He drew a rough map of his hometown from memory, before posting it on “Bring Lost Babies Home”, a Chinese website devoted to locating missing children through the help of volunteers.

Soon afterwards, a volunteer wrote back with valuable information – a couple from a small town in Sichuan’s Guangan city had lost a son 23 years ago. The time matched Luo’s abduction perfectly.

Luo searched for pictures of the Sichuan town and found they looked familiar to him. To confirm his suspicions, he turned to the satellite version Google Maps. The minute he zoomed in on an area called “Yaojiaba” near the Sichuan town, Luo recognised the two bridges.

“That’s it! That’s my home,” shouted Luo, in tears.

[Source]

This case bears a striking resemblance to a similar case of an Indian orphan who used Google Maps to find his hometown after being adopted by an Australian family. See also previous CDT coverage of child trafficking in China.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child trafficking, Fujian, Google, human trafficking, Sichuan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The protest crowds Thursday were estimated to number as many as 2,500. Scores of uniformed and riot police looked on and sometimes scuffled with demonstrators, according to photos taken at the scene and comments posted on China’s social media. The rally was mostly peaceful but did not disperse until early evening, shortly after the mayor appeared and addressed the protesters.

Kunming officials have said that the refinery project by the state-owned giant China National Petroleum Corp. will meet environmental standards, but the city and company have refused to make public the environmental impact report.

Residents fear that the plant will pollute the area’s air and water, as well as produce large amounts of paraxylene, a carcinogenic chemical.

The march in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, is the latest in a string of protests in China over worries about the environmental and health costs of development. [Source]

The lack of transparent information about the project has been a primary complaint of protesters. Officials have stated that paraxylene (PX) will not be used at the refinery, but protesters are distrustful of the government without seeing the environmental impact report. Domestic media has also been ordered not to conduct independent reporting on the project, according to a recent directive from the Central Propaganda Department. From CNN:

Several days after a May 4 protest, the Kunming mayor joined executives from the state China National Petroleum Corp. and the Yuntianhua Group for a joint news conference.

“The government will call off the project if most of our citizens say no to it,” said Mayor Li Wenrong, according to Xinhua.

The provincial general manager of China National Petroleum Corp. has said the refinery will not use the chemical.

“The project has no PX facilities, nor will it produce PX products,” Hu Jingke said, according to Xinhua.

Kunming residents expressed deep distrust of government officials and the state-owned enterprises behind the refinery project. [Source]

Al Jazeera reports on the skepticism many protesters feel toward the government’s claim:

Government officials said earlier in the week that the project, being built by the powerful state company PetroChina, would meet environmental standards and was crucial to the local economy.

However, local people remain worried that the refinery, which is expected to produce up to 10 million tonnes of refined oil annually, will pollute the air and water.

[...] He Bo, a deputy with the city government, appeared at the scene and tried to reach out to protesters, inviting them for a discussion with the government.

But the official, who was followed by state media cameras, failed to find representatives of the demonstrators who were willing to talk.

He finally gave up and abandoned the scene, escorted by security agents. [Source]

The refinery is being built largely to process oil transported through a new pipeline running from Myanmar to Yunnan. These protests fit a pattern of recent citizen actions against potential pollution from large-scale industrial projects in Chinese cities. Large protests have erupted against chemical processing facilities in Dalian, Xiamen, and Shifang, Sichuan, to name just a few. In the recent issue of Dissent Magazine, Jeffrey Wasserstrom interviews Duke University anthropologist Ralph Litzinger about the upsurge in environmental activism in China in recent years and specifically about the protests in Kunming on May 4 over the planned oil refinery:

JW: One of the most recent—maybe the most recent—NIMBY protest was in Kunming, a city I know you spent a lot of time in and that I remember from my one visit there in 1987 as an unusually beautiful and slow-paced place. I realize I’ll be in a shock if I return there, since I’ve heard it has grown exponentially in recent years and no longer has the same feel of being largely untouched by the harsher aspects of urban life. What’s your take on how the city’s changed and how this recent protests fits into the picture?

