October 2011 Archives

By Sharon LaFraniere, Michael Wines and Edward Wong | The New York Times

October 27, 2011

Political censorship in this authoritarian state has long been heavy-handed. But for years, the Communist Party has tolerated a creeping liberalization in popular culture, tacitly allowing everything from popular knockoffs of "American Idol"-style talent shows to freewheeling microblogs that let media groups prosper and let people blow off steam.

Now, the party appears to be saying "enough."

Whether spooked by popular uprisings worldwide, a coming leadership transition at home or their own citizens' increasingly provocative tastes, Communist leaders are proposing new limits on media and Internet freedoms that include some of the most restrictive measures in years.

The most striking instance occurred Tuesday, when the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television ordered 34 major satellite television stations to limit themselves to no more than two 90-minute entertainment shows each per week, and collectively 10 nationwide. They are also being ordered to broadcast two hours of state-approved news every evening and to disregard audience ratings in their programming decisions. The ministry said the measures, to go into effect on Jan. 1, were aimed at rooting out "excessive entertainment and vulgar tendencies."

The restrictions arrived as party leaders signaled new curbs on China's short-message, Twitter-like microblogs, an Internet sensation that has mushroomed in less than two years into a major -- and difficult to control -- source of whistle-blowing. Microbloggers, some of whom have attracted millions of followers, have been exposing scandals and official malfeasance, including an attempted cover-up of a recent high-speed rail accident, with astonishing speed and popularity.

On Wednesday, the Communist Party's Central Committee called in a report on its annual meeting for an "Internet management system" that would strictly regulate social network and instant-message systems, and punish those who spread "harmful information." The focus of the meeting, held this month, was on culture and ideology.

Analysts and employees inside the private companies that manage the microblogs say party officials are pressing for increasingly strict and swift censorship of unapproved opinions. Perhaps most telling, the authorities are discussing requiring microbloggers to register accounts with their real names and identification numbers instead of the anonymous handles now in wide use.

Although China's most famous bloggers tend to use their own names, requiring everyone to do so would make online whistle-blowing and criticism of officialdom -- two public services not easily duplicated elsewhere -- considerably riskier.

It would "definitely be harmful to free speech," said one microblog editor who refused to be named for fear of reprisal.

This newly buttoned-down approach coincides with a planned shift in the top leadership of the ruling party and government, an intricate process that will last for the next year. During such a period, tolerance for outspokenness outside official channels tends to shrink, and bureaucrats eager for promotion show their conservative stripes.

The crackdown also follows popular uprisings across the Middle East that appear to have given China's leaders pause regarding their own hold on absolute power. In the view of some, it also tracks the influence in China's ruling hierarchy of hard-liners like Zhou Yongkang, the public security chief who helped preside over the suppression of riots by ethnic Uighurs in western China's Xinjiang region.

On Tuesday, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that Mr. Zhou was urging authorities "to solve problems regarding social integrity, morality and Internet management" and that he had called for "the early introduction of laws and regulations on the management of the Internet," among other things.

Nobody outside China's closeted leadership knows the true reason for the maneuvers, beyond a general and intangible sense of uneasiness over the degree to which freer speech is taking root here.

The microblogs, or weibos, are perhaps the prime example. In the last year, weibos have become the forum of choice for Chinese to pass on news and gossip about scandals involving government and the elite. The two largest, run by the privately held Sina Corporation and Tencent Holdings, each count more than 200 million registered users.

In the face of official censorship, their weibos are filled with salacious tales of official malfeasance, such as a July frenzy -- photographs included -- over a Yunnan Province city official's sex orgy. Industry insiders say the principal weibo (pronounced way-bwah) regulators, based in Beijing and the Shenzhen Communist Party Internet offices, have been assailed by government leaders elsewhere for allowing the scandals to spread online unchecked.

In fact, the government could easily shut down microblogs. Officials disconnected the entire Internet in Xinjiang for 10 months after the ethnic riots there in 2009. But their growing popularity makes that highly unlikely. The number of users has quadrupled in a single year.

Song Jianwu, dean of the school of journalism and communication at China University of Political Science and Law, said Chinese leaders accepted the need for such outlets for expression. But in the case of weibos, he added, "they are also concerned that this safety valve could turn into an explosive device."

