Studies / Reports: June 2006 Archives
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. | The New York Times
June 24, 2006
Did China have a death from avian flu two years before it admitted having any human cases?
The mystery deepened yesterday, and the possibility was raised that someone had tried to block publication of that event from a prestigious American medical journal.
The New England Journal of Medicine reversed an announcement it had made two days before, now saying that the eight Chinese authors of a letter describing a man's death in 2003 from avian flu had insisted that they really did want it printed.
The timing of the death is important because scientists believe that the A(H5N1) avian flu virus had percolated in China's chickens for many years, but it was not until last November that the government admitted to having a human case; it has officially reported 19 cases and 12 deaths. In 2003, China covered up dozens of SARS deaths for months after the epidemic began there.
BBC World News
June 19, 2006
Piracy in China cost the film industry $2.7bn (£1.5bn) in 2005, according to a study by a major global movie body.
Around 93% of all films sold in China are pirated, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) study said.
The Chinese film industry was worst affected, losing around $1.5bn (£812m) to piracy, it said, while major US film studios lost around $565m (£306m).
According to the MPA report, almost 40% of the losses come from people downloading films on the internet.
"In terms of who's losing the most here in China, it's not the MPA's member companies, it's the local industry," MPA Asia Pacific head Mike Ellis said.
But the losses to US studios in China have risen since 2003, when the MPA estimated that film companies lost $168m (£91m).
BBC World News
20 June 2006
Police have occupied a college campus in central China after riots involving thousands of students, reports said.
Students at the college, in Henan province, were angry at the college's move to award less prestigious diplomas, local media said.
Last week, angry students ransacked the campus, damaging cars, shops and dormitories.
The college has now been placed under "total police control", Hong Kong daily Ta Kung Pao reports.
Photographs circulating on the internet of Thursday's riot at Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College showed smashed windows, damaged cars and a campus littered with debris and broken bicycles.
Hong Kong daily Ming Pao said up to 10,000 students took part in the riot.
By Tim Luard | BBC World News
June 16, 2006
China may have lost its reputation for making low-cost goods, but when it comes to weapons, there is no doubt which end of the market its sights are still set on
Some of the poorest and most unsavoury regimes on earth, which either cannot afford or are not allowed to buy sophisticated Western arms, are turning to the world's newest superpower to buy guns, leg-irons, anti-riot equipment and armoured vehicles.
Military specialists contacted by the BBC News website have confirmed the main findings of a report issued this week by Amnesty International, which said Chinese arms sales were fuelling conflicts and human rights abuses in countries such as Sudan and Burma.
China has been the Burmese military government's main supplier of weapons - including artillery, trucks, logistical support and communications equipment - ever since the 1990s, according to Tim Huxley, an Asia specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
"Without Chinese arms supplies, the Burmese army would find it impossible to operate," he said.
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
15 June 2006
A Chinese journalist found guilty of extortion after writing articles about official corruption was sentenced Thursday to one year in prison, his wife and lawyer said.
Yang Xiaoqing, a reporter for the state-run China Industrial Economy News, was sentenced at the Longhui No. 1 People's Court in Hunan province, his lawyer, Zhang Xingshui said.
Yang's wife, Gong Jie, said she would appeal the decision immediately.
"It's a terrible thing," Gong said. "He has not committed a single crime. He has not done one thing wrong. To sentence him to even one day of prison is the real crime."
She said hundreds of onlookers swarmed the court and blocked police cars to protest the sentence. Some carried signs reading: "Corrupt officials should not bully reporters and the people!"
Telephones rang unanswered at the Hunan court Thursday evening.
Yang was detained Jan. 22 after being accused by authorities of concocting reports in order to extort the equivalent of up to $100,000 from officials in Longhui county, human rights groups have said. Yang pleaded innocent and has insisted the evidence against him was fabricated.
Gong has said Yang was targeted after writing articles accusing Yang Jianxin, a local Communist Party official, of embezzling state assets.
Yang, who is not related to the reporter, since has moved to a new post at a government advisory body in nearby Shaoyang city. He has denied framing Yang Xiaoqing.
Reporters at China's state-run media pursuing sensitive stories often face violence and harassment, sometimes from local authorities, and often lose their jobs or are detained under unspecified charges.
