30 January 2012
A year after calls for a Chinese 'Jasmine Revolution,' activists say they have been subjected to beatings and humiliation.
As Chinese activists mark the first anniversary of online calls for an Arab World-style "Jasmine Revolution" in China, authorities in the eastern province of Hangzhou announced they would try a prominent dissident for subversion.
The beginning of the Arab Spring in Tunisia last year sparked online calls for Chinese activists to begin their own Jasmine Revolution, prompting the detention and suveilance of hundreds of dissidents and rights defenders across the country.
Chinese activists say they were subjected to beatings, humiliation, and brainwashing techniques during the crackdown, which continues this week with the trial of Hangzhou-based pro-democracy activist Zhu Yufu for "incitement to subvert state power."
"The authorities used every kind of method to make people feel sub-human," said Beijing-based rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong. "This undermines a person's sense of themselves, and of their human dignity and values."
Guangzhou-based independent commentator Ye Du, who was himself detained for a period of time during the clampdown, was reluctant to discuss the experience.
"My treatment at that time was such that I can't bear to recollect it," Ye said.
Jiang said many of his friends and fellow activists felt similarly about their experiences at the hands of China's state security police.
While dozens of those detained by the authorities were eventually freed, many remain under close police surveillance. The Jasmine crackdown has also prompted a string of lengthy jail terms handed to prominent activists for subversion.
"They detained large numbers of people and eventually let them out again," said Wuhan-based rights activist Qin Yongmin.
"But just as everyone was thinking it was all behind us, and that they should let those remaining people go, they sentenced a whole string of people, Chen Xi, Li Tie, and Chen Wei, in the space of a month."
Leadership succession
Qin said he believed the jail sentences handed to the three activists were the result of nationwide preparations for a crucial leadership succession at the 18th Party Congress later this year.
"The authorities are hoping that nothing big will happen ahead of the 18th Congress," he said. "So they are showing political dissidents what they're made of."
Rights groups estimate that at least 40 activists were held under criminal detention in the two months that followed the calls for a Jasmine Revolution--proposed silent demonstrations in major Chinese cities--that, in the event, appeared to attract more police and journalists than protesters.
Authorities in Hangzhou meanwhile announced they would try Zhu Yufu, a founding member of the now-banned opposition China Democracy Party (CDP), for subversion on Tuesday, his wife said.
Zhu's trial would begin at th Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court at 9.00 a.m. local time, according to Jiang Hangli. Only two passes were issued for family to attend the proceedings, she said.
"Only close family members [can attend]," Jiang said, adding that she and the couple's daughter planned to attend the trial. "Even more distant relatives aren't allowed."
She said the case against her husband apparently hinged on a poem he posted online, titled "It is Time," calling on Chinese people to walk the streets in support of political change.
"I read the poem," Jiang said. "But my friends said they couldn't see anything in it ... The lawyer also said that he collected donations and asked about the families who had people in prison over Spring Festival."
"He also gave interviews to journalists; that's what the lawyer said."
'It Is Time'
Zhu was formally detained by Hangzhou police last March after he posted his poem, titled "It Is Time" online.
"It is time, people of China! It is time," the poem read. "The square belongs to us all; our feet are our own."
"It is time to use our feet to go to the square and to make a choice ... We should use our choices to decide the future of China," it said.
Zhu, 60, is a veteran activist who first caught the attention of the authorities during the Democracy Wall movement of 1978. He was sentenced in 1998 to a seven-year jail term for his involvement with an unprecedented attempt to register the Zhejiang provincial branch of the CDP as a civil organization with the authorities.
Prior to his most recent arrest, he had been under frequent surveillance by police.
Zhu's charge sheet mentioned his habit of giving interviews to foreign media, his publishing of "subversive" opinions, his propaganda on behalf of the CDP and his online promotion of calls for a Jasmine Revolution in China, according to fellow CDP activist Zou Wei.
Reported by Grace Kei Lai-see for RFA's Cantonese service, and by Lin Ping for the Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
>> Original Source
By Sharon LaFraniere ~ The New York Times
January 27, 2012
Weary of waiting for the authorities to alert residents to the city's most pernicious air pollutant, citizen activists last May took matters here into their own hands: they bought their own $4,000 air-quality monitor and posted its daily readings on the Internet.
That began a chain reaction. Volunteers in Shanghai and Guangzhou purchased monitors in December, followed by citizens in Wenzhou, who are selling oranges to finance their device. Wenzhou donated $50 to volunteers in Wuhan, 140 miles inland. Officials have claimed for years that the air quality in fast-growing China is constantly improving. Beijing, for example, was said to have experienced 286 "blue sky" days in 2011, a statistic belied by the heavy smog smothering the city for much of the year.
But faced with an Internet-led brush fire of criticism, the edifice of environmental propaganda is collapsing. The government recently reversed course and began to track the most pernicious measure of urban air pollution -- particulates 2.5 microns in diameter or less, or PM 2.5. It decreed that about 30 major cities must begin monitoring the particulates this year, followed by about 80 more next year.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection also promised to set health standards for such fine particulates "as soon as possible." Last week, after years of concealing its data on such pollutants, Beijing began publishing hourly readings from one monitoring station.
Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing nonprofit group, credits the Chinese public for the breakthroughs. "At the beginning of last year, we had almost lost hope that the PM 2.5 would be integrated into the standards," Mr. Ma said. "But at the end of the day, the people spoke so loudly that they made their voice heard."
The fine particulates, caused by dust or emissions from vehicles, coal combustion, factories and construction sites, are among the most hazardous because they easily penetrate lungs and enter the bloodstream. Chronic exposure increases the risk of cardiovascular ailments, respiratory disease and lung cancer. The Chinese government has monitored exposure levels in 20 cities and 14 other sites, reportedly for as long as five years, but has kept the data secret.
It sought 18 months ago to silence the American Embassy in Beijing as well, arguing that American officials had insulted the Chinese government by posting readings from the PM 2.5 monitor atop the embassy on Twitter. A Foreign Ministry official warned that the embassy's data could lead to "social consequences" in China and asked the embassy to restrict access to it. The embassy refused, and Chinese citizens now translate and disseminate the readings widely.
While China has made gains on some other airborne toxins, the PM 2.5 data is far from reassuring in a country that annually has hundreds of thousands of premature deaths related to air pollution. In an unreleased December report relying on government data, the World Bank said average annual PM 2.5 concentrations in northern Chinese cities exceeded American limits by five to six times as much, and two to four times as much in southern Chinese cities.
Nine of 13 major cities failed more than half the time to meet even the initial annual mean target for developing countries set by the World Health Organization. Environmental advocates here expect China to adopt that target as its PM 2.5 standard.
Wang Yuesi, the chief air-pollution scientist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, estimated this month that Beijing needed at least 20 years to reach that goal. The embassy's monitor showed that fine particulate concentrations over the past two years averaged nearly three times that level, and 10 times the World Health Organization's guideline, said Steven Q. Andrews, an environmental consultant based in Beijing.
In fact, Mr. Wang told Outlook Weekly, a magazine owned by China's official news agency, Xinhua, that Beijing's PM 2.5 concentrations have been increasing by 3 to 4 percent annually since 1998. He said the finer particulates absorbed more light, explaining why Beijing so often is enveloped in a haze thick enough to obscure even nearby buildings. Air pollution in the city and in nearby Tianjin is so severe that "something must be done to control it," he wrote on his blog.
