Made in (The People's Republic of) China: July 2008 Archives
By Edward Wong | THE NEW YORK TIMES
24 July 2008
The official came for Yu Tingyun in his village one evening last week. He asked Mr. Yu to get into his car. He was clutching the contract and a pen.
Mr. Yu's daughter had died in a cascade of concrete and bricks, one of at least 240 students at a high school here who lost their lives in the May 12 earthquake. Mr. Yu became a leader of grieving parents demanding to know if the school, like so many others, had crumbled because of poor construction.
The contract had been thrust in Mr. Yu's face during a long police interrogation the day before. In exchange for his silence and for affirming that the ruling Communist Party "mobilized society to help us," he would get a cash payment and a pension.
Mr. Yu had resisted then. This time, he took the pen.
"When I saw that most of the parents had signed it, I signed it myself," Mr. Yu said softly. A wiry 42-year-old driver, he carries a framed portrait of his daughter, Yang, in his shoulder bag.
Local governments in southwest China's quake-ravaged Sichuan Province have begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake, according to interviews with more than a dozen parents from four collapsed schools. Officials threaten that the parents will get nothing if they refuse to sign, the parents say.
Chinese officials had promised a new era of openness in the wake of the earthquake and in the months before the Olympic Games, which begin in August. But the pressure on parents is one sign that officials here are determined to create a facade of public harmony rather than undertake any real inquiry into accusations that corruption or negligence contributed to the high death toll in the quake.
Officials have come knocking on parents' doors day and night. They are so intent on getting parents to comply that in one case, a mayor offered to pay the airfare of a mother who left the province so she could return to sign the contract, the mother said.
The payment amounts vary by school but are roughly the same. Parents in Hanwang, a river town at the foot of mist-shrouded mountains, said they were being offered the equivalent of $8,800 in cash and a per-parent pension of nearly $5,600.
Flush with tax revenues after two decades of double-digit economic growth, China has used its financial muscle to make Beijing and Shanghai into architectural showcases and to open diplomatic doors in developing nations. At times, the state also acts like a multinational corporation facing a product liability suit, offering money to people with grievances in hopes of defusing protests. Most people, the government assumes, ultimately put profit before principle.
The tactic appears to work, including in the cases of the collapsed schools. Many parents said they signed the contract, even if they were displeased with the terms and still angry at the lack of any real investigation.
By Andrew Jacobs - International Herald Tribune
July 23, 2008
BEIJING: A smartly dressed man carried a lighted cigarette into the elevator of an upscale apartment building one recent morning, and something remarkable happened. A fellow passenger, a middle-aged matron with a pet Maltese tethered to her wrist, waved a hand in front of her face and produced a series of mannered coughs that had the desired effect: The man stepped on the cigarette and muttered an apology.
In a country where one in four people smokes - and where doctors light up in hospital hallways and health ministers puff away during meetings - it was a telling sign that a decade of half-hearted public campaigns against tobacco may finally be gaining some traction.
Last May, the municipal government imposed a series of measures banning cigarettes in schools, railway stations, office buildings and other public places. Chinese athletes are no longer permitted to accept sponsorships from tobacco companies, and cigarette advertising on billboards will be restricted during the Olympic Games. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has declared that the Olympics will be "smoke free."
Despite the new laws and proclamations, the impact might elude visitors who arrive in the capital next month. Most restaurants remain shrouded in smoke, the air in clubs and bars can be asphyxiating, and a year-old prohibition against lighting up in Beijing taxis has had little effect.
"If I point to the no-smoking sign, the passenger will just laugh and keep smoking," said Hui Guo, a cab driver who does not smoke.
Government officials say that 100,000 inspectors have been dispatched to ticket smoking scofflaws, but the $1.40 fine offers little deterrence - especially to the nouveau riche entrepreneurs who gleefully brandish gold-filtered Chunghua, which sell for $10 a pack.
Li Baojun, the manager of a popular restaurant on Ghost Street, explained why he does not dare tell patrons to stop chain smoking during meals.
"My customers would rather starve than not smoke, and I would go out of business," he said, as a thick pall hung over the diners. "In China, you cannot drink, eat and socialize without a cigarette."
The Chinese have had a long and entrenched affair with tobacco. About 350 million people here are regular smokers - more than the entire population of the United States - and even though 1.2 million people die each year from smoking-related causes, there is a widespread belief that cigarettes hold some health benefits.