RL: Kunming is indeed a place very close to my heart. I first visited Kunming in 1990. As with many cities in China, the changes there are astonishing. Frankly, some of the development has been, to my mind, misguided, if only because Kunming now looks and feels like just another generic city on development steroids. Satellite cities are popping up all around Kunming, and many of these are sites for planned chemical factories, petrochemical plants, and other industrial manufacturing operations. On the one hand, we can argue that the protests in Kunming, meant to coincide with the May Fourth anniversary (one of the most hallowed days on the Chinese political calendar, commemorating as it does a patriotic 1919 Beijing demonstration that launched a nation-wide mass movement), are evidence of a growing consciousness, seen in other cities, about industrial pollution, chemical runoff into watersheds and rivers, and the environmental and health effects of tin and copper and other heavy mental mining. [Source]

The protests are galvanized by social media, where residents share information and protest plans. Photos and reports of the protest also spread in real-time via weibo and Twitter. A CDT reader and Kunming native sent us the following photos, which she received from friends in Kunming via WeChat (Weixin). Protesters are increasingly sharing information on the WeChat cell phone messaging application to avoid the censorship on weibo and in the media:

Read more about environmental activism, including anti-PX protests in Dalian and Xiamen, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental activism, environmental protests, industrial pollution, Kunming, Kunming PX
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chicken Republic, by Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm:

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic freedom, hexie farm, political cartoons
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Not long ago, scholar Zhang Xuezhong, Xiao Xuehui, Song Shinan and lawyer Si Weijiang all saw their Weibo accounts deleted. They each had large numbers of followers, who spread their words to an even wider audience. But all of a sudden their names have disappeared. Nobody knows why, or who ordered it, but we all know that a new round of a censorship campaign has commenced. As in 1957, 1966 and 1989, Chinese intellectuals are feeling more or less the same fear as one does before an approaching mountain storm: the scariest thing of all is not being silenced or being sent to prison; it is the sense of powerlessness and uncertainty about what comes next. There is no procedure, no standard, and not a single explanation. It’s as if you are walking into a minefield blindfolded. Not knowing where the mines are buried, you don’t know when you will be blasted to pieces.

Two days later, at 10pm on 11 May, my Weibo accounts with Sina, Tencent, NetEase, and Sohu were deleted simultaneously. When the web staff from these sites got in touch with me several minutes later, they told me more or less the same story: they were following an order from a “superior department”, whose identity they could not reveal because of a confidentiality agreement. In fact, such departments are as numerous as hairs on an ox: State Council Information Office, State Internet Information Office, Propaganda Department, Public Security Bureau, the secretary of a dignitary … Almost every department and dignitary can order internet companies to delete information and accounts while they themselves hide in the dark. Seeing speeches that trigger their ire, they can make them disappear for ever by simply picking up the telephone receiver.

I am mentally prepared for such things to happen, but when they do, I still feel dismayed and angry. I am a “big V” [verified user] on Weibo, possessing over 8.5m followers across the four web portals, and 3.96m in Sina alone. In a period of over three years, I had posted more than 1,900 Weibo messages totalling more than 200,000 words, each written with deliberation and care. In a split second, however, they were all brought to naught. [Source]

Read more by and about Murong Xuecun via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet censorship, Murong Xuecun, weibo
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In a country with one of the most sophisticated media and Internet censorship systems, Mr. Zhang and other bloggers must exercise great caution when writing about politically sensitive content — often skirting the label “citizen reporter.” But as Mr. Zhang told me during filming: “If they want to get you, they can find a way. Not even a wise man can be wise all the time.”

In 2010, he was taken by the police and put under house arrest for 10 days, during the country’s annual parliamentary meetings. News spread quickly. That day he received more than 2,000 text messages — good wishes poured in from concerned friends and readers who supported his efforts to help flooded villagers, defrauded farmers and the Beijing homeless. On this day, he said, he “felt the true power of the Internet.” [Source]

Zhang was the subject of a recent full-length documentary film, High Tech, Low Life, about citizen journalists in China. In 2007, CDT translated a series of posts by Zhang documenting his travels. Read the introductory post here.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bloggers, citizen journalism, Laohumiao
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

She was contacted days after the city of Chengdu mobilised thousands of police officers and security agents to quell a protest against the 40 billion yuan (HK$50 billion) plant – now in its final construction phase – that eventually fizzled out on May 4.

