November 2011 Archives

By Radio FREE Asia

November 25, 2011

Two popular television hosts are fired in Hong Kong, raising fears that Chinese censors are exerting undue influence over the island.

Hong Kong's government broadcaster has said it won't renew the contracts of two popular current-affairs talk show hosts in 2012, sparking fears of further pressure on media freedom in the territory since its return to Chinese rule.

Ng Chi-sum and Robert Chow hosted two popular radio phone-in shows for government broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), but the pair have now been told their contracts will not be renewed.

Wu expressed regret at the decision, which comes just months after the arrival of a new director of broadcasting, Roy Tang.

"It takes a very long time for a station to establish a talk show with a popular host, and the listeners become familiar with the personal style of that presenter, and they like it," Ng told reporters this week.

"I don't believe that I am too aggressive as a presenter, so I don't think I should have been targeted."

Ng's show, "Open Line, Open View," will continue with a new line-up of presenters and guest hosts, as well as relying heavily on the services of student reporters.

Meanwhile, Chow said the decision not to extend his contract, which didn't give him civil service status, must have been a fairly weighty one.

"It's hard for me to believe that our new director of broadcasting had no hand at all in this decision," he told local media.

"But if the staff believe that a civil servant can do a better job of presenting a show than any outsider, then I wish them good luck," he said.

Political motives?

Hong Kong has seen a number of outspoken radio personalities depart from key talk shows in the years since the handover of sovereignty to Beijing in 1997.

But RTHK management have denied any political motive behind the move.

Spokeswoman Kirindi Chan said the decision was arrived at following discussions among production staff.

"There are no political factors here, and there was no pressure from Director of Broadcasting Roy Tang," she told reporters.

Democratic legislator Emily Lau called on RTHK to hold a news conference to answer detailed questions about the decision to remove Ng and Chow.

"It's fine to change some things about RTHK, but they should give a clear explanation of how the new reforms make things better than they were before," Lau told local media.

"They should come out alongside the two presenters and give a clear account of this," she said.

"RTHK is itself a media organization, and for them to deal with things in such a way is pretty poor from a public relations point of view."

Under the terms of its handover from British rule, Hong Kong has been promised the continuation of existing freedoms of expression and association for 50 years.

But journalists fear that media organizations in the territory may nevertheless be highly susceptible to self-censorship, for fear of angering powerful corporations or high-ranking officials in mainland China.

Reported by Lin Jing for RFA's Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

>> Original Source

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times

November 26, 2011

After two decades of working as a successful engineer in the United States, Hu Zhicheng decided to return to China in 2004 and apply his rich experience to designing catalytic converters for the nation's booming automotive industry.

"I saw how polluted the air was here, and thought I could make a difference," said Mr. Hu, a naturalized American citizen who has a doctorate in engineering.

Now it seems he cannot leave.

The last three times he tried to board an airplane and return to his family in Los Angeles, Mr. Hu, 49, was turned away by Chinese border agents who claimed that he was a wanted man.

The problem is, he cannot find out exactly who wants him and why.

Mr. Hu, an inventor trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with 48 patents and a number of prestigious science awards to his name,was jailed for a year and a half starting in 2008 after a former business associate accused him of commercial theft. The charges were so spurious that prosecutors withdrew the case -- a rare gesture in China's top-down legal system.

But since his release 19 months ago, Mr. Hu's life has been in limbo and his family has grown increasingly frantic. He writes to powerful Communist Party officials who he imagines might control his fate. A coterie of influential friends and colleagues has been lobbying on his behalf. And this month, his daughter, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, began a petition campaign that has garnered more than 50,000 signatures.

Richard Buangan, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Beijing, said that American diplomats had had little success in pressing his case with Chinese officials. "No authority has been cooperative with our request for information on the exit control," he said.

Mr. Hu's predicament highlights the potential perils of doing business in China, where commercial disputes can easily become criminal matters, especially when the politically well-connected use the country's malleable legal system to bludgeon rivals. Most worrisome, legal experts say, are the country's vague commercial secrets laws that state-owned enterprises -- the companies that dominate China's economy -- sometimes wield to protect information related to production, procurement, mergers and strategic planning.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that overseas Chinese are more vulnerable to such abuses than their non-Chinese compatriots. Last year, Stern Hu, a Chinese-Australian mining executive, was detained shortly after a deal between his company,Rio Tinto, and the state-owned Aluminum Corporation of China fell through. Convicted of stealing trade secrets and bribery, Mr. Hu was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a largely closed trial.

Xue Feng, a Chinese-American geologist who is serving eight years in prison on similar charges, said he was tortured during his interrogation. His supporters, including American diplomats, insist that the oil and gas industry data he sold was publicly available. In 2008, the authorities executed Wo Weihan, a Chinese biomedical researcher who had returned from Europe to start a medical supply company in Beijing. Tried in secret, Mr. Wo was accused of espionage, although the details of his crimes were never disclosed.

