The boy has lost his speech, and is physically deformed.

On May 19, while staging a protest in Guangzhou Train Station, four activists and the foster father and the boy were detained by the police.

Activists protesting in Guangzhou Train Station on Sunday.

By Sunday evening, local time, more than 20 local activists and their friends gathered in the police station to support the five grownups and the boy who have by then detained for over ten hours. They were there also to prevent stability maintenance workers from Zhuhai to take the father and boy.

One of the five detained activists arguing with a police officer, while Chen Ya sitting on a chair.

Meanwhile, as word of the incident made it to Twitter and Weibo, netizens kept calling the police station to demand the release of  the protestors. Activists on the scene reported that the female police officer who answered the phone kept saying, “there is no child detained here,” “don’t believe what you hear online.”

During the night, the boy’s lawyer Chen Keyun (陈科云) arrived at the station, but his request to meet with the boy was not granted.

Monday morning, local time, starting around 5:30 until about two hour ago, the police station released the five grownups and the boy one by one.

Chen Fengqiang told Ye Du (@ye_du), vice secretary general of Independence Chinese Pen Center and one of the activists on the scene last night local time, the boy’s mother Wei Fen was summoned by Jinhai’an police station of Zhuhai city in 2009 for videotaping scenes of police using force to intercept petitioners, and has since disappeared. Upon his release, Chen Fengqiang visited Wei Fen’s hometown in Guangxi province to look for her, but her relatives don’t know her whereabouts either. It is feared that she died in police custody.

For now, the boy is being cared for by a friend of his mother, and protected by scores of activists. At 2pm Monday, the activists, his foster father and the boy will go to the Public Security Department of Guangdong province to demand for 1) the whereabouts of the boy’s mother; 2) accountability for Chen Ya’s illegal detention and inhumane treatment during the child’s detention; and 3) compensation.

Telephone numbers:

13697792874 (foster father Chen Fengqiang)

18979645473 (肖青山, activist).

The “Five Nos” (五不搞) refer to what Wu Bangguo, then the chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, avowed in the 2011 NPC session.They are “no multi-party election, no diversification of guiding principles, no separation of powers, no federal system, and no privatization.”

This is a translation of a revised copy made available to SRIC. The original can be read here.  Translated by Jack and Yaxue.

Gao Yu (高瑜)

The day after the Southern Weekend incident broke on January 3^rd of this year, which stirred waves in China and beyond, a national conference of propaganda chiefs was held. Liu Yunshan (刘云山), the member of the Politburo Standing Committee in charge of propaganda and secretary of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee, attended the meeting and gave a speech. The Chinese media didn’t elaborate on it probably because Xi Jinping and none of the other standing committee members attended it. The Xinhua news agency had a short release, mentioning Liu Yuanshan’s speech and not much else.

Liu Yunshan’s Speech, “The Piercing Tip of a Wrapped Awl”

This propaganda tsar from Inner Mongolia was the head of the CCP’s propaganda department for the entire tenure of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao’s ten-year reign. He is known for his talks of party platitude, and has not produced anything that could be called a signature speech.

Inside the system, the first denunciation of universal values came from Chen Kuiyuan (陈奎元), the president and party chief of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in a speech he delivered during the academy’s reform seminar held on July 26, 2008. Five months later, the first issue in 2009 of the party’s Qiushi magazine (《求是》, or Seeking Truth) published Liu Yunshan’s speech “Looking Back and Looking Forward,” delivered on December 25, 2008 during a forum of the heads of the CCP’s national-level propaganda and cultural units. It was a “study and discuss” session for Hu Jintao’s speech during a conference commemorating the 30th anniversary of the third session of the 11th Central Committee of the CCP. In this speech, Liu Yunshan required the propaganda chiefs to “steadily push forward the construction of the socialist core value system, to better pull together spirit and qi, and to strengthen the foundations and roots.” “The socialist core value system,” he said, “is the essential embodiment of the socialist ideology and is the pillar of the contemporary Chinese people.” Liu’s highlighting the so-called “socialist core value system” was seen by many as a refrain of Chen Kuiyuan’s speech against universal values.

Now, six months into Xi Jinping’s “new reign,” what Liu Yunshan said before, by comparison, was nothing nearly as alarming as what he  has been up to currently.

This year’s national conference of propaganda chiefs marks an ideological turning point from Hu’s time to Xi’s. Liu’s speech during that conference has not been published, but from the increasingly harsh media grip and internet censorship, we can feel Liu’s speech the way we can see “the piercing tip of an awl hidden in a bag.”

“Erecting Political Awareness” and “Three Loves”

According to Xinhua News’s report on the January conference, Liu Yunshan emphasized that, “to engage in propaganda of thoughts and culture in an environment of diverse social ideas and profoundly changed media landscape, [we] must erect political awareness, we must have the right stand, clear views, and firm attitude with regard to the party’s basic political path, issues of principles, and important guidelines and policies.”

What does “erecting political awareness” entail? Is it the same as “keeping in lock step with the Central Leadership” that we used to hear a lot during the Jiang Zemin era and the Hu Jintao era?

After the Two Sessions, the CCP Propaganda Department circulated, only orally, the main points of the national conference of the propaganda chiefs to national and regional media organizations across China. In an article appearing on a website called “Chinese Mainstream Culture Website”(中华主流文化网), an attendee leaked the five main points of the conference:

1.  Uphold the mouthpiece theory [i. e. the media must be the mouthpiece of the Party];

2.  Uphold Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong thought, and the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics as guiding principles;

3.  From now on, no anti-Marxism, anti-Leninism or anti-Mao Zedong thought are allowed to appear in media. The propaganda system will cleanse itself of “new three antis” personnel¹, or those who are anti-party, anti-state and anti-nationality[ 1] . These people will be removed if they don’t change their stand;

4.  Strengthen the management of the media. Media practitioners must have clear-cut political stands, must have clear political brain, must uphold the principle of objectivity and truthfulness, and must be responsible to the society. Media cannot report negative news everyday all over their pages while ignoring the positive things; and

5.  Strengthen the party’s leadership over the media. This has to start from the education of media practitioners, and those with “new three anti” tendencies are not allowed to teach journalism in universities.

Once leaked, these five points shocked many and invited heated argument online. Overjoyed Maoist websites re-posted the article, while liberals roundly condemned them.

On April 10th, the CCP’s two Hong Kong-based newspapers, Ta Kun Pao and Wen Wei Po, came out together to deny “rumors”: there had never been a “CCP propaganda work meeting,” and the so-called “new three antis” was a baseless rumor.

The next day though, on April 11th, the Red Flag Journal (《红旗文稿》), a subordinate publication of Seeking Truth magazine, published an article entitled Comprehensively Manage the Two Media Fields to Unite Positive Social Energy (read a complete translation here) by Ren Xianliang (任贤良), a deputy director of the Shaanxi Provincial CCP Propaganda Department and also a vice-chairman of the All-China Journalists Association (中国记协).The article belligerently called for tightened management of new media and occupying new fronts of public opinions, and was widely re-posted by Xinhua, People’s Daily and major gateway sites.

