Doing business in China: September 2010 Archives

By Edward Wong | The New York Times
September 22, 2010

For the last several years, one big theme has dominated talk of the future of Asia: As China rises, its neighbors are being inevitably drawn into its orbit, currying favor with the region's new hegemonic power.

The presumed loser, of course, is the United States, whose wealth and influence are being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and whose economic troubles have eroded its standing in a more dynamic Asia.

But rising frictions between China and its neighbors in recent weeks over security issues have handed the United States an opportunity to reassert itself -- one the Obama administration has been keen to take advantage of.

Washington is leaping into the middle of heated territorial disputes between China and Southeast Asian nations despite stern Chinese warnings that it mind its own business. The United States is carrying out naval exercises with South Korea in order to help Seoul rebuff threats from North Korea even though China is denouncing those exercises, saying that they intrude on areas where the Chinese military operates.

Meanwhile, China's increasingly tense standoff with Japan over a Chinese fishing trawler captured by Japanese ships in disputed waters is pushing Japan back under the American security umbrella.

The arena for these struggles is shifting this week to a summit meeting of world leaders at the United Nations. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, has refused to meet with his Japanese counterpart, Naoto Kan, and on Tuesday he threatened Japan with "further action" if it did not unconditionally release the fishing captain.

On Friday, President Obama is expected to meet with Southeast Asian leaders and promise that the United States is willing to help them peacefully settle South China Sea territorial disputes with China.

"The U.S. has been smart," said Carlyle A. Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy who studies security issues in Asia. "It has done well by coming to the assistance of countries in the region."

"All across the board, China is seeing the atmospherics change tremendously," he added. "The idea of the China threat, thanks to its own efforts, is being revived."

Asserting Chinese sovereignty over borderlands in contention -- everywhere from Tibet to Taiwan to the South China Sea -- has long been the top priority for Chinese nationalists, an obsession that overrides all other concerns. But this complicates China's attempts to present the country's rise as a boon for the whole region and creates wedges between China and its neighbors.

Nothing underscores that better than the escalating diplomatic conflict between China and Japan over the detention of the Chinese fishing captain, Zhan Qixiong, by the Japanese authorities, who say the captain rammed two Japanese vessels around the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. The islands are administered by Japan but claimed by both Japan and China.

The current dispute may strengthen the military alliance between the United States and Japan, as did an incident last April when a Chinese helicopter buzzed a Japanese destroyer. Such confrontations tend to remind Japanese officials, who have suggested that they need to refocus their foreign policy on China instead of America, that they rely on the United States to balance an unpredictable China, analysts say.

"Japan will have no choice but to further go into America's arms, to further beef up the U.S.-Japan alliance and its military power," said Huang Jing, a scholar of the Chinese military at the National University of Singapore.

In July, Southeast Asian nations, particularly Vietnam, applauded when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the United States was willing to help mediate a solution to disputes that those nations had with China over the South China Sea, which is rich in oil, natural gas and fish. China insists on dealing with Southeast Asian nations one on one, but Mrs. Clinton said the United States supported multilateral talks. Freedom of navigation in the sea is an American national interest, she said.

President Obama meets on Friday with leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean. The Associated Press reported that the participants would issue a joint statement opposing the "use or threat of force by any claimant attempting to enforce disputed claims in the South China Sea." The statement is clearly aimed at China, which has seized Vietnamese fishing vessels in recent years and detained their crews.

On Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, criticized any attempt at mediation by the United States. "We firmly oppose any country having nothing to do with the South China Sea issue getting involved in the dispute," she said at a news conference in Beijing.

China has also been objecting to American plans to hold military exercises with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, which China claims as its exclusive military operations zone. The United States and South Korea want to send a stern message to North Korea over what Seoul says was the torpedoing last March of a South Korean warship by a North Korean submarine. China's belligerence serves only to reinforce South Korea's dependence on the American military.

