News: September 2010 Archives

By Radio Free Asia
September 29, 2010

Chinese activist had exposed forced abortions and other abuses by local officials.

Prominent civil rights lawyers and activists in China have vowed to continue a relay hunger strike in support of Shandong-based activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been held under house arrest at his home since his release from prison earlier this month.

"Basically there hasn't been any improvement [in Chen's situation]," said Fan Yafeng, a legal scholar and Protestant social activist, who began the hunger strike protest on Monday.

"The main thing needed is for his communication links to be restored."

Fan said Chen's case is widely seen as an indicator of the state of human rights in China.

"The personal freedom of Chen's family members has been illegally constrained in recent years," he said.

"Their basic rights have been violated to the point where they can't even go shopping, or seek medical attention."

Abuses exposed

Chen, 38, has been confined at home since his release at the end of a jail term of four years and three months for "damaging public property and obstructing traffic" handed down by a Linyi municipal court in August 2006.

Chen, who had exposed abuses like forced abortions and sterilizations by local family planning officials under China's "one-child" population control policy, served the full term in spite of repeated requests for medical parole.

Chen is well-known in China's civil rights community, which is frequently exposed to detention, prison sentences, and official violence and harassment as activists struggle to enforce the rights of the country's most vulnerable people.

>> Complete Original Report

By Radio Free Asia
September 28, 2010

Dissidents had protested an earlier series of decisions by the court.

Authorities in China's southwestern province of Sichuan have convicted 10 rights activists on charges of disturbing public order, handing down jail terms of up to three years in some cases.

The sentences were handed down by the Central District People's Court in Leshan city on Tuesday, after the men staged a 2009 protest at a series of the court's decisions in recent years.

Bao Junsheng was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for "gathering a crowd to disturb social order," while fellow activists Zeng Li and Huang Xiaomin received two-and-a-half-year sentences.

Zeng Rongkang, Xing Qingxian, Yan Wenhan, and Lu Dachun each received two-year jail terms.

Liu Jiwei was released from detention, while Xu Chongli was sentenced to a one-year supervision order.

The men were first tried for "assembling a crowd to disrupt social order" on April 7. However, their case was sent back to the People's Procuratorate, the local state prosecutor, for more evidence.

Their sentencing comes more than 18 months after they were detained for chaining themselves together in a protest outside the court on Feb. 23, 2009.

>> Complete Original Report

By TINI TRAN, Associated Press Writer | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
September 28, 2010

China has warned the Nobel committee against awarding its coveted peace prize to a jailed Chinese dissident, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute said Tuesday

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman denied that China has exerted pressure but said that choosing dissident Liu Xiaobo would go against the prize's aims.

"The person you just mentioned was sentenced to jail by Chinese judicial authorities for violating Chinese law. I think his acts are completely contrary to the aspirations of the Nobel Peace Prize," said spokeswoman Jiang Yu.

Liu, one of the country's most prominent activists, was the main author of a daring political manifesto that called for stronger human rights and an end to Communist party dominance. He was detained in 2008, and then found guilty of inciting to subvert state power. He was sentenced last December to 11 years in jail.

Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said China's Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying warned that awarding the prize to Liu could harm ties between the two countries when she visited Norway in June.

Fu said that giving the Nobel to Liu would be "an unfriendly action that would have negative consequences for the relationship between Norway and China," Lundestad told The Associated Press.

Lundestad said the Nobel committee is independent and ignores pressure to influence its decisions. The peace prize winner will be announced on Oct. 8.

Liu's wife, Liu Xia, said Tuesday she thinks China will be able to exert enough pressure to stop her husband from getting the award.

"The Chinese government has money and power. There is nothing they cannot buy," she told AP Television News.

In past years, when other Chinese human rights activists have been mentioned as prize contenders, China also tried to quash their nominations.