He said the government might gradually require more and more users to register under their real names, while demanding that operators monitor posts more closely. "I think they will do it in a step-by-step fashion," he said. "We hope and we have suggested that they will do it in manner that is not antagonistic."

Some changes are already evident. Besides the in-house monitors who already scan posts for forbidden topics, operators in recent months have bolstered "rumor refutal" departments, staffed by editors, to investigate and knock down information deemed false.

Top officials, including Liu Qi, the party secretary of Beijing, have held publicized visits to microblog companies, sometimes accompanied by popular microbloggers, in which he urged people to uphold social order and the proper ideology -- and implying that their own status in official eyes would depend on their cooperation.

State restrictions on television are murkier. The rules ostensibly apply to CCTV-1, the general programming channel of Central China Television, but not to CCTV-3, which specializes in arts and entertainment, according to a report in the English-language edition of Global Times, an official newspaper.

Many people in the industry have interpreted the decree and earlier measures by central officials as attempts to bolster the ratings of CCTV against the onslaught of entertainment shows produced by satellite stations, which have been wildly successful. Last year, officials told producers of "If You Are the One," a popular dating show on Jiangsu Satellite Television, to tone down the program. Last month, the authorities suspended a talent show on Hunan Satellite Television, "Super Girl," for exceeding a broadcast time limit.

Many industry observers said the show may have been offensive for other reasons, including prompting home viewers to show support for their favorite contestants through cellphone texting, an action akin to voting. The shutdown of "Super Girl" was taken as a warning throughout the television industry and presaged the new rules.

Bill Bishop, a business consultant and media industry analyst in Beijing, wrote on his blog, DigiCha, that the new limits could drive television viewers to look for entertainment on the Internet. On the other hand, he added, officials might be preparing restrictions for online video content. "The trend in China appears to be towards more, not less, regulation," he wrote. "Investors may want to consider factoring in greater regulatory risk."

 Li Bibo and Edy Yin contributed research, and Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting.

>> Original Source

By The Learning Network | The New York Times

October 26, 2011

On Oct. 25, 1971, the United Nations General Assembly voted to admit the People's Republic of China (mainland China) and to expel the Republic of China (Taiwan). The Communist P.R.C. therefore assumed the R.O.C.'s place in the General Assembly as well as its place as one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The New York Times, in the Oct. 27 edition, described the reaction at the United Nations: "After the tension and drama of last night, today was spent in efforts at reconciliation and in political introspection and analysis." It also noted, "Secretary General Thant appealed to all members to 'endorse the tremendous step forward' represented by Peking's admission and to set aside suspicion and bitterness."

The Republic of China had been a member of the United Nations from the organization's formation in 1945, at which time it still governed all of China. However, in 1949, the R.O.C. government was expelled from the mainland by the Communist Party, the founders of the People's Republic of China.

Though the R.O.C. only continued to control the island of Taiwan after its expulsion from the mainland, it still considered itself the one true government of China. This view was supported by the Western powers in allowing the R.O.C. to remain China's representative in the United Nations. Their main motive? They wanted to prevent another Communist government from gaining a place in the Security Council.

By 1971, however, the People's Republic had gained enough international support for the U.N. General Assembly to pass the resolution declaring that it, and not the R.O.C., was the rightful representative of China. The resolution specified that it was a "restoration of the lawful rights" to the P.R.C., indicating that the country had been denied its rightful seat since 1949.

The United States, the most significant opponent of the resolution, then argued for the P.R.C. to be admitted separately from the R.O.C., which would have allowed the R.O.C. to retain its spot. The proposal was defeated.

Connect to Today:

The Republic of China, which has largely relinquished its claim to mainland China, has continued to fight for a place in the United Nations. Over the years, it has applied to the U.N. under the name "The Republic of China (Taiwan)" and "The Republic of China on Taiwan," but the applications have been denied. The U.S. supports a "one China" policy, which maintains that, though the People's Republic does not hold sovereignty over Taiwan, there is only one China that includes both the mainland and Taiwan. It has not supported Taiwan's applications for membership, objecting to what it perceives as "an effort to change the fragile status quo that has governed relations among the three."

>> Original Source

By Kathrin Hille | Financial Times

24 October 2011

The world's leading software industry body warned on Monday of a jump in revenues lost to software piracy in China as the country's government is failing to rein in rampant copyright infringement.