Even as official policies seek to lure Chinese-born inventors, academics and entrepreneurs with housing perks and financial incentives, lingering anti-Western xenophobia nurtured during the Mao years sometimes taints them as unpatriotic for having left the motherland. "It's kind of reverse racism," said John Kamm, executive director of Dui Hua, an American human rights group that frequently advocates on behalf of detained foreign nationals in China. "If you're ethnic Chinese with a foreign passport, you're really not considered a foreigner."

Mr. Hu, whose long résumé includes stints as a researcher in Japan and more than a decade working for an American designer of catalytic converters, the Engelhard Corporation, would seem to be the ideal returnee.

In 2006, when he took a job as chief scientist for Wuxi Weifu Environmental Catalysts, a company in eastern Jiangsu Province, he also brought his wife and their two American-born children, in part, he says, because he wanted them to become steeped in Chinese language and culture.

His return coincided with a surge in domestic car production and government-led efforts to reduce tailpipe emissions. The company prospered, and so did Mr. Hu, who eventually became Wuxi Weifu's president. It now provides catalytic converters for half of all Chinese-made cars.

Mr. Hu's troubles began after his company refused to buy components from the Hysci Specialty Materials Company, which is based in Tianjin and once supplied Engelhard.

According to Mr. Hu and his lawyers, Hysci would not take no for an answer. They say Hysci's well-connected chief executive, Dou Shihua, sent Tianjin public security agents to Wuxi Weifu to pressure Mr. Hu to change his mind.

The police raised allegations of stolen trade secrets but also suggested that the accusations would evaporate if the two companies did business together. Mr. Hu would not budge. "We have a system of quality control, and even one word from me could not change that," he said.

In the end, the veiled threats gave way to an arrest, and Mr. Hu was put in a jail in Tianjin.

The patent infringement case that prosecutors eventually built against him cited technology that has been publicly available in the United States for decades, according to several scientists who rallied to his defense.

But even after prosecutors withdrew the case and Mr. Hu was freed, he found his return home blocked by immigration officials who claimed that he was still wanted by the Tianjin police. Each time he or his lawyer contacted the authorities there, however, they were told there were no such restrictions.

One of his lawyers, Wang Shou, said he believed that Mr. Dou, Hysci's chief executive, was continuing to use his influence to exact revenge or get a deal yet.

Reached by telephone, a sales executive at Hysci refused to comment on the case. The Tianjin Public Security Bureau hung up before answering questions about Mr. Hu.

His family does not know what else to do. Although his daughter visited last summer, Mr. Hu's wife and 16-year-old son are reluctant to come here, saying they fear they, too, could be prevented from leaving.

"I worry about my husband every hour of every day," his wife, Hong Li, who is also an engineer, said by telephone from Los Angeles. "I don't want my son to grow up without a father."

The emotional anguish suffered by Mr. Hu has been compounded by pain from a herniated disc that worsened during the 17 months he slept on the floor of his jail cell.

Earlier this month, at a chemical engineering conference on the outskirts of Beijing, he lectured about ways to reduce emissions from heavy trucks in China.

As the conference wound down and his American colleagues headed to the airport, he made a joke about escaping across the border.

"If I could only invent something that would make me invisible," he said.

>> Original Source

By Radio FREE Asia

22 November 2011

His wife says police also took away his personal computer hard disk drive.

A protester holds a paper-made prison door in front of a policeman (R) standing guard during Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Hong Kong, Aug. 18, 2011.

Chinese authorities detained an activist in the central province of Anhui on Tuesday after he reported that a cyber dissident was tortured in detention, his wife said.

Police also took away Li Wenge's personal computer hard disk drive after searching his home in Bengbu city.

"Seven or eight police officers from the National Security Bureau came to our home around 10 o'clock in the morning, and they took my husband away for 10 days of detention," said Zhong Xuemei, Li's wife.

"I don't know why he was detained and he did nothing wrong," Zhong added.

Zhong was formally informed about her husband's detention when she went to a nearby police station to send his personal items.

"The notice said Li Wenge was detained for 'disturbing social order,'" the wife told RFA.

She said the police notice indicated that his detention was over a report written by him and Wuhan-based dissident Qin Yongmin about dissident writer Wu Lebao who was allegedly tortured while in detention in Bengbu.

"It alleges that my husband distorted the facts, spreading slander against the [Chinese] Communist Party," Zhong said.

Critical articles

Wu was detained for more than three months earlier this year for posting articles critical of the government on the Internet.

On his release at the end of last month, reports about his torture in detention surfaced.

Li and Qin sent out an online appeal for an investigation into the case, condemning what they called police atrocities.

However, their petition led to a police crackdown.