Fu, speaking at a news conference in Beijing about a trip by Premier Wen Jiabao to Europe next week, said there is false talk about Chinese pressure every year.

"Every year, you report that China will apply pressure. And it's standard practice around this time of year. You often talk about the Chinese pressure issue," she said.

Lundestad said he told Fu that the committee is independent of the Norwegian government. He said giving the peace prize to the Dalai Lama in 1989 shows the Nobel committee doesn't respond to pressure from China. Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of trying to undermine its control of Tibet and is sharply critical of anyone who supports him.

China has pointedly disavowed his award as well as the Nobel Literature Prize in 2000, won by Gao Xinjian, a dissident emigre writer who lives in France.

"I've had many such meetings, but this is probably at the highest level," Lundestad said. "They consider this an unfriendly action which would have negative consequences for the relationship between Norway and China.

"We, of course, reject any effort to interfere in the deliberations of the Norwegian Nobel Committee," he said.

Before his latest sentence, Liu, a former university professor, also spent 20 months in jail for joining the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, which ended when the government called in the military -- killing hundreds, perhaps thousands of demonstrators.

China routinely uses vaguely worded subversion charges to jail people it considers troublemakers. Liu's 11-year prison sentence is the harshest penalty given for inciting subversion since the crime was introduced in 1997.

In recent weeks, there have been increased public calls in support of Liu's nomination. More than 120 Chinese scholars and intellectuals have signed an open letter supporting his bid.

Last week, Czech democracy leader Vaclav Havel added his voice to the growing support for Liu, writing a public endorsement published in the International Herald Tribune.

Liu modeled the political document he wrote in 2008 after Havel's Charter 77, a political declaration that helped pave the way for the 1989 Velvet Revolution that swept the Communist regime out of the former Czechoslovakia.

>> Original Report

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.

>> Complete Report Here

By Radio Free Asia
September 08, 2010

China holds a labor activist for more than a year without trial.

Shaanxi-based labor activist Zhao Dongmin is still being held without any sign of movement towards a trial, and court officials denied him permission to see his wife before she died of illness, his relatives said.

Zhao was detained more than a year ago on charges of disrupting public order after he applied to set up an independent trade union representing more than 300 workers in more than 20 companies.

His wife Deng Yongxia died of the auto-immune disorder lupus on Aug. 31, never having been allowed to visit Zhao in the detention center.

"When she was very seriously ill, we went to the court to apply for a single visit permit, but the court didn't approve it," Zhao's brother said.

"On the night she died, we went again to ask the court to allow him to see her one last time, and they refused again, saying that no such rules existed."

"Their eldest child has just got into senior high school, and the second is only three years old, and lives with my parents [who are] in their eighties now," Zhao's brother said.

He called on Shaanxi authorities to release Zhao as soon as possible. "He has been detained for more than a year now," he said.

Belief in innocence

Deng was admitted to the hospital twice this year after a period of deep depression and insomnia. She died of kidney failure and internal bleeding triggered by systemic lupus erythematosus, doctors said.

Deng maintained a staunch view of her husband's innocence during an interview in June, when she was admitted to the hospital a second time.

"There are elderly and very young people in our family. I can't get out much. There was a time when I went regularly to the detention center to ask to see [Zhao]. I went maybe seven or eight times. It didn't matter what I said; they still wouldn't let me see him," Deng said at the time.

"They wouldn't let me give him money, or take his laundry or bring a change of clothes."

"I couldn't sleep after he went there. I didn't sleep for seven or eight months. The kids are exhausted too. His mother's health is poor as well, so in the middle of that, my body just gave out," she said.

Case stalled?

According to Zhao's lawyer, identified by his surname Chen, Zhao's case had been bounced back and forth between the police, the state prosecutor's office, and the court for months, with the prosecutor calling on the police to present more evidence.

"I haven't been allowed to read the evidence or to visit my client," Chen said. "The procuratorate [prosecutor] says the paperwork isn't ready and that it's not 'convenient' for me to read it."