Robert Holleyman, president and chief executive of the Business Software Alliance, said pledges by the Chinese government to help foreign companies gain more revenues from software sales in China and high-profile anti-piracy campaigns had failed to deliver.

"All that activity led us to believe that we'd see some fairly rapid reduction of software piracy in China," Mr Holleyman said. "But none of what I've picked up with our companies indicates that they're seeing the kind of economic growth associated with the sales of software."

The remarks indicate that software market opportunities for companies such as Microsoft are unlikely to keep up with the pace of China's PC market growth, and that intellectual property rights infringement will remain an irritant in relations with the US and China's other leading trading partners.

In late 2010, the Chinese government, responding to growing criticism of its intellectual property rights protection record, promised in talks with the US that it would help increase foreign companies' software sales in the country.

Since last year, Beijing has also been running a high-profile crackdown on the production and sales of pirated goods. The duration and scale of the campaign initially gave rise to cautious optimism among foreign industry executives that real change could be on the cards.

The US government even expressed cautious optimism in its annual report on intellectual property rights protection, saying Beijing's special campaign against piracy might lead to "lasting improvements".

But Mr Holleyman said: "While [piracy as a] percentage of total software sales is coming down somewhat, the US$ losses are exploding." He added that he expected multinational software companies to launch more legal action against Chinese counterfeiters as a result.

In China, 78 per cent of all software sold in 2010 was pirated, according to BSA's 2011 Global Piracy Report, compared with a global average piracy rate of 42 per cent. While this is not among the world's highest piracy rates, China created the second-highest economic damage through piracy as the industry lost $7.8bn in revenues to pirates last year. In the US, the damage was $9.5bn.

But China is expected to overtake the US in that ranking soon as it is set to surpass the US as the world's largest PC market by unit shipments next year.

>> Original Source

By Daryl Loo - Bloomberg-Businessweek

October 2011

The government tobacco maker sponsors schools, earning goodwill

Chinese kids smoking on the outskirts of Shaoyang in Hunan province

Imaginechina via AP Photo

In dozens of rural villages in China's western provinces, one of the first things primary school kids learn is what helps make their education possible: tobacco. The schools are sponsored by local units of China's state-owned cigarette monopoly, China National Tobacco. "On the gates of these schools you'll see slogans that say 'Genius comes from hard work--tobacco helps you become talented,'" says Xu Guihua, secretary general of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, a privately funded lobbying group. "They are pinning their hopes on young people taking up smoking."

Anti-tobacco groups say efforts in China to reduce sales, including a ban on smoking in public places introduced in May, have been hampered by light penalties, a lack of education about the dangers of smoking, and the fact that the regulator, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, also runs the world's biggest cigarette maker.

While Chinese law bans tobacco advertising on radio, television, and in newspapers, they "do not have clear restrictions on sales and sponsorship activities," according to a report published in January by Yang Gonghuan, a former deputy director of China's Center for Disease Control & Prevention, and Tsinghua University professor Hu Angang. Regional units of the monopoly funded construction of more than 100 primary schools throughout China, such as the Sichuan Tobacco Hope Primary School, the official Xinhua News Agency reported in May. Some schools are named after local tobacco companies such as Hongta or top-selling cigarette brands like Zhongnanhai, named after the compound next to the Forbidden City where China's top leaders live and work. The state tobacco company in September 2010 announced it was sponsoring an additional 42 primary school libraries in Xinjiang and 40 in Tibet, and in November made a ¥10 million donation to a women's development fund for a "Healthy Mothers' Express" campaign.

China National Tobacco lists charitable activities on its website. In a survey of more than 2,000 adults conducted in 2009 by the Association on Tobacco Control, 7 percent had a good impression of the tobacco industry due to its charity work, while 18 percent said they would pick a cigarette brand because of its good works. State Tobacco's press office didn't respond to interview requests or faxed questions about sponsorship.

China has more than 320 million smokers, a third of the world's total, and 53 percent of men there smoke. About 1 million Chinese die from tobacco-related illnesses every year. The tobacco industry grew at an average annual rate of 19 percent from 2006 to 2010, according to State Tobacco. Last year, earnings rose 17 percent, to ¥605 billion ($95 billion), including ¥499 billion paid in taxes.

