Doing business in China: June 2010 Archives

By Brad Stone and David Barboza | The New York Times
June 29, 2010

In an effort to appease Beijing as it seeks to renew its license to operate in mainland China, Google plans to stop automatically redirecting Chinese users to its Hong Kong site.

For the last three months, Google has found a clever way to overcome its ethical objections to self-censoring search results on its Web site for mainland China, google.cn. It has automatically redirected Chinese users to an uncensored search site, google.com.hk, maintained on the company's servers in Hong Kong.

There was only one problem with this solution: the Chinese government objected to it.

Late Monday in the United States, Google acknowledged those objections in a blog post written by David Drummond, its chief legal officer. Mr. Drummond wrote that the Chinese government was ready to reject Google's application for renewal of its Internet Content Provider license, which would effectively mean the company would have to shut down its Web site in the country entirely. The license renewal application is due on Wednesday.

Mr. Drummond wrote that in an effort to continue to serve Google's Chinese users while placating the government, the company is proposing a compromise. In the next few days, it will stop automatically redirecting users to its Hong Kong site.

Instead, Chinese users will see a page at google.cn, which offers a single link to the Hong Kong site, where they can conduct searches or use other Google services, like translation and music, that require no filtering.

The company said it had resubmitted its content provider license based on this approach and hopes the Chinese government will find it more palatable. If the government continues to object, Google would lose its ability to operate a Web site in China altogether.

Google appears to have made the compromise out of concern that Beijing is preparing to entirely shut down its google.cn, which could confuse users in China by failing to notify them that they can reach the Hong Kong site. Because users have grown accustomed to google.cn it could hurt Google's traffic in China, the world's largest Internet market.

"If the Chinese government isn't happy with them running uncensored search results out of the Hong Kong site -- I don't see why they'll be any happier just because it becomes one click away," Danny Sullivan, who runs the search-analysis Web site Search Engine Land, told Bloomberg News.

China's foreign ministry on Tuesday declined to comment.

"This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page," Mr. Drummond wrote.

"This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self censor and, we believe, with local law," he continued. "We are therefore hopeful that our license will be renewed on this basis so we can continue to offer our Chinese users services via google.cn."

Under the current setup in mainland China, search results are still censored. People in the mainland can conduct a search and see the results but often they can't open the citation because those results are censored by the government.

Up until January, Google had censored search results on behalf of the government in Beijing. Google had come under intense criticism from civil rights advocates in the West, and Google in January announced it would no longer do the censoring.

"As a company we aspire to make information available to users everywhere, including China," Mr. Drummond wrote. "It's why we have worked so hard to keep Google.cn alive, as well as to continue our research and development work in China."

Baidu, China's leading search engine, will start hiring software engineers directly from the United States early next month, as it seeks to expand its technological capabilities and raise its global profile, Reuters reported from Shanghai on Tuesday. Baidu stands to be the biggest beneficiary in China's search sector following Google's problems in the country.

Baidu plans to hire 30 mid- to senior-level software engineers from Silicon Valley at a job fair on July 10 to drive new technology projects, its first direct hiring from the United States, a Baidu spokesman said.

"Baidu believes that talent is the key to our success as a company, and we go where ever the best talent can be found, whether here in China or in Silicon Valley," Zheng Bin, Baidu's human resources director said in a statement to Reuters. "As we develop more and more advanced search technologies, our need for world-class talent will only continue to increase."

>> Original Report

By Christopher Bodeen - The Associated Press via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News (Canada)
June 22, 2010

A Tibetan environmentalist once praised by Chinese state media as a model philanthropist went on trial Tuesday in western China on what supporters say are politically motivated charges aimed at punishing him for his activism.

Karma Samdrup, 42, appeared gaunt and shrunken during Tuesday's opening session, his wife and lawyer said.

In his statement to the court, he said that during months of interrogation, officers beat him, deprived him of sleep for days on end, and drugged him with a substance that made his eyes and ears bleed, they said.