On Nov. 16, police in Wuhan searched Qin's home and also confiscated his computer hard drive and put him on a 10-day detention. Qin is expected to be released later this week.

"I believe that the detention of Mr. Li Wenge has two reasons," said Chengdu-based dissident Huang Qi in an interview on Tuesday.

"The first one is that he launched an appeal for released rights activist Wu Lebao who was tortured during his detention. And the second one is that Li supported a series of campaigns against human rights abuses in the southern province of Guangdong," Huang explained.

Huang pointed out that Li has been one of the leading human rights activists in China, saying he worked on a low profile but relentlessly exposed human rights violations.

Huang warned the Chinese authorities against continuing with the crackdown.

"The people's rights campaign in China has currently developed to a stage where the authorities are beginning to have dialogues with rights activists. Under these circumstances, any local people or organization who clamps down on rights activists will be nailed on the 'Pillar of Shame.'"

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Ping Chen.

>> Original Source

By Radio FREE Asia

November 21, 2011

A letter is sent to the government complaining of official harassment of candidates.

More than 40 independent candidates in the forthcoming district-level parliamentary poll in the southwestern province of Sichuan delivered a protest letter to government headquarters on Monday at widespread harassment from local officials.

"Today we...went to the Sichuan provincial government and [Communist] Party committee to tell them about the local [government] trying to prevent us from taking part normally in the elections," said Chen Qian, who is seeking nomination in her home district of Jinniu.

"A lot of us have been oppressed, beaten and put under surveillance," said would-be candidate Hu Jinqiong. "[Today] we went to the provincial government to ask for their protection."

Fellow candidate Chen Qian said the activists intended to participate in the election process according to China's election law.

"We are taking part in the elections according to law, so they must protect us according to law," she said.

She said "evil forces" were acting with impunity towards local people who wished to use a clause in China's election law allowing candidates with the signatures of more than 10 constituents to seek nomination in elections to local lawmaking bodies.

However, when the group got to the government offices, they received scant response.

"They registered all of us with our ID cards, and then they just didn't say anything," Chen said. "There were all these state security policemen taking photos and video of us."

She said the campaigners' own cameras were confiscated and the photos deleted before they were handed back.

"There were more of them than there were of us," Chen said.

Meeting refusal

Li Zhaoxiu, who is also seeking election to local branches of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament, said officials refused to meet with the whole group.

"They would only allow three of us," he said. "Three of us; Hu Jinjing, Wang Binru and Chen Qian from Chengdu."

The activists presented the authorities with an open letter detailing their complaints, signed by more than 40 people, Chen said after the meeting.

More than two million lawmakers at the local levels will be elected in more than 2,000 counties and 30,000 townships through December 2012. The poll is held every five years.

However, officials have warned that there is "no such thing" as an independent candidate, and ordered the media not to cover those who seek election outside the ruling Communist Party.

Apart from a token group of "democratic parties" which never oppose or criticize the Party, opposition political parties are banned in China, and those who set them up are frequently handed lengthy jail terms.

Liu Yongfang, who has campaigned for many years in her home county of Shuangliu against forced evictions, said she was used to being on the wrong end of official ire from her six years as a petitioner.

"They locked us up and threatened us, and when we had to rent a place to live, they put pressure on the landlord to kick us out," Liu said.

"Now I want to take part in the NPC elections in order to continue my work on behalf of the rights and welfare of ordinary people," she added.

Corruption

Elections have already been held elsewhere in China this year, amid complaints of corruption and irregular polling procedures.

Many Beijing residents weren't told that they had a right to mark their ballot paper secretly in a polling booth, according to activists involved with the election process.

On Monday, residents of Changzhi county in the eastern province of Shanxi said their local officials brought the ballot boxes door-to-door to people's houses.

"Yes," said a local resident, asked if a video posted of the incident was accurate. "We were not happy about it...There is a lot of shady practice," he said.

"They were going to people's homes...it was all out in the open," the resident said.

An official who answered the phone at the Changzhi county government offices confirmed the incident took place.

"Well, the situation (you refer to) did happen," the official said, but made no further comment.

Another local resident said he hadn't voted because he didn't want officials to see his choice.

Reported by Wen Yuqing for RFA's Cantonese service and by Qiao Long for the Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

>> Original Source

By Associated Press | via UNCENSORED yahoo!news

November 16, 2011

By Susanne Beyer | SPIEGEL Online International (Germany)

November 17, 2011

Chinese poet Liao Yiwu recently moved to Germany, where his books are best-sellers. His self-imposed exile has allowed him to finally publish his memoir, which reveals the abuses and torture he suffered during his years in prison. The book is a shocking indictment of the Chinese justice system.