"If I go to the court, they tell me that the case is still under investigation," he said. "They also said there was some kind of a meeting higher up to discuss the case."

"To this day, they haven't brought a case [against Zhao]. Investigations are supposed to take seven days."

An official who answered the direct line number given to Chen for Zhao's case at the Xincheng district court in Shaanxi's provincial capital, Xian, said the number had been changed.

"There's a new phone number now," he said. "The new directory hasn't been printed yet."

Chen said no one had answered repeated calls he made to the court last week.

"I have been thinking that perhaps the court has been sitting on the case because they don't think it will stand up," Chen added.

Pushing labor reform

Zhao Dongmin was arrested in August 2009 for "gathering a crowd to disrupt social order."

A former left-wing organizer of labor rights group Gongweihui, Zhao applied on behalf of the group to the Shaanxi provincial trade union and the Shaanxi provincial party for registration as a study group.

Receiving no reply, they applied again to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) in the same month Zhao was arrested. The Shaanxi provincial civil affairs bureau then stepped in and issued an order banning the study group.

"The 'Application to Establish a Shaanxi Union Rights Defense Representative Congress' is a strongly worded demand by the working class to the Party to strengthen its leadership over the working class," Zhao wrote in his application letter to the ACFTU.

In it, he argued that the study group was necessary to prevent exploitation of the workers by factory management.

The Hong Kong-based rights group China Labor Bulletin (CLB), which has long criticized the ACFTU as being mired in bureaucracy and unable to function as a body that represents China's workforce, said that, in response, "union officials obfuscated and claimed there was a limit to what they could do."

But behind closed doors, they were moving quickly to make sure that Zhao's influence was quashed as soon as possible.

"They were far more concerned with trying to neutralize the organizing ability of the lawyer-turned-labor rights advocate, Zhao Dongmin," CLB said in a news item on its website.

"The union officials at the meeting all stressed that Zhao Dongmin should not be allowed to represent the workers or get directly involved in their struggles," it said.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Ding Xiao. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

>> Original Source

By Radio Free Asia
September 07, 2010

Police assist authorities in a forcible land grab in southern China.

Several hundred policemen stormed farmland in a southern Chinese village on Tuesday, bulldozing crops and beating and detaining villagers, according to witnesses.

The police officers, who donned riot gear during the raid, were dispatched by authorities to appropriate land in Shuangren village, outside of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region's Liuzhou city.

Villager Chen Qinglong said his mother Qin Shuiying was taken away by police in the clash.

"The [Liuzhou] city authorities ordered the forced land seizure today, sending an army of 500 security personnel, police officers, fire fighters, and armed police, along with 50 bulldozers," Chen said.

"We knew they would come and waited for them on our land from 4 a.m.," he added.

"A villager got beaten up. My mother was detained. All the arrested were taken to Liuzhou city."

Another villager named Qin Shujin provided more details of the attack.

"Police took two dozen people into custody in Liuzhou. They were carrying a large banner on the way to the township government office when they were stopped by police. The two banner carriers were beaten up and injured," he said.

Villagers outnumbered

Qin said that police targeted all villagers, regardless of whether or not they had signed an earlier compensation agreement.

"The bulldozers leveled everything in their way, no matter whether you signed or not, or took the compensation money or not," Qin said.

"When they came, we tried to argue with their bosses, asking 'Why are you destroying our crops?' But the land was surrounded by police and we had no way to deal with them," he said.

A third villager, named Liao Binfeng, from nearby Luorong township said villagers were completely outnumbered by authorities during the confrontation.

"There were about 400 to 500 people, including police, there. They had dogs to guard at the entrance of the road," Liao said.

"A villager was beaten up. I don't know his condition. About 30 people have been arrested. They arrested them this morning and have not released them yet," he said.

One employee who answered the telephone at the Luorong township office said he knew nothing about the incident before hanging up.