“Please delete the petition,” a security agent told the blogger. The blogger, who did not want to be named, told the South China Morning Post that the agent had tracked her down from her registration information on Weibo and invited her to “tea”, an euphemism for a police interrogation. The agent had insisted that she withdraw the post from the White House website, she said.

But the US website does not allow petitions to be deleted. Frustrated and fearing retaliation, the blogger posted again on Weibo:

“Help needed! Will someone please tell me how to delete a White House petition? The police have talked to me, and I am scared.”

Another blogger responded: “Looks like you need to start another White House petition to have the first one deleted.” [Source]

Read the petition here. It currently has more than 2,000 signatures, but requires 200,000 by June 6 in order to get an official White House response.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bloggers, Chengdu PX, petitions, White House
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Wang Jiangsong, a philosophy professor at the China Institute of Industrial Relations in Beijing, said that on Tuesday he had seen the receipt of notice sent to his university’s leadership, instructing it to forbid lecturers from mentioning seven controversial issues in their classes.

The seven topics were freedom of the press, a civil society, civic rights, historical mistakes committed by the Communist Party, elite cronyism, and an independent judiciary.

“The purpose of this notice is just to tell you as a teacher to be a bit careful about what you’re saying,” he said. [Source]

The list was first circulated and widely distributed on Sina Weibo.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic freedom, CCP history, press freedom, universities
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Word of the death spread on the Internet in the days after the woman, whose surname was Yuan, was initially said to have committed suicide by jumping from a top floor or roof of the mall, called Jingwen, last Friday. Rumors on the Internet said Ms. Yuan, a migrant worker from Anhui Province, had been raped by private security guards in the mall, where she worked, and might have been thrown to her death.

A witness told The Wall Street Journal that the protest had swelled by 10 a.m. and had ended by 5 p.m., though a heavy police presence lingered on the scene. CDT’s “Sensitive Words” project also noted that photos of riot police and police helicopters had spread on Weibo, while footage of the demonstration had emerged on Tencent.

The Guardian’s Jonathan Kaiman had more on the protests:

A shopkeeper who gave his name only as Mr Li said that some police had arrived at around 10am, followed by around 200 people who paraded down the street shouting “Protest! Protest!”

The rapidly growing number of officers then closed the road for the rest of the day, he said. Photographs of the scene posted online showed hundreds of people on the street, although it was not clear how many were protesters and how many were onlookers.

One bystander said that officers had clashed with protesters, beating them and dragging them into vans.

While police said a preliminary investigation and autopsy did not indicate foul play, and that the woman did not have any interaction with other people during the hours before she fell to her death, the state-run Global Times reported that the demonstrators demanded a more open investigation:

Rumors have been circulated online that Yuan was gang raped in a enclosed room inside the building by seven security guards, which led to her suicide, or that they even pushed her out. Yuan’s mother visited the Dahongmen Police Station supervising the market but was not allowed to see the surveillance footage, some Web users said.

Leslie Hook of the Financial Times wrote that the protest, which halted traffic in southern Beijing for hours, “highlights mounting social pressures facing China’s leaders:”

The area where Ms Yuan worked is poor and is mostly populated by “outsiders” such as herself who work in the garment trading industry, according to residents. Scepticism of the police is widespread in China and many smaller protests across the country have been sparked by allegations of malpractice.

By Wednesday evening, the protest had dissipated amid heavy rain, but a large military presence was still visible, with dozens of parked buses carrying special forces, soldiers and police.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Anhui, Beijing, mass incidents, migrant workers, murder, protest, rape, suicide, women's rights, Yuan Liya
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

While some recent estimates have more than 90 percent of cyberespionage in the United States originating in China, the accusations relayed in the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities were remarkable in their directness. Until now the administration avoided directly accusing both the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army of using cyberweapons against the United States in a deliberate, government-developed strategy to steal intellectual property and gain strategic advantage.

“In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military,” the nearly 100-page report said.