China created the tobacco monopoly in the 1980s, when the industry supplied more than 10 percent of government revenue. Today, tobacco contributes 6.7 percent, according to Yang and Hu's report. "Especially in tobacco-growing provinces like Yunnan and Guizhou, the tobacco industry is a very important part of local government income," says Wang Shiyong, the World Bank's senior health specialist in Beijing. "There is a lot of internal government lobbying to make sure the health consequences of smoking are not addressed."

A government survey in 2010 found that two in five male doctors light up every day in China. (PFE)Pfizer, whose Champix is the main prescription anti-smoking drug sold in China, funded a three-year program in 2008 to set up 60 smoke-free hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Smoking among the hospitals' leadership fell to 8.4 percent, from 19.1 percent, while overall rates for doctors fell to 6.8 percent from 10.7 percent, says Pfizer spokeswoman Neena Moorjani.

Still, the education drives have a long way to go. Only one in four adults in China believe exposure to tobacco smoke causes heart diseases and lung cancer, and the percentage among smokers is even lower--22 percent--according to the 2010 Global Adult Tobacco Survey for China.

"We've been trying to get the Ministry of Education to stop the tobacco companies from sponsoring these schools," says Xu, a former deputy director at the Chinese Center for Disease Control & Prevention. "But the ministry wants us to show them proof that this is causing harm."

The bottom line: China's tobacco monopoly funds schools. About 18 percent of Chinese say they'd pick a cigarette brand because of its charitable works.

>> Original Source

By Radio FREE Asia

October 11, 2011

Residents of southern China say a planned battery factory could poison local water supplies.

Residents of the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen are mounting a vocal campaign against plans to build a battery plant in their neighborhood, following a slew of cases of lead poisoning in children across the country in recent months.

The plant is scheduled to be built, beginning next year, by China's BYD Group, which numbers among its shareholders U.S. market guru Warren Buffett. If it goes ahead, it will export state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries around the world.

But residents of Shenzhen, a city of 10 million people, say they are concerned that it sits too close to reservoirs which supply the city with drinking water.

They say BYD has already sparked pollution concerns at some of its other Shenzhen facilities.

A private homeowner in Shenzhen's Longgang district surnamed Li said people in his neighborhood have been complaining for two years about foul smells issuing from an industrial plant also run by BYD, but without result.

"We have complained many times, and every time the environmental protection department knows it's coming from BYD as soon as they get our call," Li said.

"They are lagging behind on a number of [environmental] standards," he said. "They have been tested a number of times, and told they have passed, but that they have to make improvements."

"I don't understand this ... because a lot of elderly people and children from our residential complex have been feeling unwell, and have gone to the hospital to get treatment."

A local spokeswoman for the environmental group Greenpeace surnamed Jiang said the Longgang BYD plant was known to be emitting pollution into the atmosphere.

Local media have reported a sharp rise in patients in recent months at the nearby medical clinic.

An employee who answered the phone at the plant said he hadn't heard of any complaints from local residents, and that no one had reported any sickness as a result of its emissions recently.

Environmental crisis

Chinese officials have warned that the country is facing a "grave" environmental crisis, with more than half its cities affected by acid rain and one-sixth of its major rivers too polluted even to water crops with.

Three decades of breakneck economic growth have taken their toll on the country's natural resources, sparking a huge increase in public unrest linked to environmental degradation and health problems caused by pollution.

BYD announced the plans to build what it calls "the worlds' largest battery plant" in May, following a surprise change to zoning regulations on the plot of land it owned.

According to an April report issued by China's cabinet, the State Council, BYD planned to invest more than 8.2 billion yuan (U.S. $1.3 billion) in its "new energy" projects, including 7.8 billion yuan (U.S. $1.2 billion) on the lithium ion battery plant in Shenzhen, and 372 million yuan (U.S. $58.1 million) on a solar cell facility.

A Shenzhen resident and protester surnamed Zhou said the plot of land earmarked for the plant lay between the Bingkeng, Tongluojing and Sanzhoutian reservoirs, amid a network of channels supplying water to Shenzhen.

"Two of those reservoirs supply drinking water to us here in Shenzhen," Zhou said. "I heard that there would be a lot of heavy metals involved in a battery plant ... which [raises questions about] environmental protection."

"This is a huge hidden danger: a time bomb," he said. "That is why those of us who live nearby are very worried."

