Studies / Reports: September 2009 Archives

By Radio Free Asia
28 September 2009

Tibetans face increased restrictions on prayer and travel ahead of a sensitive Chinese anniversary.

As authorities prepare for sensitive anniversary celebrations across China, a growing security presence in the country's west is limiting the religious practices and travel of Tibetans, residents say.

The increased security, residents say, is targeting several areas within China's Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), as well as other parts of the country inhabited by Tibetans.

On Oct. 1, China will mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Many inhabitants of the TAR oppose Chinese rule in the region.

A resident of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, who asked to remain anonymous said security personnel had been posted around sites of cultural and religious significance to Tibetans.

"There is a huge presence of security forces in Lhasa around the Potala Palace and in the Jokhang [temple]. Fearing Tibetan protests, the Chinese authorities have closed all other shrines in Jokhang except the main shrine," the Tibetan said.

"In the past you would not see any armed personnel inside the Jokhang shrine--only monks. However, on Sept. 24, six armed security personnel were stationed inside to keep watch on Tibetans who come to view and pray at the main shrine," the man said.

'A show of force'

Another Tibetan resident of Lhasa said both armed police and soldiers have been ordered to march around the Jokhang temple in groups of 10 "as a show of force."

He added that Tibetans from other parts of the TAR were being refused entry to the Tibetan capital.

"The Tibetans from Kham and Amdo in particular are checked for their IDs, while those who do not have proper permits have been ordered to return to their hometowns," the man said.

He added that even those Tibetans from villages on the outskirts of Lhasa are "thoroughly checked" for identification when they come to the city.

"Special checkpoints were raised at different entry points and have stopped all Tibetans from going into Lhasa," he said.

Security personnel also carried out combat training to disable explosives and prevent "surprise terror attacks" in the city on the morning of Sept. 24, according to the official Beijing Zhongguo Xinwen She news agency, which called the drills "a complete success."

Other areas targeted

Others said the increased security presence was not limited to policing Lhasa's cultural sites and city entry points.

A resident of Kardze [in Chinese, Ganzi] county in Sichuan's Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, said similar "anti-terror" drills were being held there.

"A convoy of 30 vehicles carrying armed security personnel arrived at the main town center where the Tibetans protested last year," the woman said.

"Armed security personnel were stationed in groups in different parts of Kardze city. The security force was undergoing training in combating Tibetan uprisings," she said.

In March of last year, riots protesting Chinese rule in Tibet spread throughout the TAR, but were met with a swift and violent response from Chinese authorities.

Residents of Kardze, part of what Tibetans know as Kham, have earned a reputation for speaking out against Chinese rule, experts say.

Visas no longer issued

In addition to the increased security presence around the TAR, authorities have stopped granting travel permits for Tibet, according to tourism industry workers in neighboring Nepal's capital of Kathmandu.

"Chinese Embassy officials stopped issuing permits to Tibet on Sept. 21, and they will end the restriction only after Oct. 8," one of the workers in Kathmandu said.

The other Kathmandu resident, who works as a travel agent in the city, said Tibetan travelers from outside Tibet are being told to leave the region before National Day celebrations commence.

"Those Tibetans who are in Tibet to visit their relatives were ordered to leave Tibet before Oct. 1," the travel agent said.

Chinese authorities are implementing a nationwide security clampdown ahead of the Oct. 1 National Day celebrations, closing key Web sites and discussion boards, and detaining people who try to lodge complaints in Beijing about local governments.

The anniversary comes as Beijing struggles to quell ethnic tensions in China's northwest and to silence outspoken dissidents, petitioners, and civil rights lawyers, who have been warned against using the occasion to protest against the government.

Original reporting by Norbu Damdul and Thupten Sangyal for RFA's Tibetan service. Tibetan service director: Jigme Ngapo. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written for the Web in English by Joshua Lipes. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original source

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and JOHN GROBLER | THE NEW YORK TIMES
September 22, 2009

WINDHOEK, Namibia -- It is not every day that global leaders set foot in this southern African nation of gravel roads, towering sand dunes and a mere two million people. So when President Hu Jintao of China touched down here in February 2007 with a 130-person delegation in tow, it clearly was not just a courtesy call.