By Dr Gao Dawei | The Epoch Times
12 June 2006
High level government and military officers join the tide of withdrawals, regime said to be on the brink of collapse
Dr. Gao Dawei, a representative of the Global Quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Service Center, spoke at a rally in Los Angeles on June 10 in support of 11 million withdrawals from the CCP and reported on the latest developments in the withdrawal movement in China. Following is a summary of his speech:
More People Are Awakening Every Day
The Communist regime in China is increasingly afraid of the "Nine Commentaries" and the movement of quitting the CCP that is surging across the nation. In recent weeks, the regime has gone all out to block the hotlines of the global Quit the CCP Service Center as well as the Web sites—wujie.net and dongtai.net (now restored) that help to facilitate the movement.
The CCP continues to abduct, detain, and illegally sentence those who spread the "Nine Commentaries" and promote withdrawals from the Party, the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers. But the conscience of the public and military is rapidly awakening, and the regime is unable to suppress this movement. The following are some examples that occurred during the communist regime's recent blockade of our Web sites.
BBC World News
June 11, 2006
The human rights organisation Amnesty International has accused China of being of the world's most secretive and irresponsible arms exporters.
In a report, it says Chinese weapons have helped to fuel conflicts such as those in Sudan, Nepal and Burma.
Amnesty is urging China to publish information on its arms exports.
The authorities in Beijing have long insisted that they have strict safeguards in place to prevent any unethical arms sales.
Amnesty International challenges this idea in the report.
"China describes its approach to arms export licensing as 'cautious and responsible', yet the reality couldn't be further from the truth," the author's report, Helen Hughes, said in a statement.
By Keith Bradsherand David Barboza | The New York Times
June 11, 2006
HANJING, China — One of China's lesser-known exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.
In early April, a dense cloud of pollutants over Northern China sailed to nearby Seoul, sweeping along dust and desert sand before wafting across the Pacific. An American satellite spotted the cloud as it crossed the West Coast.
Researchers in California, Oregon and Washington noticed specks of sulfur compounds, carbon and other byproducts of coal combustion coating the silvery surfaces of their mountaintop detectors. These microscopic particles can work their way deep into the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer.
Filters near Lake Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are the darkest that we've seen" outside smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Davis.
Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.
By Howard W. French | The New York Times
June 10, 2006
NIE YUANZI was an ambitious college professor whose "big character poster," displayed on the grounds of Beijing University, was said to have ignited the Cultural Revolution, a prairie fire of violent purges and denunciations that quickly spread across the nation.
Wang Rongfen was a student of German at Beijing's elite Foreign Language Institute who was imprisoned after writing a bold letter to Mao challenging his judgment in unleashing the self-destructive frenzy of his young vigilantes, the Red Guards.
Even today, the history of that time has been shunted into a dark corner. There have been no news reports or public memorials of the catastrophe, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed and China's economy was devastated. Yet four decades after the start of the Cultural Revolution in May 1966, there remains a compelling symmetry to the experiences and reflections of the two women who played such prominent roles at the outset of this disastrous era, and had their lives tragically derailed as a result.
However different, they were both, in the phrase of Ms. Wang, "bold and straightforward" women.
After the publication of an article criticizing Mao's political rivals, Ms. Nie, then Communist Party secretary of Beijing University's philosophy department, put up a poster that claimed the university was under the control of the bourgeoisie. Mao had the poster read over the radio, giving it his stamp of approval and encouraging attacks on authority figures.
Vaulted into the leadership of the Red Guard, she was detained only a year later after becoming disenchanted with its excesses, and was jailed for 17 years.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
June 04, 2006
BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese police tore up a protester's poster and detained at least two people on Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Sunday as the country marked 17 years since local troops crushed a pro-democracy demonstration in the public space.
An elderly woman tried to pull out a poster with apparently political material written on it, but police ripped it up and then took her away in a van.
A farmer tried to stage a protest apparently unrelated to the 1989 crackdown, but he also was taken away in a van.
After dawn, a group of tourists tried to open a banner while posing for a photo, catching the attention of police, who quickly forced them to put the nonpolitical material away. They were not detained.
Discussion of the crackdown is still taboo in China outside of the semiautonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Chinese television news and major newspapers did not mention the anniversary.
In Hong Kong, several hundred people holding candles gathered at Victoria Park, creating a sea of lights covering four soccer fields. They observed a brief silence and organizers laid wreaths at a makeshift shrine dedicated to ''martyrs of democracy.''
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