Ren Xianliang defined the internet-based new media and traditional state-owned media in terms of enemy vs. us. He believes that the emergence of blogs, microblogs and other forms of self-media has in effect demolished the Chinese government’s prohibition of private media and its ban on media exposé of events out of regional boundaries, and opened up a “micro-era” where everyone is a journalist. Personal media are “unfettered” and “uninhibited,” he argued, and they can exert influence as powerfully as a newspaper or a news agency. They not only challenge the fundamental principle that the party alone runs the media, he opined, they also lead to class divide and confrontation and damage the credibility of the government. Some forces “manipulate” online opinions, fabricate political “rumors,” viciously denigrate the image of the party and the state, and dismantle the foundation on which the party governs. He describes the Southern Weekend incident as “flagrantly challenging the party’s news media management system.” He called for internet censors to rein in more stringently those well-known online leakers, “Big V” Weibo accounts (verified accounts with a large number of followers), “warning them when warning is due, shutting them up when they should be shut up, and closing them down when it is called for.” Meanwhile, he proposed to “transform, sponsor and cultivate” a large number of opinion leaders who understand, recognize and support the guidelines and policies of the party and the state, and to influence and lead public opinions through them.

Ren Xianliang’s article in a way confirmed the existence of the “new three antis,” and it brought about another torrent of online backlash. Beginning from April 12, in an effort to silence the discussion, accounts were frozen or deleted, not just those of the critics, but also those of Ren Xianliang and Zhang Hongliang (张宏良, a Maoist intellectual). Phrases like “new three antis” and “traitor to the Han people” were censored.

The year of 2012 [with the saga of Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun] was a year when “rumors forced the truth out.” This time, the CCP’s Propaganda Department came out to “clarify” that there had been no such thing as the “new three antis.” Instead, it said that it had only talked about “three loves”: love the party, love the country, and love the nationality, and by “erecting political awareness,” Liu Yunshan meant the “three loves.” But the question is, how about those who are not adhering to the “three loves?” Do the three loves not in effect evidence the existence of the “new three antis?”

A big name from the People’s Daily revealed that the leadership of the paper had been informed of the key points of the national conference of propaganda chiefs which indeed included the phrase “new three antis,” an invention of China’s propaganda tsar.

On April 19, the world media was flabbergasted to learn that the Ta Kun Pao, the CCP’s paper in Hong Kong known for “quashing rumors” about mainland politics, had fabricated the false story of Xi Jinping riding Beijing taxi.

The Duowei website appealed in what sounds like an invocation: “Under the circumstances, it’s time for Xi Jinping to take action to transcend the boundaries of the left and right!”

In late April, the General Office of the Communist Party issued Document No. 9 to the county/military division level across the country. The document is called the Minutes of the 2013 National Conference of Propaganda Chiefs — Briefing on the Current Situation in the Field of Ideology with Liu Yunshan’s speech, in its entirety, attached to it. Documents of the CCP General Office are only second to those of the Central Committee, and they must be signed by the entire Standing Committee. So this is not just about Liu Yunshan anymore.

Document No. 9 is divided into three parts: 1) Situation, 2) Problems, and 3) Countermeasures.

The “situation” section summarized new achievements in the fields of propaganda,  ideology and culture, such as “successfully promoting the spirit of the 18th Party Congress;” “promoting and reporting the new central leaders, with comrade Xi Jinping as the general secretary, who are collectively showing a high level of responsibility-bearing spirit to the nationality, the country, and the people; while working hard to rejuvenate the nation, empty talk will only lead the nation astray; showing the good work style and image of being vigorous and resolute, realistic and pragmatic, and making every effort to govern the nation well;” “receiving waves of praise from inside and outside of the party, making the masses and the cadres inspired with enthusiasm;” and “promoting the ‘Chinese Dream’ with great force.”

According to the Xinhua News Agency, Liu Yunshan proposed in his speech that “we must establish an awareness of problems, and ‘problems are the sound of the times.’ We must be good at discovering problems, bringing forth problems, facing problems directly, studying problems, and answering problems, positively setting into motion resolutions for the problems, and gathering the positive energy to propel development.”

So, what problems did the national conference of propaganda chiefs actually raise and directly face? It turns out they are even more startling than what was leaked online:

• The Concepts of Democracy and Constitutional Government: The goal of this is to overthrow the leadership of the Communist Party and subvert the political power of the state. The Southern Weekend incident was a brazen provocation. 
• Universal Values: The core of this is to dispel the leadership of the party and force the party to make concessions.
• Civil Society: The main purpose of this is to establish new political forces outside of the party’s grass roots units.
• Neoliberalism: This is against the state exerting macroeconomic controls.
• Western Ideas of the Press: These ideas are against the “mouthpiece theory” that the party has consistently held fast to. They want (the press) to break free from the party’s leadership over the media and open things up, creating havoc for the party and society by stirring up public opinions.
• Historical Nihilism: This takes issue with the historical problems under the party leadership and disputes facts that have already been widely accepted. The most noted example is that it makes a great effort to disparage and attack Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong thought, negating the historical role that the CCP played during the period of Mao Zedong’s leadership. The goal is to whittle down, even overthrow, the legitimacy of the party’s leadership.
• Distortion of Opening and Reform: This criticizes the emergence of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie and state capitalism. It believes that that China’s reform is not thorough, and that only by carrying out political reform can economic reform be implemented.

The third section of Document No. 9 presents countermeasures:

1. Consolidate and strengthen positive, healthy, and progressive mainstream thinking and public opinions, spread the voice of the party and government, display the mainstream of the current society and reflect the aspirations of the people and the masses.

2. Educate everyone. Launch publicity education on socialism with Chinese characteristics, guide the whole party and whole society to further strengthen confidence in our path, confidence in our theory, and confidence in our system, and strive to realize the “Chinese dream” on this path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

3. Strengthen the party’s leadership over the media, improve the compartmentalized accountability system, and be able to track down the individuals who are responsible for problems when they arise.

The Xi Era is Regressing Further than “Five Nos”

During the Hu Jintao administration, what received the most criticism was the “Five Nos” that Wu Bangguo avowed in 2011. There is little hope for political reform to occur in China, and there will be no economic reform either because political reform is a bottleneck for all reforms. Reforms by Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang in the 1980’s started from letting go of power and yielding on interests in all domains, but Xi Jinping not only wants to maintain stability, he also wants to strengthen the party’s leadership in all domains. The result of this can only be running in the opposite direction of reform. Single-mindedly seeking GDP increase and doubling growth will not reduce social frictions and environmental degradation; instead it will continue to worsen toward a tipping point. Domestic population dividends and the dividends of peace since the end of the cold war are rapidly disappearing, the price of raw materials is rapidly rising, and as the sociologist Sun Liping said, “the age of development with low costs has already passed, and we must welcome an age of development with high costs.”

The most serious issue with Document No. 9 is its outdated concepts. It is not a small, but a long regression from the Hu and Wen era. Hu and Wen at least kept in line with the third plenary session of the 11th CCP Central Committee that marked China’s opening-up more than thirty years ago. A leader without modern ideas cannot possibly have the vision required to lead. How is he going to cope in an age of development with high cost?

Alas, what a pity for China!

¹The “three antis campaign”: The anti-corruption, anti-waste and anti-bureaucracy campaign in early 1950s was one of a long string of political campaigns in China that targeted communist cadres who had become too close to capitalists from the previous era.