"If not for his voice, I would not have recognized him," wife Zhenga Cuomao told The Associated Press by phone from the courthouse in remote Yanqi county in the Xinjiang region adjoining Tibet.

Karma Samdrup was arrested Jan. 3 after speaking up for his two brothers, also environmental activists, who were detained after accusing local officials in eastern Tibet of poaching endangered species. He is accused of dealing in looted antiquities, charges dating from 1998 that were not pursued until this year.

Lawyer Pu Zhiqiang alleged numerous irregularities in the prosecution, including the use of new documents that removed evidence favourable to his client and added new testimony against him. He said the indictment had been translated from Chinese into a Tibetan dialect different from that spoken by Karma Samdrup, making it impossible for him to understand it.

Pu also questioned the legitimacy of prosecutor Kuang Ying, saying he believed she had been transferred from the Xinjiang regional prosecutor's office specifically for the case in violation of regulations.

Pu said Kuang denied violence had been used against Karma Samdrup. People who answered calls to the court and prosecutors' office refused to answer questions.

Beatings and torture are believed to be routine among Chinese police, despite official bans.

While Karma Samdrup, named philanthropist of the year in 2006 by state broadcaster CCTV, was not known to be politically outspoken, authorities in tightly controlled Tibet are extremely sensitive to any form of social activism and criticism of their work, either explicit or implied.

Karma Samdrup's younger brother, Chime Namgyal, is reportedly serving a 21-month sentence in a labour camp on the vague charge of harming national security. His older brother, Rinchen Samdrup, was scheduled to be tried on a similar charge on Thursday, but that date has since been postponed.

The cases come amid increased repression of Tibetan intellectuals, an echo of the massive security crackdown that followed rioting in the capital Lhasa in 2008 in which at least 22 people died.

>> Original Source

By Radio Free Asia
June 14, 2010

Chinese authorities prevent a church leader from meeting with a congregation facing forced eviction.

An underground Christian pastor has been detained in the central China city of Zhengzhou, the church leader said from an interview in custody.

Pastor Zhang Mingxuan, president of the Association of Chinese Family Churches, was detained with his wife Sunday as the couple traveled by car to Yancheng city in the southeastern province of Jiangsu.

Police stopped the pastor and his wife on the road, taking them to a hotel in Henan province capital Zhengzhou, where Zhang is based.

Several police officers then questioned Zhang about his trip to Beijing earlier in June, as well as the purpose of his visit to Yancheng.

"I traveled to Beijing recently to meet a Christian who had just come back from the United States. Police questioned me about the meeting and about the man. My detention seems to be arranged by a request from the police in Beijing who know him well," Zhang said by telephone while in police custody Monday.0

"Another reason they detained me was because I was going to Yancheng, where a church faces forced demolition," he said.

Zhang said police had promised to free him Tuesday.

Planned demolition

The church Zhang planned to visit in Yancheng was erected according to city regulations in 2005 by a group of Christians who raised 5 million yuan (U.S. $732,000) for its construction.

But according to Zhang, developers had coveted the property since 2006 and managed to bring local officials on board, offering the congregation only 2,860,000 yuan (U.S. $419,000) in compensation to evacuate the premises.

Church members refused the deal, but authorities had recently ordered the building's demolition regardless.

Pastor Ding of the Yancheng church said Monday that officials are "planning to demolish our church by force."

"In fact they already demolished some auxiliary parts of the church in December 2008. We petitioned in the provincial capital of Nanjing and in Beijing several times, but did not get any help at all," Ding said.

Previous attempts

According to Ding, authorities in Yancheng beat up Christian worshippers affiliated with the church when attempting to demolish the church last December and on June 2, and managed to seize parts of the property.

"Because the main building of the church is sinking, we built up a buttress wall to support it at the end of last month," Ding said.

"But on June 2, scores of security personnel rushed into the church and destroyed the buttress wall. They beat up two old members who were hospitalized that night," he said.

"We reported the incident to the police the next day, but they didn't come. We hope that objective media outlets would come to report the news."