Lead poisoning

Battery makers and lead and zinc smelting plants have been blamed for a wave of lead poisoning cases affecting thousands of children across China in recent years, sometimes sparking violent protests.

And Chinese children who suffer lead poisoning as a result of industrial pollution are frequently sent back to live in contaminated environments and refused treatment, according to a recent report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The plans for the plant are causing great concern and widespread speculation, local people said in recent interviews.

A residential landlord surnamed Yin said there were currently a large number of residential blocks under construction in the area around the proposed BYD plant, which would provide homes for up to 100,000 people when they were finished.

"A lot of people are talking about this now, and the key factor is the battery plant," Yin said. "Recently a customer took a liking to an apartment, but they are now waiting to see whether the battery plant goes ahead before they buy it," he said.

Ordinary Chinese people are becoming increasingly active in support of environmental issues in recent years.

Shenzhen-based rights activist Xiao Chun said an growing number of ordinary Chinese were now prepared to stand up for the environment.

"The residents of Shenzhen are standing up one by one to protect their own environment," Xiao said. "This sort of courage on their part will contribute to a better society."

"The government should back them up, not suppress them," he said.

Moves to cut down some of Nanjing's iconic "wutong" trees sparked protests in the eastern city ahead of the G20 international monetary conference in March.

And thousands gathered in the northeastern port city of Dalian in August to call on the government to close down a petrochemical plant that made paraxylene (PX), a toxic and carcinogenic substance.

The protests, which resulted in a promise to close the plant from the city's leaders, echoed a similar movement in the southeastern port city of Xiamen in 2007, when the municipal government backed down on a planned PX plant following massive popular anger and demonstrations.

Reported by Bi Zimo and Wen Yuqing for RFA's Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

By Annie Huang | Associated Press | via UNCENSORED yahoo!news

October 10, 2011     

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou urged China's government on Monday to pursue democracy and respect his island's self-governance as the two sides mark the centennial of a revolution that ended 2,000 years of imperial Chinese rule.

Both Taiwan and China -- which split amid civil war in 1949 -- commemorate the Oct. 10, 1911, start of an uprising against the Qing dynasty as a seminal event, and both have sought to use the centennial as an opportunity for dialogue.

But Taiwanese authorities have rejected suggestions to jointly host events, fearing that Beijing will use them to highlight its "one-China principle" that places the island under mainland rule.

On the eve of the centenary, Chinese President Hu Jintao made an appeal in Beijing for the two sides to move beyond the history that divides them and work together to achieve a peaceful reunification. Taiwanese are wary of those calls, fearing they may lose their freedoms and democracy if they are reunited.

At a ceremony in front of the presidential office building, Ma said the Beijing government "must not forget the ideals of our founding father and should move boldly toward freedom, democracy and the fair distribution of wealth."

His brief speech was followed by an hourlong arms display in which jet fighters flew in ranks over the spacious square and tanks and missile-carrying trucks rumbled past. Pilots in red jumpsuits parachuted from helicopters in front of Ma.

China's centenary commemorations have had clear political and nationalistic undertones, but Taiwanese public interest in the event has been lukewarm. Most Taiwanese don't want to come under China's control, and don't see the events of 100 years ago as particularly relevant to their future.

The ceremony marks the centennial of an armed uprising led by rebels associated with revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen on a Qing dynasty garrison. The attack set in motion events that led to the overthrow of imperial rule and raised hopes that China could emerge from more than a century of national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers.

The Republic of China was established after 2 1/2 months. It later fled in disarray to Taiwan in 1949 following the victory of Mao Zedong's Communists over Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in the Chinese civil war.

China regards Taiwan as part of its territory and threatens to invade should it seek formal independence.

Under Ma's initiative, Taiwan has moved closer to China economically but has refused any political dialogue to settle the island's future.

China's president said Sunday that the two sides should work together to achieve the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."

"Achieving reunification by peaceful means best serves the fundamental interests of all Chinese, including our Taiwan compatriots," Hu said.

Ma did not respond to Hu's call, but instead urged China to "respect history and recognize the existence of the Republic of China."

>> Original Source

By Marianne Barriaux | Agence France Presse | via UNCENSORED yahoo!news

October 09, 2011

China's President Hu Jintao on Sunday called for Taiwan and the Chinese mainland to reunite, as he marked the 100th anniversary of the revolution that ended the nation's long imperial history.