American officials are increasingly concerned about the modernization of China's navy and its long-range abilities, as well as China's growing assertiveness in the surrounding waters. In March, a Chinese official told White House officials that the South China Sea was part of China's "core interest" of sovereignty, similar to Tibet and Taiwan, an American official said in an interview at the time. American officials also object to China's telling foreign oil companies not to work with Vietnam on developing oil fields in the South China Sea.

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By Frank Ching | The Japan Times
September 3, 2010

The only lady vice minister in China's Foreign Ministry is Fu Ying, a well-coiffed, mild-mannered 57-year-old, an ethnic Mongol who speaks flawless English, who has served as ambassador to the Philippines, Australia and Britain, and who is known for her media skills.

A few weeks ago, those skills were fully on display when she gave an interview to Die Zeit, a highly respected German weekly newspaper. Not surprisingly, the subject of human rights in China was discussed. Interestingly, the subject of human rights was introduced not by the interviewer but by Fu.

Asked to compare Europe and Asia today, the veteran diplomat recalled that three decades ago when she was an interpreter "human rights was always on the menu in our dialogues." Now, she said, "China has moved on, and the world has moved on. So much has changed."

"In 2004," she said, "protection of human rights was incorporated into China's constitution." Yet, "European delegations still come to China with the same old attitude. They accuse and interrogate China in a condescending way. I really don't hear much mentioning of China's human rights progress."

It isn't clear if she is genuinely puzzled. Of course, putting protection of human rights into the constitution was a positive gesture -- one that was reported by the international media. But the question is the extent to which this has made a difference on the ground.

The Chinese Constitution is full of high-sounding principles and declares unambiguously that China is a country governed by law. But the promise in the constitution has yet to be realized.

For example, after the Lhasa riots in 2008, defendants were unable to be represented by lawyers of their choice. Lawyers who volunteered their services were warned to stay away.

The current Chinese Constitution, promulgated in 1982, guarantees the Chinese people a host of rights, which include "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."

Indeed, similar rights were proclaimed even before the formal establishment of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949. On Sept. 29, 1949, two days before the PRC came into existence, a Common Program was published that became the temporary constitution. Article 5 of that document declared that the people "shall have freedom of thought, speech, publication, assembly, association, correspondence, person, domicile, change of domicile, religious belief and the freedom of holding processions and demonstrations."

But where are these rights today? Surely, Fu cannot say such words were forced on China by the West. These were China's own words.

Indeed, as the foreword to Charter 08 -- a dissident manifesto issued two years ago and whose main author, Liu Xiaobo, is serving an 11-year prison term -- put it, China "has a constitution but no constitutional government."

Fu was careful not to name any names in the interview, but she characterized people like Liu Xiaobo as "political extremists" who "put forward demands impossible to meet." Liu and other signatories were simply exercising the freedom of speech guaranteed by the constitution. How can that be construed as making demands impossible to meet and deserving of imprisonment?

However, the lady diplomat was not totally negative. She divided China's attitude toward human rights into three chronological stages, beginning with the end of the Qing dynasty, when prominent scholars tried to reform the Chinese feudal system. At the time, she said, "Westerners were unwilling to make Chinese their equals in human rights. The first wave of China's human rights movement went nowhere."

The second wave, she said, was actually embraced by the Communist Party, but because of the blockade against China instituted in 1950, "many Western concepts including human rights were rejected."

Now, she said, China is in the third -- and most successful -- wave. Many laws have been introduced such as the Labor Law and the Property Law, and while they may not be perfect, they "still represent a big step forward in the development of China's legal system."

China, she said, is not rejecting the idea of human rights but is "learning gradually and absorbing ideas that can be planted and grown on Chinese soil."

So, while human rights are still regarded as an alien concept that should not be imposed on China, there are aspects that can be transplanted that may flower on Chinese soil. Such a theory does not explain why rights promised to the Chinese people more than 60 years ago remain nothing but promises.

