Human Rights Watch says they interviewed women who told of violence by police and of being detained following sex with undercover police officers. One anonymous woman cited in the report said she and two colleagues were assaulted by police who “attached us to trees, threw freezing cold water on us, and then proceeded to beat us.”

Other problems are arbitrary detention of sex workers and discrimination by law enforcement officials when sex workers try to report crimes or abuse, the report said. It focused on women primarily in Beijing who engage in sex work on the streets, in public places such as parks, and in massage parlors and hair salons. While Chinese law treats most sex work-related offences as administrative violations, punishable by fines and short periods of police custody or detention, it allows for administrative detention of up to two years for repeat offenders.

In most of East Asia, prostitution is embedded in a business and political culture of entertaining clients and partners in karaoke bars and nightclubs. Prostitution also is illegal in Japan, but legal gray areas still allow it to flourish. South Korea toughened its anti-prostitution laws in 2004, driving thousands of prostitutes and pimps out of business, although the industry there remains widespread. Still, the level of police abuse against sex workers is deemed lower in those two countries in part because of a stronger rule of law.

“There is a much more robust legal system in both Japan and South Korea so this offers in the first place a greater protection for women who engage in sex work,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Of course you don’t have the kind of limitations on right to expression and right to assembly and so on that you face in China, which is also contributing to this climate enabling these abuses.” [Source]

In China, the frequent crackdowns on prostitution make the problem worse without making a significant dent in the industry, according to the report. From the Guardian:

Authorities have launched frequent drives against the sex industry, but it remains widespread and visible. While such campaigns see hundreds of women rounded up, brothels often continue to operate with little obvious difficulty.

While there have been hints of change in the government’s approach – three years ago the ministry of public security ordered an end to the public shaming of sex workers and said they should be treated more respectfully – problems remain widespread.

“The anti-prostitution drives are useless in terms of controlling the industry, but they lead to a spike in abuses,” said Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch and one of the report’s authors.

Several interviewees said they had been assaulted by police or by auxiliary workers. Others reported police entrapping them or extorting sex. [Source]

Read the full report here via HRW.

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A one-line Xinhua dispatch yesterday quoted unnamed officials within the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) as saying that Liu Tienan, the 58-year-old deputy director of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), was being investigated, but it gave no details.

Sources close to the matter said Liu was formally placed under investigation yesterday and that his home and office were searched by CCDI officials on Saturday night.

…

Liu’s case was first announced on December 6 on the microblog account of a deputy editor of news magazine Caijing. Luo Changping reported on his verified Sina Weibo account a series of allegations against Liu, including that he fabricated academic credentials, improperly profited from his position and kept a mistress.

…

Liu made several public appearances in the following couple of weeks, including at a national working conference on development and reform on December 18. However, a source familiar with the case told the Post that Liu had been barred since mid-December from attending official activities related to external affairs.

[Source]

Liu becomes the second vice-ministerial-level official to be targeted by new president Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, after the deputy party secretary of Sichuan province was placed under investigation in December. The announcement did not mention any specific allegations against Liu, who served as director of the National Energy Administration (NEA) until being replaced in March.

The NEA’s press office initially had called the allegations against Liu as “pure slander,” according to Gillian Wong of the Associated Press. Luo Changping, the journalist who initiated a public campaign against Liu last year, told The New York Times that he believed the official allegations were related to his own:

“I know there’s a direct connection, but I can’t say any more,” Mr. Luo said in a telephone interview.

“I had felt panicky before because nothing was happening, but I’ve breathed a sigh of relief now that this has happened,” he said, referring to the inquiry.

[Source]

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Of course, the Barkhor, which was originally a place of religious significance, won’t turn into a deserted street. On the contrary, it will become a bustling street, existing only for the benefit of tourists. But it will never again be the street of those Tibetans who circumambulate, come on pilgrimage, and prostrate themselves. Even if there manage to be pilgrims making prostrations there, they will simply serve to liven things up as background for the tourists, as one disaster follows another, winding down to a pathetic and miserable end for Lhasa. Historically, Lhasa has never had a mining cave-in. And now, it has had a mining cave-in. Historically, the Kyichu has never been blocked and dried up. Now it is drying up to the point that the fish are all dying. Historically, the Old City of Lhasa has never existed solely as a backdrop for tourists. And now it’s being changed into a replica of Sifang Street in Lijiang and Daka Dzong in “Shangri-La.” Might it be that one day, perhaps very soon, entry into the mountain fortress version of these tourist traps, “Old City Lhasa,” will require the purchase of tickets?