And in fact, China soon granted Namibia a big low-interest loan, which Namibia tapped to buy $55.3 million worth of Chinese-made cargo scanners to deter smugglers. It was a neat illustration, Chinese officials said, of how doing good in Namibia could do well for China, too.

Or so it seemed until Namibia charged that the state-controlled company selected by China to provide the scanners -- a company until recently run by President Hu's son -- had facilitated the deal with millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. And until China threw up barriers when Namibian investigators asked for help looking into the matter.

Now the scanners seem to illustrate something else: the aura of boosterism, secrecy and back-room deals that has clouded China's use of billions of dollars in foreign aid to court the developing world.

From Pakistan to Angola to Kyrgyzstan, China is using its enormous pool of foreign currency savings to cement diplomatic alliances, secure access to natural resources and drum up business for its flagship companies. Foreign aid -- typically cut-rate loans, sometimes bundled with more commercial lines of credit -- is central to this effort.

Leaders of developing nations have embraced China's sales pitch of easy credit, without Western-style demands for political or economic reform, for a host of unmet needs. The results can be clearly seen in new roads, power plants, and telecommunications networks across the African continent -- more than 200 projects since 2001, many financed with preferential loans from the Chinese government's Exim Bank.

Increasingly, though, experts argue that China's aid comes with a major catch: It must be used to buy goods or services from companies, many of them state-controlled, that Chinese officials select themselves. Competitive bidding by the borrowing nation is discouraged, and China pulls a veil over vital data like project costs, loan terms and repayment conditions. Even the dollar amount of loans offered as foreign aid is treated as a state secret.

Anticorruption crusaders complain that secrecy invites corruption, and that corruption debases foreign assistance.

"China is using this financing to buy the loyalty of the political elite," said Harry Roque, a University of the Philippines law professor who is challenging the legality of Chinese-financed projects in the Philippines. "It is a very effective tool of soft diplomacy. But it is bad for the citizens who have to repay these loans for graft-ridden contracts."

In fact, such secrecy runs counter to international norms for foreign assistance. In a part of the world prone to corruption and poor governance, it also raises questions about who actually benefits from China's projects. The answers, international development specialists say, are hidden from public view.

"We know more about China's military expenditures than we do about its foreign aid," said David Shambaugh, an author and China scholar at George Washington University. "Foreign aid really is a glaring contradiction to the broader trend of China's adherence to international norms. It is so strikingly opaque it really makes one wonder what they are trying to hide."

Until recently, wealthy nations could hardly hold themselves out as an example of how to run foreign aid, either. Many projects turned out to be tainted by corruption or geared to enrich the donor nation's contractors, not the impoverished borrowers. But over the past 10 or 15 years, some 30 developed nations under the umbrella of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.) have made a concerted effort to clean up their assistance programs.

They demanded that foreign money be awarded and spent transparently, using competitive bidding and outlawing bribery. Increasingly, they also are also pushing to give borrowers more choice among suppliers and contractors, rather than insisting that funds be recycled back to the donor nation's companies.

China, which is not a member of the O.E.C.D., is operating under rules that the West has largely abandoned. It mixes aid and business in secret government-to-government agreements. It requires that foreign aid contracts be awarded to Chinese contractors it picks through a closed-door bidding process in Beijing. Its attempts to prevent corrupt practices by its companies overseas appear weak.

Some developing nations insist on independently comparing prices before accepting China's largesse. Others do not bother. "Very often they are getting something they wouldn't be able to get without China's financing," said Chris Alden, a specialist on China-African relations with the London School of Economics and Political Science. "They presume that the Chinese are going to give value for money."

Development experts say they have tried to convince the Chinese government that better safeguards and a more open process will enhance its efforts to gain influence and business. If its projects collapse because of kickbacks or inflated costs, they argue, China will end up exporting not only goods and services, but a reputation for corruption that it is already battling at home.

But Deborah Brautigam, the author of a coming book on China's economic ties with Africa titled "The Dragon's Gift," says Beijing is hesitant to hobble its companies with Western-style restraints before they have become world-class competitors.