The report, released Monday, described China’s primary goal as stealing industrial technology, but said many intrusions also seemed aimed at obtaining insights into American policy makers’ thinking. It warned that the same information-gathering could easily be used for “building a picture of U.S. network defense networks, logistics, and related military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.”

It was unclear why the administration chose the Pentagon report to make assertions that it has long declined to make at the White House. A White House official declined to say at what level the report was cleared. A senior defense official said “this was a thoroughly coordinated report,” but did not elaborate.

In a blog post for Council on Foreign Relations, Adam Segal lists three interesting points from the report, all relating to the cyberattack accusations. In his final point, he is not optimistic about prospects for reconciliation between China and the U.S. on this issue:

[..D]espite the announcement of a U.S.-China working group on cybersecurity during Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to China, and General Fang Fenghui’s declaration that China was willing to set up a cyberserurity “mechanism” during a meeting with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey, the report does not give much reason for optimism that the two sides will find common ground on the rules of the road. For the first time, the report calls China out for playing a “disruptive role in multilateral efforts to establish transparency and confidence building measures in international fora such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum, and the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts.”

Indeed, for its part, the Chinese government reacted angrily to the report, calling the accusations “groundless.” From the Los Angeles Times:

Responding to the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military, released a day earlier, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman insisted that Beijing was “strongly against any form of hacking activities,” and said China was willing to start a “rational and constructive dialog” with the United States on Internet security issues.

“This kind of baseless accusations and endless finger-pointing would only hurt the efforts and environment for such a dialog,” said the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.

Beijing’s stiff reaction was expected as it has repeatedly denied charges of cyber-espionage, which has become a growing concern in Washington. U.S. officials have recently stepped up complaints about Chinese cyber-warfare as more large-scale hacking attacks have been traced to China.

Yet some observers warned that by focusing all attention in the cyberbattle on China, the U.S. government may risk missing other important developments. And while the cyber accusations got the lion’s share of press attention, the Wall Street Journal points out that a number of other interesting revelations came to light in the report:

Perhaps the DoD report’s single greatest advancement of public knowledge concerns China’s nuclear submarine programs. It states that China’s three already-operational Type 094 Jin-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) may be joined by “as many as two more in various stages of construction.” The Type 094, the report says, “will give the PLA Navy its first credible sea-based nuclear deterrent” once its JL-2 – a submarine-launched ballistic missile with a range in excess of 7,400 km – is deployed effectively. “After a round of successful testing in 2012, the JL-2 appears ready to reach initial operational capability in 2013,” DoD asserts. “JIN-class SSBNs based at Hainan Island in the South China Sea would then be able to conduct nuclear deterrence patrols.”

Meanwhile, China’s two already-deployed Type 093 Shang-class nuclear-powered attack submarines will be joined by four improved variants under construction, according to the report. Within 10 years, the DoD projects, “China will likely construct the Type 095 guided-missile attack submarine, which may enable a submarine-based land-attack capability.” The Type 095 will “likely incorporat[e] better quieting technologies” and “fulfill traditional anti-ship roles with the incorporation of torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles.” As for conventional attack submarines, DoD states that the Yuan-class (Type 039A), of which China may build as many as twenty, “includes an air-independent power system.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cyberattacks, cyberespionage, hacking, Mandiant, pentagon, People's Liberation Army, U.S. relations
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The details of the almost two-decade-old case are sordid and murky. In 1995, Zhu Ling was a promising undergraduate at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University when she came down with a mysterious illness that was thought to be poisoning via thallium, a toxic element once used asrat poison. This finding soon led to a suspect: Sun Wei, a roommate of Zhu’s who happened to be one of the few undergraduates at Tsinghua to have access to thallium in a laboratory.

Most important for the politically minded Chinese netizen, Sun Wei was the granddaughter of a high-ranking official who was thought to be close to then-President Jiang Zemin. In 1997, Sun was detained by police for questioning for eight hours but not arrested. Soon after, the case was closed, and Sun reportedly fled to the U.S., where it’s rumored she’s married with kids (enterprising microbloggers have tried to keep tabs).