The old man seemed unflappable as he spoke. Sitting in a wheelchair, his wooden cane always close at hand and his thick, silvery gray shock of hair as neatly parted as ever, he talked about China, presenting himself as someone who knew the place well, having been there 12 or 15 times. "I admire what China has accomplished since Mao Zedong's death in 1976," he said.

But he didn't stop there. He continued on to say that, while it's true China isn't a democracy, the country has nonetheless managed to create an economic boom for itself, with the result that "hardly anyone living in China today could say they aren't doing better now than at any other point in their lives." This is "an enormous accomplishment," he added, and Chinese communism has been "successful." Then he raised his index finger, and, stabbing it in the air, said, in a reference to a famous quote by the Prussian king Frederick the Great: "They have the right to find their salvation in their own way."

This 92-year-old man wasn't just chatting by a fireplace somewhere, nor was he just anyone. The man in question was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, celebrated as the grandfather of the nation. And Schmidt said all this as a guest on Germany's most important talk show, sitting across from Günther Jauch, the country's most respected talk-show host. At his side was the man who has set his sights on becoming the next chancellor, Peer Steinbrück. The talk-show host said nothing at all in response to Schmidt's theories, but quickly changed the subject. Steinbrück, for his part, suggested the theories were "in need of some fleshing out," then praised Western-style democratic rule of law in a roundabout way.

Schmidt got away with his statements without criticism, in front of more than 5 million viewers, and with applause from the studio audience.

An Interesting Conversation Partner

The former chancellor certainly appeared sprightly on that talk show three weeks ago, and considering the fact that he seems to be constantly out and about and meeting people, perhaps he could -- though it's just a suggestion -- spare a little time for someone who might make an interesting conversation partner: the friendly 53-year-old Chinese man who has written the year's most brutal and shocking book, and insists every word in it is true.

The man is Liao Yiwu and the book lays out his recollections from nearly four years spent in Chinese prisons, following his arrest and conviction for writing a poem called "Massacre" in response to the bloody suppression of the 1989 demonstrations at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. His latest book, published in German as "Für ein Lied und hundert Lieder" ("For a Song and a Hundred Songs"), is an eyewitness report from the epicenter of human rights abuse, a volume that overflows with blood, urine and excrement.

"Admiration" for China? "The right to find their salvation in their own way?" Liao Yiwu was astonished when told about the former chancellor's statements. He asked whether Schmidt really uttered those precise words, then shook his head.

On Thursday of last week, Liao had just arrived in Munich after a book tour in the United States, in order to accept the Geschwister Scholl literary prize for his prison memoir on Nov. 14. He found his way, exhausted and shivering in the cold, to a restaurant in Munich's English Garden for this interview, but when he heard Schmidt's words quoted, he was suddenly wide awake.

Anyone who talks that way is afraid of jeopardizing trade with China, he said, but such people bring "bad thoughts into the world." If trade is more important than human rights and dignity, "then the end of the world has arrived." And no one should deceive themselves about the Communist Party, he said. "It has a golden body and two faces. It shows the Chinese people its fierce face, and the West its pleasant one."

Multiple Versions

Liao Yiwu described that fierce side in his book. He was forbidden to publish it in China or abroad, but S. Fischer Verlag, a German publishing house, was interested in releasing it this summer. Another of Liao's books, published in English as "The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up," had been well received in Germany two years before. In that book, Liao records his conversations with China's poor and disenfranchised, the toilet cleaners and migrant workers, and those persecuted for their political views.

Liao was forced to write multiple versions of his prison memoir. The first version, hand-written and his only copy of the work, was confiscated by the police. So was the second. For the third version, he was able to write on a computer and save back-up copies. After investing so many years in the work, Liao was determined to see it published in Germany. He fled China for Berlin in early July, and the book was released later the same month.

His escape saved not only the book, but himself as well, Liao said. If he had stayed in China, the book couldn't have been published. And if it had been published, he would have been put on trial. And then it would have started all over again.

'Open Fire'

Liao writes in his book that he was a "romantic" before he went to prison, a successful young poet in China during the 1980s, talented, but naïve and apolitical.

The turning point for him came on June 4, 1989, with the massacre at Tiananmen Square. The words poured out of him, and "Massacre" was the result.

Open fire, open fire, open fire
Shoot women, students and children
Shoot workers, teachers and vendors
Riddle them with bullets
[...]
Wipe out the flowers, forest, school campuses, love, and the pure air
Shoot, shoot and shoot...
I feel good and I feel high

Liao's taped recording of the poem circulated among dissidents. In 1990, he was arrested and taken to an interrogation prison. "They exposed my head, then my body. The (prisoners appointed as guards) examined the clothing they'd torn from my body, centimeter by centimeter, then piled it up nearby. Only then did they examine my mouth, my armpits and the soles of my feet. I clutched both my empty fists at my sides, then moved instinctively to pull up the pants that weren't there, when their leader ordered me to stick out my bottom -- and, with the utmost care, inserted a bamboo stick into my anus."