But another staffer at the same office initially denied force had been used to occupy the farmers' land and said no one had been arrested in the incident.

"We didn't grab the land. We did no such thing," she said.

When told that photos showing the clash had been obtained, the woman said she was unaware of the events.

"I don't know about this. I did not personally see this incident."

Land sale unapproved

Villagers say the Liuzhou city government made a secret arrangement in September last year with Shuangren village chief Qin Jianlin to secretly sell nearly 10,000 mu (1,650 acres) of their land to a company for commercial development as an automobile factory.

Villager Chen Xinlong said the Luorong township government claimed at the time that it had received provincial permission to obtain the land for sale.

The Guangxi Provincial Bureau of Land Management later told village representatives that the land trade was not approved and was thus illegal.

Chen said that after reports about the sale surfaced, the township government initially promised the 300 residents of Shuangren village 500,000 yuan (U.S. $73,000) each in compensation, but eventually forced the villagers to sign an agreement for a reduced amount.

"According to the state law, the money for land compensation has to go directly to the farmers' accounts. But this did not happen," Chen said.

"[The township government] used an official's name to open a new account. All the compensation went to that account and then was distributed from that account to the farmers. They made the decisions about who they wanted to give money to and how much they wanted to give," he said.

Chen said the villagers are all dependent on farming the land, but will be unable to make ends meet now that the government has damaged their crops.

Another villager who asked to remain anonymous said the deal was kept secret to prevent disclosure of the amount of money involved.

"They didn't publicize the deal. The developers paid 310,000,000 yuan (U.S. $45.6 million) for the tract of land. But we didn't get the money--that went to the village chief. The chief gave us money according to his own will."

A third villager said Qin's cousin, who is not a resident of the village, also received money because he is the deputy director of the township land expropriation office.

"The village chief and his two cousins amassed 1,500,000 yuan (U.S. $221,000) in total in the deal," the villager said.

Qin Jianlin hung up when telephoned for comment on the clash and his involvement in the land deal.

Land disputes common

Profits from new property developments in China can swell local coffers and boost tax revenues to the central government in Beijing.

China's "Regulation on Petitions," issued by the State Council, states that petitioners may voice their grievances to higher-level government offices.

But those trying to do so are frequently held in unofficial detention centers, or "black jails," before being taken back to their hometowns.

Many petitioners have spent years pursuing complaints against local officials over disputes including the loss of homes and farmland, unpaid wages and pensions, and alleged mistreatment by the authorities.

Few report getting a satisfactory result, and most say they have become a target of further harassment by the authorities.

Land disputes have spread across China in recent years, with local people often complaining that they receive only minimal compensation when the government sells tracts to developers in lucrative property deals or evicts them from their homes in downtown areas.

Attempts to occupy disputed property frequently result in violent clashes, as police and armed gangs are brought in to enforce the will of local officials.

Original reporting by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service and RFA's Cantonese service. Translated by Ping Chen and Shiny Li. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

>> Original Report

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.

>> Original Source

By BBC News

01 September 2010

The EU has urged China to step up the fight against black market exports, saying counterfeit cigarettes alone are depriving the EU of 10bn euros (£8bn) in tax revenue annually.

The EU Commissioner for Taxation and Customs, Algirdas Semeta, is in Shanghai to discuss customs co-operation with Chinese officials.

He described China as "the main source of counterfeit cigarettes in the EU".

Most fake or pirated goods seized in the EU last year were Chinese.

The European Commission says goods from China accounted for 64% of the seizures. Besides cigarettes, the main items were fake labels, clothing and accessories, shoes, toys and blank CDs and DVDs.

According to Mr Semeta, the 10bn euros in lost revenue from cigarettes "impacts significantly on legitimate business interests".

China is the EU's second biggest trading partner after the US and EU-China trade totalled some 300bn euros last year.

>> Complete Report

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.

>> Original Source