Such sentiments are increasingly common on weibos, the Chinese version of microblogs like Twitter, especially among elites. International schools here are doming their athletic fields because pollution so often requires that students stay indoors.
In November, Pan Shiyi, a Beijing real estate tycoon, asked his seven million microblog followers whether China should employ a stricter air-quality standard. Shi Yigong, a molecular biologist who left Princeton University in 2008 to lead Tsinghua University's life sciences department, complained in a December blog post that air pollution was the single "most upsetting and painful thing" about life in China.
Some Chinese citizens remain stoic or unaware. One afternoon last week when smog cloaked Beijing and the American Embassy monitor edged toward the top of the chart, parents flocked to the Capital Institute of Pediatrics, a children's hospital in downtown Beijing, towing children with respiratory ailments.
One mother of a 6-year-old awaiting treatment for her child's chronic cough said: "I think it's good for the child's immune system to be exposed to tough weather like today's. It will make them tougher."
Chinese statistics indicate that urban air quality has improved over the past decade as cities have relocated factories, reduced coal burning and adopted stricter vehicle emission standards. The World Bank's analysis of the government's data found that average concentrations of particulates measuring 10 microns or less -- a group that includes both fine and coarser particulates -- fell 31 percent from 2003 to 2009 in 113 major cities.
Still, only a few cities managed to meet China's own toughest standard, which is twice as loose as the World Health Organization guideline. Mr. Wang, the researcher, contends that while Beijing's PM 10 level fell nearly a third from 2006 to 2009 -- for the most part, in the years leading up to the Beijing Olympic of 2008 -- it has been edging up ever since.
Whether government statistics are reliable is another matter. While some argue that the release of ever more detailed data makes fudging ever harder, Mr. Andrews, the environmental researcher, contends that the government systematically manipulated data and standards to create more "blue sky" days. Although attention focuses on Beijing, at least 16 other cities are more polluted, the World Bank says. Their efforts to clean up the air are partly offset by rising populations, an avalanche of vehicles and never-ending construction.
Some experts contend that the government shies away from epidemiological studies on pollution's health impact. "They are really unwilling to match it to the health data because that would be much more alarming," said one specialist who spoke anonymously for fear of angering Chinese officials. "They want to get the counts down first."
The World Health Organization estimated in 2007 that 656,000 Chinese died prematurely each year from ailments caused by indoor and outdoor air pollution. The World Bank placed deaths related to outdoor pollution at 350,000 to 400,000, but excised those figures from a 2007 report under government pressure.
Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told China Daily last month that without intervention, PM 2.5 particulates would replace smoking as China's top cause of lung cancer. Beijing health experts told the newspaper that while smoking rates were flat, the city's lung-cancer rate had risen 60 percent in the past decade, probably as a result of air pollution.
Feng Yongfeng, a Beijing father of a 3-year-old who founded a nonprofit environmental group called Greeen Beagle in 2009, argues that the Chinese should protect themselves by investigating their surroundings.
"If the data is real, officials keep it to themselves," said Mr. Feng, whose organization began this July to lend two PM 2.5 monitors to anyone who completes an online application. "You should not wait for the ministry to tell you the truth. You can find it out for yourself."
Only 30 people accepted the offer in the first five months. But Wang Quixia, the project manager, said interest had skyrocketed since publicity made PM 2.5 a household phrase in Beijing.
Now there is a two-month waiting list.
Mia Li contributed research.
]]>By Jonathan Watts | The Guardian (United Kingdom)
January 25, 2012
Chinese relations with Norway have been frosty since Oslo-based Nobel committee announced that dissident Liu Xiaobo would be peace laureate.
Norway could shut China out of the Arctic Council if Beijing does not stop a campaign of diplomatic snubs imposed after the Nobel peace prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a Norwegian newspaper has reported.
If confirmed, Oslo's move would mark a bold confrontation with the world's fastest rising economic power and highlight the growing importance of the Arctic, which is opening up for navigation and mineral exploitation as it melts due to global warming.
China's relations with Norway have been frosty since October 2010, when the Oslo-based Nobel committee announced that Liu, an imprisoned Chinese democracy activist, would be the next peace laureate.
Although the Norwegian government has stressed that the Nobel committee is independent, Beijing has punished its host nation by cutting political and human rights dialogues.
Until now, Norway has tried to use quiet diplomacy to ease the situation but, with little sign of progress, the Aftenposten, Norway's best selling newspaper, claims the government is preparing to up the stakes.
Citing an unnamed high-level diplomatic source, the paper said Norway would find it difficult to agree to China's application to be a permanent observer on the Arctic Council while the current situation persisted.
The Arctic Council is a forum for political discussions on the far north. It was established in 1989, originally to discuss measures to protect the Arctic environment, but has since expanded to work on scientific research, sustainable development and responses to emergencies.
Officially, the two governments have yet to comment on the issue.
"I can neither confirm nor deny this story, but I can say bilateral contacts between Norway and China are at a low level," Karsten Klepsvik, the senior Arctic official at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said.
He said no decision had been reached about Norway's position on applications from several nations to join the Arctic Council, adding: "As of today, we have not had inter-agency consultation on applications, but we will have to do that in the near future."
China makes no secret of its interests in the Arctic. The country has had a permanent research base in Norway since 2004 and conducted four expeditions of the region, according to the website of the government's Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration.
It has also announced plans to build a new 8,000-tonne icebreaker by 2013 to join its current vessel, the Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, on some of the other three expeditions planned by 2015.
The potential is enormous. If the ice clears sufficiently for reliable summer navigation, ships could drastically cut the time needed to carry goods from China to Europe, and Chinese academics believe the Arctic could become the most important trade route in the world.
The region also has abundant resources, including fisheries, minerals, more than 10% of the world's undiscovered oil reserves and 30% of its undiscovered gas reserves.
Although much of this is within territory that has already been claimed, emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil seek influence over these opportunities through observers seats at the Arctic Council, which currently has eight full members - Norway, Canada, Russia, the US, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark.
Until now, it had been thought that Russia and Canada were the strongest opponents of expansion, while Denmark has been the most supportive of a greater role for China in the development of the Arctic.
The Danish ambassador to Beijing, Friis Arne Peterson, said in October that China has "natural and legitimate economic and scientific interests in the Arctic".
Denmark hopes to benefit from the shrinkage of Greenland ice with the extraction of major deposits of rare earths, uranium, iron ore, lead, oil and gems. China is likely to be a key customer for these resources.
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By Edward Wong | The New York Times
18 January 2012
Yu Jie, a prominent writer of 11 books and a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, said Wednesday in a news conference in Washington that he and his family had left China on Jan. 11 after more than a year of harassment and house arrest.
Mr. Yu said his ordeal began Oct. 13, 2010, when he was placed under house arrest after the announcement that his close friend Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned writer, had won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. That December, Mr. Yu said, he was detained for four days and tortured nearly to death. He said security officers criticized him for planning to write a biography of Mr. Liu and for writing "China's Best Actor: Wen Jiabao," a scathing critique of the prime minister.
Mr. Yu was then kept under house arrest, with a travel ban, until this month.
]]>January 17, 2012
A veteran Chinese dissident, Zhu Yufu, has been charged with subversion for writing and publishing a poem on the internet, according to his lawyer.
The poem, entitled It's Time, urged people to gather in support of freedom.
Mr Zhu's lawyer said no date had been set for the trial. Chinese officials have not commented on the reported charge.
Mr Zhu was formally arrested last April as China began a wide-ranging clampdown on dissent.