Phone calls to relevant government offices in Yancheng city went unanswered Monday.

June 14-16 is a public holiday in China.

Church groups targeted

China's underground churches are under constant fire from central authorities for operating outside of officially sanctioned religious activities.

Last month, police detained two Christians belonging to a family church in central China for more than two weeks.

The two detainees, Chen Fengming and Qin Gaiying, were part of a 30-member underground congregation who had gathered to pray in Henan province's Neixiang county when security officers stormed their place of worship.

According to an April 26 statement by the Texas-based religious rights watchdog China Aid, police at the detention center demanded 130 yuan (U.S. $19) from the family member of each detainee to pay for their cost of living.

In total, the group said, police demanded 1,850 yuan (U.S. $270) from family members, also as a "cost of living" payment, but never wrote receipts for the payments.

When asked if the "cost of living" fees constituted a ransom to release the detained Christian believers, a police officer who answered the phone at the Chimei township station said he could not comment because the case had been handled by county-level administrators.

Separately, more than 10 believers and church officials in Luoyang, Henan were detained May 5 when local authorities raided their house church.

Beijing-based house church activist Fan Yafeng said about one dozen people were detained and family members were told by police to pay 3,000 yuan (U.S. $440) for their release or they would face heavier penalties, including the possibility of "education through labor."

Officially an atheist country, China has an army of officials whose job is to watch over faith-based activities, which have spread rapidly in the wake of massive social change and economic uncertainty since economic reforms began 30 years ago.

Party officials are put in charge of Catholics, Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, and Protestants. Judaism isn't recognized, and worship in unapproved temples, churches, or mosques is against the law.

In its most recent report on human rights in China, the U.S. State Department said freedom of religion is permitted to varying degrees around China.

Original reporting by Fang Yuan for RFA's Mandarin service. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated by Ping Chen. Written for the Web in English by Joshua Lipes. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original Source

By Min Lee - Associated Press | via (UNCENSORED) Yahoo! News
June 11, 2010

Taiwan has pulled eight movies from China's leading international film festival, an official said Friday, citing concerns that festival organizers could use the occasion to assert Beijing's sovereignty over the self-ruled island.

The Taipei Film Commission withdrew the works from the Shanghai International Film Festival after noticing that organizers of a recent TV festival in the same Chinese city identified TV series from Taiwan as originating in "Taiwan, China," said Anne Lu, a publicist for the commission. The commission also canceled a planned news conference and party featuring Taiwanese filmmakers.

"We are worried that a similar situation to the TV series will recur," Lu told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing still claims the democratic island as its territory. Ties have warmed under current Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who takes a more conciliatory approach toward China.

A publicist at the Shanghai International Film Festival asked a reporter to send questions by e-mail, but didn't immediately respond.

The eight films are "Monga," "Au Revoir Taipei," "Hear Me," "More Than Close," "Orz Boys," "Yang Yang," "Three Times" and "Tonight Nobody Goes Home."

>> Original Source

By Radio Free Asia
June 09, 2010

Does labor action signal the end of the low-wage era?

A series of high-profile labor disputes likely signals the end of low-cost manufacturing in China, as workers walk out at three Honda plants in the Pearl River Delta and at a Taiwan-invested machinery plant in Jiangsu, analysts and activists say.

In the latest strike in southern China's Pearl River Delta region, workers at a third Honda auto parts plant in Guangdong province took to the streets Wednesday, official media reported.

The strike at Honda Lock (Guangdong) came after Honda was forced to suspend production at two of its Chinese factories because of disputes at parts joint venture Foshan Fengfu and at a wholly owned subsidiary parts supplier.

Production was suspended Wednesday at the two factories of Honda joint venture Guangqi Honda Automobile Co., Honda said in a statement, citing "a labor dispute."

Foshan Fengfu is a joint venture between Honda subsidiary Yutaka Giken, which owns about 70 percent, and a Taiwanese firm called Moonstone Holding.