[...] Among the earliest actions was a highly unusual censorship decision directed at People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. On April 26, the paper’s official Sina Weibo microblogging account tweeted, as translated by the blog Offbeat China: “Zhu Ling is 40 years old now, completely paralyzed, almost blind and with the intelligence of a 6-year- old. What exactly happened 19 years ago? Who was behind the poisoning?”

[...] Then the tweet was deleted by Sina’s censors, along with tweets that quoted it, posted screen grabs or reposted it outright. About the same time, People’s Daily deleted its special online page devoted to Zhu Ling coverage. So, either People’s Daily or somebody above it decided that the paper didn’t need to devote any additional coverage to an issue that was becoming increasingly critical of the party.

Some netizens even set up an online petition on the White House’s official ‘We the People’ platform, asking Obama to deport Sun Wei. From David Bandurski at China Media Project:

The petition for the deportation of Sun Wei received more than 107,000 signatures by 8:30pm today. According to the terms and conditions of the service, the petition has now reached the required “signature threshold” (100,000 signatures within 30 days) and should receive a response from the White House.

[...] Users have predictably made light of the fact that Chinese have turned to an American petition site seeking justice that, some say, is impossible at home.

[...] Zhang Xian (张弦), a media professional in Hefei with more than 153,000 followers, wrote on Sina Weibo: “Hello, Comrade Obama, chairman of the National Office of Letters and Calls! Requests on the Zhu Ling case have already reached 100,000. We hope Chairman Obama answers the Chinese people for the sake of the autonomy of the Chinese people!”

CN ppl set up a new Weibo account for Obama: the officer of Central petitions office. Trending. twitter.com/MissXQ/status/…

— XQ (@MissXQ) May 8, 2013

The petitioning caught on. Besides the Zhu Ling case, netizens have also asked Obama to encourage the suspension of a PX Project near Kunming, Yunnan Province, which was the target of local protests last Saturday. More radical petitioners called for the US to “send troops to liberate Hong Kong“, while others hoped that it “will tofu curd official taste is sweet,namely the use of granulated sugar,brown sugar and other sweet condiments.”

The more serious White House petitions are just the latest efforts to turn to foreign authorities and news media as a last resort. From Yang Yingjie at Global Times:

Yuan Yulai, a Ningbo-based lawyer and active microblogger on Sina Weibo, told the Global Times Tuesday that the petitions to the White House were regarded the last straw when seeking justice after frustrations over official probes and assessments.

[…] Meanwhile, some petitioners unsatisfied with the way the authorities have dealt with their grievances also turn to UN missions and foreign embassies as well as overseas media.

[…] Yuan noted the move was aimed at pressuring the authorities at home in the hope the government could direct attention to their grievances and devote itself to providing remedies to their problems.

However, Zhang Yiwu, a professor of Chinese literature with Peking University, disagreed, calling it “irrational and more of a way to vent people’s frustrations than offering any practical help.”

[…] Last year, a petitioner surnamed Peng from Sichuan Province was sentenced to 18 months of re-education through labor punishment for appealing directly to a foreign embassy in China.

At Tea Leaf Nation, David Wertime recalled the trend’s online predecessors:

In early February of 2012, when China’s so-called Great Firewall of censorship temporarily lifted its block on Google Plus, Chinese Web users took advantage of the brief reprieve to flood President Obama’s re-election page with comments. More recently, in mid-March of this year, a well-known provocateur tweeted the results of an imaginary election on Sina Weibo, a micro-blogging service. Hundreds of users replied in surprisingly serious tones, with one estimating that true elections would not be held until 2033, another saying it would be “a thousand years” hence. That provocateur’s tweet, and the comments to it, were deleted in less than 24 hours.

One cannot interpret these instantiated movements as representing China writ large. Given the massive size of China’s social Web, even a tiny but determined minority can quickly make its presence felt on the American Internet. Even within these comparatively small groups, motivations vary; some White House petitioners wrote in rage, others in jest.

Nonetheless, it’s a valuable reminder of American soft power in the digital age. In China, the Letters and Visits Office is charged with accepting petitions from aggrieved citizens. But often, thugs known as “jiefang” intercept would-be petitioners from outside of Beijing, sometimes before they can even board a train headed for the capital. The contrast with the White House’s approach is jarring. As one Weibo user commented, “Going to the gates of the White House to petition may or may not be useful, but I know that going there to petition won’t get you in trouble.” Another wrote, “Too funny; but after I laughed, I felt like I’d never be able to slake my thirst.”

