and injuring almost 200. The first train was forced to stop on the tracks due to a power outage and the impact caused six cars to derail, including four that fell from an elevated bridge.

Although Chinese reporters raced to the scene, none of the major state-run newspapers even mentioned the story on their Sunday front pages. A user of Sina Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, first broke the story and increasingly popular social media outlets then provided millions of Chinese with the fastest information and pictures as well as the most poignant and scathing commentaries.

By the time the railway ministry held its first press conference more than 24 hours after the collision, the public had seen not just reports of passengers trapped inside dark trains or images of a mangled car dangling off the bridge -- but also bulldozers crushing mangled cars that had fallen to the ground and burying the wreckage on site.

"How can we cover up an accident that the whole world already knew about?" said a defiant railway ministry spokesman Wang Yongping. "They told me they buried the car to facilitate the rescue effort -- and I believe this explanation."

Wang was terse when reporters asked him to explain the fact that a toddler girl was being pulled out of the wreckage alive 20 hours after the accident -- and long after authorities declared no more signs of life in the trains.

"That was a miracle," he said.

Blaming lightning strike-triggered equipment failure as the cause of the accident based on preliminary investigation, Wang put on a brave face on the safety of China's controversial high-speed rail.

"Chinese technologies are advanced and we are still confident about that," he said.

While some state media echoed Wang's sentiment, many netizens questioned his every statement from the death toll to the cause and called him the face of a ministry mired in allegations of corruption and ineptitude.

"This land is a hotbed for the world's most sprawling bureaucracy and most cold-blooded officials," user "chenjie" wrote on Sina Weibo.

Netizens also dug up an old video clip showing the railway ministry's chief engineer proudly telling state television in 2007 that China had developed modern technologies to ensure bullet trains never rear-end each other.

The quick sacking of three top local railway officials in Shanghai -- who were in charge of the affected rail lines -- failed to placate the public, either. The announced new Shanghai railway chief prompted more scorn than applaud, as the replacement -- the railway ministry's chief dispatcher -- was once demoted for his role in another fatal train accident in 2008 that killed 72 people.

In a user-generated opinion poll on Sina Weibo on the government's handling of the accident, more than 90 percent of the 30,000 respondents chose the option "terrible -- it doesn't treat us as humans."

Now the world's second-largest economy, and flush with cash, China has built the world's longest high-speed rail network -- boasting more than 8,300 kilometers (5,100 miles) of routes -- in a few short years. The government plans to pour over $400 billion into rail projects in the next five years.

The massive investment and rapid construction have long raised public doubts on the new lines' safety and commercial viability. The skeptics' voices became louder after the former railway minister -- a champion of high-speed rail -- was sacked for corruption early this year.

Even the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail -- the ministry's newest and proudest project -- has broken down several times since its much-touted launch less than a month ago.

"It's not the faster, the better," Sun Zhang, a railway professor at Tongji University in Shanghai and a long-time railway ministry consultant, told CNN last month. "We have to take safety, economics and environmental impact into consideration."

"Strategically we can talk about a great leap forward in the industry, but tactically we have to do things step by step," he added.

Back online, many users -- already jittery about safety in their daily life -- now view China's high-speed rail, long considered a symbol of the country's fast rise, as a metaphor of its troublesome approach to development.

"This is a country where a thunderstorm can cause a train to crash, a car can make a bridge collapse and drinking milk can lead to kidney stones," user "xiaoyaoyouliu" posted on Sina Weibo. "Today's China is a bullet train racing through a thunderstorm -- and we are all passengers onboard.

>> Original Source

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times

July 23, 2011

For Chinese authors who join the international writers' organization PEN, membership would appear to have very few privileges. Many of its members are subjected to frequent harassment; four of them are currently in prison, including one of its founders, Liu Xiaobo, the essayist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate serving 11 years for subversion. All told, the group counts 40 journalists, novelists and historians imprisoned because of their writings.

On Saturday, the authorities once again demonstrated their displeasure with the organization by barring three writers from joining Independent Chinese PEN Center's 10th anniversary celebration in Hong Kong. Those prevented from attending were Zhuang Daohe, a Hangzhou lawyer and essayist; Jiao Guobiao, a Beijing journalism professor who lost his job after writing a critique of the Communist Party; and Cui Weiping, a poet and film scholar who was to receive an award on Saturday.