By Centro de Medios Independientes Santiago (Chile)
July 20, 2008
Is China about to go burst? What is really behind Chinese finance, politics, trade, politics and society? Has China's ongoing reform altered the nation's political-economic landscape as far as government corruption is concerned? What is the next if this corruption goes deeper? Get the most powerful reports on Chinese politics, government, finance, banking, outsourcing, and tech by insiders.
China's coming collapse: corruption, finance, trade, outsourcing, politics, law, society
Has China's ongoing reform altered the nation's political-economic landscape as far as government corruption is concerned? What is the next if this corruption goes deeper?
A compelling new report says that runaway corruption in China poses a lethal threat to the nation's economic development and "undermines the legitimacy of the ruling Chinese Communist Party."
Evidence from official audits, press articles and law enforcement data, the report says, indicates that "corruption in China is both pervasive and costly."
Bribery, kickbacks, theft and fraud, particularly by government officials, are said to be rampant.
Pei Minxin (裴敏欣) wrote the report issued last month by the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, based in Washington. Pei is a political scientist educated at the Shanghai International Studies University. He earned his PhD at Harvard and his work has been widely published in the US.
The report asserts that corruption in China "has spillover effects beyond its borders" that hurt US, Japanese and other foreign investors.
"Illicit behavior by local officials could expose Western firms to potentially vast environmental, human rights and financial liabilities," the report says.
Public statements by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) and other senior Chinese officials suggest that China's leaders are well aware of the widespread problem but have been unwilling to curb it.
The report says: "The odds of an average corrupt official going to jail are at most 3 out of 100, making corruption a high-return, low-risk activity."
If Hu comes down too hard on corruption, he risks losing support of the delegates at the recently held party Congress who elected him. Those delegates are drawn largely from party officials at the local and provincial level.
Pei is not alone in assessing corruption in China. George Zhibin Gu ( 顾志斌), an investment banker who was educated at Nanjing University and earned a doctorate at the University of Michigan, has suggested that corruption may destroy China's economy, which has been growing at 8 percent to 10 percent a year. In the West, a 3 percent growth rate is respectable.
Much more systematic analysis and information is contained in Gu's two new books: 1. China and the new world order: how entrepreneurship, globalization, borderless business are reshaping China and the world; 2. Chin's global reach: markets, multinationals, globlization. Gu is based in Guangdong, China. His two books contain field investigations and a number of interviews with Chinese officials, business managers, farmers, scholars and researchers. There are surprising findings throughout the work.
Moreover, China's Xinhua news agency frequently details specific instances of corruption. Last week, the Chinese government was reported to have banned fire department officials from receiving sexual favors from companies seeking their protection.
Scrutinized through a wide-angle lens, corruption is just at the forefront of the internal ills that jeopardize China's economic and political strength. Unemployment and under-employment, in which a worker has only one or two days of work a week, may be over 25 percent. Paradoxically, China has begun to experience shortages of the skilled labor needed for its expanding industries. Economic progress has been uneven, with coastal cities leaving the rural interior far behind.
"Corruption in China is concentrated in the sectors with extensive state involvement," the Pei report says.
That includes construction of dams, roads and electrical grids. The sales of land or granting user rights are susceptible, as are financial services and heavily regulated industries.
"The absence of a competitive political process and a free press in China makes these high risk sectors even more susceptible to fraud, theft, kickbacks and bribery," the report says.
Pei cites a study done last year asserting that about half of those engaged in corruption were involved in infrastructure projects or land transactions.
Even so, the report says: "Beijing punishes only a very small proportion of party members or government officials tainted by corruption."
US, Japanese and other foreign investors may be put at a competitive disadvantage by rivals who engage in illegal practices to win business in China, the report says.
"Corruption puts Western firms' intellectual property rights particularly at risk because unscrupulous local officials routinely protect Chinese counterfeiters in exchange for bribes," it says.
While the report doesn't say so, US firms that pay bribes may violate the US Foreign Corruption Practices Act of 1977 that forbids kickbacks and bribery abroad, no matter what the customs of other nations.
The report also says: "Corruption in China affects other countries through the spread of cross-border crimes such as drug trafficking, human smuggling and money laundering."