The lawyer, Li Dunyong, said he had collected the indictment on Monday from a court in the eastern city of Hangzhou.
He told Reuters news agency he had met Mr Zhu, who he said was "in a good condition".
Jailed twice
Zhu Yufu, who is from Hangzhou, is a veteran activist who was involved in the 1979 Democracy Wall movement, which pressed for a quicker pace of change in China.
He has been jailed twice before for his activism - in 1999 for seven years and in 2007 for two years.
The Chinese authorities formally arrested Mr Zhu in April 2011 for inciting subversion of state power - a charge often used against critics of the Communist Party.
A verse of his poem reads: "It's time, Chinese people! / The square belongs to everyone / the feet are yours / it's time to use your feet and take to the square to make a choice."
But Li Dunyong said Mr Zhu was not connected with internet appeals for rallies inspired by uprisings in Arab countries.
Chinese police rounded up dozens of dissidents in response to those calls; but the rallies themselves were tiny, with participants outnumbered by security officials.
China's Communist leaders have been stressing the need for stability ahead of a leadership change later in 2012.
The authorities have continued to detain and question large numbers of activists and lawyers.
In December 2011 the prominent Sichuan writer and political activist, Chen Wei, was sentenced to nine years in prison for inciting subversion.
Days later, the veteran Guizhou dissident, Chen Xi, received a 10-year sentence on the same charge.
]]>January 13, 2012
Entire Chinese village raises complaint to the government over a land grab.
Authorities in the southeastern province of Fujian detained about half a dozen people following demonstrations at an ethnic minority Muslim village over a government land grab inspired by last year's protests in the Guangdong rebel village of Wukan.
"That's right, they were probably detained on Thursday afternoon," said a resident of Fujian's Xibian Hui Minority Village, near Chendai township. "The whole village went to the township government to complain."
She said the majority of Xibian villagers were Hui minority Muslims. "Only reporters from Hong Kong dare to report this," she added. "Journalists here don't dare to report it."
Protests have continued in the village since Dec. 27, when villagers took to the streets carrying banners which read, "We must learn from Wukan," and "We strongly demand our land back."
In a case they say is similar to land grabs in Wukan, where protesters won major concessions from officials after several days of pitched battles with riot police, Xibian villagers accuse local officials of secretly appropriating more than 900 mu (60 hectares) of local land.
The villagers were detained by police after around several hundred villagers marched to the government office building on Thursday, local residents said.
"About 500 to 600 people went on the march yesterday," said a villager surnamed Ding. "There were hundreds of police there, and they snatched away people's flags and banners and threw them away like rubbish."
"There are still a few people locked up," he said. "There was one guy who tried to go to the district-level parliament to complain, but they wouldn't let him in, and they locked him up too."
Photos
Photos of the protest posted online showed an elderly villager in a wheelchair waving a flag, and heading towards the ranks of assembled policemen. They also showed a banner which read, "We welcome China's central government leaders and the overseas media to come and investigate the truth."
An official who answered the phone at the Xibian village committee office denied that any demonstration had taken place.
"No, there wasn't," the official said. "I don't know [what the situation is]."
According to online posts, protests began in September amid allegations that the relatives of the village ruling Communist Party secretary had appropriated hundreds of millions of yuan in village funds from the sale of local farmland.
"In other villages they divide up the proceeds [of land sales] among each individual," said another Xibian resident. "We got nothing here in our village. I don't understand it."
An employee who answered the phone at the Chendai police station declined to comment on the protests.
"I don't really know," the employee said.
Clashes between farming communities and police are becoming more and more widespread as local residents increasingly challenge lucrative property deals involving communal land by local officials.
Last week, activists in the southwestern province of Sichuan said they were spurred on by the concessions won by Wukan villagers amid strikes at a major state-owned steel works in Chengdu.
Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service and by Lin Jing for the Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
January 11, 2012
One of China's most prominent dissidents, Hu Jia, said police confiscated two computers from his home on Wednesday and warned that he could face renewed detention or investigation on accusations that he broke the terms of his jail release.
Hu, 38, was released in June last year after serving a jail sentence of three and a half years for "inciting subversion of state power", a charge used to punish dissidents who criticise China's ruling Communist Party in print and online.
Communist Party chiefs are preparing for a leadership handover late this year, when the party's long-standing focus on fending off political challenges is likely to intensify.
Hu has largely avoided the limelight since his release while showing support for rights campaigners and protesters through online comments, visits and appearances at government offices.
He told Reuters that authorities appeared to be seeking to silence him with the threat of fresh punishment.
"Eight police came to my home -- one of them was an Internet police investigator -- and took away two computers," he said, adding that the police had told him to go to a police station for further questioning on Thursday.
"They said I might have violated the conditions of my release and there could be consequences, perhaps detention for fifteen days or I could be held on suspected inciting subversion charges," he added in a telephone interview.
Reuters' calls to the police headquarters of Tongzhou district in Beijing, where Hu lives, were not answered.
If Hu is detained again, that could add to international friction over China's heavy grip on dissent, which recently brought the jailing of two less-well-known activists.
He won the European Parliament's human rights prize in 2008. Supporters also spoke of him as a potential recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which in 2010 went to his friend and fellow Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo.
Before he was detained in late 2007, Hu pursued an energetic career as an environmental protection campaigner, advocate for rural victims of AIDS, and critic of China's restrictions on dissent.
Hu said that when he was released from jail, police told him not to accept interviews from foreign reporters, protest, publish his views on the Internet or otherwise speak out. But he said he had always insisted he would not remain entirely silent.
He said the police might have been prompted to move against him because of his vocal support for Gao Zhisheng, a prominent Chinese right lawyer who was recently sent back to jail.
"I told them from the very beginning that when I saw other people's human rights were being violated, I wouldn't avoid speaking my views," he said. "I was never secretive about it. I told them that was my position."
In late December, a court in Guizhou, southwest China, jailed a veteran dissident, Chen Xi, for 10 years on subversion charges, in one of the heaviest sentences for political charges since the Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo was jailed two years ago.
Chen Xi's long sentence came days after another dissident -- Chen Wei from Sichuan province in southwest China -- was jailed for nine years on similar charges of "inciting subversion".
(Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)
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By Edward Wong | The New York Times
January 06, 2012
President Hu Jintao has said China must strengthen its cultural production to defend against the West's assault on the country's culture and ideology, according to an essay in a Communist Party policy magazine published this week. The publication of Mr. Hu's words signaled that a new major policy initiative announced in October would continue well into 2012.
The essay, which was signed by Mr. Hu and based on a speech he gave in October, drew a sharp line between the cultures of the West and China and effectively said the two sides were engaged in an escalating war. It was published in Seeking Truth, a magazine that evolved from a publication founded by Mao Zedong as a platform for establishing Communist Party principles.
"We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration," Mr. Hu said, according to a translation by The Associated Press.
"We should deeply understand the seriousness and complexity of the ideological struggle, always sound the alarms and remain vigilant, and take forceful measures to be on guard and respond," he added.
Those measures, Mr. Hu said, should be centered on developing cultural products that can draw the interest of the Chinese and meet the "growing spiritual and cultural demands of the people."
Chinese leaders have long lamented the fact that Western expressions of popular culture and art seem to overshadow those from China. The top-grossing films in China have been "Avatar" and "Transformers 3," and the music of Lady Gaga is as popular here as that of any Chinese pop singer. In October, at the sixth plenum of the party's Central Committee, where Mr. Hu gave his speech, officials discussed the need for bolstering the "cultural security" of China.