Related reading:

The Anxiety of a Propaganda Chief in the Face of Media Changes, by Song Zhibiao

Assessing the State of Nerves of the CCP

Beijing Observation: Xi Jinping the Man, by Gao Yu

Upon learning the news of their colleagues’ encounter, four more lawyers went to Ziyang to help. They were first followed by men in plain clothes, and then they too were snatched.

Jiang Tianyong

Li Heping

Tang Jitian

Liang Xiaojun

The eleven lawyers are: Jiang Tianyong (江天勇), Tang Jitian (唐吉田), Liang Xiaojun (梁小军), Tang Tianhao (唐天昊), Lin Qilei (蔺其磊), Li Heping (李和平), Zhang Keke (张科科), Guo Haiyue (郭海跃), Wang Cheng (王成), Yang Huiwen (杨慧文) and Wen Haibo (温海波).

Rights lawyer, legal scholar Teng Biao tweeted Monday evening, Beijing time, that several lawyers were hurt. Jiang Tianyong’s legs were hurt by rocks, and Tang Tianhao was bleeding from his head.

By Beijing time Tuesday morning, three lawyers were released and have since returned to Chengdu, the provincial capital, while the whereabouts of the other eight are still unknown. They were taken away around 2 am Tuesday from the police station where they had been held.

According to several other rights lawyers following and reporting the incident online, the black jail has the improbable name of the “Rule of Law Education Center of Ziyang Municipality” (资阳市法制教育中心). From outside, it looks like a resort, but it houses what the authorities called the “rule of law classes” (法制学习班). Some have been jailed there for five or six years, and some were tortured to death. During the last Chinese New Year season, there were as many as 260 people illegally jailed there. (See below for address and telephone numbers of the facility.)

Teng Biao (@滕_彪_) posted on Weibo that “the so-call Rule of Law Education Centers can be found all over China, and they are also known as brainwashing camps, or study class, but they are really concentration camps where torture is used routinely. There are a shocking number of Falungong practitioners, petitioners and others who have been detained in these facilities across China. Lawyers said that more prisoners had been tortured to death in these illegal detention centers than in jails or re-education-through-labor camps. In this particular Center in Ziyang, at least three are known to have died of torture.”

Rule of Law Education Center of Ziyang Municipality 资阳市法制教育中心

Address: 资阳市雁江区迎接镇二娥湖山庄法制教育中心

Tel: 28-26741799, 28-26332128, 28-2674103

Director Xu Hongyan 徐红艳  Tel: 28-26741031  Cell: 13547291868

Sources:

http://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2013/05/blog-post_5533.html

Twitter accounts: @tengbiao, @lvshi798; Weibo accounts: @滕_彪_, @李方平律师

My name is Liu Yuting (刘玉婷), and I am the mother of Yuan Yong (袁勇) who was, before the earthquake, a freshman of the no. 4 class at Beichuan High School (北川中学). On May 12 when the earthquake stuck, I was in Mianyang, not in Beichuan, the epicenter. In Mianyang, few houses collapsed, and I thought: since Beichuan is only a little over an hour of driving away, not that far really, I thought it shouldn’t be too bad. My son is a strong, healthy boy and he should be fine.

An old man with a radio said that Beichuan had been devastated and many had probably died. I was stuck with fear. When I reached the school, I saw that houses around the classroom building were all standing, including houses built in the 1960s that had been designated before the quake as “condemned houses.”  These brick-and-wood houses didn’t collapse, didn’t even crack, but the school’s classroom building did. In the rubble, you didn’t even see frames, or anything like that. It crumbled into dust and powder. My son’s classroom was on the fifth floor, the top floor. I looked at the rubble, and I thought he might have been rescued.

The teachers were all sheltered in the gym. I found my son’s class counselor. The counselor pulled a piece of crumpled paper out of his pocket with a dozen or so names on it. He told me my son left there alive, he was injured, and the teachers arranged for another student by the last name Bai to take care of my son. I looked for him in each hospital. I found that student. He said he parted ways with my son at a temporary dressing station in An Xian county (安县).

I went to Mianyang, Jiangyou, Deyang, even Chengdu, and I searched for my son in every single hospital. I didn’t want to eat, nor did I feel hungry. I searched for my son day and night. Finally when I couldn’t find him anywhere, I knew my son had perished. So I went back and began to search for him in funeral homes. Then in a police station, probably a temporary one, in An Xian county, I saw my son’s picture, taken before he was cremated. So I didn’t even get to see my son at his death. All I saw was just a picture.

I was thinking, “as long as my son lives, I don’t mind if he loses an arm or a leg. I want to have my son.” He’s such a considerate boy. I had lived a busy life up to that point. My child was everything for me, I was happy in my heart no matter how busy, how tired I was. But having lost my son, I lost the drive to do anything. Making money doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. So I quit my business, no more of it.

Because the building crumbled into powder, most of the kids didn’t have a chance to run to safety. Kids on lower floors suffered the most casualties. The entire sophomore class had only a few survivors. My son’s class had the most survivors, but still, only 30 or so made it. If a landslide buried my son, I would have held no grudges. Or, even if the building didn’t collapse the way it did, I could still accept it, because it was a severe quake and buildings could collapse. But I believe this was a man-made disaster caused by cutting corners during construction.

All the parents demanded an evaluation of the building. But later, there was a directive to stop the evaluation of collapsed classroom buildings. Experts came and explained to us what seismic waves were. As an ordinary person, I don’t understand seismic waves, but it’s puzzling how that seismic wave hit precisely that school, precisely that classroom building. If the earth cracked open, this whole area would have tumbled down. Why nothing else but this classroom building? I don’t understand.

[Showing photos of the school site] These two are dorm buildings. This one is the canteen. The classroom in the middle collapsed but not the buildings right next to it. This is the school’s office building, including restrooms. In the front is residential housing, a row of it, and nothing collapsed.

Construction of this building started in ’93, and went on for several years. It was completed around ’98. [Continue to show photos of the rubble] Look, such small pieces, such size. There were a few parents who knew something about architecture. Take a look at this, the lap length. Look at this. You can see the gap here. The blueprints required welding, and the lap length should be much longer, but it was only 3 centimeters. These are some of the blueprints. There are a lot more, and I merely photocopied a few pages. We made a comparison chart. [For example,] where there should be 8 steel bars of 20cm diameter, only 4 steel bars of 16cm diameter were used. If you compare the blueprints and what you find from the collapsed building, there is a big difference.

The principle of Beichuan High School, Zhao Changwen, who oversaw the construction of the building, is now an academic director [in a school] in Chengdu, a much higher position. Why? I heard that when he left Beichuan, he took with him the school’s own coffer—a lot of work units in China have their own coffers. Lu Wanchun, the man who sold the steel bars used in the building, is still in the construction business in Beichuan. So I can’t get over it. These children shouldn’t have died; I must bring a complaint against these people.

As far as insurance goes, we had also negotiated with the insurance company and the government. For minors, the provision has a RMB 50,000 cap, and for disease, the cap is 60,000. The dead children each got RMB 4,000. Of the injured and disabled, some got RMB 1,000, some got RMB 2,000, others got RMB 4,000, but none received RMB 60,000. Because the insurance is unreasonable, we have made many visits to the insurance company. Because of it, one of the parents was convicted of “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order” and sentenced to five years in jail. He was accused of organizing parents to fight the insurance company, but as far as I know, he was not the organizer, and the real reason  he was targeted was because he was doing it for his sister’s child, not his own. Of course we all felt it was not fair, but we were helpless. Some parents eventually lost heart, for all these trips, all the expenditures, the time, and the energy, were in vain. Not to consider that, if they could sentence He Hongchun, they could also sentence any of us.