But what is really behind China's deadly corruption? Pei is short on this deeper issue, but George Zhibin Gu in his books pinpoints on the root-causes: "unlimited bureaucratic power, which is based on cults and terror, is the root-cause of this ongoing China's corruption. And as long as this bureaucratic power remains in place, corruption can hardly be contained in any practical way."
>> Original Source
By Sylvia Westall - REUTERS | International Herald Tribune
July 14, 2008
GIENGEN AN DER BRENZ, Germany: Wafts of golden fluff whirl in the air as Irene Basan wedges a bundle of material onto a spike and gently turns it inside out, right ear, left ear, then a snout, to reveal a Steiff teddy bear head.
She has been making Steiff toys by hand for 18 years in Giengen, the tiny south German town where the maker of collectible teddy bears - some worth hundreds of thousands of euros - was founded over 125 years ago.
Chasing lower costs, Steiff outsourced around a fifth of its production to China in 2003 but has now decided to come back because of concerns about quality and staff turnover.
Steiff is one of a small number of German companies that are swimming against the tide and leaving China, despite its lower labor costs and a burgeoning consumer population. With fuel prices at record highs, some cite mounting transport costs.
Production of Steiff toys, which include a distinctive long-limbed bear with a melancholy growl, will come back to Germany and other countries in Europe by the end of 2009.
"A Steiff animal has to look cute, it has to look at you and say, 'Take me in your arms and hug me, I'm here for you, I'm your friend,"' the managing director of Steiff, Martin Frechen, said. "If the symmetry is off and if it looks like it's been run over by a car, it's not what we want. People don't pay for that."
Consisting of around 35 parts and with an average price of Euro 40 to Euro 70, or about $60 to $110, the toys take up to a year to learn to make, and around 80 percent of the work is done by hand.
But with twisted legs, bald patches and open seams, a "cumbersome" number of the Steiff toys made in China had to be rejected, Frechen said, because high staff turnover in a fast-growing economy meant workers did not have long enough to train.
"We don't really fit in over there," he said, pointing out that Steiff's typical orders of around 500 lots were also too small to reap good cost savings in factories more accustomed to mass production.
By AsiaNews.it
July 14, 2008
An investigation by the BBC provides, for the first time, proof of Chinese jets and heavy weaponry used against civilians, sold in spite of the embargo. Beijing is not responding, while the UN is asking to examine the evidence.
China is selling arms to Sudan and training its pilots to fly the Chinese Fantan A5 jet, in violation of the United Nations embargo. The accusation is made by the authoritative British Broadcasting Corporation, at the conclusion of an investigation.
The government of Sudan has for some time been accused of using airplanes to strike civilians, but it was never possible to prove what kind of jet was being used. Now satellite photos show Chinese Fantan jets leaving the airport of Nyala in February and June, in southern Darfur, and the BBC says that these are the only jets on the base. It reports testimonies of air raids against civilian targets, with many victims.
The news agency says that two tanks with anti-aircraft weapons have also been filmed in the area, believed to be part of a group of 212 military vehicles that in 2005 the UN "suspected" China of sending to Khartoum, without being able to find proof. Eyewitnesses have reported that these vehicles were used in December in the attack on the city of Sirba, in western Darfur, to strike residences. They launch missiles that explode on impact, scattering deadly shrapnel.
There is no comment from the Chinese government, while the UN intends to examine the evidence from the BBC. The embargo is intended to prevent genocide in Darfur, where it is estimated that 300,000 have already been killed and two million displaced. Beijing has been repeatedly accused of violating the embargo, and has defended itself by first denying any arms sales, and then saying that in any case its weapons are not used in Darfur.
Experts observe that the worldwide boycott against Sudan over Darfur has allowed China to become a privileged commercial partner, obtaining oil and raw materials in exchange. For some time, international public opinion has accused China of fostering government genocide, and in recent years it has even been proposed that the Olympics should be boycotted if Beijing does not make a serious effort to exact peace from Khartoum. Beijing responds that it is promoting economic development in the country, which helps the population.