"I hadn't been exposed to the gaze of others this way, without a stitch of clothing on my body, since I was a baby. The exhibition lasted about seven minutes, but it was longer than an entire lifetime ... God damn it, I hadn't thought the first blow would already bring me to my knees."

Beaten with Batons

He was kept in a cell near the latrines, and from there taken to his interrogations. The guards beat him with electric batons, one time delivering 100 blows in a single interrogation, another time for 20 minutes without pause. They cuffed his hands behind his back, once for 23 days straight. The handcuffs were often too tight, causing his hands to swell and the metal to dig into his skin.

There was a clear hierarchy among the prisoners, about 20 of them were held in "a bit more than 20 square meters" (215 square feet). The higher-ranking prisoners were waited on by the lower-ranking ones. There were the "pleasure servants," feminine young men with pretty faces who sang and danced for the higher-ranking prisoners, slept naked beside them and performed sexual favors. Then there were the torturers, merciless with their defenseless victims.

A so-called "menu" circulated among the prisoners, offering 45 "dishes," each a description of a different method of torture. "Twice-roasted meat, served on a steel plate: First, the victim's naked back is pricked at random with bamboo needles, causing thousands of punctures. These are strewn with salt, then the entire thing taped up in bandages. Once the blood has clotted, the bandages are torn off."

Liao Yiwu left prison a broken man, and China's enemy. In one poem, he describes his "fatherland" as a "country of criminals" and exclaims, "I want to see you in prison. I want you, too, to see how it feels to have your hands bound at your back." He asks whether the country wants "for your people to love you like a prostitute loves her client."

No More Potatoes

Writing gives him dignity. He's no longer afraid. And life is about survival.

He feels lost even during the days in Munich leading up to the acceptance of his award, although he has friends here with him. But how can he feel joyful, given his history? How can he, when a friend he has felt closely connected to for 30 years is in prison? Author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, one of the individuals who signed the Charter 08 human rights manifesto, was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years' imprisonment for "inciting subversion of state power." Liao Yiwu thinks of his friend every day. Is he being tortured with electric batons this very minute?

At the restaurant in Munich, Liao orders a fish stew, but leaves half of it uneaten. "It's the potatoes," says the friend sitting next to him. "There were always potatoes in prison. Now he can't force them down."

Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

>> Original Source

By Radio FREE Asia

November 16, 2011

Rights activists detail the detention and torture of netizens who called for street protests in China.

A Chinese netizen in the eastern province of Anhui was detained for more than 100 days on suspicion of involvement in recent calls for a Middle East-inspired "Jasmine" revolution and was tortured, fellow activists said this week.

Wu Lebao was released from criminal detention this week after signing an undertaking not to meet with other activists, according to rights activist Li Wenge.

Li said Wu had lost around 40 pounds and suffered muscle wastage and psychological damage during his time inside.

"When he was in the detention center ... he developed sores because he was only able to sit in a single position and his clothing wasn't changed," Li said. "He wasn't able to move around so he developed circulation problems."

"Physically, he is recovering all right but he still needs to vent emotionally," Li said.

Wuhan-based rights activist Qin Yongmin, who was himself detained by police on Wednesday, said a large number of activists had "disappeared" nationwide in the crackdown on calls for "Jasmine" protests on the streets of Chinese cities.

The protests themselves appeared to attract more police and journalists than participants.

Police would take people to an undisclosed location with black bags over their heads and hold them, sometimes questioning or torturing them, said Qin, who runs a rights newsletter called the China Human Rights Observer.

"One of their most common practices is to have you sitting in one place and not to allow you to move around," Qin said. "Even this is pretty unbearable."

"If you move, they beat you ... They also use various methods of terrorizing people which I won't go into here, because the people themselves don't want to talk about it any more."

Wu was detained on July 13 at the height of a police security clampdown ahead of the ruling Communist Party's 90th anniversary.

He was released on Oct. 28, Li said.

Qin said that in the central province of Hubei, activist Gao Chunlian was detained simply for retweeting a microblog post about the "Jasmine" rallies and adding the word "Guiyang."

Gao was detained in February on suspicion of "incitement to subvert state power," and had yet to be released, he said.

Pressured over boycott

Meanwhile, in the southern city of Guangzhou, rights activist Lin Xuqiang said he had come under intense pressure from state security police after he tried to organize a boycott of China's train services on Sunday in protest at the Wenzhou high-speed rail crash of July 23.

"I have just got a call from the state security police, who are very worked up about this," Lin said.

"If I want to do something for the people of China, I will have to take the pressure," he said. "After all, a lot of people died in the 1911 revolution."

"But I am already middle-aged and single, so I have nothing to lose really," he said.