Located in Foshan, a city in southern China's Guangdong province where Honda has its joint venture with Guangzhou Auto Group, the company makes exhaust pipes and other parts for Honda's Odyssey, Accord, and Fit models.

An employee who answered the phone at Foshan Fengfu Autoparts declined to give details of the strike.

"It's not convenient for me to talk about this," the employee said.

By Robert Saiget - AFP - via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
June 08, 2010

China on Tuesday defended its right to censor the Internet, saying it needed to do so to ensure state security, and cautioned other nations to respect how it polices the world's largest online population.

The government's white paper on the Internet in China -- where more than 400 million people are now online -- comes after a very public row with Google over web freedoms which prompted the US firm to shut down its Chinese search engine.

The Google spat over censorship and cyberattacks touched off a war of words with the United States over Internet freedom, at a time when ties were already suffering over US arms sales to Taiwan and a host of trade and currency issues.

China "advocates the exertion of technical means" in line with existing laws and international norms "to prevent and curb the harmful effects of illegal information on state security, the public interest and minors", it said.

Such laws and regulations allow the curbing of content on everything from "instigating racial hatred or discrimination and jeopardising ethnic unity" to gambling, violence and obscenity, the government noted.

"Effectively protecting Internet security is an important part of China's Internet administration, and an indispensable requirement for protecting state security and the public interest," it said.

Beijing operates a vast system of web censorship, sometimes referred to as the "Great Firewall of China". It blocks access to any content the government deems unacceptable, ranging from pornography to political dissent.

Critics at home and abroad complain that the Internet rules stifle criticism of the ruling Communist Party and restrict discussion on sensitive topics such as Tibet and the brutal crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests.

But China on Tuesday insisted it "guarantees the citizen's freedom of speech on the Internet as well as the public's right to know, to participate, to be heard and to oversee" -- and warned foreign nations to keep quiet on the issue.

"Within Chinese territory, the Internet is under the jurisdiction of Chinese sovereignty. The Internet sovereignty of China should be respected and protected," the government said.

During a visit to China last month, European Commission vice president Neelie Kroes said that Beijing's web censorship constituted a trade barrier that should be looked at by the World Trade Organisation.

Kroes, who is in charge of charting the European Union's digital agenda, said China's "Great Firewall" was a trade issue "as long as that is a real barrier for communication".

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, China is among the worst nations in the world oppressing Internet bloggers, and had jailed 24 journalists as of December 2009, many of them Internet bloggers.

>> Complete Report

By Philip Bowring (International Herald Tribune Op-Ed Contributor)  | The New York Times
June 03, 2010

A strike at Honda's plant at Foshan in southern China. Suicides and labor unrest at the giant Foxconn factory not far away in Shenzhen. Everywhere in coastal southern China pressure is growing for wage rises and better working conditions, particularly from the young, mobile workers who have converged on the region in recent years.

At one level this is just a demand for a fairer share of the China cake now mostly being eaten by enterprises, local and foreign, rather than by their workers. In almost no other country are employees' shares of national income as low as it is in "socialist" China.

But behind the surge of worker activism lies not ideology but some dull, fundamental data -- demographics. This year the percentage of China's population of working age people (15 to 64) peaks at 71.9 percent, the culmination of a steady rise over 30 years. Together with the birth bulge which preceded the introduction of the One Child policy in 1980 this increase drove workforce growth of 33 percent in 30 years and helped to fuel the export sweatshops of southern China.

Another important marker is just five years away: The absolute size of the working age population will peak by 2015 and then decline gradually. In practice, the peak of available workers may have already arrived because more people stay in school longer and thus do not enter the workforce until much later than 15. The participation of women in the workforce, at 70 percent, is as high as it is likely to get.

As important as the size of the workforce will be the change in its age composition. For almost two decades very rapid economic growth has been possible partly because of the mass migration of young people from rural areas to the towns driving urbanization and industrialization.