In the early days after the earthquake, the central government and everyone else were all talking about holding accountable those who were responsible for the tofu-dreg projects. We, the parents, waited; we felt that even if we didn’t do anything, those responsible would be punished. Besides it was the year of the Olympics, a big thing. But when the Olympics were over, we still didn’t hear anything. So we talked among ourselves and decided: Let’s petition higher authorities.

In 2009, a few parents and I sent these documents to the provincial Construction Department (建设厅), also to the provincial Office of Letters and Calls. We went with Yang Anquan and his wife who used to live in Beijing where they had a business. We went together. At the Office of Letters and Calls, only two of four of us were allowed to go in. When we got to the second door, they said only one of you two could go in, so Yang Anquan went in, and I was kept out. Yang Anquan, a man from the mountains, probably didn’t know what to say. They took him to a room and asked him questions. He left a copy of our documents there and was given a receipt. We were told to go home to wait.

As I began to petition, the government already knew that I had been interviewed by overseas media, Chinese and foreign, and they knew I had contact with them. They said to me, “they videotaped you, but they probably will change what you had said when they show it overseas, and that would hurt the image of the country. Don’t be used by those media outlets, and don’t be used by hostile forces.”

Everyone knew that Tan Zuoren (谭作人) had been interviewing people about the sub-standard building projects in Sichuan. The government thought I must have had contact with Tan Zuoren. Needless to say, when Tan Zuoren’s trial took place, many parents would go. In the days leading up to his trial, I knew that many parents were summoned, questioned and warned. That day they took me to a guesthouse where I was forced to stay a night with them there. The next day when the trial was held, they took me to a park to drink tea. Anyway they made sure that I didn’t go to Chengdu for the trial.

At the time I was assigned to the Beichuan Public Security Bureau as a “person to be helped.” There they introduced me to a lieutenant of their Domestic Security Team, a woman. They said, “You women folks can chat and have an easy time to communicate.” That day she called me, she said she was going to find housing for me. So I went, but she said she had a meeting to attend, leaving me to talk to another of their officers. After a while I said I had to go, and I had to go back to Mianyang. He said, “We have cars here, why don’t I give a ride to Mianyang?” When we got to Mianyang, he insisted that we dine together, then they took me to a guesthouse. It was….my memory is getting poor….a guesthouse of the Chaoyang Factory.

They said, “Tell us what you the parents really want.” Since they asked me to tell, I told them all, including the sub-standard buildings, insurance, the collective burial ground of my child, all the things we the parents have grievance about. He said, wherever you go to petition, your petition eventually will still come back to us, to where it started. Give us your documents, like documents showing the safety problems with the school building. I gave them a copy, including photocopies of the blueprints. The blueprints say clearly that Beichuan High School [inaudible] and is a framework structure by design. This is something I remember very clearly. They said, “If we report the problem to higher authorities, it would be much more effective.” That was how he said it to me.

During the four days when I was held in the guesthouse, a friend from my hometown was visiting Chengdu. I wanted to go to meet my friend, but they wouldn’t let me, saying “Ask them to come over here if they want to meet.” In any case, they were just keeping me in sight. During the night, several people stayed in the same room with me.

In the end they asked me to write a letter guaranteeing that I would stop petitioning. I said I would not write any guarantee for you, instead, I can write down my thoughts. Petitioning is my right, I wrote, I might have incurred expenditures and headaches for the state, for some offices, that’s possible. But I will not be able to guarantee that I will stop petitioning against the sub-standard buildings. They read what I wrote, they said it wasn’t good enough, adding a few things and asking me to copy it. So I did, or they wouldn’t let me go. If I didn’t write that thing, they would have confined me there indefinitely.

It was during the Two Sessions in early March. At the time I was back to my hometown, and my cellphone service was suspended because of late payment. Since my cellphone was being tapped, when they couldn’t locate me, they thought I had gone to Beijing to petition. The state security police in Sichuan contacted their colleagues in my hometown to see if I had gone to Beijing. They called me repeatedly, asking to meet me. I said, well, it’s ok to meet with them, and I’m not afraid. At the meeting with the public security in my hometown, I showed them some of my petition documents. They looked at them and they fell silent: how could there be such buildings? The pictures I showed them were pictures of the rubble.

They said to me, if you want to petition, you can go, but let us know when you go. I said, if I let you know, I will never get to Beijing. They said, their colleagues in Sichuan contacted them, and they are on their way, and will arrive very soon.

It seems that provinces were compared with each other to see which province had more petitioners. Even though I was petitioning against Sichuan, my ID was issued in Henan. So I imagine that the state security in the two provinces were coordinated and of the same organization. I figured that they shared the responsibility and coordinate with each other to stop me. I told them that I still had to petition.

Many people felt that it had been taking so much time, money and effort. They felt helpless, and they gave up. Some cautioned me that many petitioners were punished when they came back home, and they told me to put my safety first. Everyone told me “whatever you do, be safe.”

I know that, as long as there is any possibility at all, I will persist. But at the same time, I understand that one’s persistence doesn’t necessarily result in a quick solution. But if I don’t persist, if no one persists, if even the victims themselves give up, who will bother to handle it? You can talk about a dog who died, a cat who died, but our children died under the building, why can’t we speak out？Why can’t we let everyone know the truth? When I speak out, I don’t feel I am denigrating the country; I am merely being truthful.

I don’t know where I can find the solution for my problem. I feel the most difficult thing is that I can’t find anyone, anywhere, to lodge my complaint. But as the mother of my child, I will do everything I can.

Anti-PX protest in Kunming, Yunnan province, on Saturday, May 4th.

This past week was, by any measure, an interesting week in China.

Last Saturday, May 4th, Chengdu residents planned, after days of online mobilization, to have a “stroll” in a downtown area protesting an oil refinery and petrochemical plant known as the PX project to be built in Pengzhou, about 30 kilometers away from the city. People worried about pollution and also the possibility of an earthquake disaster since the project is located on the same earthquake-active strip as Beichuan, the epicenter of the devastating 2008 earthquake. The protest didn’t materialize because China’s stability maintenance machine went to work in full gear. It was a rare, all-out display, and NPR’s Louisa Lim has a good report on how:

“At the appointed hour and location for would-be protesters — a covered bridge at the city center — at least five different kinds of security forces were on patrol. Police patrolled in pairs, with plainclothes police out in force and a fire engine handily parked down the street. At a nearby teahouse, several dozen anti-riot police dozed in their full gear, plastic handcuffs dangling from their vests, ready to spring into action should the need arise. Trucks of paramilitary police circled the town, while police patrolled university campuses.

The main square — overseen by a huge statue of Chairman Mao — was closed to visitors, with police officers stationed every 20 feet around its periphery. Though China now spends more on domestic security than on its military, such a citywide show of force is unprecedented.

The tentacles of the stability-maintenance machine go deep, and all of them swung into action in Chengdu. A woman who’d forwarded a message about the protest on social media was forced to apologize on television earlier in the week. At least 10 dissidents were put under house arrest or forced to ‘go on holiday,’ according to a local human rights website. Meanwhile, employees at state-run work units were warned that they’d be sacked if they protested.