Mr. Jiao, like the others, had bought a plane ticket but was prevented from leaving his apartment by a contingent of security agents. "I don't know how much longer I can put up with this," Mr. Jiao said in an interview via Skype on Saturday. "It's getting worse and worse."

Although writers who refuse to conform to government restrictions have long been persecuted in China, conditions have worsened since February, when the Communist Party began a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent prompted by fears that the pro-democracy protests in the Arab world could spread to China.

Dozens of rights lawyers and critics have been detained, among them the artist Ai Weiwei, who spent nearly three months in custody. The government has accused Mr. Ai of tax evasion, but conventional wisdom suggests his more urgent crime was the frequent and unvarnished criticism he directed at the Communist Party. Since his conditional release last month, Mr. Ai has been conspicuously silent.

Except for Mr. Liu, the jailed Nobel laureate, most Chinese writers who cross the authorities suffer in relative anonymity. Their works are banned, employment opportunities dry up and their daily movements are constrained by security officials who prevent them from leading normal lives.

Mr. Jiao offered a precise tally of the restrictions on his movements. Last year, he said, he was confined to his home for 249 days. On other days, he was required to receive permission to meet with friends. "On the days I could go out, I had the feeling I was being followed," he said.

Last year, Ms. Cui was prevented from going abroad to attend a film conference in the United States; the nonfiction writer Liao Yiwu was pulled off a plane that was to take him to a literary festival in Germany. After 17 failed attempts to leave China, Mr. Liao surprised the authorities this month by secretly making his way to Germany, via Vietnam and Poland, and declaring himself an exile.

A delegation from the PEN American Center that came to Beijing last week had a firsthand encounter with the growing stranglehold on dissident writers. On Wednesday, the group invited 14 people to a roundtable discussion on free expression at the American Embassy in Beijing. Only three arrived.

Among those blocked from meeting the delegation was Dai Qing, a journalist who wrote scathingly about the environmental impacts of the massive Three Gorges Dam. In a telephone interview on Saturday, she described the indignities of having her phone calls monitored, which is how the authorities knew of the invitation, she said.

When she insisted on meeting the Americans for brunch last week, a security official arrived in her living room with a warning that disobedience would lead to even more draconian surveillance -- including a carload of police parked outside her Beijing home day and night. "That's just trouble for everyone," she said the official told her apologetically.

Since 2008, after the police forced the cancellation of yet another seminar in Beijing, the Independent Chinese PEN Center moved its annual events to Hong Kong. Asked about the logic behind the increased government restrictions, the group's president, Tienchi Liao, said she thought Beijing was simply trying to show writers it still held all the cards. "They decide when people can write, when they can publish and when they can join literary activities," said Ms. Liao, who lives in Germany. "For us, this is really, really sad."

>> Original Report

By Katie Hunt | BBC World News

20 July 2011

In some respects, Hong Kong has never had it so good.

The economy in this former British territory is booming, reaping the rewards of China's rise.

Employment is at an all-time high and the government is so flush with cash, it is literally giving it away - each permanent resident is due to receive 6,000 Hong Kong dollars ($770; £480) later this year.

But try telling Tam Kin Wai, a retired hospital porter, that times are good.

He lives in a "cubicle home" that is barely 2m (6ft) wide with his wife and 13-year old son in Sham Shui Po. They must share a toilet and kitchen with eight other families. "Living costs are always going up," he says.

Bypassed by the boom

Mr Tam is one of about 100,000 people who live in inadequate housing - sometimes these homes are barely bigger than a coffin - according to the Society for Community Organisation (Soco), a non-governmental organisation that works on behalf of Hong Kong's poorest.

"Hong Kong is a rich city," says Soco social worker Chan Siu Ming.

"But so many people live in such a poor situation. I know many people who can't stand upright in their own home."

And it's not just those at the bottom of the economic heap who feel that the city's boom is passing them by.

Hong Kong enjoys many civil liberties unavailable across the border in China, such as the right to protest. But residents cannot vote directly for their leader or for many legislative seats.

According to a University of Hong Kong opinion survey released last week, dissatisfaction with the government over livelihood conditions has reached the highest level since 1992.

These sentiments were made clear at on 1 July, the 14th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China and an annual occasion for demonstrations.

Turnout, although disputed, was generally agreed to be the highest since July 2004 when half a million people marched to have an unpopular anti-subversion law overturned and the economy was at a low ebb following the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars).