Lin's campaign was aimed at giving a focus to popular anger over the high-speed rail crash, which drew widespread criticism over official handling of the rescue effort and crash inquiry.

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.

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.

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

Reported by Hai Nan for RFA's Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

>> Original Report

By Grace Ng | The Straits Times | ASIA News Network

November 11, 2011

By Michael Bristow | BBC World News

November 10, 2011

The three men acted swiftly and efficiently - they had a job to do. They yanked open the car door, barked a few orders and then snatched equipment from out of our hands: cameras, mobile phones and recording devices. We were told to stay put while one man radioed for help.

This was the scene at the entrance to the village of Dongshigu in China's Shandong Province, where a self-taught legal activist has been virtually imprisoned in his own home.

Chen Guangcheng, blind since childhood, is watched by plainclothes security officers, who appear to be acting outside the law - but with the authorities' approval.

Activists have been trying to visit him for months; many say they are beaten up for their efforts. The BBC saw the kind of men they say they come up against.

Mr Chen made his name by helping women who said they had been forced to have abortions or undergo sterilisation. He helped expose the harsher side of China's family planning policies.

His activism eventually landed him in jail. The 39-year-old was sentenced to more than four years in 2006 for disrupting traffic and damaging property.

He denied the allegations, with many believing the charges were brought simply to silence him.

The activist was released last year, but, along with his wife and daughter, has spent much of the time since confined to his home.

Although he is isolated from the world, unable to leave a village surrounded by orchards and hills, Mr Chen has not been forgotten.

A steady trickle of activists has been making its way to his home, near the booming city of Linyi, for the past several months. But few get through the security cordon.

Personal grievance

A group of 37 tried to visit at the end of October and were attacked by about 100 unidentified individuals, according to the New York-based organisation Human Rights in China.

One of those who went along was Liu Li, a 49-year-old who has been living in Beijing for the last six months, pursuing his own personal grievance against the government.

Mr Liu is still on crutches, the result of being beaten up outside Mr Chen's village, he said. But he does not regret trying to visit him.

"Chen Guangcheng represents all that's wrong and unfair when it comes to human rights in China. He lost his freedom - so we want to visit him to show our support," he said.

Others have shown their dissatisfaction with the legal activist's treatment by posting photographs on the internet showing themselves wearing dark glasses similar to ones worn by Mr Chen.

The case has also attracted international attention.

Gary Locke, the US ambassador in China, recently wrote to the Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, to ask about Mr Chen.

The claims of attacks on activists outside Mr Chen's village sound, at the very least, plausible.

Rule of law?

When the BBC visited, it was clear the men who stopped us were well drilled and organised - although it was impossible to say who had hired them.

There appeared to be a chain of command: one man took took some money from our car and put it into his pocket, before someone else told him to put it back.

The men wore plain clothes, showed no identification and refused to answer questions about who they were. They did not ask before taking what they wanted.

After searching our equipment they gave it back and then told us to leave the village.

Beijing-based lawyer Lan Zhixue said the government had offered no legal reason for restricting the activities of the blind activist, and Chinese law gave them no excuse.

"He should have the full range of freedoms - the freedom to move around, the freedom to speak out and the freedom to meet friends," he said.

The government does not appear to have even offered a veneer of legality in this case, a worrying development according to Mr Lan.

"Without the rule of law, how can we talk about harmony and stability?" he added, referring to watchwords often used by the Chinese government to justify its actions.

Other legal experts go further, saying the treatment meted out to Chen Guangcheng is common - and at least known by those at the very top of the Chinese Communist Party, if not authorised by them.

Jerome Cohen, an authority on China's legal system, said: "The leaders of China are very smart guys and they are very knowledgeable about the full scope of unrest and dissatisfaction."

Mr Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law, said officials used repression because they feared that dissatisfaction, fanned by people like Mr Chen, could undermine their rule.

China likes to say it is a country ruled by laws; government spokespeople regularly repeat this mantra in answer to questions about the treatment of activists and dissidents.

In October, it issued an official document on the development it has made in establishing a "socialist legal system".

This has been "solidly put in place", declared the paper. Chen Guangcheng, and many others, might disagree.

Plainclothes security officials stop the BBC from visiting Chen Guangcheng

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By BBC World News

November 07, 2011

Chinese firms have agreed to increase their censorship of internet content as authorities seeks greater control over the medium.

The heads of 39 companies including Baidu and Alibaba agreed to "curb rumours" and the spreading of "harmful information", official media reported.

Chinese authorities has often been accused of censoring online material to maintain control over its population.

China is the world's biggest internet market.

The move comes just weeks after Communist Party leaders agreed a list of "cultural development guidelines" which included increased controls over social media and penalties for those spreading "harmful information".

Increased scrutiny

The decision was agreed upon after a three-day session hosted by the government and attended by heads of some of the biggest internet and technology companies in China.