Then there was an enormous leafleting campaign. Households received letters from the government calling for ‘everyone to stand firm and not believe rumors, and not participate [in protests] in order to prevent people with other motives from seizing this opportunity to create turmoil.’ The letters had the unintended effect of bringing the Pengzhou plant to the attention of those who hadn’t already heard about it, creating an even greater groundswell of suppressed discontent.”

Then on Wednesday, May 8th, hundreds of migrant workers—mostly garment vendors from Anhui province—gathered outside Jingwen Building (京温大厦) in the south part of Beijing demanding justice for a girl who died on May 3. The girl, also a migrant worker from Anhui, had allegedly been raped by security guards of the building, thrown off the building from the 6^th floor, and died. The police insisted that she committed suicide, but the protesters weren’t convinced. Request by family to disclose the building’s security video recording was rejected. All sorts of rumors swirled online about who the boss of this building is, and about guards fleeing the scene.

All the opacity and commotion is amazing, given that this is such a simple case without any political complication. More amazing was the show of force at the scene. Some posted photos of a large number of police cars and different kinds of police forces, and others reported traffic lockdown in much of the city’s south side and sightings of helicopters (more photos of force deployment here).

The day after, on May 9, NPR’s Louisa Lim “counted 20 buses each carrying 50 policemen in case of trouble, not counting police on streets” around the Jingwen Building.

One netizen observed that “as far as I know, today’s protest at the south 3rd ring road in Beijing is the largest, and the police deployment the heaviest, since 1989,” while others commented that if the government had to use such force to deal with a protest of this size and this nature, “going forward, how are they going to play their game?”

All I can say is that, in today’s China, it will take only 1/20 of the size of the Tian’anmen Square protest twenty-four years ago for tanks and machine guns to roll into Beijing, and that is, without one minute of delay.

Also on Wednesday, three of the four activists (one on bail for poor health), who had been detained for displaying banners in the Xidan commercial district in Beijing on March 31 demanding asset disclosure by officials, were charged with “illegal assembly” and formally arrested. A trial is expected, and the three could face up to five years in prison. There are at least another twelve in Beijing, Jiangxi and Guangdong, who have been detained for similar reasons.

On Thursday, Xinhua News Agency reported that the State Internet Information Office canceled one Weibo account (@萧山君子) and suspended another (@何兵) for “deliberately spreading rumors.” Scores Weibo accounts are deleted every days, but these two are so-called “Big Vs,” Weibo accounts with a large number of followers.

I’m not sure who @萧山君子is except that he or she has over 110,000 followers. He Bing (何兵) is a professor of law at China University of Political Science and Law, and his Weibo account has more than 460,000 followers. The rumor in question is that a university graduate stabbed to death an official in charge of communications regulation in Guizhou province over a website shutdown.

Just days ago on May 2, the State Internet Information Office announced plans to crack down on internet “rumormongering,”  singling out “Big V” accounts for their power to relay messages and posts.

Many see the shutdown of the two accounts as the beginning of a systematic effort to take out and deter online criticism. Meanwhile, one must remember that these are accounts maintained by people who are tolerated enough by the government to maintain an account at all. Some of the best known dissidents and activists have not been able to set up, or maintain, accounts without being shut down promptly and repeatedly, each time losing all of their previous posts and followers. In other words, China is taking internet cleansing one step further now to curb criticism and to stunt its power to edify and mobilize.

On Friday, May 10th, law professor Zhang Xuezhong (张雪忠) of East China University of Political Science and Law revealed on his Weibo account (@新常识2016) that a directive from the central government is being circulated in his university to prohibit faculties from speaking to students about seven topics, or the “seven don’t talks” (七不讲), and they are: universal values, press freedom, civil society, civil rights, the Party’s past mistakes, the-powerful-and-the-privileged class, and judiciary independence.

Professors Zhang was promptly attacked for spreading “false rumors” (note how it is an all-purpose accusation) but his post was confirmed by Wang Jiangsong (王江松), a very well-known scholar and a professor at China Institute of Industrial Relations. Earlier on May 8, another scholar Yao Jianfu (姚监复) told Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster, that a CCP central committee document about the “seven don’t talks” was being leaked.

Professor Zhang Xuezhong’s Weibo account has since been deleted.

China watchers may still remember the “Five Nos” enunciated by the then chairman of the National People’s Congress Wu Bangguo (吴邦国), that is: no multi-party election, no diversified guiding principles, no separation of powers, no federal system, and no privatization.

Altogether, this week’s events paint a rather telltale picture about the state of China’s rulers, their sense of crisis, and their assessment of China’s political situation. As for the Chinese Dream, I heard that kindergarteners and primary school kids are being taught of it as well.

Sunday, May 12, will be the fifth anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake, another “sensitive”day, because all the questions about those tofu-dreg school buildings that buried over 5,000 children have not been answered. Then it will be June 4^th, the 24^th anniversary of Tian’anmen Square massacre, the most sensitive day of all. Fast approaching is the time when, in China, each day will be a touchy, nerve-racking day, and every black dot the shadow of an enemy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro3xyYoY7lU&feature=youtu.be&noredirect=1

Whether or not the Ya’an earthquake was a man-made disaster, whether or not the Three Gorges Dam influenced Sichuan’s geological structure, these are not questions that a short commentary is able to answer clearly. Even if you look at this earthquake as purely a natural disaster, the extended effect that it triggered is more shocking and thought provoking than a natural disaster.

In the Wenchuan earthquake five years ago, the land was battered, scenes of devastation met the eyes everywhere. This once affected the feelings of the Chinese people and overseas Chinese, the people and governments of every country in the world all extended a sincere helping hand. But the Wenchuan earthquake also toppled down the stage props of the false harmony and prosperity. The many innocent lives that were buried under the rubble of “Tofu-dreg” buildings drew people’s attention deeper: why did a natural disaster completely expose a tightly concealed man-made calamity? Even if the Chinese people are unable to escape a natural disaster, they at least ought to put an end to this kind of man-made disaster that is tragic beyond compare in the world, right?

But this line of thought immediately runs into the iron gate of autocracy, this regime does not allow any forces outside of the system to investigate the truth and clear up responsibility. All of the civil organizations and independent persons who are not under the control of the Communist Party are potential enemies of autocracy. These people are even more hazardous than a natural disaster, this is why Tan Zuoren (谭作人), Ran Yunfei (冉云飞) and Ai Weiwei (艾未未) were all arrested one after another.

One should admit, in the face of the machines of state violence, common people have a deep feeling of fear. To supervise power and the government is to violate the worst political taboo. As long as this road is blocked, everyone can only be silent and put up with the reality. But, that kind of totalitarian system has no way of avoiding or curing this malignant tumor, that is, that the party monopolizes everything. After abusing power to the extreme, uncurbed corruption is like spreading cancer cells, it makes the entire country fester and reek from top to bottom. The Chinese Red Cross’s Guo Meimei and her wealth-flaunting scandal” is just a tiny cross section of the cancer, but it reflects the terminal illness of the entire system.

The “Guo Meimei effect” has been continually fermenting, all the way until the Ya’an earthquake where it finally exploded. The masses of the mainland not only refused to donate to the Chinese Red Cross (not a member of the International Red Cross), in a single day, netizens wrote more than 100,000 posts on the Red Cross’s official Weibo: “Scram!”“No f***ing donation to you!”