卫星照片和证人表示北京不顾禁运向苏丹出售武器
--尽管联合国对苏丹实行禁运，但中国向苏丹出售武器、帮助喀土穆训练驾驶中国制造A5攻击机的飞行员。日前，权威的英国广播公司BBC在一项调查后发表报告，提出上述指控。
长期以来，苏丹政府被控利用飞机空袭平民。但是，却从未查证出采用什么型号的攻击机。现在，卫星照片显示，中国制造A5攻击机于今年二月和六月从达尔富尔南部的恩亚拉机场起飞。BBC表示，准备作证表明向平民发动空袭造成多人死亡。
英国通讯社还指出，在当地拍摄到了两辆军用卡车。据悉，是二OO五年联合国"怀疑"中国送给喀土穆的212辆军事车辆之一，但苦于没有证据。证人还表示，上述军备物资于去年十二月用在了打击达尔富尔地区西部西尔巴市军事行动中。
中国政府未对此作出任何评论。联合国表示会检验BBC提供的证据。禁运旨在防止达尔富尔的种族屠杀。据统计，当地已造成三十多万人死亡、两百万人流离失所。北京多次被指控违法禁运。对此，中国政府历来言词驳斥，否认出售武器。然后，又表示，总之上述武器并没有用在达尔富尔地区。
专家指出，世界性抵制苏丹，使中国得以成为喀土穆最主要的贸易伙伴，并首先赢得了石油和原材料。长期以来，国际舆论指责中国支持苏丹政府的种族屠杀。甚至在近几个月以来发出威胁，声称如北京不采取行动推动达尔富尔和平，将通过种种手段阻挠北京奥运会。北京的回应是，支持苏丹造福于民的经济发展。
thisislondon.co.uk from the Evening Standard
July 13, 2008
Military equipment and weapons made in China are being used against civilians in Darfur in violation of a United Nations arms embargo in the troubled region of Sudan.
One Chinese-built army truck is understood to have taken part in an attack on a village. And Chinese-built and maintained fighter jets are also being used to bomb and strafe civilians, it is claimed.
The findings, in a Panorama documentary to be shown tomorrow, come just four weeks before the start of the Beijing Olympics and amid intense international pressure over China's close economic, diplomatic and military ties with oil-rich Sudan, as well as its human rights record in Tibet.
Film director Steven Spielberg resigned as an artistic adviser to the Games in February over Beijing's support of the Sudanese government. And actress Mia Farrow, a UN goodwill ambassador, has also sought to draw attention to the two countries' relationship, calling the Games the 'Genocide Olympics'.
By Hilary Andersson reporting from Darfur | BBC News
July 13, 2008
The BBC has found the first evidence that China is currently helping Sudan's government militarily in Darfur.
The Panorama TV programme tracked down Chinese army lorries in the Sudanese province that came from a batch exported from China to Sudan in 2005.
The BBC was also told that China was training fighter pilots who fly Chinese A5 Fantan fighter jets in Darfur.
China's government has declined to comment on the BBC's findings, which contravene a UN arms embargo on Darfur.
The embargo requires foreign nations to take measures to ensure they do not militarily assist anyone in the conflict in Darfur, in which the UN estimates that about 300,000 people have died.
More than two million people are also believed to have fled their villages in Darfur, destroyed by pro-government Arab Janjaweed militia.
Panorama traced the first lorry by travelling deep into the remote deserts of West Darfur.
They found a Chinese Dong Feng army lorry in the hands of one of Darfur's rebel groups.
The BBC established through independent eyewitness testimony that the rebels had captured it from Sudanese government forces in December.
The rebels filmed a second lorry with the BBC's camera. Both vehicles had been carrying anti-aircraft guns, one a Chinese gun.
Markings showed that they were from a batch of 212 Dong Feng army lorries that the UN had traced as having arrived in Sudan after the arms embargo was put in place.
The lorries came straight from the factory in China to Sudan and were consigned to Sudan's defence ministry. The guns were mounted after the lorries were imported from China.
The UN started looking for these lorries in Darfur three years ago, suspecting they had been sent there, but never found them.
"We had no specific access to Sudanese government army stores, we were not allowed to take down factory codes or model numbers or registrations etc to verify these kinds of things," said EJ Hogendoorn, a member of the UN panel of experts that was involved in trying to locate the lorries.
Culpability
China has chosen not to respond to the BBC's findings. Its public position is that it abides by all UN arms embargoes.
China has said in the past that it told Sudan's government not to use Chinese military equipment in Darfur.
Sudan's government, however, has told the UN that it will send military equipment wherever it likes within its sovereign territory.
An international lawyer, Clare da Silva, says China's point that it has taken measures in line with the arms embargo's requirements to stop its weapons from going to Darfur is meaningless.