See also Ministry of Truth: White House Petition Goes Viral at CDT. Samuel Wade contributed to this post.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, corruption, judicial corruption, online petition, online public opinion, petitioners, weibo, White House, Zhu Ling
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Some demonstrators wore symbolic masks and brandished posters warning against the dangers of a paraxylene (PX) spill.

“We want to survive, we want health, get PX out of Kunming”, a banner read.

Two years ago, protests against a PX factory in the city of Dalian forced the city government to close the plant, though it reportedly re-opened later.

Saturday’s protest in Kunming, in the south-west of the country, attracted at least 200 people, according to state media.

Chinese bloggers, however, put the number at up to 2,000.

A Xinhua report claimed about 100 protesters gathered, along with 1000 “onlookers” who were also wearing face masks and holding banners. But witnesses say the number of protesters was higher:

#Anti-PX protest in kunming. News says 100s of protesters & 1000+ onlookers. But i saw different, teach-in style protest. All participated.

— Brian Eyler (@aikunming) May 4, 2013

Anti-PX protest in Kunming. Photo from height of protest. 90min mark. twitter.com/aikunming/stat…

— Brian Eyler (@aikunming) May 4, 2013

Possibly the best picture of Kunming anti-PX protest I saw today pbs.twimg.com/media/BJZtUV2C…

— Yaxue Cao (@YaxueCao) May 4, 2013

Weibo photo showing anti-PX protesters in #Kunming are holding self-made banners. twitter.com/Edourdoo/statu…

— edde (@Edourdoo) May 4, 2013

Also on Saturday, calls went out online, and were quickly squashed, for protests against the construction of an oil refinery plant near Chengdu. From ABC News Australia:

Police also lined the streets of Chengdu, the capital of southwest China’s Sichuan province, after locals planned to demonstrate over a nearby chemical plant, residents said.

“There were a lot of police outside government offices, public spaces and important crossroads in the city,” one resident surnamed Liu said, adding that fliers posted around the city in recent days had called for a protest.

[...]

The government responded with notices calling on people not to demonstrate, Liu said.

[...]

Local police on Saturday morning announced that they would be carrying out an earthquake protection drill, a claim dismissed by thousands of internet users.

And from AP:

After word spread about an environmental protest that was planned for Saturday in the central Chinese city of Chengdu, drugstores and printing shops were ordered to report anyone making certain purchases. Microbloggers say government fliers urged people not to demonstrate, and schools were told to stay open to keep students on campus.

And when Saturday came, thousands of police officers and security staff were on Chengdu’s streets, some of them making a tight ring around a major public square. A weekend-long earthquake drill, officials said, but many residents didn’t believe it. They said city officials pre-emptively quashed the protest over a petrochemical plant that a powerful state-owned enterprise is building about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Chengdu.

“What do they fear?” asked local resident Tina Zhong, contacted via China’s social media. “If the government can share more information, the public would be less distrusting.”

Weibo posts about the protests were censored and activists were detained ahead of the planned protest. Anti-PX protests have flared up in Dalian and Xiamen when plans were announced to build plants there in recent years.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chengdu PX, dalian px, environmental protests, Kunming PX, PX, Xiamen PX
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A year after the former Beijing correspondent bid her farewell to China, she sat down with the University of British Columbia’s Asia Pacific Memo for an interview. The interview covers the relationship between and unique roles of China correspondents and China-focused academics; the policy impact of journalism and the need to guard against making direct connections between foreign coverage and changes in China’s state policy; China’s changing media landscape, and the differences between state-backed global news outlets like Al Jazeera English and Beijing’s own excursions into the international news media. From Asia Pacific Memo:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also see prior CDT coverage of some of the topics mentioned by Melissa Chan: Bloomberg’s probe into the family wealth of Xi Jinping and the New York Times’ similar investigation into the family of then-prime minister Wen Jiabao; recent allegations that foreign media companies covering China have been the target of cyber-espionage; the tightening of media controls in the PRC; and CCTV America – Beijing’s entrance into the U.S. news media.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Al-Jazeera, foreign journalists, journalism, journalists conditions, media regulations, media restrictions, Melissa Chan, visas
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Although Wang Lixiong’s banned publications are not available at bookstores and online in China, many Chinese readers are avid readers of these banned books. Their pirated versions were widely circulated. Many Chinese readers got to understand issues about Tibet and Xinjiang and their history, current situation and importance through his work. I actually got to meet him from reading Sky Burial.