Coincidentally, the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan did not open their wallets generously either as they had done five years ago. In Hong Kong in particular, the “Donating Not a Single Penny” campaign resonated among many residents. In addition, because of the objection by the majority of directly elected representatives, the Hong Kong Legislative Council did not approve the Special Administrative Region (SAR) government’s 100 million Hong Kong dollar disaster relief donation.

When one leaf falls, you know it is autumn everywhere. The significance of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan all refusing to donate is extremely far-reaching. It has not only punctured the government-run Red Cross, a malignant tumor of power, it has also made the old tricks of “distress regenerates a nation” and “the more natural disasters, the more patriotism” totally bankrupt. Chinese Communist Party authorities have consistently treated funerals like weddings, every disaster has become an opportunity for the government to erect monuments to their achievements, make refugees endlessly thank the party and country, and at the same time, demonstrate to the people how to perform patriotism and nationalism. On the other hand, natural disaster and disaster relief also provide corrupt officials a quicker path to accumulating wealth. Everyone knows that the Wenchuan earthquake, with charitable donations rolling in, fattened up many corrupt officials’ wallets.

The debate (with English subtitle) by the Hong Kong Legislative Council’s directly elected representatives and the SAR government’s Chief Secretary for Administration is edifying. Legislative Council representatives said that they were not refusing to donate, but were demanding supervision and openness as where the donation is spent and what spending rules are. Chief Secretary Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said, since it is a donation, there is no sense in supervising how they use it. This may sound like it makes some sense, but in Hong Kong, charitable organizations and donations are open and transparent, and the rules for receiving and spending donations are made public. If Hong Kong can do it, why can’t the mainland? This touches on the essence of the discussion. The fact is, this cannot be done in the mainland, and it is impossible for it to be done there.

During last year’s rain storm flooding in Beijing, residents already started communally refusing to donate. One person announced that he was willing to donate five million RMB to the Red Cross with the precondition that the Red Cross must make its accounts public. This proposal was refused with stern words by the Red Cross–they would rather not take the five million RMB than expose their accounts. Why is this? Are the Chinese Red Cross’s account books also like China’s soil pollution, a “national secret?”

To put it bluntly, if you want to know how government-controlled resources are used, as the Hong Kong Legislative Council representatives demanded, then it is not a “socialist system,” especially not “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” You had better not think that, having witnessed the refusal to donate in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Beijing authorities surely will make a determined effort to reform the Red Cross. This is not the issue merely of the Red Cross, it touches on the foundation of the authoritarian regime itself.

Four activists in Xidan, Beijing, on March 31.

Following earlier detentions in Guangdong and Beijing, on April 27, another ten activists in Xinyu, Jiangxi (江西新余) were taken into police custody for demanding that government officials disclose their assets. Since then, seven of them have been released but Liu Ping (刘萍), Wei Zhongping (魏忠平) and Li Sihua (李思华) are still been held.

According to Beijing-based rights lawyer Li Pingfang, those who were released gave accounts of being slapped in the face, wearing shackles, and being locked in iron cages. They said that the police interrogation focused on their participation in advocating asset disclosure by officials.

For days, Liu Ping’s daughter, a college student, has been visiting the Public Security authorities for the detention notice that, by law, the family is supposed to receive but has never been provided.

From a Weibo post on May 7th by Zhang Xuezhong (张雪忠), Liu Ping’s lawyer who teaches law at East China University of Political Science and Law, we learned that Liu Ping has been criminally detained for allegedly “subverting state power.” Mr. Zhang visited the detention center in Xinyu on Tuesday morning, submitted Power of Attorney letter and a request for meeting his client, but his request was declined without an explanation.

He told the local public security authorities that “Liu Ping is merely an ordinary laid-off worker. If she were charged with subversion just because she stated some plain truths out of a sense of justice, it would cause a public outcry, not to mention that it will cast a shadow on the new administration for which people have some expectations.”

Liu Ping

In 2011, Liu Ping, Wei Zhongping and Li Sihua campaigned in the election of people’s representatives in Xinyu as independent candidates. They were met with all manners of harassment and suppression, including forced disappearance, beatings and other forms of torture, passport confiscation, home searches, and seizure of personal objects.

The recent detentions in Xinyu are part of a wave of arrests across China over recent months. They are aimed at stamping out more visible citizen activism that has been on the rise. On March 31, four Beijing residents unfurled banners demanding that officials publish their assets as the Party has been promising for 30 years. They were taken away by police on the spot and subsequent detained for “illegal assembly.” A video posted on You Tube shows the protest scene in Xidan, a downtown commercial district only a couple of miles from the Tian’anmen Square , and the man who is giving a speech about the need to push for asset disclosure is Yuan Dong (袁冬), a stock brokerage manager and a regular participant in citizen dinner gatherings.

From April 15 to 17, four more Beijing residents, who held the similar demonstrations in other locations in Beijing, were detained on the same charges of “illegal assembly”. Around the same time, it was confirmed that another two were detained for the same reason. That brings the total number of detentions to ten for anti-corruption activism (one of them on bail due to poor health).

The Beijing Ten are: Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜), Zhao Changqing (赵常青), Sun Hanhui (孙含会), Wang Yonghong (王永红), Ma Xinli (马新立), Zhang Baocheng (张宝成), Yuan Dong (袁冬), Hou Xin (侯欣), Li Wei (李蔚), Qi Yueying (齐月英). Brief bios of eight of them can be found here (link in Chinese).

On April 26, a group of lawyers representing some of the detainees issued a statement entitled “No Crime Was Committed to Peacefully Call for Public Disclosure of Officials’ Assets” to appeal for withdrawing the case against the ten citizens.

A decision on whether the first four, detained on March 31, will be formally arrested is due on Wednesday, May 8. If tried, they could face up to five years in prison.

Also in April in Guangdong, several netizens were given 10-20 days of detention for holding signs, or unfurling banners, in public, that promote democracy and human rights, or condemn the dictatorship of the communist party.

One of the activists, Liu Yuandong (刘远东), was formally arrested on April 3, as his wife was notified, but an activist in Guangdong told SRIC that the family has yet to receive the notice of arrest despite repeated requests for it. It is unknown then with what Liu Yuandong has been charged, but relatives and friends said the authorities had been investigating his finance and tax records, likely to trumpet money-related charges against the businessman-turned-dissident.

Readers might wonder why the Chinese government is targeting citizens engaged in anti-corruption activism. Hasn’t Xi Jinping himself been vowing to crackdown on rampant graft inside the party? Dissident intellectuals pointed out that the regime is not afraid of what you say, no matter how strong; however, it is fearful of any form of organization and collective activities, and it has been cracking down harshly on these street demonstrations and also regular dinner gatherings of like-minded citizens known as “same-city dining and getting drunk” (tong cheng fan zui, 同城饭醉).

In Beijing, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, there have been reports of security police preventing such parties from occurring by temporarily detaining participants in the police stations, keeping them from leaving home, or making threats. In some cases, security police sat next to the parties watching them.

A recent study of censorship in China, conducted by a team of Harvard scholars, reached similar conclusion: “Censorship is oriented toward attempting to forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future—and, as such, seems to clearly expose the government’s intent,” the article says.