Thinking Business, Not Ethics

"The Chinese are kind of starting out where everyone else was years ago, and they see themselves as being at a disadvantage," Ms. Brautigam said. "The Chinese don't particularly want a big scandal. That doesn't further their interests. They just want their companies to get business."

Sometimes they get both. In 2007, the Philippines was forced to cancel a $460 million contract with the Beijing scanner company, Nuctech Company Ltd., to set up satellite-based classroom instruction after critics protested the company had no expertise in education.

It also canceled a $329 million contract awarded to ZTE Corporation, a state-controlled Chinese communications company, after allegations of enormous kickbacks. ZTE denied bribing anyone, but the controversy has lingered. Last month an antigraft panel recommended filing criminal charges against two Philippines officials in connection with the contract.

A Manila-based nonprofit group, the Center for International Law, has mounted a legal challenge against still another Chinese contract in the Philippines, to build a $500 million railroad. Professor Roque, who leads the center, contends that the price of China's state-owned contractor "was simply plucked out of the sky." Officially, China's directive to its companies is toe an ethical line overseas.

"Our enterprises must conform to international rules when running business, must be open and transparent, should go through a bidding process for big projects and forbid inappropriate deals and reject corruption and kickbacks," Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister, told a group of Chinese businessmen in Zambia in 2006.

But China has no specific law against bribing foreign officials. And the government seems none too eager to investigate or punish companies it selects if they turn out to have engaged in shady practices overseas.

Indeed, it has an added incentive to look the other way because of the state's ties to many foreign aid contractors -- connections that sometimes extend to families of the Communist Party elite.

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By Radio Free Asia
September 14, 2009

Chinese authorities detain parents observing the anniversary of a far-reaching milk scandal that sickened their children.

Three parents of children sickened in China's 2008 tainted-milk scandal were detained after observing the one-year anniversary of the milk scandal, and another who planned to join them has been taken to an unofficial "black prison," victims' parents say.

Guo Caihong and Zhou Jinzhong from central Henan province and Xiang Qingyu from southern Jiangsu province met last Friday at a restaurant in suburban Beijing's Daxing county, parents said. But authorities then detained and questioned them.

Milk powder contaminated with an industrial chemical killed at least six babies and sickened nearly 300,000 others with painful kidney stones last year. Friday marked one year since Sept. 11, 2008, when a Chinese dairy recalled hundreds of tons of baby formula and the government vowed "serious punishment" for those responsible.

Chinese authorities are jittery and eager to crack down on dissent ahead of the 60th anniversary of Chinese Communist Party on Oct. 1. Police have arrested or detained leading dissidents and are harassing lawyers who defend them.

Zhao Lianhai, a representative of victims' parents, said a local official from Henan contacted Guo Caihong on Friday and promised to take her home from Beijing.

"But on Saturday afternoon, a volunteer told me that the three parents had been taken by their respective local officials to an unknown place instead of home. When they were led away, local police were there as well," Mr. Zhao said.

Zhou Jinzhong, one of the three parents, described what has happened.

"On Saturday, I was taken away by staff members from the Henan Province Office in Beijing, and then they questioned me. Now I am with local officials from our township and our village. I will be heading home tomorrow," Zhou said in an interview Monday.

He said the two other parents received similar treatment.

Another parent of a tainted-milk victim, Liu Hai from Siyang city, had planned to attend anniversary activities in Beijing but was sent to a "law study group," an unofficial detention center also known as a "black prison."

"My husband has been taken away by an office of the local government," Liu's wife said.

"This is the news his uncle managed to get through his connections. For me this is the end of the world."

Original reporting by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated by Ping Chen. Written for the Web in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original source

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
10 September 2009

Chinese police have tried to prevent parents of children sickened by tainted milk powder from traveling to Beijing to mark the anniversary of last year's scandal, an activist said Thursday.

Milk powder contaminated with an industrial chemical killed at least six babies and sickened nearly 300,000 others with painful kidney stones -- making it one of China's worst food safety scandals.

Zhao Lianhai, the father of a sickened child who has rallied other families through a Web site he created, said 11 parents had planned to hold a small commemoration in Beijing on Friday with a dinner, lighting of candles and prayers for the children.

