Studies / Reports: 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.

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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.

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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."

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The Christian Science Monitor
July 18, 2008

Like a marathoner at the finish line, China seems whipped. It struggled two decades to host the Olympics that open in three weeks. It has spent about $50 billion, pumped up its athletes, spiffed up Beijing, and fended off calls for a boycott. Now it may wonder if the effort will be worth it.

The Games themselves will, of course, be the world's main focus for two weeks after the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies. And thousands of athletes will fulfill once again the purpose of the modern Olympics, as stated by founder Pierre de Coubertin: "to bring together in a radiant union all the qualities which guide mankind to perfection."

But these Olympics also came with two political expectations, both of which are not even close to earning a medal.

One is human rights in China. The International Olympic Committee, in awarding the Games seven years ago, pointed to the Communist Party's record in suppressing dissent and said it expected that "openness, progress, and development in many areas will be such that the situation will be improved." The IOC also said athletes have "an absolute right" during the Games to speak out. The party itself did not publicly agree to improve its record, but the head of China's bidding team did say the Beijing Games would "benefit the further development of our human rights cause."

If anything, China's human rights record has worsened, as seen clearly during this spring's crackdown on Tibet's Buddhist monks. Last year, the number of arrests for "endangering state security" was at their highest since 2000.

And China's hand in world atrocities, such as Darfur and Zimbabwe, has also worsened. Steven Spielberg quit as artistic adviser for the Olympic ceremonies over China's backing of Sudan.

Why would China do this? These Olympics may simply serve as a pretext for the party to keep an authoritarian hold over 1.3 billion Chinese, who are increasingly revolting against corrupt rule. Not only do the Olympics justify crackdowns, but Chinese leaders have shown again and again that they will use foreign protests to whip up nationalist pride.

Those actions undercut the second expectation of these Olympics: to celebrate China's economic progress and its emergence as a power.

China's leaders may have thought the Beijing Olympics would serve the same purpose as the 1964 Games did for Japan: a coming-out party. Instead, the many protests, such as the interruptions of the torch relay, and the strong possibility of protests in Beijing during the Games, are likely to lower the PR boost.

The 2008 Olympics could end up like the 1936 Berlin Games, in which Hitler tried to promote Nazi (and Aryan) superiority, only to have American blacks, such as Jesse Owens, win track events. But these Games may not be the PR disaster of the 1980 Moscow Games that were widely boycotted after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were overturned within years after their Games. A better model for China would be the 1988 Seoul Games. During the run-up to those Olympics, the South Korean people used the coming event to rise up and force an end to a dictatorship. Now that was an example of "qualities which guide mankind to perfection."

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By Michael Bristow | BBC World News
July 16, 2008

A Beijing family are refusing to move from their city centre home, despite a court order threatening to throw them out.

Family members say they are not being offered enough compensation for the home they bought 60 years ago.

Their campaign is attracting large crowds, who gather at the tumble-down shack in the heart of historic Beijing. It could pose a problem for officials, who want to avoid embarrassing incidents ahead of the Olympic Games.

Yu Pingju, one of 14 family members who live in the house, said it was bought before the Communists took power in China in 1949.

Until recently, it was also the family's workplace; they sold roast chestnuts, peanuts and other snacks from the roadside home.

But then they were told to move as part of a plan to tidy up the neighbourhood, which is near many of the city's main tourist attractions.

All other residents appear to have moved on, allowing the area to be spruced up. But the Yus refused to accept the 340,000 yuan ($49,900, £24,800) compensation.

"In Beijing you can't even buy something the size of a toilet for that," said 40-year-old Ms Yu, as she stood with her arms folded outside her home.

Officials who administer the district have obtained a court order, which says the family had to move out by 13 July. But they are still there.

"I'm not going - I've got nowhere to go to. We are going to defend our house with our lives," said Ms Yu.

'No say'

The Yus' Beijing home is one of many "nail houses" that have sprung up over China, particularly since the introduction of a property law last year.

These are homes whose owners have refused to leave to make way for redevelopment.

As part of their campaign, the family have plastered their shack with flags and slogans. One says simply: "This is my home."

They have also put up posters of Chinese leaders because they believe they could help them resolve the issue.

"If they knew about this problem, they would look after us. They would care and sympathise with us," said Ms Yu.

The colourful home has now become something of an attraction, grabbing the attention of passers-by and those who live in the district.

One local said: "In Beijing, house demolition often ends up with forced eviction. Ordinary people don't have a say."

This poses a problem for Beijing officials, who will want to resolve the issue without being too heavy-handed.