"What you have is a whole wodge of people who have jobs but are still struggling, " says Christine Loh, the head of the Civil Exchange think tank and a former legislator.

The sources of discontent are wide-ranging but centre on economic issues such as soaring housing prices, inflation and the wealth gap.

Inflation figures due to be released on Thursday are expected to show the city's inflation rate stood at 5.2% in June, its highest in almost three years, driven by rising rents and soaring food prices.

Hong Kong imports 90% of its food and much comes from China where pork prices are at a record high.

Home prices rose last 24% last year and are up 12% so far this year as newly affluent mainland Chinese snap up apartments here.

According to a report by Demographia International, Hong Kong property, at 11.4 times gross median annual household income, is the most unaffordable in the world.

Nearly half the population lives in government or subsidised housing and buying their own home is out of reach for many residents.

Tycoon targeted

And discontent over unaffordable housing is fuelled by the belief that government policy favours powerful property developers over ordinary people.

Even billionaire tycoon Li Ka-shing, once feted by residents for his rags-to-riches life story, has become a target of protests.

Earlier this year a group of young people camped outside the offices of his offices and protesters at the 1 July march carried placards that depicted Mr Li as a devil.

They resent the hold Mr Li's business empire has over the Hong Kong economy where it's often said that anyone living here cannot go though a day without spending money at one of his businesses.

His conglomerates have a dominant hand in key sectors including property development, retail, electricity generation and container ports.

"We remember the days when we called Li Ka-shing superman," says Ms Loh.

"There has been a fall from grace."

Measures

The government has acknowledged that the rising income gap is a problem and is taking some steps to address it, although progress is slow.

In May, it introduced a minimum wage after more than a decade of debate.

And a decision on whether to build more public housing for sale to lower income residents is expected in the autumn.

The cash handout also came in response to public pressure to provide more relief for the less well-off but has been widely criticised.

Pro-business groups are aghast at the idea of unconditional handouts, while Ms Loh at Civic Exchange says it's a short-term salve that does not address underlying problems such as health care and the pension system.

Others just think the money could be better spent on other issues facing Hong Kong, such as worsening air pollution or public housing.

For Mr Tam, perched on the bunk in his tiny cubicle, things are about to look up.

After a four-year wait, the family has been allocated a public housing flat eight times bigger than the their current living space.

But he is one of the lucky ones. There are 150,000 families on the waiting list.

>> Original Report

By David Barboza | The New York Times

July 18, 2011

SHANGHAI -- For years, DaVinci furniture stores have been places where wealthy Chinese in this and five other big cities can indulge their appetite for imported luxury.

Promoting itself as "a haven for premium products," DaVinci is the place to go for Versace sofas, sumptuous Fendi Casa calf-skin couches or stylish chaise lounges stamped Made in Italy. A DaVinci bedroom set can sell for $100,000.

That's why it set off a national consumer scandal when one of China's biggest state-run media outlets reported last week that it had discovered a tawdry truth: some of DaVinci's imported Italian furniture, the report said, is actually produced at a factory in southern China.

Besides sullying DaVinci's reputation, the revelations have raised questions about whether European furniture makers are keeping close enough tabs on their Chinese supply chain.

Maybe more significant, the scandal indicates that even in China -- where consumers have long been willing to turn a blind eye to pirated DVDs and Gucci knockoffs -- there are boundaries that no counterfeiter should breach. Not if the fakes are priced as high as the real thing.

"DaVinci plays a trick of mixing pearl and fish eye together, so we customers paid for pearl but got fish eye," one customer complained in the Chinese news media.

In a Web outcry, customers have demanded refunds and posted details of how their DaVinci products turned out to be shoddily made or reeking of foul-smelling lacquers.

DaVinci, which was founded in Singapore before branching into China, tried to quiet the storm by holding a news conference last week in Beijing, along with European executives representing some of the luxury brands in question. But DaVinci's chief executive, Doris Phua, fed the news cycle anew by breaking down in tears over loud interruptions by customers.

Ms. Phua insisted that the allegations were false.

That same day, however, customs officials in Shanghai said they had evidence that DaVinci was temporarily storing Chinese-made goods in a Shanghai warehouse, including cattle-hide sofas produced in nearby Zhejiang Province. The officials said that after a day spent in Shanghai's Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, the products -- with the paperwork duly filed -- were imported back into the country.