It is encouraging to see banned books on the internet–a contribution of internet technology to mankind. The reason internet is so great is that it broke various kinds of boundaries, like a soaring bird, or a blooming flower. Intellectual thinking should not comply to authoritarianism. Symbols of technological advancement such as Apple should not yield to the Chinese Communist Party.

Unfortunately, through incidents like Wang Lixiong’s books being banned, we realized Apple had surrendered itself, like the old Chinese saying, ‘If you have money, you can make the devil push the millstone for you.’ I heard there is an English expression similar to that–Money makes the world go around.

See more on Woeser via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, apple store, censorship, Internet censorship, Wang Lixiong, Woeser
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Since it opened its first restaurant in China in 1990, the American chain KFC has blanketed the country with thousands of outlets that offer Western-style fried chicken, hamburgers, and fries. While in the U.S. KFC symbolizes speedy, inexpensive food, in China it’s a symbol of quality. “Being able to dine in KFC once a month was a pride of my childhood,” said Wanqing He, a New York University student from Xinjiang. “It is still some kind of high-end restaurant in my hometown to average income families.”

But the aura of quality has faded fast in recent months, ever since China Economic Net, a government-owned online publication, published a November story revealing that a Chinese KFC supplier used banned antibiotics and hormones to raise its chickens.

The report set off a huge wave of criticism of KFC on weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. Then, in December, state-run China Central Television (CCTV) joined the critics, and the story accelerated.

In the CCTV story, reporter Yun Zhang reprimanded Yum Brands, KFC’s corporate owner. “Yum reaches a large group of consumers who trust in its food quality,” said Zhang, who challenged the company to “offer clear information about the number and consumption of these chickens. It has to give the public a satisfactory answer.”

The story was an unusual one – a relatively rare example of investigative journalism by CCTV, and even more attention-getting because the target was a foreign company. In fact, the KFC report may have signaled a shift in media rules in China: Foreign companies are now fair game for criticism and investigation. Apple learned that when it was compelled to apologize this month over criticism of its customer service policies.

The CCTV report on KFC, 15 minutes long, offered strong visuals. Tight video shots showed listless chickens, who spend 45 days from birth to slaughter, growing in overcrowded coops filled with waste. The CCTV reporter asked one farm worker if he would ever eat the meat he helped produce. No, came the answer. “Even the flies won’t come to this place, because it’s toxic.”

After that report, KFC, which earned 44 percent of its global revenues in China last year, saw sales in the country plummet by 24 percent in January and February. Bad feelings persist. One recent post on Weibo said, “I hope companies like KFC that sells these garbage foods will go bankrupt soon.”

But while foreign companies take a lashing, domestic enterprises are still far less likely to get investigative scrutiny in social or mainstream media.

According to an analysis by the Chinese news website 163.com, domestic food companies were not featured in any of the special Consumer Rights Day programs for the past three years in China, while McDonald’s and Carrefour were both criticized for food safety lapses. Another online site, China Food, reported that Chinese media exposed food scandals at 30 companies last year – nearly a third of them foreign firms, including KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks, Heinz, Nestle and Coca Cola. An editor at China Food, who declined to be identified, said Chinese media clearly feel freer to criticize foreign companies. “They have less concern when they deal with foreign companies because the companies are less connected with the government,” said the editor.

How CCTV reacted to another food safety scandal, this one involving domestic wine producer, Maotai, illustrates the different standard that appears to apply when media report on Chinese enterprises.