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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By Robin Shulman | The Washington Post
08 July 2008

Marking the one-month countdown to the start of the Beijing Olympic Games, activists gathered here and in cities around the world Tuesday to call on China to ease crackdowns on dissenters and release political prisoners.

A coalition of advocates met at City Hall in Lower Manhattan to announce the launch of a 24-hour appeal for China to release prisoners -- including journalists, bloggers and artists -- before the Olympics opening ceremony on Aug. 8. "It would show goodwill toward keeping promises they made in 2001 to the International Olympic Committee that they have not yet kept," said Lucie Morillon, Washington director of Reporters Without Borders, which helped organize the appeal.

Campaigns also were launched in Melbourne, Australia; Toronto and Vancouver, Canada; Hong Kong; Berlin; and other cities.

The protesters included Chinese democracy activists who are working with Tibetan independence advocates as well as campaigners pressing China to influence its ally Sudan to stop the killings in Darfur. They were joined by advocates for journalists and artists.

The Chinese government had been counting on the Olympics to provide an international showcase for the country's economic growth and development. But the Games have also focused attention on China's poor human rights record.

Activists report that in recent months, the Chinese government has expanded its controls: Foreign reporters have had difficulty getting visas, police have briefly detained dissidents during pre-Olympic sweeps, and police have warned activists who live outside the capital against traveling to Beijing.

"There are two Chinas in China," said Yang Jianli, who spent five years in prison after he attempted to address a workers' rally. "One, the Chinese government wants to showcase to outsiders. Another, the government does not want other people to see. Since my release last year, I cannot forget the political prisoners I left behind."

Global concern has grown since Chinese security forces cracked down harshly on protesters in Tibet in March.

Some world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have said they will not attend the Games' opening ceremony. President Bush reiterated Sunday at the Group of Eight summit in Japan that he plans to attend.

"I feel so sad that most of the political leaders -- they are going to go to the opening ceremony of the Games with Chinese Communist Party leaders," said Baiqiao Tang, speaking Tuesday at City Hall in Manhattan. He said he had protested in 1989 at Beijing's Tiananmen Square and was imprisoned afterward.

Activists have called for demonstrations outside Chinese embassies during the Olympics opening, and Reporters Without Borders is staging a cyber-demonstration on its Web site.

By Aileen McCabe | canada.com - where perspectives connect
July 06, 2008

With just one month to go before the opening ceremony, it is increasingly obvious worldwide efforts to use the Beijing Olympics to hold China's feet to the fire on human rights have floundered.

A 71-page report outlining violations of press freedom in China released Monday by Human Rights Watch is the latest indication that hosting the Games was not enough of a lever to convince the Beijing government to improve its sad rights record.

Proponents and critics of the Beijing Games agreed on one thing - that fewer restrictions for international media and scrutiny of China at this time would constitute progress, Sophie Richardson, HRW's Asia advocacy director said.

Yet the Chinese government, with the help of the International Olympic Committee, has done its best to impede progress. Talk of an Olympic boycott to pressure Beijing on rights never gathered wide support, but it fizzled totally last week when U.S. President George W. Bush said he would attend the opening ceremony on Aug. 8.

Following his announcement, French media reported President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has hemmed-and-hawed about boycotting, would also attend. Sarkozy's office did not deny the story and a disappointed Robert Menard, head of Reporters Without Borders, said in a television interview on the weekend: "This is a stab in the back of Chinese dissidents. This is truly cowardly and is the opposite of what one expects from France."

Hordes of world leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, are not going to the opening ceremony. But like Harper, most have taken some pains to make it clear their absence is not a boycott.

Over the past year, Beijing has made a few concessions to human rights concerns, almost certainly because it is hosting the Olympics.

When Hollywood director Steven Spielberg withdrew as a consultant to the opening ceremony to protest China's involvement in Darfur, China made some effort to bolster international attempts to rein in the rogue government.

And, this spring, after protests over the crackdown in Tibet reached a crescendo worldwide that threatened to affect the Games, China re-opened talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama.

But, as in the case of media freedom, which was the sole "rights" guarantee China actually gave the International Olympics Committee (IOC) when it was awarded the Games, progress on those files is spotty, at best.

The HRW report documents dozens of cases where the Chinese have harassed, intimidated and impeded foreign journalists in direct violation of its promise to allow free access nationwide to foreign reporters in the run-up to the Games.

The most egregious example is the closure of Tibet to foreign journalists following the violent protests in March, but HRW cites case after case where reporters working on environmental, health or industrial stories were also hassled, roughed-up or detained by security officials. It lists incidents where they were simply talking to disgruntled citizens and their notes or pictures were confiscated and their sources intimidated. In many, if not all of these cases, the reporters appealed to Beijing to live up to the guarantees it gave the IOC, but they were ignored.

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