"The overall strength of Chinese culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China's international status," Mr. Hu said in his essay, according to another translation.
"The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak," he added.
Mr. Hu's words suggested that China would not lift anytime soon strict limits that it sets on imports of some cultural products. Each year, the agency in charge of regulating film allows only 20 foreign movies to potentially make a profit off their box office take here. Hollywood studios have long criticized that system and lobbied the United States government and international organizations to pressure China into scrapping or loosening the quota.
People involved in the arts here say the policy also means more government financing for Chinese companies to create cultural products, ranging from books to live musical productions. At the same time, officials have been encouraging many cultural industries to become more market driven and rely less on government subsidies.
Some investors might see the government's announcement of support for more creative works to be positive, but the policy also runs counter to market freedoms, emphasizing the need to censor cultural expressions that the government deems unacceptable.
In his essay, Mr. Hu did not address the widespread assertion by Chinese artists and intellectuals that state censorship is what prevents artists and their works from reaching their full potential. In late December, Han Han, a novelist and China's most popular blogger, discussed the issue in an online essay called "On Freedom."
"The restriction on cultural activities makes it impossible for China to influence literature and cinema on a global basis or for us culturati to raise our heads up proud," Han Han wrote.
The publication of Mr. Hu's essay and other articles in Seeking Truth about bolstering China's cultural power signaled that this would be a central initiative in 2012, which is a transition year for the Chinese leadership. Seven of the top nine party members, including Mr. Hu, will step down from the Standing Committee of the Politburo. Mr. Hu appeared keen to enshrine the culture drive as a final defining moment of his decade-long tenure at China's helm.
The Central Committee meeting in October established the ideological foundation for a tightening of the cultural sphere that is only now beginning to unfold. Right after the meeting, officials announced a sweeping new policy to wipe scores of so-called entertainment shows off the air. That took effect on Sunday, and Xinhua reported Tuesday that the number of prime-time entertainment shows was now at 38, down from 126.
Last month, officials in Beijing and other cities ordered Internet companies based there to ensure that people posting on microblogs had registered their accounts using their real names, though they could still post under an alias. Officials have been putting pressure on executives and editors running the microblog platforms to self-censor, and many microblog users say the microblogs have been getting less interesting.
At the same time, China has been making a push to increase its cultural influence abroad, or its "soft power." The government has opened up Confucius Institutes around the world to aid foreigners in learning Chinese. The state is also lavishing money on opening operations of large state-run news organizations, including Xinhua, the state news agency, and China Central Television, in cities around the world. Officials from those organizations say they hope their version of the world events becomes as common as those from Western news organizations.
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January 1st, 2012
Wang Peijie's idea for what would become the most-talked-about show in China was simple: Throw a spotlight on this country's bright young things as they court each other on stage to pop music and audience applause.
The men boasted of their bank accounts, houses and fancy cars. The women were svelte and sassy, dousing suitors with acid putdowns. But mixed into the banter were trenchant social issues that urban Chinese from their 20s to 40s grapple with, if not always so publicly: living together before marriage, the unabashed pursuit of wealth or the government's one-child policy.
"Through this show, you can tell what China is thinking about and chasing after," said Mr. Wang, a veteran television producer.
The show, "If You Are the One," broke ratings records in the first half of 2010. More than 50 million people tuned in. The sauciest contestants became sensations -- one aspiring actress famously rejected a man offering a bicycle ride by saying, "I'd rather cry in a BMW." The show attracted huge interest from Chinese overseas; some students on American campuses even filmed their own versions. It increased the nation's cultural influence, which China's leaders crave.
But reality television proved too real for the censors. Disturbed by the program's revealing portrait of Chinese youth and the spread of copycat shows, they threatened to cancel it. Producers raced to overhaul the show. They brought on older contestants and added a third host, a matronly professor from the provincial Communist Party school. "We've had more restrictions on expressions on the show, to eliminate remarks that could have negative social impact," the wiry Mr. Wang, 45, said one morning as dozens of screens flickered behind him in a control room here in Jiangsu Province.
Then regulators formulated a sweeping policy that takes effect on Sunday and effectively wipes out scores of entertainment shows on prime-time television. The authorities evidently determined that trends inspired by "If You Are the One" and a popular talent show, "Super Girl," had gone too far, and they responded with a policy to curb what they call "excessive entertainment."
That a dating show could help set off the toughest crackdown on television in years exposes the growing tension at the heart of the Communist Party's control of the entertainment industry. For decades, the party has pushed television networks here to embrace the market, but conservative cadres have grown increasingly fearful of the kinds of programs that court audiences, draw advertising and project a global image not shaped by the state. Television, after all, occupies a singular position in the state's media arsenal: with its 1.2 billion viewers and more than 3,000 channels, it is the party's greatest vehicle for transmitting propaganda, whether through the evening news or staid historical dramas.
"A conflict has arisen: On the one hand, they're pushing for the building of a commercial industry, but on the other hand they wonder if this commercialization has led to an overall decline in cultural quality and moral cultivation," said Yin Hong, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing who studies television.
The party's definition of "entertainment shows" encompass game shows, dating shows and celebrity talk shows. As in the West, they are cheap to produce but earn high ratings and advertising revenue, which is critical since stations get little or no government subsidies. Now, the new rules, which were announced in late October, are forcing television executives and producers at 34 satellite stations across China to cut many entertainment shows from their lineups to limit what regulators describe as "vulgar tendencies."
The tightening of television is at the fore of a major new effort to control culture overseen by President Hu Jintao that is also permeating film, publishing, the Internet and the performing arts.
Government regulators issued the television guidelines right after the party's Central Committee made culture and ideology the focus of a meeting in October. Mr. Yin, who advised officials in the prelude to the meeting, said cadres had originally intended to issue a paper that would push cultural industries closer to the market. But starting half a year ago, he said, senior officials began growing more worried about "social morality," so they steered the policy toward the control of culture. Regarding television specifically, he said, "many old comrades" frequently complained about entertainment shows and "the idolizing of celebrities."
Under the new rules, each television station can broadcast only two "entertainment shows" during prime time each week. Only nine can be shown nationally per night, down from an official estimate this fall of 126 per week. A panel convened by regulators will decide which ones will remain if the stations do not trim. Ideas for new shows must be approved by censors. Satellite stations are also expected to increase their news programming and broadcast at least one show that promotes traditional Chinese virtues and the "socialist core value system."
The agency regulating the industry, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or Sarft, is not shy about imposing limits on dramas, either. Last year, it expressed disapproval of spy dramas and time-travel shows. In late November, it surprised the industry by mandating that as of January, commercials cannot be shown in the middle of television dramas. "The whole point here is that Sarft is trying to get TV station presidents back to the roots," said a person once involved with "If You Are the One," who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "What are the roots? TV is supposed to be the mouthpiece of the party in the country. You're supposed to broadcast propaganda instead of sensationalistic content."
The Role of Money
Reining in television is not just ideological, but is also tied to advertising money, people in the industry contend. Officials at Sarft are close to those at China Central Television, or CCTV, the state-run television network that is the largest in the country. CCTV still dominates the industry, but it has ceded market share to provincial satellite stations because they are producing the most popular entertainment shows. CCTV and Sarft have a revolving-door relationship: In November, a former vice minister of Sarft, Hu Zhanfan, took over as president of CCTV. The network also remits a fraction of its annual revenue to Sarft. From 2001 to 2005, it gave the agency $675 million, according to statistics from CCTV. By contrast, provincial stations remit revenue to local authorities, who have little incentive to censor successful shows.