"Staying at the bonded zone for a day, the products changed from domestically produced ones to imported ones," Zhou Guoliang, a customs bureau official, told Chinese news media.

Over the weekend, Shanghai's official consumer watchdog agency ordered DaVinci to stop selling items bearing the label of the Italian brand Cappelletti, because of "fake ads" and "unqualified labels," according to Shanghai Daily, the local English-language newspaper.

A spokesman for Cappelletti and the other European brands could not be reached for comment Monday.

The allegations first appeared early last week on China Central Television, China's biggest state-run television broadcaster.

>> Original Report

By Radio FREE Asia

14 July 2011

Chinese authorities are nervous that protests outside the country will fuel dissent at home.

Renewed protests in Egypt's Tahrir Square and recent street demonstrations in Malaysia mean Beijing is unlikely to loosen its grip on dissent, activists said this week.

Rights activists in China's southwestern province of Guizhou said they had come under increasing pressure from the local authorities since large street protest in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur last Saturday.

"On Monday the head of the municipal state security police came to visit me with two police officers and warned us not to do anything illegal," said Guizhou-based civil rights activist, Chen Xi.

"They told us not to start propagating ideas of democracy among the people, or to hold collective gatherings under the aegis of the Human Rights Conference," he said.

Chen, a leading member of the Guizhou Human Rights Symposium, said the police had also summoned his wife to the police station to issue similar warnings.

"According to my understanding, [fellow activist] Wu Yuqin was also called in 'for a chat' to the police department."

Nervous

Wu confirmed Chen's account on Wednesday. "The Chinese Communist Party is pretty nervous at the moment because of the Jasmine revolution," she said, referring to the recent wave of popular uprisings in the Middle East, which rekindled last week in Egypt's Tahrir Square.

"They have had us under surveillance since Feb. 18," she said. "They won't let us do this, won't let us do that, won't let us do anything."

"Overseas, our organization would be legal, but here it's a hostile organization," Wu said.

Meanwhile, Shanghai human rights lawyer Li Tiantian, who wrote an article online congratulating the Egyptian people on overthrowing an authoritarian government, said she was currently being held in a small room by police, who had already beaten her.

Li said via a popular microblogging service that the police had betrayed their own humanity. "Everything about their work is dirty," she said. "But lawyers have to have contact with them if they are to earn a living."

"I told them I would start working as a prostitute, because that would be cleaner work than [what they do]," she wrote in a tweet that was soon censored from China's Sina Weibo microblogging platform.

Surveillance

Chinese authorities have already detained or placed under surveillance dozens of dissidents, rights activists, and lawyers since February as uprisings erupted in the Middle East.

The Arab Spring appeared to have inspired protesters in Malaysia at the weekend, as thousands marched to call for electoral reforms, sparking widespread clashes with police.

Rights groups have called for an independent investigation into the Malaysian police's use of "excessive force" in handling the demonstrations.

"The government should cease threats and intimidation against the march's sponsor, the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih), and release all those still detained for exercising their rights to free expression, association, and assembly," the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement on its website.

"The Malaysian authorities' crushing of Bersih's march shows that when basic liberties compete with the entrenched power of the state, the government is quick to throw respect for rights out the window," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"Apparently in Malaysia, freedom of speech, assembly, and association are only permissible when they support the government."

Bersih is calling for free and fair access to the mainstream press, a minimum 21-day election campaign period, and a cleanup of the electoral rolls.

Preventive detention

Human Rights Watch called on the Malaysian government to release six detained Socialist Party members, withdraw public order charges against a further 24 members, and to stop using preventive detention against peaceful demonstrators.

Thousands of pro-democracy activists were camped out in Cairo's central Tahrir Square this week following renewed protests at the pace of change under the stewardship of the military government, which has run the country since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak earlier this year.

Protesters have continued to take to the streets in other Egyptian cities, including Alexandria, Suez and Port Said.

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

>> Original Source

By Radio FREE Asia

July 06, 2011

Chinese authorities send a rights activist back to Xinjiang, to which she had been banished.

An outspoken lawyer was forcibly sent back to China's northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on Wednesday, after challenging a ban on her return to her home in Shanghai, according to a supporter and her attorney.

A man surnamed Xiao, who escorted Li Tiantian from the southern city of Shenzhen by train to Shanghai, confirmed that authorities had detained her upon her arrival in the city.

"After the train stopped at the Shanghai South station, national security police and plainclothes police officers closed in on Li Tiantian and took her away," Xiao said.