In December, a Weibo user posted a quality report, done by an independent company in Hong Kong, stating that toxic ingredients had been found in Maotai, a high-end wine often served at banquets for top officials. Mainstream domestic media largely ignored the independent assessment, but instead aired the accusations of a Maotai executive, who charged that the reports were a smear campaign instigated by competitors. The account of the Weibo user who posted the Hong Kong report was later suspended.

Jason Lee, a reporter from China Daily in Beijing, said that the mainstream media’s softer treatment for domestic firms was probably due to self-censorship, rather than any specific government order. But he said that the increasingly popular Weibo platform creates pressure on China’s state-owned media, particularly when it comes to reporting on foreign companies.

“People on social media would blame the problems of domestic companies on the lack of government regulations,” said Lee. “But they don’t make that kind of excuses for foreign companies.”

Wenxiong Zhang studied international affairs and English literature at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. He is currently a graduate student at Columbia Journalism School in New York, where he reports about China and Chinese immigrants in New York City. He contributed this article to CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, CCTV, food safety, foreign companies, kfc
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“We are very worried. Medical experts say the appendix could easily burst. There is a risk to his life,” Chen said, adding: “The prison hospital is unable to deal with the kind of illness Chen Kegui has.”

Prison officials said they would make their own arrangements for treating Chen Kegui, he said, adding that he had been permitted to visit his son in prison several times.

[…] In an apparent concession, local prosecutors appear to have dropped a case against Chen Kegui’s mother, Ren Zongju, whom they accused of “harbouring a criminal” for helping her son before his capture, Chen Guangfu added.

But Chen Guangfu described a continued campaign of harassment against his family, with local thugs attacking his house with rocks, and posters describing his family as “traitors” placed on nearby streets.

Human Rights Watch provides more details on Chen Kegui’s illness and the various forms of “harassment and intimidation” to which his family has been subjected. “Chen Kegui urgently needs effective medical care,” commented the organization’s China director, Sophie Richardson. “Until the Beijing, Shandong, and Linyi authorities cease their persecution of the Chen family, it is hard to see what difference Xi Jinping’s administration is making over the previous leadership despite his promise to ‘put power in a cage of laws’.”

An editorial in The Washington Post last week noted Chen Guangcheng’s view that neither Beijing nor Washington has kept promises made last year:

It was a year ago this week that blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng escaped from illegal home detention in his native village in Shandong province and made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he was given shelter. After days of intense negotiations between senior U.S. and Chinese officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a deal was struck under which Mr. Chen left the embassy. A senior U.S. official told reporters that among the commitments made by Chinese officials was that they would “investigate reported extra-legal activities committed by local Shandong authorities against Mr. Chen and his family.”

Ms. Clinton said that “making [China’s] commitments a reality is the next crucial task” and pledged that “the United States government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr. Chen and his family in the days, weeks and years ahead.”

Mr. Chen, who during the past year moved to New York to study at New York University, told us Thursday that, in his view, neither side has kept its word. […]

While Chen’s fears for his family appear to have been well-founded, worries that moving to the U.S. would doom him to irrelevance were not, according to Lijia Zhang, writing at The New York Times:

It happened to Wei Jingsheng, one of the most prominent Chinese dissidents, who moved to the United States in 1997. His calls for democracy once inspired so many in and outside of China. Not anymore.

[…] But on my recent trip to Chen Guangcheng’s hometown in rural Shandong, I saw that his spirit lives on — not only in the memories of people he has helped, many of whom have now become activists themselves, but also through Chen’s regular Internet contact with local activists. It’s a different world from when Wei Jingsheng went into exile.

[…] During my recent video call with Chen Guangcheng himself, he told me that he keeps in touch with people from all over the country. Before our conversation, he had been talking to a blind man from Inner Mongolia who runs a grocery store but also devotes much of his energy to helping other disabled people with their rights issues. Chen was planning to video-chat with a group of activists in Sichuan and give them his pitch about the importance of protecting their rights.

“How do people find you?” I asked. He replied with a laugh. “In this Internet age, if you are willing to be available, people can find you easily.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, chen kegui, Dongshigu, exile, Hillary Clinton, human rights watch, linyi, Shandong, United States, Wei Jingsheng
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall