Internet: August 2008 Archives

By Paul Mooney | U.S. News & World Report
August 26, 2008

China was intent on making a splash with the 2008 Olympics, which concluded on Sunday, and it did just that. The games are being described as the best ever, thanks to great organization, impressive Olympic venues, stunning opening and closing ceremonies, an army of 70,000 smiling volunteers, and the amazing performances by athletes such as swimmer Michael Phelps and sprinter Usain Bolt.

But it was not an entirely golden occasion.

The games fell far short of accomplishing what many, perhaps unrealistically, had hoped for--to see the authoritarian Communist Party of China, in the world's spotlight, move toward becoming a kinder and gentler regime. Indeed, there was a lot of commentators' talk about this marking China's full engagement with the world, a sort of coming-out party for a "new China."

Instead, the Communist rulers stayed true to form and did pretty much as they wished while the International Olympic Committee and international community played along for the most part. In the end, the Olympics were a tool for strengthening the party's tight grip on power, rather than being an agent of change.

This could be seen before the games kicked off. Determined to make this "the best games ever," the government forced some 1.5 million Chinese out of their homes--often with little or no compensation--to make way for Olympic venues and beautification projects. Countless hawkers, beggars, construction workers, prostitutes, trash collectors, and migrant laborers were removed from the streets and were sent back to their villages or to detention centers. Ten prominent human rights activists, dubbed the Olympics prisoners, were given prison sentences for criticizing the games.

This policy continued during the games. Ding Zilin, the mother of a 17-year-old son who was killed on the night of June 4, 1989, and the founder of the Mothers of Tiananmen, and Wan Yanhai, a leading AIDS activist, were among several activists taking forced holidays outside the capital. And Zeng Jinyan, the 24-year-old blogger and wife of imprisoned dissident Hu Jia, and her 8-month-old baby, disappeared altogether.

In a throwback to George Orwell's Animal Farm, the Communist authorities set up three Protest Zones in parks where legal demonstrations could be held. Of the 77 applications submitted, not one was approved. Indeed, 15 people were arrested for being foolish enough to believe the government was serious. This includes Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, who have been threatened with a year in a re-education-through-labor camp. The two wished to protest against officials who evicted them from their homes in 2001.

While foreign journalists were free to cover sporting events, in many cases, they were harassed, beaten, and even arrested by the police, who prevented them from reporting on sensitive issues and even talking to Chinese citizens. According to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, there were more than 30 cases of reporting interference from July 25, the day of the opening of the Olympic Media Center, with the most disturbing trend the increase in the incidence of police roughing up or beating reporters and breaking their cameras. Foreign journalists also complained about restrictions on travel to places like Tibet and in Xinjiang, and the blocking of Internet websites.

Two American videobloggers were detained for covering pro-Tibetan activists and were sentenced to 10 days in prison for "disrupting public order." Dozens of foreign protesters were detained and deported.

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By BBC World News
August 22, 2008

Apple iTunes customers in China fear the online store has been blocked after a pro-Tibet album featured on the site became a hit.

The site has been unavailable inside China for the past week.

An Apple spokeswoman said the firm was currently investigating what lay behind the problem.

The Beijing authorities have not commented on the issue, but activists claim it is connected to the recent release of "Songs for Tibet".

Millions of Chinese citizens use the internet for education and business, but the government sometimes tries to block access to sites run by dissidents and human rights and Tibet activists.

Popular download

Users of iTunes in China have complained that they have been unable to download music since Monday - a day after the Art of Peace Foundation announced the release of the pro-Tibet album.

BBC staff in Beijing confirmed on Friday that the site was still not working.

The album has been a popular download across the world, and has featured on the front pages of the iTunes stores.

A review page for the album attracted a strong exchange of views between pro-Tibet campaigners and Chinese nationalists.

Michael Wohl, the Art of Peace Foundation's executive, said he believed the album was the reason for the disruption to iTunes, although he had no proof.

Those who contributed to the album include artists Alanis Morissette and Underworld, and there is also a 15-minute talk by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

By TIM SULLIVAN | Associated Press Writer via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
Associated Press Writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report
August 13, 2008

Over at the media village, China is battering them with petty kindnesses.

There's one person to open the door to the cafeteria where breakfast is served, and two more to sort journalistic recycling from journalistic trash. There are people to guide the press onto special buses. There are flower-arranging demonstrations (mostly ignored) at the main media press center, just off the Olympic Green, and free afternoon coffee and cookies (well-attended).

Security sweeps are gauntlets of politeness, where the "good-morning's" and "please's" rain down from teams of smiling Olympic staffers in matching blue Olympic outfits.

China has a long history of difficult relations with the foreign media, and has long heavily restricted press access to sensitive stories. But the past week also makes clear that Beijing wants to keep those journalists happy while they cover the Olympic games.