Later that day, Liu Xiaoyuan, the attorney who represents Li, posted on Twitter that she had been forced onto a train bound for Xinjiang from Shanghai.

Her family is now calling for her release.

Detention and relocation

Li had been practicing law in Shanghai until this past February, when police took her in for questioning over cyber posts celebrating the Egyptian people's overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak.

One of dozens of dissidents and lawyers rights groups say the government has detained amid fears of a "Jasmine" revolution inspired by recent uprisings in the Middle East, Li was interrogated and then kept in detention.

Li was kept in a room without windows until her release on May 28.

When she was set free, authorities informed her that her place of residence had been registered in Xinjiang, where she was ordered to relocate.

She was told that she would not be permitted to return to Shanghai for three months and warned that she could no longer publish comments on the Internet.

But Li continued to post messages online via various microblogging sites while in Xinjiang and on July 2 announced that she would return to Shanghai, even at the risk of being jailed or killed.

Train to Shanghai

Earlier on Wednesday, Li traveled to the train station in Shenzhen with six of her supporters, including Xiao, who would escort her to Shanghai.

"The police expelled me three times from Shanghai in the past. I tried twice to return but failed," Li said in an interview with RFA after boarding the train.

"I need to go back to Shanghai to take care of the lawsuits I was working on," she said.

"The police are shameless, because I even promised them that if returned to Shanghai I would remain silent. But I also warned the authorities, I would risk anything to get back to my home."

While on the train, Xiao spoke with RFA about why he had decided to accompany Li to Shanghai.

"I cannot sit idly by while a lawyer is refused the right to return to her own home," he said.

"The police are abusing their power."

Rights lawyers targeted

Last July, as part of a larger focus on restructuring China's blogging services, authorities targeted the specific blogs of several prominent rights advocates.

Officials in Shanghai removed dozens of articles posted to a blog by Li Tiantian, who wrote about it on Twitter.

At the time, Li said she was likely to be fired if the boss of her law firm was called in to "drink tea" with police over her writings on her blog and on Twitter.

In Beijing, authorities also censored the blogs of two prominent rights lawyers: Liu Xiaoyuan's, with 250 articles removed overnight, and Teng Biao's.

Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all blocked in China, unless netizens use circumvention tools to gain access.

According to China's Online Public Opinion Monitoring & Measuring Department of the People's Daily online, 23 out of 77 key news stories during 2009 were broken by netizens.
 
Reported by Xin Yu for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated by Ping Chen. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

>> Original Report

By Radio Free Asia

July 01, 2011

China holds lavish celebrations to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party.

By Radio Free Asia

June 30, 2011

Chinese authorities want key cities free of petitioners on the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party.

China has stepped up security in Beijing and Tibet ahead of a key political anniversary on Friday, when carefully organized groups will sing revolutionary songs in praise of the ruling Communist Party.

An employee who answered the phone at a guesthouse in the Tibetan capital Lhasa said police had stepped up checks on the entire industry in recent days.

"They come in the middle of the night and in the early morning," the employee said.

"Tomorrow is July 1," the employee said, referring to the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. "Here, if they don't have an ID card, we can't let them stay."

As the nation's capital tightened security ahead of the anniversary events, Wang Kouma, a petitioner from Shanghai, said he was currently being held in a Beijing hotel room by police after being detained by officials from the Shanghai municipal representative office in the capital.

"They put me in this hotel, where there are a lot of people watching me," Wang said. "They are just outside the door of my room, and they won't give me my freedom."

"My mother was persecuted to death and I am seeking redress on her behalf, but I'm not even free to pursue a complaint".

>> Complete Report HERE

By Dr. Damian Tobin | for BBC World News

June 29, 2011

The rapid growth of China's economy over the past three decades has been greeted with largely unquestioned assumptions that increasing affluence would lead to a happier, wealthier and more equitable society.

Of course, such assumptions came with an implicit acceptance that some would get rich faster, but also that these benefits would eventually trickle down.

The emergence of a middle class, combined with high levels of personal savings and low levels of personal debt, offers tantalising evidence of China's new-found wealth.

Yet, behind these headlines, there is compelling evidence that although economic growth has created vast wealth for some, it has amplified the disparities between rich and poor.

These disparities indicate an often hidden vulnerability in China's rapid growth, but one which is neither unique nor new to China's leadership.