So Sarft's crackdown on entertainment shows is partly aimed at enriching CCTV, industry observers argue. The announcement of the new order in October may already have yielded benefits for the network. On Nov. 7, at its annual auction for advertising spots in 2012, CCTV earned $2.2 billion, a 12.5 percent increase over the previous year. Sarft and CCTV officials did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Tightening the vise could backfire. Some analysts say that the more television is regulated, the more viewers will watch shows on the Internet, over which Sarft wields much less power.
"If You Are the One" dropped in ratings after censors forced it to change its format last year. But Mr. Wang and his crew have found ways to keep it the top-rated variety show. When the parent station, Jiangsu Satellite Television, held its 2012 advertising auction in November, "If You Are the One" earned an astounding 82 percent of the station's total haul of $345 million.
Jiangsu wants desperately for censors to allow the 90-minute show to remain in its Saturday and Sunday prime-time slots. The station is cutting a half-dozen other entertainment programs, Mr. Wang said, and is developing shows that promote "social responsibility." But some wonder whether censors will show leniency. People's Daily, the party's mouthpiece, ran a commentary in October that lamented the negative influence of two shows. One was "Super Girl," an influential talent show that had been repeatedly punished for being "vulgar" since its 2004 debut on Hunan Satellite Television. It was suspended in September. The second was "If You Are the One."
"Some programs seek novelty as their objective," the article said. "They rely on peering into the privacy of others to achieve that, and they hype money worship and pleasure-seeking, which have aroused the antipathy of the audience."
Clashes Between Ideas
At a recent taping of "If You Are the One" in a Beijing studio, a male contestant, Wang Yan, 23, told the women on stage that he appreciated women who wore silk stockings. The women grilled him, to the delight of the audience. That turned into a discussion of the sizes of women's legs.
"Do you prefer S- or M-sized women?" asked one of the female contestants, Zuo Teng'ai, a single mother.
"I'm sorry, I really have no idea about the difference between the two," Mr. Wang said. The main host, Meng Fei, chimed in: "Is she asking whether you like S-and-M?"
"I didn't ask him about S-and-M!" Ms. Zuo said. The audience laughed and applauded. But the exchange was excised from the episode that aired Nov. 12.
Sharp dialogue was once the show's hallmark. One of its original goals was to push the limits of what could be discussed on Chinese television. "We hoped there would be some clashes between different ideas," Mr. Wang said.
The show was conceived in cigarette-fueled talks between Mr. Wang and Xing Wenning, a media entrepreneur now with the Hearst Corporation. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Xing, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia, was working for FremantleMedia, owned by Bertelsmann, and his task was getting Chinese stations or production companies to buy the rights to adapt foreign television shows. One of FremantleMedia's properties was "Take Me Out," a dating show popular in Britain. Mr. Xing approached the two most adventurous stations, Hunan and Jiangsu.
Mr. Wang at Jiangsu was receptive. He had worked at the station since the late 1980s and had witnessed the industry's transformation. In 1997, satellite television was established, allowing some provincial stations to broadcast nationally and compete with CCTV for advertising money. CCTV and provincial stations had increased production of entertainment shows around that time. "Competition is fierce among the top few stations," Mr. Wang said.
Mr. Wang said he wanted a new dating show to capitalize on the concept of "leftover girls" and "leftover boys," career-oriented people without a partner, a hot topic in China. The show, too, would be a window into the lives of the "rich second generation," the children of China's new money.
Hunan beat Jiangsu in the bidding for "Take Me Out." But Mr. Wang pushed ahead with his version, which Unilever had wanted to sponsor.
"If You Are the One," called "Fei Cheng Wu Rao" in Chinese, is set up like a tribunal. Twenty-four single women stand behind brightly lighted podiums and pepper a potential male partner with questions. Directing the talk is Mr. Meng, a bald, witty former news anchor. His sidekick is Le Jia, a younger, slimmer (but also bald) man dubbed the show's "psychological analyst."
The first episode aired Jan. 15, 2010, and set the tone. "Any woman who comes with me won't have to worry about her livelihood," said the first male contestant, Zhang Yongxiang, 23. His family ran a factory with more than 1,000 workers. A video showed off his large apartment, white sedan and endless rows of clothing. Other male contestants had their incomes advertised in graphics on their videos.
Later in the episode, a female contestant in red, knee-high vinyl boots and a tight black dress performed a chair dance that would not have looked out of place in a strip club.
But serious issues wormed their way into the talk. Women interrogated Mr. Zhang on why he clung to a traditional mentality of wanting to sire at least one son.
"Today's youngsters dare to express themselves," Mr. Wang said. "You can't be authentic if you don't dare to express yourself."
Spare No Dignity
The show's notoriety surged after one contestant, Ma Nuo, rejected a man with her "cry in a BMW" remark. Ms. Ma got thousands of messages from fans and critics alike. Supporters said she was only publicly voicing what many women think.
Ms. Ma, 23, said in an interview that producers had told the women not to spare the dignity of the male contestants. After the BMW comment, "Because they saw that I was outspoken, they wanted me to say more controversial things," she said.
On another episode, Zhu Zhenfang brushed off a suitor by saying that any man who wanted to shake her hand had to pay 200,000 renminbi, almost $32,000, because "my boyfriend must have a monthly salary of 200,000" renminbi. Another woman, Yan Fengjiao, made the headlines when nude photographs of her appeared online.
Viewers swarmed to the show. By May 2010, its ratings were second only to those of the CCTV evening news, which all satellite stations are forced to carry. China Daily called it "morally ambiguous and visually electrifying." Copycat dating shows sprang up, ones that were even more explicit.
Censors were not amused. In June, the heads of the Jiangsu and Hunan satellite stations were both called to Beijing for a meeting with Sarft officials. "They were quite harsh," said one person briefed on the meeting. The message was simple: Tone down the shows or face cancellation. The agency issued two edicts. One said: "Do not humiliate and assault participants in the name of dating; do not discuss vulgar topics involving sex; do not hype materialism and other unhealthy, incorrect viewpoints on marriage; and do not air the show without censorship and editing."
Zhejiang Satellite Television canceled a dating show. For a time, it looked as if all stations might have to do the same. One person on the set of "Take Me Out," the Hunan show, recalled a producer telling the entire cast and crew: "I might get a phone call at any minute, and all of you will have to pack up and go home."
Fans of "If You Are the One" immediately noticed the changes when the June 26 episode aired. Most obvious was the addition of a third host -- Huang Han was a mother who taught psychology at the local party school. All the female contestants had been replaced. The new ones were more subdued. So were the male contestants. And there was no mention of their incomes. "We started to choose older participants who have a stronger desire for marriage," Mr. Wang said.
Each episode now had to be reviewed at least six times in-house before broadcast, one person said. The producers still asked the hosts to steer talk toward social topics, but more subtly. "The comments made by contestants weren't as incisive as before," said Guo Wei, 34, a longtime fan.
Mr. Wang said he hoped the censors, when they whittle down the entertainment shows, keep in mind that "If You Are the One" made changes when asked. The show now tries to win ratings not through fiery dialogue, but by promoting itself online and bringing on overseas Chinese contestants. On the show's Web site, all the episodes from the show's first half-year have been deleted. "Our show," he said, "is one that obeys the rules."