Related reading:

Appeal to Immediately Free Seven Citizens Criminally Detained for Calling for Asset Disclosure

Sources:

https://freeweibo.com/weibo/3572572626649859

http://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2013/05/blog-post_4275.html?spref=tw

http://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2011/12/blog-post_6537.html

http://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2013/04/blog-post_471.html

http://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2013/04/blog-post_9061.html

http://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2013/04/blog-post_8134.html

http://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2013/04/blog-post_4432.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/world/asia/china-expands-crackdown-on-anticorruption-activists.html

Song Zhibiao (宋志标)

Recently, the standing vice-director of Shaanxi provincial propaganda department Ren Xianliang (任贤良) published an article entitled Comprehensively Manage Two Media Fields to Unite the Positive Energy of the Society in which he evaluated the present media circumstances (China Media Project has a roundup about Ren Xianliang’s article). Although his logic and conclusions are both questionable, it seems as though we may agree on one point:  Even if this article, issued in the Red Flag Journal (《红旗文稿》), is meant to test the waters, it reflects the anxiety of the Party’s propaganda system and the latest judgment of high level officials in the propaganda system concerning public opinion. Media professionals should not treat this article with ridicule; others should also think about the sentiments in it and pay attention to the information it conveys. (Read Rogier’s complete translation of Ren’s article here.)

Ren’s article is divided into two parts: the first part assesses the nature of the public opinion sphere, while the second part provides some management prescriptions. In assessing the nature of the public opinion sphere, it places “Party management of the media” on a par with “Party management of the military.” This is raising the Party’s control of media to a point where matters cannot be more severe. His word choice here goes further than merely repeating the old hackneyed themes of conquering all under Heaven with both the “gun barrel” and the “pen.” Given the current context, this seems to be a proposition for keeping the country stable, thus revealing the fretful feelings and violent tendencies on the part of the propaganda system.

Ren’s article referred to the Southern Weekend incident, believing it has “challenged the base line of the Party’s control of the media.” Such thinking conforms to the propaganda departments’ talking points, but deviates from the expectations of the masses. In a way, we can say that the Southern Weekend incident has not concluded, the Party has reached a conclusion of it but held it back from the public. Ren’s article has brought some grapevine hearsay into the open, at a minimum confirming the attitude of the propaganda system towards the incident. Does a re-discussion of the incident mean that more disciplinary steps will be taken against those who were involved? One might expect more moves than the firing of Zeng Li (曾礼, a senior censor at the Southern Weekend who spoke out during the incident and who recently died days after “retirement”).

Director Ren noted that there are two media spheres: the Party-controlled media versus new internet media. He talked about the largest common divisor of the two and contributes a wholesale management plan. Treating the two media spheres equally without noting their stark contrast in opinion output, he proposes “Dual Management” (两管) that is, managing the media and managing the people running them, a method they are skilled at using.

All of his proposed countermeasures are rehashed clichés, but what calls for attention is that he wants the propaganda system to foster its own “opinion leaders.” In the old time the system “beats them down,” now it wants to “cultivate” them. Here you are witnessing how the propaganda system appropriates a term of mass communication. Clearly, the system has recognized, and accepted, the low productivity of its army of Fifty Centers (五毛); it will now move to fostering opinion leaders to counter the tide of adverse public opinion. As a result, a big wave of buy-up (of opinion leaders) can be expected.

Ren Xianliang (任贤良)

In the past, “Dual Management” was both the principle and the methodology for the Party’s running of the media. But, as “the Party running the media” is raised to be the overarching rule, “Dual Management” measures have become ever finer management techniques. This technical process began some time ago, and it will only become denser and be applied with more pressure. Now, ratcheting up the Party’s control of the media even higher to the level of the Party’s control of the military, as Ren proposes, would mean abandoning the exhaustive operation of the Party’s management of the media, do away with the space it allows journalism, and step up the intensity of control instead. Consequently, it would be impossible to accomplish the search for the greatest common divisor that Ren proposes later. In the end, to forcibly reach that highest principle, the only option would be for the propaganda department to raise the level of violence.

Ren Xianliang’s worries are not expressions of theory, but a response to reality. The problems is, what Ren and his colleagues, and even the entire system, face is not just a few influential Big Vs (verified Weibo accounts with large number of followers), it isn’t even the Southern Weekend incident. What is truly threatening to them are the tempestuous media changes. In terms of influence, structure, real power, especially the power to counter information control, these changes, altogether, deserve to be called a media revolution. Regardless of how propaganda directors like Ren choose their targets, their true opponents are in fact not in the world of media.

The force of change in the media is created by the society and the time we live in. Changed has been driven by technology development, and they have fermented everywhere and created an overall climate. It would be backward as a concept, and ineffective as a method, to suppress such changes by making a more antagonistic case against them and using force rather than more moderate approaches. In the old times the propaganda departments across the country only had to manage 200,000 to 300,000 media practitioners; now, they face information interaction between hundreds of millions of people. What to do? It looks like when they don’t have sufficient tools, they resort to making it a matter of ideology, thus escaping from the real issue.

Under such circumstances, a crackdown becomes a preset option against the media, and management becomes a synonym for retaliation. This, I am afraid, is the worst option there is. In fact, the main characteristic of changes in the media—also their driving force—is that they are changing not only the media structure but the power structure of media operations. I suppose propaganda directors such as Ren have had a taste of the vanguard of the torrential media changes, but it isn’t yet clear to them what might come on the heels of this vanguard. For both sides, this will be a rather difficult meeting.

What must be said in the end is that director Ren Xianliang once accepted a Southern Weekend interview with pleasure (link in Chinese). During that interview, Director Ren praised and encouraged monitoring by the public, and expressed an open-minded attitude. Now he has made a big turn, carrying a red flag to separate himself from the Southern Weekend. In doing so, he proclaims his new stance, and bids a farewell to his old stance on display in that interview. In pledging his allegiance, director Ren’s article also reflects the system’s sense of crisis. But the important thing is not what he thinks, but what the masses do, and how media changes move forward in the time to come.

Related reading:

China’s Press Freedom Goes South, by Annie Zhang, Foreign Policy.

Perspective on Southern Weekend Incident: Root, Failure & Future, by Mo Zhixu

The Coming Information Totalitarianism in China, by Mo Zhixu

The Virus of Censorship, by Cheng Yizhong, New Statesman.

Jia Jia (贾葭)

A while ago, my neighbor’s Japanese car had its tires slashed, and a note was posted on its windshield that read: “Driving a Japanese car is equal to treason!” I advised him to take it easy. Although Japanese cars are fuel-efficient, driving them can be risky in China. Later on he switched to an American car, saying that young people have never protested American goods. I said of course, if they protest American goods, they can start by taking their computers apart and returning to the abacus.

With regards to America, it seems that everyone’s stuck between love and hate. When I was small, the image of imperial America was extremely evil where milk flowed in abundance but people died of hunger left and right. When Bill Clinton visited China in 1998, a female student named Ma Nan (马楠) at Peking University stood up and denounced the appalling human rights condition in the US. She was supposed to file a question, but she sounded more like she was delivering a lecture. Later on, she married an American man, gave birth to a son, became the mother of an American, and departed China for good where “the human rights are at least five-fold better than in the US.”

There are a lot of Chinese, I tell you, who desire to become Americans. Take for example the TV show “Beijingers in New York” (《北京人在纽约》). Even though the Beijingers in the show are faring poorly in the city, they still believe that New York City is half heaven.