Those sensitive stories, though, are still clearly out of bounds.

On Wednesday, a British television journalist was detained by police as he tried to report on a pro-Tibet protest near the green, where protesters handcuffed themselves together and hung a "Free Tibet" banner from a bridge. John Ray of London-based ITV News was grabbed by police and put into a car. He was released after proving he was a journalist.

International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said the committee was checking into what happened. "The IOC's position is clear: the media must be free to report on the Olympic Games," she said in a statement.

While Beijing vowed before the Olympics to give the foreign media unrestricted access to China during the games, Ray's detention was just the latest in a string of recent confrontations between Chinese authorities and international journalists, adding to worries that Beijing has reverted to the tight controls it normally keeps over the press.

Late last month, Chinese police shoved and kicked a crowd of 30,000 people who had waited in the heat for up to two days hoping to get a chance to buy Olympic tickets. Hong Kong television showed several journalists pushing back against police, and Hong Kong Cable TV showed a policeman putting his arm around the neck of one of their reporters and pulling him to the ground.

Last week, two Japanese journalists were briefly detained and beaten by police in western China, triggering a protest by the Japanese government. Chinese officials later apologized. The journalists were working in Xinjiang province at the scene of a deadly attack on Chinese policemen when they were forcibly taken to a border police facility, said a reporter for Japanese broadcaster Nippon Television Network Corp.

While China has long been anxious to use the Olympics as a chance to show its emergence as a global superpower, such reactions also reflect Beijing's efforts to carefully script the games and how journalists cover them.

Olympic freebies and flower-arranging amount to nothing substantive, said Bob Dietz of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. "The easy stuff ... is easy" he said. "This is China turning on its hospitality and welcoming people, and it isn't just journalists getting the red-carpet treatment.

"On the substantive issues, there hasn't been much movement at all," he said. "The one human rights pledge that China made was that there would be a free media for the games -- and that just hasn't materialized."

So coverage of athletes and gold medal face-offs are acceptable. But stories about pro-Tibet protests -- even on the edge of the main Olympic venues -- are off-limits.

"I can give you a general principle: That is, the Chinese government adopts a positive and open attitude and welcomes foreign journalists coming to China and report on the Beijing Olympics," Qin Gang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a regular briefing Wednesday. He said Chinese officials were "very concerned" about reports of what had happened to the Japanese journalists, but added that: "Local officials have the right to take some measures."

Chinese authorities have been particularly sensitive about Tibet since bloody anti-government protests in March in the region's capital and surrounding provinces.

While foreign journalists regularly face troubles reporting in China, the situation is far worse for Chinese reporters who aggressive cover sensitive topics ranging from official corruption to human rights.

At least 26 Chinese journalists are in prison in China for their work, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement earlier this year. According to a February report by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, China jails the largest number of journalists, cyber dissidents, Internet users and activists for freedom of expression.

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By Christine Brennan - USA TODAY
August 07, 2008

The popular notion is that the story of the Beijing Olympic Games begins this Friday night, 8.8.08, as the saying goes, with the opening ceremony in the glowing-red Bird's Nest.

But that's not entirely true. The history of China's efforts to host the Games is already being written -- some chapters, in fact, are already completed -- and, so far, the plot line looks terrible for the Chinese.

If it weren't so sad, it would be almost comical, how China's leaders are trying to sabotage their own Olympic legacy. They were supposed to free dissidents. Instead, they jailed more. They said their air would be clean. But it looks like pea soup.

Things didn't get better in Tibet. They didn't get better in Sudan's Darfur. They didn't get better for the workers in China.

Journalists were promised they could carry out their work unfettered. Then the government blocked troublesome Internet sites in the press center.

Finally, in what might be their most outrageous act yet (there's still plenty of time for more), Chinese officials revoked the visa of Joey Cheek, one of the world's most charitable Olympians, banning him from the country because of his humanitarian work as co-founder of Team Darfur.

The problem with China is not its people, but its leaders. It's not one country, but two. There's the deferential, white-glove-wearing, efficient nation of 1.3 billion that just might put on the most awe-inspiring Olympics in memory.

There's also heavy-handed official China, the one doing all that damage to its people's good name. The government might as well be the smog that rolls in each day, obscuring the stunning venues, the first-class organization and the simple acts of kindness of tens of thousands of volunteers. You get the feeling it can't help itself. At a time when it so wants to join the rest of the world, when it craves being discovered and admired, it reverts to its Mao default setting.

After decades of Games held in the most agreeable places -- Calgary, Barcelona, Sydney -- we're in uncharted territory here. But it's already clear that the worst thing national Olympic committees and their athletes can do over the next 2½ weeks is to acquiesce to the Chinese leadership's outrageous positions rather than hold true to the values of their homeland because they want to be good guests.

The U.S. Olympic Committee took a few dangerous steps in that direction Wednesday when, in a previously scheduled news conference, its leaders failed to strongly stand up for Cheek, who not only was one of their own just 2½ years ago, he was so beloved he was selected to carry the U.S. flag in the 2006 closing ceremony.

Choosing his words as if he thought Chinese President Hu Jintao had sneaked into the back row to eavesdrop, USOC CEO Jim Scherr gave a lukewarm defense of Cheek: "It is unfortunate, but it's between this government and Joey as a private citizen."

No "We stand with Joey." Not a hint of "He's ours, and he's to be lauded for his efforts." No, just Citizen Cheek.

The USOC is not a political organization, but it does represent a country of many freedoms, and it must do better than that in the next 2½ weeks.

Its leaders would do well to follow the example of the U.S. athletes, who picked as their flag bearer a 1,500-meter runner who fled Sudan at 6 and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for 10 years before settling in the United States.

Lopez Lomong also happens to be an outspoken member of Cheek's Team Darfur, saying if he won a medal in China, he would "hold an American flag and a Sudan flag" on the medal stand. That would be a perfect political statement, the kind the Chinese government and its accomplices in the International Olympic Committee have railed against for years.

That didn't bother the U.S. team captains who voted for the flag bearer. They could have hidden Lomong. Instead, they asked him to lead them into the stadium.

>> Original source

By Howard W. French | International Herald Tribune | The New York Times
July 31, 2008

SHANGHAI: This is it for me, folks. I'm finished. Done, meaning this is the last of the regularly scheduled columns readers will see from me in this spot.

I've had the distinct privilege of writing for this space for the past three years, most of that time holding forth on a weekly basis. As much as a privilege, it has been a deeply pleasurable challenge trying to say something interesting and, hopefully, new each time about China and its place in the world.

As a rhythm sets in, so does a humbling sense of hits and misses, guided in great measure by the invaluable feedback of one's readers, and whether one reaps criticism or praise, nitpicking or expansive analysis, it is readers that the column writer comes to cherish most.

As a final installment, this is an occasion meant for parting thoughts, and I offer them herewith. First, as a writer with an innately and sometimes intensely critical bent, one wishes to offer some general observations about China.

What this country has accomplished in the last generation deserves all of our respect. If any doubters remain, the China phenomenon is real. I have eschewed the use of the word miracle, which is often attached to China's development these days, not simply because it has become a cliché, but because it subtly detracts credit where credit is due.

China has achieved the tremendous momentum of growth and change that we journalists are always writing about not by miracle at all, but rather through the hard work and ingenuity of its people. These same factors, along with this society's extraordinary resilience, after experiences in the 20th century that were among the cruelest anywhere, should serve as an inspiration to downtrodden people on other continents.

China's example shows what kinds of remarkable results can follow when governments stop committing colossal blunders and grossly shackling or preying upon their own people. Add universal education to the mix, economic openness and basic law and order almost anywhere, and the results will soon attract that clichéd descriptive: a miracle.

China has had the great fortune of good timing, too, with its reforms coming at the start of a great wave of globalization. And there have been countless other factors behind its success that space won't allow exploring here, but any number of plodding states around the world would do well to learn from its example, from lagging regional giants like Nigeria and Pakistan to borderline failed states like Haiti and Myanmar.

A more interesting question may be, How appropriate is China's model for China itself? Rather than highlighting the country's many successes, the run-up to the Beijing Olympics has ironically spotlighted this country's more retrograde qualities, from environmental devastation and vast class disparities, to a repressive instinct that seems to lurk everywhere here.

This is supposed to be a grand, global celebration, but the people who run the country are so uptight they've frightened their own people, and risk turning off many of their overseas guests - that is, the guests who will make it here despite restrictive visa policies and an atmosphere that leaves no room for spontaneity.

Events of recent months have revealed this to be a deeply reactionary government, a state with manifold reasons for self-confidence, and yet one that seems spooked by its own shadow.

How else to explain the embarrassing need to carefully censor the Internet during the Games, as detailed in this newspaper on Thursday, or the need to jail lawyers, or buy off parents whose children were killed in flimsy schoolhouses during the recent Sichuan earthquake, or to tightly censor journalists, or to ban protests of all sorts?

What this all points to is the emergence of China as a new kind of Potemkin state: a place that invests heavily in the very old-fashioned idea that if you manipulate appearances and control the field of view, reality will gradually bend in the desired direction.

Most have learned from cartoons that the ostrich, by burying its head in the sand, does nothing to make predators disappear. And sure enough, the harder China has tried to exert control, to enforce illusions, the more noticeable the cracks in the façade become.

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