December 30, 2011
ZHENGZHOU, China - The electric acupuncture needles stung her scalp, and the drugs bloated her weight, gave her heart palpitations and brought on premature menopause.
But Wu Chunxia consented to the treatments at the psychiatric hospital because if she didn't, she knew she would be strapped to her bed and left vulnerable to assaults from violent inmates.
"It was worse than hell in there," says Wu, 37, of the Henan provincial psychiatric hospital in Xinxiang. "I feared I would be strangled at night by other patients."
Wu was not at the hospital for reasons of mental health. She was committed there in 2008 by the Chinese government for 132 days as punishment for protesting about local injustice to higher authorities.
The Communist Party does not acknowledge its mental facilities are used to silence critics, but according to numerous human rights groups and Chinese dissidents, China's Communist-led government has for decades incarcerated healthy people in mental wards to suppress dissent. In the past two years, wrongful confinement cases have sharply increased, says Liu Feiyue of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, a human-rights organization based in Suzhou.
The rise in confinements is greatest among petitioners -- the ordinary people who complain about local problems, he says. Committing them to mental hospitals is a "quick, convenient and very effective" method for the government to silence criticism.
Now some Chinese officials are pushing back against the political confinements. Prodded by academics, activists and former patients, China's National People's Congress is discussing what would be the country's first ever mental health law.
Minister of Health Chen Zhu told the standing committee of the Congress in October that the new law will curb the abuse of involuntary hospitalization and better protect the rights of the mentally ill. Chen blamed "procedural failings" for cases of forcible treatment that were challenged by victims and families.
Despite several shortcomings, the draft legislation represents both a legal and social milestone for the world's most populous country, says Wang Yue, a psychiatry professor at Peking University.
"Only once a society develops to a certain level does it pay more attention to mental health and forced hospitalization," says Wang, who alludes to wrongful confinements in mental wards in the U.S. in the early 1900s, though such cases were not attempts by the government to silence political opponents.
"In China, we have long had the principle of big government and small society, and only now are we moving toward judicial supervision and a society ruled by law," he says. "We must solve the problem of treating those mental patients who need treatment and not hospitalizing people who don't."
Complaining to higher authorities
The number of wrongful confinements has risen because the number of Chinese who demand justice for personal matters has grown, Liu Feiyue says. They are reviving an ancient Chinese system of seeking redress by taking a complaint directly to higher authorities. They are determined, often desperate, he says, and thus troublesome to the authorities who are well aware their careers can be ruined by disquiet.
Xu Wu, 43, a former security guard, had grown suicidal after four years of incarceration, including electric shock treatment, for petitioning authorities about a wage dispute with his employer. In April, after watching a film in which kung fu star Jet Li escapes from jail, Xu copied Li's moves by loosening his cell bars over three nights and escaped from the mental hospital in the Yangtze River port Wuhan.
He fled by train to Guangzhou, 600 miles south, where a hospital test concluded he was sane. He was seized eight days later by plainclothes Wuhan police outside the Guangzhou television station where he had just described his plight on-air. Media coverage, including video of his re-capture, helped secure Xu's release on June 10, the same day the initial draft law was released for public comment.
He has read it and is pessimistic about its effectiveness. "I hope the new law will help other patients, but it will be hard to implement, like all laws in China," Xu says.
His lawyer sounds more optimistic.
"The law will reduce the abuse of power and the confinement of healthy people," says Huang Xuetao, director of the Equity & Justice Initiative, a non-profit based in Shenzhen, south China. She welcomes the revisions adopted in the latest October draft, including removal of the catch-all "risk of public disorder" reason for involuntary hospitalization, but urges further revision before the law is finalized sometime in 2012.
Last month, with the help of Equity & Justice, Xu Wu and four fellow victims of forced hospitalization appealed to the National People's Congress for patients to be permitted to enlist outside representatives to help appeal their diagnosis and confinement.
In China, only the person or organization that applied for a patient's forced commitment can apply for his or her release.
"The ideal would be for every involuntary hospitalization case to be examined and verified by judicial authorities, as happens in some U.S. states," Huang says. "But in China at present, that's just not realistic."
Persistence pays off sometimes
Wu Chunxia won her release from the psychiatric hospital in Xinxiang by threatening suicide and persistently demanding her case be investigated, she says. Now she is battling for justice and compensation both through China's courts, despite their lack of independence from the Communist Party, and the more traditional route of petitioning higher authorities, the very act that, while legal, got her detained in the first place.
She has had some success. Officials revoked the police decisions to punish her petitioning first by detaining her, then by committing her to a labor camp, a decision later changed to confinement in the mental hospital. The policeman who handled her case, Zhang Xiaodong, told USA TODAY he doesn't know Wu. But earlier this month, in an interview with Southern Metropolitan News, Zhang blamed his treatment of Wu on orders from the local political-legal committee, a Communist Party group that guides judicial work. Committee secretary Li Zongxi declined to comment.
Corruption plays a major role
Rights activist Liu says officials commit troublemakers to mental hospitals because the process is secretive and, unlike the courts, requires no evidence of wrongdoing. He says the full extent of wrongful confinement in recent years far exceeds the 1,000 cases his group has compiled in a database since 2009.
Corruption also plays a major role. Unethical doctors and hospital administrators can benefit financially by allowing police to turn hospitals into "black jails," Liu says.
For these reasons, Liu says the new law will remain "just a piece of paper" until China undertakes "systematic change, to a society that genuinely respects law and human rights."
Even accepting the current draft over nothing may be a devil's bargain, warns Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watchg. "A bad law will entrench bad practices and would extend too much the power of public security officials to detain people on the basis of their political opinion or other irrelevant aspects," he says.
China has failed to adopt the international norms for mental health law set out in the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, despite its ratification by Beijing, Bequelin says. The draft lacks provision for people to be assisted by lawyers and fails to prohibit the "political use of psychiatry," he says.
Wu Chunxia is encouraged by the pending legislation. "It shows more attention paid to human rights in China," she says. "I hope the law stops normal people suffering the persecution I had."
Two years after Wu filed a suit against both the hospital and the neighborhood officials who committed her, a court in nearby Shenqiu County held its first hearing in October. Now she is petitioning the provincial court to speed the process and asking police to investigate the policeman Zhang Xiaodong.
"I have no home or family, I have been detained and tortured by illegal medical treatment," Wu says. "They have destroyed the latter half of my life. Until the people who illegally handled my case are punished, I won't close my eyes, even in death."
Contributing: Sunny Yang
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December 27, 2011
The security checks are believed to be part of a 100-day 'strike hard' anti-terror campaign in Xinjiang.
Authorities in China's troubled northwestern Xinjiang region have stepped up security checks on citizens, an overseas rights group said on Tuesday, as at least five ethnic minority Uyghurs are detained for possession of material deemed subversive by Beijing.
Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, said the tightened measures had begun last week in the regional capital Urumqi, but had also been reported in the south of the region, where police were carrying out house searches in the middle of the night.
"In the Aksu district there were some Uyghurs who were discovered in possession of photographs of [exiled Uyghur leader] Rebiya Kadeer and former U.S. president George W. Bush on their computers," Raxit said. "They were detained."
"In Yangtakexiehaier village, the police organized nearly 60 people to search more than 200 Uyghur households on Dec. 20," he added. "Some of the methods they used were violent."
He said police had confiscated computers from the home of at least one villager, Azmet Sadik, and had discovered "religious propaganda materials" at the home of another, Yifu Halili.