But this spring of youth escaping rural drudgery is drying up. The Honda strikers, like the Foxconn suicides, are mostly in their 20s. There is an instinctive realization among them that there is a diminishing number of youths to follow their migrant footsteps. There are also now more work opportunities in the towns and small cities closer to their rural homes.

For China as a whole there are currently only 106 million workers in the 15-19 age group compared with 122 million in the 20-24 group. China now has 378 million in their 40s and 50s but only 273 million under 20. The decline, which is continuing, in the number of the young and mobile has been greatest in rural areas. So China will have to find other ways of sustaining economic growth and gains in worker productivity.

This is actually good news for almost everyone -- except the control freaks of the Chinese Communist Party, and those who believe that investment is an end in itself, not a means to a better life. The more strikes, the more demands for higher wages, the more chance that China will see the shift toward a better balance between consumption and investment. The more chance too that investment itself will focus on raising labor productivity rather than on mega projects with scant economic return. Improvements in technical education and an innovative spirit in the private sector should keep productivity moving ahead.

Big wage increases will also reduce China's export competitiveness, eliminating a trade surplus that is positively damaging to the global economy as well as to China's low-paid workforce. It is past time that personal incomes that have lagged for so long start to grow faster than national income. More money for households will also mean less for military aggrandizement and prestige projects -- and maybe less to be laundered by corrupt officials through Macau's gambling tables. More consumption will make for greater long term economic stability than today's lop-sided focus on investment regardless of its rate of return.

There will be challenges. One is what will happen to agriculture as rural populations get ever older. Will consolidation of land holdings, now that transfers of agricultural land are allowed, happen on a big enough scale to allow the rapid mechanization of farming? Or will rural de-population and water shortages threaten a food crisis?

But that potential problem is further down the road. The harbingers of the coming demographic decade are the Foshan strikers.

>> Original Source 

By Radio Free Asia
June 03, 2010

China blocks efforts to commemorate the 1989 massacre in Beijing of pro-democracy demonstrators.

Attempts to stage public events and protests commemorating the 21st anniversary of the military crackdown on the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square have been largely thwarted by Chinese authorities, activists said.

"The Chinese government continues to refuse to openly and truthfully address the events of June 4, 1989, and persists in its efforts to silence Chinese citizens who seek to commemorate the massacre," the nongovernment network Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said.

Activists using the microblogging service Twitter said a planned commemorative event on the campus of Beijing University, one of the centers of the student movement two decades ago, had failed owing to the presence of large numbers of state security police.

"I am at the Beijing University campus," tweeted user PKUbuzheteng Thursday. "Looking at the current situation, it seems that the protest event hasn't been able to proceed."

Twitter users had called on netizens to arrive wearing the mourning color white at the university campus on June 3 to mark the night of the beginning of the advance on the student headquarters by the People's Liberation Army.

"It seems that they have stationed one national security policeman at the gate, with others walking around the place in all directions," PUKbuzheteng wrote.

'Scuffles,' detentions reported

And Twitter user freemoren reported "scuffles between police and bystanders" outside the Great Hall of the People and numerous government departments, including the ruling Communist Party's powerful central propaganda department.

Police in Beijing detained six artists ahead of the anniversary as they staged public memorial events for the crackdown outside the capital's Museum of Fine Arts, including a sit-in and a signature campaign, artist Zhu Yanguang said.

Earlier this week, a cartoon entered for a competition which depicted a child drawing a line of tanks stopped by a single person at the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper was removed from the paper's Web site.

"We decided pro-actively to remove the cartoon as it was being maliciously misread and misunderstood by some people, leading to a negative influence," an employee at the newspaper said.

"There was no question of being put under pressure."

But Beijing-based dissident Jiang Qisheng said the government had been obsessive about suppressing any mention of the crackdown for 20 years.

"I see the event as the massacre of poor people by an army, but the government thinks that it was right and proper to kill them," Jiang said.

"But it still won't come out and admit it."

Hong Kong criticized

Accusing police across China of "harassing and intimidating activists against speaking out as June 4 approaches", CHRD said that at least four Beijing-based individuals are still serving jail sentences for their participation in the 1989 protests.

