News: November 2005 Archives

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: November 26, 2005 - The New York Times

HARBIN, China, Nov. 25 - A toxic 50-mile band of contaminated river water slowly washed through this frigid provincial capital on Friday, leaving schools and many businesses closed, forcing millions of people to spend a third straight day without running water and raising fears of a long-term environmental disaster.

Yet a local newspaper seemed just as concerned about a disaster that did not happen. "There Will Not Be an Earthquake in Harbin," promised a large front-page headline in The Modern Evening Times.

The strange headline, coming as nationwide attention in China is focused on the dangerous benzene and nitrobenzene spill that contaminated the local Songhua River, seemed to have been a misprint. But, instead, it was an effort to dispel the wild rumors that mushroomed after Monday, when city officials pointedly did not mention the spill of the liquid chemicals in their initial public notice shutting down the municipal water system.

The city tried to convince the public that a shutdown was necessary to conduct routine repairs on the pipes. Suspicions instantly erupted. There had already been an inexplicable rash of rumors that the government had detected signs of an earthquake. Now those rumors escalated, and enough people panicked that officials had to confirm the spill, but the public relations damage was already done.

It seems that in their efforts to hide a chemical spill, Harbin officials may have helped fuel unfounded fears of an earthquake. The provincial earthquake bureau has since issued a reassuring statement that no temblors are predicted.

"They were trying to lie and get by," Qi Guangzhong, 64, said as he walked on a promenade beside the brown waters of the Songhua on Friday. "The government wanted to hide this."

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By Dominic Casciani
BBC News community affairs

It was a curious battle of flags, complete with a British tolerance for the other point of view.

President Hu Jintao of China was to be accorded the finest of welcomes to the UK: An official hello from the Queen, a carriage ride up the Mall, flanked by the Household Cavalry, and a nice cup of tea (China, we suppose) before getting down to business.

Oh, and then there were the protesters.

The last time the Chinese came on a state visit, in 1999, the police seized banners and blocked demonstrators from seeing Mr Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin.

This time, the demonstrators were to be allowed to have their say and a few hundred turned out with more than enough banners (and symbolic gags over their mouths) for most of the passers-by in St James's Park.

Free Tibet campaign

By far the biggest - and loudest - contingent outside Buckingham Palace were the Tibet campaigners, people who believe that China has no role in the territory invaded by the Chinese Red Army half a century ago.

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By JOSEPH KAHN
on the November 1, 2005 New York Times

BEIJING, Oct. 31 - David Ji, a Chinese-American electronics entrepreneur, spent two months in custody enduring all-night interrogation sessions, but his stubbornness and occasional flashes of sarcasm infuriated his Chinese captors.

So in late December last year, according to a person who compiled a record of the encounter, guards emptied his pockets, removed his shoes and socks, and ripped the buttons off his oxford shirt. He was ushered disheveled and barefoot into the office of Zhao Yong, the chief executive of Sichuan Changhong Electric, Mr. Ji's onetime business partner and, more recently, his warden.

"Your only way out is to do what Changhong tells you to do," Mr. Zhao told him. "If I decide today I want you to die, you will be dead tomorrow."

Mr. Ji soon agreed to cooperate with Changhong. But a year after the Chinese police apprehended him in his hotel room during a business trip, he remains in China as a pawn - Mr. Ji's colleagues say a hostage - in a commercial dispute that pits Changhong, China's largest television manufacturer, against Apex Digital, Mr. Ji's electronics trading company based in Los Angeles.

Changhong, which declined repeated requests for comment over several weeks, claims that Apex owes it $470 million. Apex, which recruited Changhong to supply Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Circuit City with inexpensive television sets and DVD players, says it owes less than $150 million. The sums involved are large, but what is more significant about the case is the way Changhong, a major state-owned company in Sichuan Province, deployed the police, prosecutors and judges in a campaign to collect its debt.

China has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment and has become the world's third largest trading power. But its legal system, even when handling nonpolitical business cases, has progressed far more haltingly and still rarely backs investors or ordinary citizens against the state.

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