"They included books and disks explaining to people how to conduct [Islamic] prayers," Raxit said. "The two men are currently being held in the local police station."
The searches are believed to be part of a 100-day "strike hard"
anti-terror campaign in Xinjiang, begun by the Chinese authorities three weeks ago.
Four Uyghur men were detained recently in Urumqi for "taking part in illegal religious activities," while dozens were fined, Raxit said.
China's Muslim Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority that has long chafed under Beijing's rule, have their practice of Islam tightly regulated by the ruling Communist Party, which bans children from mosques and controls everything about their worship, from the wording of sermons to "approved" interpretations of the Quran.
According to the authorities, study of the Quran in an unauthorized location constitutes an "illegal religious activity."
'Huge operation'
Raxit said raids had also taken place in Urumqi, which was rocked by ethnic violence in July 2009 that left nearly 200 people dead, according to official figures.
"There was a huge operation in Urumqi on Saturday," he said. "This was mostly focused on the close-packed Uyghur districts on the outskirts of the city."
Xinjiang's regional ruling Communist Party secretary Zhang Chunxian, who was brought in as a hardline "new broom" following the 2009 violence, said last week that his government would be stepping up measures to "preserve social stability" during 2012, when the party holds its 18th Congress, and Urumqi will host another Eurasian Expo.
The Xinjiang Daily quoted Zhang as calling on regional officials to make a watchful security stance the norm rather than the exception.
"Officials at all levels must harden their stance on opposing splittism and stepping up their crackdown on extremist religious forces and their activities," Zhang told a meeting on stability and security at the weekend.
An Urumqi resident surnamed Zhang said the citizens' security brigades that were recruited from among the Han population in the wake of the 2009 unrest were still very much in evidence.
"There are still a lot of security personnel and employees wearing red armbands in the underground markets and malls," he said.
"Some are uniformed [private] security guards, while others are employees wearing red armbands."
Since the raids in Aksu last week, three more Uyghur men have been detained in continuing raids on Uyghur homes, Raxit said.
"They are accused of possessing reactionary, splittist reading materials," he said.
'Religious content'
A police officer who answered the phone at the village police station confirmed the raids had taken place.
"Yes, that's right," the officer said, when asked if police there had recently confiscated "illegal" religious recordings and DVDs. "Mostly it was religious content, but there was also some pornography, along with other things that have been banned now," the officer said.
Asked if the confiscated material included media of Rebiya Kadeer, he said: "Yes, there were pictures of Rebiya Kadeer, as well as audiovisual material, which basically means stuff on DVD. She is subversive and a splittist."
But he declined to confirm how many Uyghurs were being held. "I'm not very familiar with the details, because things change daily from shift to shift," he said.
He said Uyghurs found with such material would receive different treatment "depending on the circumstances."
"We would have to see what they had been found with, the things that we found, and also the things that the state security police found," he said. "The more serious cases [will get criminal detention]...then we get in touch with the religious affairs bureau and we work on some of the process together."
Official media say Beijing wants to turn Urumqi into an important exchange platform for leaders and businesses in China and its western and southern neighbors, including Russia, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan.
But some experts believe Beijing's rapid development of Xinjiang, which they say has created more opportunities for Han Chinese than for the local Uyghur population, is leading to additional ethnic tension in the region.
Last year, Beijing ramped up security before and during for the five-day China-Eurasia Expo trade fair in Urumqi. The added security measures came in the wake of separate attacks in the Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Hotan that killed more than 30 people in July.
Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service and Hai Nan for the Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
>> Original Source
December 26, 2011
A veteran Chinese activist who was involved in the 1989 Tiananmen protests has been jailed for 10 years.
Chen Xi was convicted of subverting state power after a trial lasting a few hours. He had published essays online criticising the Communist Party.
The jailing comes days after another activist, Chen Wei, was imprisoned for the same offence.
Rights groups expressed outrage and accused Beijing of using the Christmas period as cover for a crackdown.
"It does work really well because there's no diplomatic activity around Christmas," said Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch.
"By the time the diplomats get back to their desks, the sequence of events has moved on."
Chen Xi's wife, Zhang Qunxuan, told reporters that her husband was innocent, but would not launch a "futile" appeal against his conviction.
"Chen Xi told the court it did not take into consideration the things he has written as a whole, and has interpreted his words out of context. But they have power and they don't listen," she said.
He had posted 36 essays online, and also hosted a human rights forum in Guiyang, south-west China.
Chen Xi has been jailed several times since being involved in the 1989 protests.
Analysts say Beijing has a long-standing policy of punishing veteran activists who refuse to stop criticising the government.
Another activist, Chen Wei, was jailed last week for nine years for criticising the party.
He had argued that he was exercising the right of freedom of expression guaranteed by China's constitution.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay called his sentence "extremely harsh" and said it "indicates a further tightening of the severe restrictions on the scope of freedom of expression in China that has been seen over the last two years".
"I call upon Chinese authorities to release any person detained for peacefully exercising his or her right to freedom of expression," she said in a statement released on Monday.
Ms Pillay also criticised the decision earlier this month to send lawyer Gao Zhisheng back to jail.
"[These] are the latest examples of an escalating clampdown on the activities of human rights defenders in China," she said.
]]>December 24, 2011
Police officers fired tear gas at hundreds of protesters in Haimen city in southeastern China on Friday as a huge protest against the expansion of a coal-fired power plant persisted for a fourth day.
In an apparent effort to deter protesters, the authorities showcased two handcuffed and seemingly remorseful demonstrators on local television, Reuters news service reported. Other clips featured legal experts who warned that those who joined in protests could face up to five years in prison.
The videos underscored the difficulty authorities have had in controlling the demonstrations, which began Tuesday when thousands of people mobbed a government office and blocked a freeway in anger over the power plant.
Local officials offered to temporarily suspend the expansion, but demonstrators have demanded that plans for the new plant be scrapped altogether. Other protesters are calling for the police to release protesters detained earlier in the week.
Residents of Haimen, a city of about 120,000 that is part of the major Pacific port of Shantou, complain that existing coal-fired plants have already polluted the air, spurred a rise in cases of cancer and damaged the local fishing industry.
Riot police officers had used tear gas on previous days of protest. On Friday, The Associated Press reported, their targets included Haimen town elders, who were kneeling on a road, burning incense and praying for the police to release detainees.
It was unclear how many protesters were seized by the police. The state-run Xinhua news service reported Thursday that five people had been detained on vandalism charges as of Wednesday.
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December 19, 2011
Authorities in southern China tell protesters that they will target their families if unrest continues.
Residents of Guangdong's rebellious Wukan village are planning further protests this week to call for a probe into alleged official corruption and the return of the body of a fellow protester, defying threats of force from officials as thousands of armed police encircle the area.
"The authorities called up Xue Jinbo's family and threatened them, telling them not to lodge a complaint," said one Wukan resident surnamed Zhang on Monday. "If they did, they would start arresting family members."
Thousands of people gathered last week in the besieged village, which lies between the cities of Lufeng and Shanwei in the eastern part of Guangdong, to mourn fellow protester Xue Jinbo who died last week in police custody.
The authorities say he died of a heart attack, but relatives who identified the body said it was covered in injuries from head to foot.
Xue's death came amid fierce clashes between police and an embattled farming community furious at alleged official corruption and the sale of its land.
Zhang said the phone call came from officials at the nearby Donghai township government.
"They won't even give back [Xue's] body, and now they're telling us not to complain."