The so-called American dream holds that so long as an individual works hard and never gives up, he or she will inevitably reap the benefits of a better life. Examples of this American dream coming true abound; suffice it to say there have been several Chinese-American Cabinet members and several Chinese-American Nobel laureates.

A typical Chinese dream used to be for farm dwellers to move to the township, for township dwellers to move to the city, for city dwellers to move to the provincial capital, and for provincial capital dwellers to move to the capital Beijing. What about Beijingers? Well, they had no choice but to go abroad. In the 1998 Chinese romantic comedy film Be There or Be Square (《不见不散》), Ge You (葛优), a typical good-for-nothing from a Beijing hutong, becomes a happy truck driver in America where there is no urban management enforcers, no Bureau of Commerce and Industry enforcers, and he can park pretty much wherever he likes.

Stories of Chinese getting rich in the US are everyone’s favorite. Even dimwits want to make money off the American stock market.

The problem then comes to: How does a Chinese citizen become an American citizen? Singles always have hopes to marry an American and thus reinvent themselves. But what about those who have already married? Well, Chinese people are known for their diligence. Stowing away in a big container on a ship going from Fujian to the US is one way, but it is illegal. There are a lot of other ways, readily available and perfectly legal. For instance, to deliver a baby in America, the return on such investment is considered greater than robbing a bank. If we cannot become Americans, then we can at least become the parents, or the grandparents, of Americans. As long as the children can get a green card, the parents can then get in line to wait for one. After five or six years it will go through.

The only drawback is, it is a time-consuming process, and the children cannot assume the rights of a citizen until they turn 18 years old.

And so the best way to smash through this process is to immigrate through investment, and the agency middle man estimates that a million RMB will do. Based on the prices of housing and commodities in Beijing, a millionaire is nothing but a hobo. Within Beijing’s 4th ring road, pick any lighted window at night, and it is worth at least a million RMB.  Based on the average price of commercial housing in Beijing, an apartment of 100 square meters within the 4th ring road is worth at least 3.5 million RMB.

Any Beijing resident, if he or she is determined to embrace the imperialist America, can sell their apartment and immigrate to the US without a hitch. In theory, any person who owns an apartment within Beijing’s 4th ring road is a potential American citizen. With that amount of money, who would be so stupid as to pay a premium to buy low-quality real estate in a city where the air is unbreathable and the traffic is so bad that you cannot drive faster than 15km (about 9 miles) per hour? Not to mention that when bulldozers rumble [to demolish one’s property], even the Super Girl and the Sister Fairy will have to make way.¹

If the INS had no control over immigration quota, I am sure the American western seaboard by now would have been ready to seek independence.

Nowadays, a typical Chinese dream is to go to college, take the civil service test, make money, and immigrate. Or, go to college, become a white-collar worker, make money, and immigrate. Or go to college, become an engineer, make money, and immigrate. For Beijingers, it is much simpler: sell the apartment and immigrate. Being the capital, there are always people from Shanxi or Zhejiang to fill the space up right away. In the past, I always thought that those who sought residence overseas were people made of special materials who took pains persuading the rest of us to love China and love socialism. Now, thanks to skyrocketing housing price, Beijingers have the opportunity to enjoy clean air and dependable education of their young—in the US.

We might be born Chinese, but we will die American. No question about it.

¹Li Yuchun (李宇春) and Liu Yifei (刘亦菲) respectively, two darlings of popular culture. 

Chen Guangcheng in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin a year after his escape.

You would think life has moved on, and the Chinese government has gotten over Chen Guangcheng, the blind barefoot lawyer they had imprisoned and then placed under house arrest. But no, they haven’t. Exactly a year after Chen Guangcheng fled his heavily-guarded house in Dongshigu village on April 20, 2012, they are bearing down on him again by harassing and assaulting his family members in the village. Over the last year, the remaining family, and the village itself, have been carefully monitored, outside visitors were occasionally harassed, but it seemed nothing more than meanness on the part of local officials. Some of the pictures of the village brought to social media showed sunlight, trees, plain-looking farm houses, stone walls, and a general…. bucolic feel if you can forget for a moment the brutalities that have occurred there.

Over the past several week, Chen Guangfu (陈光福, CGC’s eldest brother and Chen Kegui’s father) and another of the Chen brothers have been under intense harassment. According to Chen Guangcheng’s own tweets and reports from Hu Jia, the prominent dissident in Beijing who maintains close contact with the Chen family, rocks, dead chickens and ducks have been thrown into Chen Guangfu’s courtyard in the middle of the night, and the latest “stone rain” occurred Tuesday night Beijing time. Fliers have been posted around the village denouncing the Chen brothers being “han jian” (汉奸, traitors of the Chinese people). Dozens of Guangfu’s young trees growing on his own land were pulled out, and no one responded to his calls to the police.  Miles away in another town, another Chen brother’s car was vandalized and all four tires punctured. Joss papers were scattered around the brothers’ houses to supposedly “curse” them.

Last week, on April 18, two artists from Beijing, who had gone to the village to film Chen Guangcheng’s house and his escape route, were beaten by the village’s Communist Party chief Chen Guangshan and the security officer Liu Changsheng. According to Hu Jia, they shouted, “Beat them to death! Smash their car! The state will pay for it anyway!” The two artists eventually were able to leave but not without being questioned by the police of the township, not without one of them hiding in a graveyard for a night.

Notice of Summons for Ren Zongju, Chen Kegui’s mother.

Wednesday afternoon, Beijing time, prosecutors from Yinan county government and policemen from Shuanghou township public security station came to Chen Guangfu’s home and took his wife away. According to the Notice of Summons posted on Twitter by Hu Jia, Kegui’s mother was summoned for allegedly “hiding and sheltering a criminal.” Chen Guangcheng’s other brother Chen Guangjun received a similar notice around the same time.

Here the “criminal” refers to Chen Kegui. After confronting thugs who broke into his home on April 26, 2012, in an act of self-defense, Chen Kegui ran away fearing for his life. He went to his uncle Chen Guangjun for help. The latter was too scared to keep him; instead, he gave him some money and asked him to leave as soon as possible. After Kegui’s arrest, Kegui’s mother and uncle were criminally detained on the same charges of “hiding and sheltering” Kegui, but were later released “on bail awaiting further investigation.”

We believe that this wave of intense harassment and assault on Chen Guangcheng’s family are meant to retaliate against Chen Guangcheng in light of his overseas activities. He’s currently visiting Germany. He’s in the process of preparing a visit to Taiwan later this year. Chen Guangcheng testified earlier this month during the “Human Rights in China” hearing by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in which he reiterated the need for western countries to uphold their ideals and to take a tough stand against China’s human rights violations. He also submitted to the committee a list of 44 Chinese officials who should be barred from entering the United States, including Zhou Yongkang (周永康), a former chief of Politics and Law Committee, Zhang Gaoli (张高丽), a current member of the Politburo Standing Committee and former party secretary of Shandong province, and other high-ranking officials of Shandong province and local government officials.

Well-known Chinese activist Wen Yunchao (@wenyunchao) commented that “all of the harassment of course is meant to pressure Chen Guangcheng and to shut him up. You can infer where the instructions came from. They cannot be from Shuanghou township government, nor from Linyi, Shandong. They can only come from the central government in Beijing.”

(This New York Times report has more details about the summons.)