The meeting was presided over by Wang Chen, director of the State Council Information Office, the government's propaganda and information arm.

After the session, internet companies agreed to "conscientiously safeguard the broadcasting of positive messages online," Xinhua news agency reported.

China has more than 500 million internet users and authorities have been concerned about the spread of information they deem unsuitable.

Last month a university student was detained after being accused of posting a fake news story about a man killing eight village chiefs in the south-western province of Yunnan.

A Shanghai resident was held in police custody for 15 days after accusations he had posted a falsified income tax document online.

Miao Wei, minister of Industry and Information Technology, called upon internet companies to strengthen their research and development to ensure better censorship of content.

>> Original Source

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times

04 November 2011

Membership in the upper ranks of the Chinese Communist Party has always had a few undeniable advantages. There are the state-supplied luxury sedans, special schools for the young ones and even organic produce grown on well-guarded, government-run farms. When they fall ill, senior leaders can check into 301 Military Hospital, long considered the capital's premier medical institution.

But even in their most addled moments of envy, ordinary Beijingers could take some comfort in the knowledge that the soupy air they breathe on especially polluted days also finds its way into the lungs of the privileged and pampered.

Such assumptions, it seems, are not entirely accurate.

As it turns out, the homes and offices of many top leaders are filtered by high-end devices, at least according to a Chinese company, the Broad Group, which has been promoting its air-purifying machines in advertisements that highlight their ubiquity in places where many officials work and live.

The company's vice president, Zhang Zhong, said there were more than 200 purifiers scattered throughout Great Hall of the People, the office of China's president, Hu Jintao, and Zhongnanhai, the walled compound for senior leaders and their families. "Creating clean, healthy air for our national leaders is a blessing to the people," boasts the company's promotional material, which includes endorsements from a variety of government and corporate leaders, among them Long Yongtu, a top economic official who insists on bringing the device along for car rides and hotel stays. "Breathing clean air is a basic human need," he says in a testimonial.

In some countries, the gushing endorsement of a well-placed official would be considered a public relations coup. But in China, where resentment of the high and mighty is on the rise, news of the company's advertising campaign is stirring a maelstrom of criticism. "They don't have to eat gutter oil or drink poisoned milk powder and now they're protected from filthy air," said one posting on Sina Weibo, the country's most popular microblog service. "This shows their indifference to the lives of ordinary people."

News that Chinese leaders are largely insulated from Beijing's famously foul air comes at a time of unusually heavy pollution in the capital. In recent weeks, the capital has been continuously shrouded by a beige pall and readings from the United States Embassy's rooftop air monitoring device have repeatedly registered unsafe levels of particulate matter.

But those very readings, posted hourly on Twitter or through an iPhone app app, have prompted a public debate over whether the Chinese government is purposely obscuring the extent of the nation's air pollution. Unlike the American Embassy readings, Chinese environmental officials do not publicly release data on the smallest particulates, those less than 2.5 micrometers, which scientists say are most harmful because they are able to penetrate the lungs so deeply. Instead, government data covers only pollutants larger than 10 micrometers -- a category that includes sand blown in from the arid north and dust stirred up from construction sites.

Environmental officials prefer to focus on air quality improvements of recent years, largely achieved by replacing coal-fired stoves with electric heaters and closing heavy industry in and around the capital. Driving restrictions have slightly eased the environmental injury of the 700,000 new vehicles that last year joined the capital's jammed roadways.

But when pressed, those same officials acknowledge that their pollution metrics willfully ignore the smaller particles, much of them generated by car and truck exhaust. In fact, the American Embassy's monitor has become an unwelcome intrusion into China's domestic affairs, according to a diplomatic cable released this year by Wiki Leaks, which said a Foreign Ministry official had requested that the Americans stop publicizing the data.

The director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a nonprofit organization in Beijing, said many government officials feared that publicly revealing such data could stymie development or dent the image of cities that had been trumpeting their environmental bona fides.

"I don't agree with this philosophy," said the director, Ma Jun. "The government's more urgent priority should be to warn the public when the air quality is dangerous so people susceptible to poor air quality, like children or the elderly, can make decisions to protect their health."

The government does appear to be moving in that direction. In September, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said it planned to amend the nation's air quality standards to include the smallest particulates, although it has not released a timetable for adopting the new standards.

Officials in Beijing, however, are apparently not quite ready to embrace it. In response to criticism over the heavy smog of recent weeks, a spokesman for the city's environmental protection bureau, Du Shaozhong, assured the public that they should feel secure in the government's own readings, which termed the city's air "slightly polluted" even as the embassy monitor found it so hazardous that it exceeded measurable levels. "China's air quality should not be judged from data released by foreign embassies in Beijing," he said.