''The scandal has affected a whole generation of China's future,'' Zhao said in a phone interview. ''This day is a humiliation for all Chinese. It is a national disaster. We should have the courage to remember this day.''

Friday marks one year since Sept. 11, 2008, when a Chinese dairy recalled hundreds of tons of baby formula and the government vowed ''serious punishment'' for those responsible for the contamination, days after the scandal was first reported in Chinese media.

The commemoration also comes amid efforts by Chinese authorities to curb dissent in the lead-up to the 60th anniversary of the Communist Party's rule. Police have arrested or detained leading dissidents and are harassing lawyers who defend them. The Oct. 1 celebration will be marked by a military parade.

Liu Hai, a father whose two children developed kidney stones after taking tainted milk powder, said he was detained by police Wednesday in Kunshan city of Jiangsu province while waiting for a train. The police told him they had to stop him because he was headed to an ''illegal gathering,'' Liu said by phone while being taken in a county government car to his hometown of Siyang.

An official at the Kunshan police propaganda department who refused to give his name said he has no information about Liu's case.

Zhao said in the days running up to the anniversary, several parents have reported being warned by police that their group was an illegal organization. However, Beijing's public security bureau on Thursday issued him a letter saying the anniversary event had been approved. The discrepancy in official positions on the commemoration could not immediately be explained.

>> Original source

By Jonathan Ansfield | The New York Times
September 05, 2009

News Web sites in China, complying with secret government orders, are requiring that new users log on under their true identities to post comments, a shift in policy that the country's Internet users and media have fiercely opposed in the past.

Until recently, users could weigh in on news items on many of the affected sites more anonymously, often without registering at all, though the sites were obligated to screen all posts, and the posts could still be traced via Internet protocol addresses.

But in early August, without notification of a change, news portals like Sina, Netease, Sohu and scores of other sites began asking unregistered users to sign in under their real names and identification numbers, said top editors at two of the major portals affected. A Sina staff member also confirmed the change.

The editors said the sites were putting into effect a confidential directive issued in late July by the State Council Information Office, one of the main government bodies responsible for supervising the Internet in China.

The new step is not foolproof, the editors acknowledged. It was possible for a reporter to register successfully on several major sites under falsified names and ID and cellphone numbers.

But the requirement adds a critical new layer of surveillance to mainstream sites in China, which were already heavily policed. Further regulations of the same nature also appeared to be in the pipeline.

And while the authorities called the measure part of a drive to forge greater "social responsibility" and "civility" among users, they moved forward surreptitiously and suppressed reports about it, said the editors and others in the media industry familiar with the measure, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid putting their jobs at risk.

Asked why the policy was pushed through unannounced, the chief editor of one site said, "The influence of public opinion on the Net is still too big."

Government Internet regulators have been trying to usher in real-name registration controls since 2003, when they ordered Internet cafes around China to demand that customers show identification, nominally to keep out minors. Last year, lawmakers and regulators began discussing legislation on a more extensive "real name system," as it is known.

But such proposals have aroused heated debate over the purview of the state to restrict China's online community, which is the largest in the world at about 340 million people and growing.

Proponents, led by officials and state-connected academics in the information security field, argue that mandatory controls are necessary to help subdue inflammatory attacks, misinformation and other illegal activity deemed to endanger social order. They often note registration requirements on large sites in South Korea to support their point.

Critics counter that government regulation represents an incursion on free speech, individual privacy and the watchdog role of the Web in China.

The critics say sites and users should retain the right to discipline themselves. Given the country's huge population of Internet users and its failure to guarantee freedom of expression, they argue, the case of China is hardly analogous to that of South Korea.

In 2006, Internet users and the news media rebuffed one official proposal to require real-name registration on blog hosting sites. Star bloggers denounced the notion, while ordinary users overwhelmingly rejected it in surveys conducted on sites like Sina.

In another key test of the policy earlier this year, the legislature in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, passed a regulation that would have placed the requirement on users who comment, blog or play games on sites based there. Amid a popular outcry, however, the city shied away from enforcing the regulation.

Central authorities have gone to new lengths to tame online activity in 2009, a year peppered with politically delicate anniversaries.