It added that a further three activists had been sent to labor camp last year for their attempts to mark the 20th anniversary of the crackdown, which officials refuse to discuss openly, and which left hundreds, perhaps thousands, dead and an unknown number injured.

It slammed the seizure by Hong Kong police of two replicas of the 1989 Goddess of Democracy statue ahead of memorial events, which have taken place in the territory every year, calling it "an unprecedented act of interference with the territory's commemorative activities."

Hong Kong activists were in uproar on forums and microblogging services after the territory's Chinese University of Hong Kong refused to allow a sculpture of the Goddess to be displayed on campus, citing a need for political neutrality.

They called on people attending Saturday's memorial service in Victoria Park to carry the statue to the campus in protest after the event was ended.

Hong Kong Democratic legislator James To also hit out at the government's deportation of New Zealand national Chen Weiming, who sculpted the statue.

"The government is obviously playing dirty tricks and this must be condemned," To told local media. "I think it is playing dirty tricks."

"[I] believe that all the government has done is to suppress the June 4 remembrance activity ... I think the government is to be condemned," he said.

Hong Kong Security Secretary Ambrose Lee denied the charges, saying that the immigration authorities had acted fully in compliance with the law.

He said police had already returned the confiscated statues to the memorial organizers, the Hong Kong Alliance for the Support of Patriotic and Democratic Movement in China.

Activists watched

Meanwhile, dozens of rights activists remained under surveillance across China, or had been warned off participating in any public events.

In Beijing, civil rights lawyer Teng Biao had been subjected to surveillance, while writer Wang Debang had received a warning.

In Xian, activist Yang Hai said police had said they would take him out of town until after the anniversary, while a second activist Zhang Jiankang hadn't been seen since being called in to "drink tea" with national security police.

In southwestern China, Suining-based dissident Liu Xianbin and Chongqing-based rights activist Mu Jiayu both reported being under surveillance on the eve of June 4, CHRD said in a statement on its Web site.

Original reporting in Mandarin by He Ping and in Cantonese by Grace Kei Lai-see. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated from the Chinese and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original Source

By AsiaNews.it
04 June 2010

Open Letter of the families of those killed in the massacre of June 4, 1989. The Party does not respond and waits for them to "die" to get rid of the problem. With the anniversary approaching, families are being placed under control and isolation, their phone lines, internet and mail are blocked.

The families of those killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre (June 4, 1989), are demanding that Beijing break the silence and open a dialogue with them about the government led violence.

Just as every year, as the anniversary approaches, a group of 128 members of the association Tiananmen Mothers, released an open letter in which they criticized the leadership for not wanting to listen to their requests for frank and open dialogue about what occurred on the night between 3 and 4 June 1989. "The communist authorities - said the letter - should listen to our voice, but there is no response ... Can it be that you really want to wear us all down or wait for our deaths so that the problem will naturally disappear?".

From April to June '89, up to a million young people, students, workers, peasants, gathered in Tiananmen Square demanding democracy and an end to corruption. The night between 3 and 4 June the Chinese military intervened with tanks and guns to "clear the square", occupied for months. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of young people were killed or crushed, others were shot in the streets surrounding the square. For the Communist Party, the movement was a counterrevolutionary rebellion", despite being a non-violent movement.

With the passing of years, faced with the criticism of the Tiananmen Mothers, demanding the revision of judgments made of their children from "counterrevolutionaries" to "patriots", the government has imposed its interpretation of the "lesser evil": the suppression of the '1989 Movement was necessary to enable the current economic wellbeing of China.

The letter however states: "We have gradually come to understand from the blood, tears, and suffering that June 4 is not only the misfortune of any single family, but rather it is the misfortune of the entire nation."

The group also calls for the end of persecution against its members. Now, for longer and longer periods during the year, families are followed by police, isolated and controlled at home, their phones and Internet connections cut off, and mail requisitioned.

>> Original Source