According to the Broad Group's Web site, it did not take much to convince the nation's Communist Party leaders that they would do well to acquire the firm's air purifiers, some of which cost $2,000. To make their case, company executives installed one in a meeting room used by members of the Politburo Standing Committee. The deal was apparently sealed a short while later, when technicians made a show of cleaning out the soot-laden filters. "After they saw the inklike dirty water, Broad air purifier became the national leaders' appointed air purifier!" the Web site said.

 Edy Yin contributed research.

>> Original Source

By Radio FREE Asia

November 04, 2011

Chinese authorities move to restrict expressions of Tibetan national culture.

Chinese authorities in the Tibetan capital Lhasa have closed an exhibition of Tibetan art amid growing efforts by Tibetans to assert their cultural and national identity in a region increasingly dominated by Han Chinese.

The exhibition, which was shut down two hours after it opened, included modern paintings and a display of wooden writing boards called jangshing, traditionally used to teach the written Tibetan language.

"[On Oct. 16] there were many people browsing through the exhibition," said a Lhasa resident, speaking to RFA on condition of anonymity.

"Among them were police and other security officials," the man said.

"Since it was really crowded, I left with the intention to return when fewer people were there. But when I came back on Oct. 17, the exhibition had closed with no word of explanation."

"I heard later that it was ordered to close," the man said.

Authorities may have shut down the exhibition by Tibetan artist Kalnor because of the "sensitivity of Tibetans displaying traditional cultural themes," he said, adding, "There are heavy restrictions on all Tibetans living in the Lhasa area now."

Modern and traditional themes

The exhibition, arranged in three rooms, had included displays of old and modern styles of writing and contemporary paintings done on traditional backgrounds, the man said.

In one painting, a Buddhist Wheel of Life was depicted with a lamp placed at its center, and with moths flying into its flame. In another, monks were shown flying in the sky.

A third picture showed the 21 Taras, popular female divinities, painted on butterfly backgrounds.

The main section of exhibition contained the jangshing, wooden boards used for practicing Tibetan writing, the man said.

"These were arranged as if for a class, with writing boards, bamboo sticks for writing, and bags containing white power used to trace the lines shown on the boards."

"It was an interesting display of Tibetan art," he said.

"I wanted to see more of it in detail, but the crowd was so overwhelming that I couldn't view all of the items."

'A critical role'

Speaking in an interview on the state-controlled Xinhua Television Network, artist Kalnor said that in old Tibet, wooden writing boards had played "a critical role" in teaching the Tibetan language.

"Now we have computers and paper to write with, but for Tibetan writing practice, we have to depend on jangshing," said Kalnor, who learned traditional writing from his father and now teaches art at the Toelung Dechen Middle School outside Lhasa.

"I want to revive the old tradition of practicing writing and initiate further improvements," he said.

The Xinhua interview aired on Oct. 20 and did not mention that the exhibition had been closed.

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama recently called on the Chinese government to change its "repressive" policies in Tibet, citing China's crackdown on monasteries and policies curtailing use of the Tibetan language.

Eleven Tibetans inside Tibet have self-immolated so far this year in protest against Chinese rule.

Tensions in the Tibet Autonomous Region and in Tibetan-populated areas in China's provinces have not subsided since anti-China riots swept through the Tibetan Plateau in March 2008.

Reported by RFA's Tibetan service. Translations by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.

>> Original Source

By BBC World News

November 01, 2011

Chinese authorities have served Ai Weiwei with an official demand telling him to pay 15m yuan ($2.3m; £1.4m) within 15 days, the artist has said.

He said he had rejected the notice, and was not sure whether he would pay.

The artist, one of China's most famous people, was held for almost three months earlier this year before being accused of "economic crimes".

His supporters say the accusations are part of a plot to silence Mr Ai, who is an outspoken critic of the government.

Mr Ai said he would pay the money if it was proved to be a tax issue.

But he said he had not been able to review his company's account books because they had been taken by the authorities.

"I am only a designer of the company. I never signed any of the company's contracts, nor did I ever read any of the company's finance reports, so I have no idea," he told the BBC.

Mr Ai was picked up by police in April as authorities rounded-up activists, following calls on websites for a Middle Eastern-style Jasmine revolution in China.

The state news agency Xinhua said in June that Mr Ai had been released "because of his good attitude in confessing" to tax evasion and because he had agreed to pay back the money he owed.

But on Tuesday he said: "It was not true that I admitted to tax evasion charges. I was never formally arrested and never charged."

"If they really want to prove that I am a bad guy, why don't they behave themselves to make the process more transparent?" he later added.

Since his incarceration, he has won numerous art awards, and was recently named the world's most powerful artist in a poll carried out by an art magazine.

His case has also become a cause celebre for rights activists and critics of China's Communist Party.

And he said he had not seen any evidence showing that the firm had evaded tax.

>> Original Source