Government censors have closed thousands of sites in a continuing war on "vulgarity," closed liberal forums and blogs for spreading "harmful information," blocked access to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and cut off Internet service where serious unrest has erupted, notably in the Xinjiang region of the west after deadly clashes between ethnic Uighurs and Han in July. Increasingly, officials have defended the Web shutdowns on the grounds of national security.

The government recently set off an international furor when it ordered that all computers sold in China come prepackaged with pornography filterting software that authorities could remotely control. Officials were forced to retreat from the order after international companies and trade bodies protested and Chinese hackers showed that the software was designed to block politically offensive content as well.

The authorities had aimed to avoid a similar showdown over the new real-name requirement. "We had no recourse to challenge it," said the news editor of another portal.

Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong-based newspaper loyal to Beijing, first leaked news of the State Council edict in late July. But the report was scrubbed from the paper's Web site within a few days.

Another state newspaper tried to follow up on the Ta Kung Pao report soon thereafter, the paper's editors said, but they were forced to abort their article because they were warned that the order was a state secret.

The State Council Information Office had yet to respond to a list of submitted questions about the move.

The new mandate did not appear to affect formerly registered users of the portals. Nor did it affect blog hosts, forums or government news sites like People's Daily or Xinhua.

Whether because it had an impact mainly on rookie users or because of the void of news about it, bloggers in China were unusually slow to recognize the measure. But those who did were critical.

One commentator on the popular forum Tianya wrote, "Not daring to write one's real name, in truth, is a form of self-protection for the weak."

There were signals in the state media in recent weeks that more name registration measures would follow.

An influential advocate of the policy, Fang Bingxing, the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told a forum in August that the "time was ripe" to roll it out widely to bolster information security, newspapers reported.

A trail of comments on Sina thrashed the report.

Late last month, the Communist Party-run Guangming Daily ran a positive story about a city government portal in western China that imposed the requirement on new bloggers, calling it a "forerunner."

Hu Yong, a new media specialist at Peking University, said government-enforced registration requirements carried long-term side effects.

"Netizens will have less trust in the government, and to a certain extent, the development of the industry will be impeded," he said.

From a comparison of the most commented-on articles in July and August on a number of portals it was hard to determine whether the volume of posts had been affected so far.

But both editors at two of the major portals affected said their sites had shown marked drop-offs.

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By Keith Bradsher | The New York Times
01 September 2009

China is set to tighten its hammerlock on the market for some of the world's most obscure but valuable minerals.

China currently accounts for 93 percent of production of so-called rare earth elements -- and more than 99 percent of the output for two of these elements, vital for a wide range of green energy technologies and military applications like missiles.

Deng Xiaoping once observed that the Mideast had oil, but China had rare earth elements. As the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has done with oil, China is now starting to flex its muscle.

Even tighter limits on production and exports, part of a plan from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, would ensure China has the supply for its own technological and economic needs, and force more manufacturers to make their wares here in order to have access to the minerals.

In each of the last three years, China has reduced the amount of rare earths that can be exported. This year's export quotas are on track to be the smallest yet. But what is really starting to alarm Western governments and multinationals alike is the possibility that exports will be further restricted.

Chinese officials will almost certainly be pressed to address the issue at a conference Thursday in Beijing. What they say could influence whether Australian regulators next week approve a deal by a Chinese company to acquire a majority stake in Australia's main rare-earth mine.

The detention of executives from the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has already increased tensions.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has drafted a six-year plan for rare earth production and submitted it to the State Council, the equivalent of the cabinet, according to four mining industry officials who have discussed the plan with Chinese officials. A few, often contradictory, details of the plan have leaked out, but it appears to suggest tighter restrictions on exports, and strict curbs on environmentally damaging mines.

Beijing officials are forcing global manufacturers to move factories to China by limiting the availability of rare earths outside China. "Rare earth usage in China will be increasingly greater than exports," said Zhang Peichen, the deputy director of the government-linked Baotou Rare Earth Research Institute.

Some of the minerals crucial to green technologies are extracted in China using methods that inflict serious damage on the local environment. China dominates global rare earth production partly because of its willingness until now to tolerate highly polluting, low-cost mining.

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