"It is an empty measure to take the assurances from a partner who clearly has no intention of abiding by the resolution," she said.
Ms da Silva said the BBC's evidence put China in violation of the arms embargo.
The UN panel of experts on Darfur has said it wants to examine the BBC's evidence.
Homes scorched
The BBC found witnesses who said they saw the first Dong Feng which the BBC tracked down being used with its anti-aircraft gun in an attack in a town called Sirba, in West Darfur, in December.
"When it is shooting or firing there is nowhere for you to move and the sound is just like the sound of the rain. Then 'Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!'" said Hamaad Abakar Adballa, a witness in the Chadian refugee town of Birak.
The lorry's powerful anti-aircraft gun fired straight into civilian houses. The gun carries high calibre shells that explode on impact, spreading hot shards of metal and causing terrible wounds
Witnesses saw one hut take a direct hit from the gun:
"An intense wave of heat instantly sent all the huts around up in flames," one witness, Risique Bahar, said. "There was a lot of screaming."
In the attack on Sirba one woman was burnt to death, another horribly injured.
Genocide accusation
Sudan's government has been accused by the United States of genocide against Darfur's black Africans.
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) say war crimes by Sudan's Arab-dominated government have included summary executions, rape and torture.
Recently the conflict has deteriorated into more confused fighting, with rebel and militia groups also fighting each other. Two hundred thousand people have been displaced already this year.
Malnutrition rates are set to soar in South Darfur later this year due to insecurity and drought.
Darfur's landscape is spotted with blackened circles representing the hundreds of the villages that were burnt down by government forces and their Janjaweed allies.
Air attacks
In these attacks Darfur's civilians have been hunted not just from the ground, but from the sky.
Most civilians who tell stories of aerial attacks talk about Russian made Antanovs and helicopter gunships.
Many also talk about fighter jets being used, but no-one has ever answered the question of which type of fighter jets these are.
Kaltam Abakar Mohammed, a mother of seven, watched three of her children being blown to pieces as they were attacked by a fighter jet on 19 February in the town of Beybey in Darfur.
The BBC has established that Chinese Fantan fighter jets were flying on missions out of Nyala airport in south Darfur in February.
Panorama acquired satellite photographs of the two fighters at the airport on 18 June 2008, and its investigations indicate these are the only fighter jets that have been based in Darfur this year.
When Kaltam heard the sound of fighting early that morning, she took her children and ran.
"We start running near the well," she said. "We hid behind a big rock. Something that looks like an eagle started coming from over there. It looked like an eagle but it made a funny noise."
When the plane unleashed two bombs Kaltam's five-year-old daughter, Nura, was dismembered from the chest up.
Her eight-year-old son, Adam, was killed instantly, as was her 20-year-old daughter, Amna.
Kaltam's 19-month-old grandson still has shrapnel in his head from the fighter jet bombing. He cries a lot and often calls out for his mother, but she was killed in the attack.
Kaltam's 13-year-old girl, Hawa, cannot grasp what she saw happen that day to her brother and two sisters. She rarely speaks now.
Pilot training
The Chinese Fantan jets are believed to have been delivered to Sudan in 2003 before the current UN arms embargo was imposed on Darfur.
But the BBC has been told by two confidential sources that China is training Fantan fighter pilots.
Sudan imported a number of fighter trainers called K8s two years ago - they are designed to train pilots of fighters like Fantans.
"Clearly this is what they used to train for operations with the Fantans," said Chris Dietrich, a former member of the UN panel on Darfur.
International lawyer Ms da Silva says if China is training Fantan pilots, this represents another Chinese violation of the UN arms embargo.
"The terms of the embargo cover not only just the supply of weapons, military vehicles, paramilitary equipment. It also covers training any technical assistance, so the training of pilots obviously falls within the scope of the embargo."
There are strong economic ties between the China and Sudan.
China buys most of Sudan's oil and believes that what Sudan needs is good business partners, help with development and a solid peace process in Darfur, instead of confrontation and sanctions from the West.
So when China's President Hu Jintao visited Sudan in 2007 he wrote off millions of dollars worth of debt and donated a multi-million pound interest free loan for a new presidential palace to Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.
In April last year, China's military leaders pledged to strengthen co-operation with Sudan.
Panorama: China's Secret War will be on BBC One at 2030 BST on Monday 14 July 2008.
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