Speaking at a ceremony attended by top Communist Party leaders -- including former President Jiang Zemin, who made his first public appearance since rumours emerged that he had died -- Hu also ruled out Taiwanese independence.

"Achieving reunification through peaceful means is what most suits Chinese people's fundamental interests, including Taiwan compatriots," he said.

>> Please Read Complete Report

By Michael Bristow | BBC World News

October 06, 2011

In one big respect, life has changed little in the past 12 months for the man who won last year's Noble Peace Prize.

As the Nobel committee prepares to hand out this year's award, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is exactly where he was last October - in jail.

He is serving an 11-year sentence for inciting the subversion of state power.

If anyone hoped this award might bring about a reduction in the activist's sentence or a more open society in China, they were wrong.

The opposite has happened. Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia, appears to be under house arrest and other Chinese campaigners have been targeted.

But the debate about human rights in China has not gone away.

The 55-year-old's award - and later the Arab Spring - seems to have renewed the focus on China's political system, even among its own top leaders.

Long-time activist

Liu Xiaobo was sentenced on Christmas Day 2009 for helping to draft a manifesto - Charter '08 - calling for political change.

At the time he had been speaking out for 20 years, although he was still a relatively unknown figure both inside and outside China.

But his criminal conviction, the manifesto he proposed and the harsh sentence he received suddenly catapulted him onto the international stage.

And it happened just as the Nobel Peace Prize committee was looking to honour someone who had stood up to the Chinese government.

"We knew from experience that the dissident community was divided," Geir Lundestad, the permanent secretary to the Nobel committee, said just a few days ago.

"In one sense the Chinese government made the decision easy. Liu Xiaobo went from one of several candidates to the most prominent symbol of human rights in China."

Immediately after the award was announced, Liu Xia, the dissident's wife, went to see him in jail, in the city of Jinzhou in northeast China.

She told her husband about the award - and passed back news to the Nobel committee that he was happy to have received it.

Up until then Liu Xia had been visiting her husband regularly in prison, where the activist, academic and author spent his time reading, running and writing letters to his wife.

After the award though, things changed.

Liu Xia suddenly disappeared from view, her Beijing home off-limits and guarded by security officers.

Her telephone, internet connection and other contact with the outside world was severed. Little has been heard from her since.

Expected reaction

When the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention asked earlier this year about these restrictions, the Chinese government admitted that "no legal enforcement measure" had been taken against her.

But it continues to detain her anyway - without justification, according to the UN working group.

Hu Jia, another Chinese activist who has spent time in prison, recently tried to visit Liu Xia, but was stopped by a guard before he got to her apartment. 

He added that Liu Xiaobo was allowed to return home last month - free from handcuffs and leg irons - to mourn the death of his father.

'Very patient'

For other activists, bloggers and lawyers, life has also become more difficult over the last 12 months.

The political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa appears to have worried China's leaders, who fear these revolutions might lead to calls for change here.

Their reaction has been to crack down on anyone who might agitate for change.

People have been detained, prosecuted and sometimes simply scared, in an apparent attempt to curtail their already limited activities.

"All hopes were dashed if anyone had expected that some positive change in the human rights situation in China would result from awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese citizen for the first time," commented the Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Mr Lundestad said the Nobel Peace Prize committee had not been surprised by China's reaction and remained "very proud" of its award to Liu Xiaobo.

The committee is now waiting for him to collect his medal, pick up his prize money, worth about $1.5m, and give his Nobel lecture.

The dissident still has eight years of his sentence left to serve so that might not happen for some time - if ever.

But as Mr Lundestad said: "We are very patient."

>> Original Source

By Radio FREE Asia

October 6, 2011

Chinese authorities detain supporters of a rights lawyer under house arrest.

By Radio FREE Asia

October 03, 2011

The Chinese government aims to authorize detentions without informing family members.

Women hold pictures of their loved ones, alleged victims of injustices, outside the court trial of a rights activist in Beijing, Aug. 12, 2011.   (AFP)

Chinese lawyers, rights activists, and legal experts are mounting an online campaign against proposals to legalize secret detention currently being debated by the country's lawmakers.

China's parliamentary body, the National People's Congress (NPC), is currently debating amendments to the criminal law which could remove a current requirement to inform a person's relatives of their detention.