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By Radio Free Asia
August 31, 2010

The beating of an exposer of fraud highlights recent attacks against members of the Chinese media.

A leading Chinese campaigner against academic fraud and fake remedies is recovering as police investigate a brutal attack against him in a Beijing alleyway, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Peng Jian, the legal representative of "science cop" Fang Zhouzi, said his client was recovering well after he was attacked over the weekend by two men, one of whom sprayed anesthetic in his face, and the other of whom tried to beat him with a hammer.

"The thugs planned to have one of them knock me unconscious with the anesthetic and the other one beat me to death with the iron hammer," Fang said in a dramatic account of the attack carried on his personal blog and translated by Hong Kong-based blogger Roland Soong.

The attack took place near Fang Zhouzi's home at around 5 p.m. Aug. 29 after he had finished an interview with Liaoning TV about Taoist master Li Yi, whose claims of superhuman feats of endurance he had investigated.

"Learning from the attack on Fang Xuanchang, I reacted quickly, ran fast, and escaped," Fang Zhouzi wrote, referring to a similar attack on June 24 that left science journalist Fang Xuanchang hospitalized.

The Beijing municipal public security bureau posted on its sina.com microblog: "The police are investigating the attack on Fang and will reveal the investigation results to the public."

Journalists targeted

Chinese journalists and media are increasingly finding themselves the targets of threats and attempts at censorship by private-sector companies as well as government officials if their reporting damages vested interests, overseas rights groups say.

Paris-based press freedom group Reporter Without Borders (RSF) slammed the Beijing police investigation into the attack on Fang Xuanchang as "desultory."

Both Fang Zhouzi and Fang Xuanchang said they are convinced the attacks were acts of revenge by persons they had discredited during the course of their professional lives.

"This was obviously retaliation by someone whom I had once exposed," Fang Zhouzi wrote of his attackers. "They waited near near my residence for a long time until they seized this moment."

"I hope that the case will be solved quickly, along with the case of Fang Xuanchang."

Peng said Fang Zhouzi had also received threatening texts and phone calls about a month before the attack, which resembled in its methods the earlier attack on Fang Xuanchang.

"Fang Xuanchang was attacked by two thugs who hit him on the head with a hammer," Peng said. "Fang Zhouzi was also attacked by two thugs who tried to hit him on the head with a hammer."

"[Like the previous attack], they also used anesthetic, and used extreme force, and didn't say a word. Both attacks appeared calculated to kill their target."

Peng said he believed the attack might be linked to Fang Zhouzi's campaigning against a controversial surgical operation known as "Xiao's procedure," which claims to restore bladder control to people with spina bifida or spinal cord injury.

Fang Zhouzi had recently published an article in the U.S.-based Journal of Urology, which concluded that Xiao's procedure was ineffective, and highlighted the cases of patients who had complained about it on his campaign website.

Xiao's procedure is designed to treat neurogenic bladder due to spina bifida, or spinal cord injury, and has been undergoing clinical trials in China, the United States, and a few other countries.

Response to articles

Xu Youyu, a former professor at the China Academy of Social Sciences, called the attack on Fang Zhouzi a serious incident, but not an uncommon phenomenon in today's China.

"Firstly, he is a courageous and genuine person who works to overturn fraud, fakery, and corruption in academic circles," Xu said.

"I don't think he will be put off by these threats. I am confident that he will continue his work."

Fang Xuanchang also said he believes that the attacks on himself and Fang Zhouzi were the direct result of articles they had written.

"Right now, it doesn't look as if there could be any other reason," Fang Xuanchang said. "This is revenge because we have angered someone with the articles we have written."

"At a personal level, [we] haven't made any enemies, so it's purely the articles. I think we can rule out other possibilities."

Some Chinese media carried front-page coverage of the attack on Fang, with netizens responding in shock and outrage and calling on police to find the attackers.

Original reporting in Cantonese by Hai Nan and in Mandarin by Xin Yu. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

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