Decision to demonstrate
In a mass meeting on Monday, villagers made a collective decision to stage a demonstration on Wednesday and march to the city government, local sources said.
"Basically the whole village is there," said a resident surnamed Chen on Monday. "There are maybe 6,000 or 7,000 people."
"They are at the main intersection."
Officials are now threatening that several thousand armed police officers now stationed in a cordon around the village, and carrying out identity checks on all those coming and leaving, are being readied for an assault on the village, according to Zhang.
Zhang said tensions were proving unbearable for many local residents caught up in the long-running dispute.
"A lot of local people are suffering from mental health problems now, as well as a lot of kids," he said. "The authorities are calling us several times a day, telling us not to petition or complain, telling us how many police are waiting to enter the village."
"These are terror tactics," Zhang said.
Repeated calls to the Donghai township government went unanswered during office hours on Monday.
Censoring coverage
The standoff in Wukan prompted widespread support from netizens, before the village and associated keywords were listed as "sensitive" and stopped showing up in search results.
Censors on the Sina and Tencent Weibo micro-blogging sites, which are very popular in China, quickly removed a video showing a demonstration by thousands of villagers in Wukan, who were filmed chanting "down with corrupt officials," and "compensation for spilled blood."
"The Chinese authorities are yet again trying to hush up a local corruption case although it has led to a man's death and has highlighted a major problem--arbitrary land seizures," Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said in a statement on Monday.
"This criminal censorship is indicative of the nervousness that the authorities feel about ... the role played by the Internet and social networks as a sounding board. They are trying to intimidate netizens and get them to censor themselves," the group said.
An activist surnamed Yu, who traveled to Wukan in a show of solidarity with local residents, said he was detained after arriving at one of the road-blocks set up by armed police.
Yu, who traveled with a group of 10 others, said he was held from Dec. 8-16, before being escorted back home to the provincial capital, Guangzhou.
"I and a lot of other netizens are being confined to our homes," Yu said. "We can't go out."
Guangzhou-based lawyer Tang Jingling was taken away by police at the weekend, his wife said.
"It's probably to do with the Wukan incident," said Tang's wife, surnamed Wang. "I called up the police station to ask, and they told me that he was being held on orders from the Guangzhou municipal police department."
"He said the case was being overseen by state security police," Wang said. "I don't know when he's coming home."
A keyword search in Chinese on the popular Sina Weibo microblog service gave the following message on Monday: "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, we were unable to display the search results for 'Wukan'."
Sina Weibo user @ershutasanjiu wrote: "I sent out so many tweets today about Wukan, but I don't think a single one will last until tomorrow."
Call for probe
Wukan residents are calling on Chinese leaders in Beijing to carry out an independent probe into allegations of corruption surrounding the sale of their farmland, for the election of local officials, and for answers about Xue's death.
Xue's death followed several weeks of highly organized and vocal demonstrations by Wukan's farming community, which says it wants action taken over alleged corruption and abuse of power by the village Communist party chief Xue Chang, who has occupied the post for more than 40 years.
The village has been besieged by security forces for more than a week after residents have fought off thousands of riot police using barricades and home-made weapons, and similar protests have erupted in nearby villages in recent days.
A resident of Shangdaimei village, also near Shanwei city, said hundreds of villagers had marched to local government offices in Xinan township on Sunday to protest the sale of their farmland.
"There were some officials from the Communist Party commission for discipline inspection who said they would come to our village, but they never came," said one protester, Lao Zhang.
"So we went to the township to protest ... We were also protesting and calling for an allocation of land," he said. "They should give it all back to the villagers."
An official who answered the phone at the Xinan township government confirmed the protest had taken place.
"There definitely weren't as many as 1,000 people," she said. "There are only a few hundred in the whole village."
Reported by Fung Yat-yiu and Wen Yuqing for RFA's Cantonese service, and by Qiao Long for the Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
December 16, 2011
DONGSHIGU VILLAGE, China (CNN) -- As Christian Bale approached an impromptu checkpoint leading to this tiny village in eastern China, four men blocking the narrow path started marching toward him in menacing unison.
"I am here to see Chen Guangcheng," the "Dark Knight" actor said and I translated, with correspondent Stan Grant and cameraman Brad Olson next to us.
"Go away!" the plainclothes guards barked, pushing us back.
Amid the scuffling and yelling, dozens more guards in olive-green, military-style overcoats -- and two gray minivans -- emerged from the other side of the checkpoint, all coming toward us.
"Why can I not visit this free man?" Bale asked repeatedly, only to receive punches from guards aiming for his small camera as they tried to drag him away from the rest of us.
As we retreated, I recognized the ringleader -- the same burly man who had hurled rocks at the CNN team 10 months earlier to force us out of the same location.
A precarious scene ensued Thursday as one of the gray minivans chased our car at high speed on bumpy country roads for some 40 minutes.
When the dust settled, we counted a broken car, a damaged camera -- and a Hollywood star disappointed at -- but not shocked by -- his failure to see a personal hero.
"What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is," Bale said.
The man, 40-year-old Chen Guangcheng, has been confined to his home along with his wife, mother and daughter, and watched around the clock by dozens of guards since he was released from prison in September 2010. A local court had sentenced him to more than four years in prison for damaging property and disrupting traffic in a protest.
Blind China activist recovers amid call for his release
His supporters maintain authorities used trumped-up charges to silence Chen, a blind, self-taught lawyer who rose to fame in the late 1990s thanks to his legal advocacy for what he called victims of abusive practices by China's family-planning officials.
Bale first learned about Chen through news reports, including our coverage in February, when he was in China filming "The Flowers of War," a wartime drama set in 1930s Nanjing in which he plays a mortician trying to save a group of schoolgirls from the clutches invading Japanese soldiers.
Blind lawyer makes Chinese officials jittery
The injustice faced by the activist and his family stirred such strong emotions in Bale that, upon hearing his impending return to China to promote the movie, he decided to do something unusual to raise the international awareness of Chen and thereby to turn up the heat on the Chinese government.
"This doesn't come naturally to me, this is not what I actually enjoy -- it isn't about me," he explained during our eight-hour drive from Beijing to the eastern city of Linyi, where Chen's village is located. "But this was just a situation that said I can't look the other way."
Known to be a media-shy celebrity, Bale reached out to CNN and invited us to join him on his journey to visit Chen.
In the car, he lamented the American public's lack of knowledge on Chen's case, despite senior U.S. officials' increasingly vocal support for his freedom. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gary Locke, the American ambassador to China, have both championed Chen's cause.
Bale appeared a little surprised to learn that Relativity Media, which produced his 2010 Oscar-winning "The Fighter" and recently filmed a comedy in Linyi, was accused by activists of cozying up to the same officials who ordered Chen's detention and torture. The studio has issued a statement denying the allegation.
Although China's state media has largely ignored the story, Chen's plight has spread online and outraged a growing number of Chinese "netizens." Many have tried to visit Chen, and activists say nearly all would-be visitors have been turned back, often violently, by plainclothes police and local thugs.
"I'm not brave doing this," Bale emphasized. "The local people who are standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and getting beaten or detained, I want to support them."
As our car sped toward Beijing in the dark, Bale wondered aloud if he would never be allowed back -- a prospect he is prepared to accept -- even as "The Flowers of War" became China's official entry into next year's Academy Awards.
"Really, what else can I do to help Chen?" he kept asking as the clock struck midnight, with his latest movie -- partially funded by the state -- about to open nationwide in China.
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