Rights activist Hu Jia and his wife and fellow activist Zeng Jinyan have already criticized the move in open letters and online opinions, while prominent rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan has sent a detailed critique of the proposed amendments to the NPC.

In a letter to a parliamentary committee considering the legal change, Hu said holding suspects in a secret location is a "painful torment" for the parents, spouse, and children of the person detained.

"This violates the minimum humanity of the suspect, who is not yet convicted by the law, and [of] his or her innocent family members," Hu said in the letter to the legislative working committee of the National People's Congress.

"Such KGB secret police-style Red Terror methods have been used not only on me but also a lot of people such as rights lawyers, dissidents, artists, petitioners, and family members of political criminals."

'Preserving stability'

Liu's letter was more detailed and technical, but his conclusion was the same as Hu's.

"We can't allow them to legalize 'being disappeared,'" Liu wrote on his Twitter account.

"It is my opinion that the clause allowing for the family to be left uninformed in the case of 'obstructions to the investigation' be deleted."

In his letter to the NPC, Liu described a clause in the draft revision dealing with "subversion" as being directed against citizens who criticize the government or the ruling Communist Party.

"This clause contravenes the right to freedom of expression which is in the Constitution," he wrote. "It is a bad law that will manufacture injustice and social division."

In a blog post on Monday, top legal expert Chen Youxi agreed.

"If the proposal to allow secret detentions enters into law, this will do serious damage to China's human rights image internationally," Chen wrote.

"This is a momentous question touching on the human rights boundaries of a nation," he said. "If it becomes law, it will have a long-lasting and fundamental effect [on society]."

"The new draft takes 'preserving stability' as its starting point, and it must be stopped," he said.

Support for critics

Both Liu and Chen's opinions, submitted to the NPC and republished on their blogs, drew dozens of comments, mostly supportive.

"This bill cannot be allowed to become law," wrote a user identified as "Xiaodi." "Otherwise, state power will continue to expand, and gradually fill our lives with terror."

A second commenter, "Wuchideluoben," said: "If this evil law gets passed it will show that the leaders of this country really are finished. People will not sit by and watch!"

Their views were endorsed by 14 other rights lawyers across China, some of whom also highlighted problems with proposals to formalize house arrest and surveillance of people in their daily lives.

Lawyer Li Jinglin said the proposed amendments to the criminal law would allow the authorities to put anyone under residential surveillance without the need for formal detention.

He said he thought the month-long consultation period was far too short.

"The fact that they have allocated such a short time to collecting people's opinions means that most people don't have a hope of contributing an opinion to legislation having to do with their personal safety," Li said.

Dozens 'disappeared'

Chinese authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on dissent around the country following online, anonymous calls early this year for a "Jasmine" revolution inspired by uprisings in the Middle East.

Dozens of activists have been "disappeared," sometimes for months at a time, according to Chinese rights groups, including prominent artist and social critic Ai Weiwei. Top rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng has been missing for more than a year.

International rights groups say that "disappearances" render detainees more vulnerable to abuses like torture.

Chinese authorities also use house arrest, known in Chinese as "soft detention," as a means of containing and intimidating activists without resorting to criminal law.

Chen said that while police currently already hold people in secret detention past the legal time limit and without informing their families, they do not yet do so openly.

He said the relaxation of the rules of evidence would also legalize poor police practice.

"Mail surveillance, hacker attacks, bugging, secret filming, and secret searches are all part of current criminal investigations now, as a way of finding evidence," he said.

"These methods have been used all along in investigations, but never openly ... Evidence gathered in such a way has never been admissible in court."

He said the draft law made special mention of "technological investigation" in clauses 147-151, a move which Chen called "unprecedented."

Last week, Ai Weiwei's wife Lu Qing also sent a letter to the committee condemning the new law as slowing "China's progress toward civilization".

The consultation period for the proposed revisions, which garnered more than 68,000 electronic submissions via the NPC's official website, has now closed.

Reported in English by Luisetta Mudie and by Hai Nan for the Cantonese service.

>> Original Source

By Gillian Wong :: Associated Press :: via UNCENSORED yahoo!news

October 03, 2011

In a quiet, leafy neighborhood of Beijing, a woman has been living in enforced isolation in her book-lined, fifth-floor apartment. Her apparent misdeed: being married to a Nobel Peace Prize winner the Chinese government calls a criminal.

In the year since jailed democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo was awarded the prize, his wife Liu Xia has also become a prisoner. She has largely been held incommunicado, effectively under house arrest, watched by police, without phone or Internet access and prohibited from seeing all but a few family members.

"Liu Xia has been completely cut off from communication with the outside world, and leads a lonely and oppressed life," said Beijing activist Zeng Jinyan, the wife of another well-known dissident who has endured bouts of surveillance and harassment. "It has already been a year, I dare not imagine how much longer she must bear this pain."

The Nobel prize announced last Oct. 8 cheered China's fractured, persecuted dissident community and brought calls from the U.S., Germany and others for Liu's release, but also infuriated Beijing, and authorities harassed and detained dozens of his supporters in the weeks that followed.

China has a long history of punishing family members of government critics. But the Liu case is different because he's the first to win the Peace Prize and by isolating Liu Xia the government seems intent on preventing the frail-looking 51-year-old poet with close-cropped hair and wire-rimmed glasses from becoming a rallying point for political activists.

"The Chinese government simply just do not want people to be reminded of the emotional, the human aspect of Liu Xiaobo in jail, and to do that they also want to erase Liu Xia from people's memory," said Wang Songlian, a researcher with China Human Rights Defenders in Hong Kong.

The harsh treatment of Liu Xia seemingly runs afoul of China's laws and might be the most severe retaliation ever suffered by the family of a Peace Prize laureate.

"As far as I know, the way she is treated is unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize," said Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. "Her situation is extremely regrettable."

Lundestad said the committee is also worried about Liu Xiaobo because it has not received any new information about his situation since late last year.

The government did not comment.

A literary critic and dogged campaigner for peaceful political change, Liu Xiaobo tried to negotiate the retreat of pro-democracy student demonstrators from Tiananmen Square in 1989. He co-authored a manifesto in 2008 calling for an end to single-party rule. Both acts earned him jail terms, the latter an 11-year sentence he is now serving.

Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia's friendship began in the early 1980s over a shared love of literature and poetry. Her father, a senior finance official, had set up a cushy job at the national tax bureau for her, but she quit because she wanted more freedom, according to an essay about the couple by dissident writer and friend, Yu Jie.

They wedded in 1996 while he was in a labor re-education camp in order for Liu Xia to be granted permission to visit him. Yu's essay says she told police: "I just want to marry that 'enemy of the state'!"

In a tribute to Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo wrote: "I am serving my sentence in a tangible prison, while you wait in the intangible prison of the heart," as part of a statement he had prepared for his trial in 2009.

Two days after the Nobel announcement, which brought furious condemnation from Beijing, Liu Xia was allowed to visit him in prison. She carried out a message from him that he dedicated the award to those who died in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Rights groups say she hasn't been allowed to see him since.

During a rare phone interview with the AP a few days after the award was announced, Liu Xia sounded hopeful her confinement would be brief: "I'm sure that for a moment the pressure will be greater, I will have even less freedom, even more inconvenience, but I believe they won't go on like this forever and that there will be positive change in the future."

On a recent day, there were no signs of movement in her apartment that could be seen from the ground floor, although a window was open and a light in a small room was switched on at night. Downstairs, residents walked their dogs near a river where Chinese men were swimming and fishing.

Liu Xiaobo was not allowed to attend the funeral of his father last month and it's not clear that he or Liu Xia know that he died Sept. 12, because his brother could not reach him, said Liu Xiaobo's close friend, Wu Wei. Wu said he was informed by Liu Xiaoxuan, Liu Xiaobo's younger brother, who told the AP he was not allowed to accept foreign media interviews.

"He said there was no channel, no way to inform Xiaobo and Liu Xia, so that means that they do not necessarily know the news," Wu said in a phone interview.

Despite being more beleaguered since the Nobel prize, many of China's dissidents say they cherish the recognition.

"Awarding Liu Xiaobo the prize had the overall effect of helping to energize China's civil opposition and rights defense movement," said Wu, the writer. "Just like South Africa had their Mandela and Myanmar had their Aung San Suu Kyi, we now have Liu Xiaobo."

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Associated Press writer Bjoern Amland contributed to this report from Oslo, Norway.

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