No place has disappeared so quickly; no place has been inundated so quickly. Sick at heart, Andre Alexander wrote; “Each time I go, the old houses are clearly fewer, stone by stone, brick by brick, alley by alley, street by street; even the dogs are going missing.” And today it’s being relaced by a new Lhasa City that is being commercialized by those in power. From here on in, it’s not just me, one individual, it’s many people who are losing the few remaining bits of the Lhasa cityscape that they so deeply love; from here on in, it’s not just my life, one individual life, it’s the lives of many people, all mixed together with memories of Lhasa, that are being covered over. It’s just as one internet friend bitterly put it: “Dismantling the old structures, excavating tunnels, building crossover bridges, stopping up the Kyichu, draining the groundwater: these people are truly the incarnations of hungry ghosts! Whatever they can carry away, they carry away, and what they can’t carry away they destroy!” [Source]

Woeser’s post also includes a number of photos of Lhasa under construction. The Jokhang Temple has been named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. A recent post by Tea Leaf Nation (via CDT) looks at the environmental degradation of Tibet and the reasons why the international and domestic NGO community do not speak out against it.

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If the central government’s decrees are opaque, local authorities’ can be downright ridiculous. In 2001, hospital officials in the southern city of Shenzhen specified that nurses should show precisely eight teeth when smiling. In 2003, Hunan Province, in central China, stipulated that the breasts of female candidates for civil-service positions should be symmetrical. The next year, public safety officials in the northern city of Harbin ruled that policemen whose waistlines exceeded 36 inches had to go. In 2006, transportation officials in Zhejiang Province, just south of Shanghai, banned employees from sporting facial hair. The following year, in an effort to reduce the school-dropout rate, Pinghe County in Fujian Province, on the southeast coast, decreed that a junior high school diploma was required to marry.

Several of these rules have since been revoked, but their wacky and arbitrary nature demonstrates the arrogance of power in China. One can imagine all too easily their creators — sitting in comfortable armchairs, drinking high-grade tea and smoking fine cigarettes — discussing the issues at hand as if they were purely intellectual abstractions, never considering how ordinary people might react. That people will be unhappy is no cause for concern because, for so long, the power of the state has trampled on individual rights. Only when rules are so onerous that they stir actual protest do higher-ups take notice: “You guys are just making a mess of things,” they’ll tell their bureaucrat underlings. “This is not good for social stability.” The rules are then quietly rescinded — sometimes.

[Source]

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An official with the Jiangsu provincial family planning commission confirmed that Mr. Zhang was under investigation and said it was ongoing but gave no other details. “We don’t know yet how we will deal with it, if it turns out to be true,” said the official, who gave only his surname, Li.

[...]

News of the investigation comes at awkward time for the China’s family planning authorities. Beijing officially continues to defend the one-child policy, saying it has prevented 400 million births and helped lift the country out of poverty. But public anger over forced late-term abortions, anxiety over gender imbalances and shifting demographics have prompted increasing calls for the policy to be scrapped, or at least relaxed.

Shifting attitudes toward the one-child rule were evident online Thursday, as a number of Internet users rushed to defend Mr. Zhang.

“I applaud Zhang Yimou for having more than one child,” wrote one user of the Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service. “Having children is a right bestowed on man by Heaven.” [Source]

As the Guardian reports, anger has centered around Zhang’s treatment for breaking the law as compared to the that of common citizens:

Disparity in the treatment of those who break the laws has fuelled public anger about inequality.

“It is just a policy for limiting the poor’s right to give birth,” one angry microblogger wrote in response to the news about Zhang.

Another asked: “Why doesn’t China have the world’s respect? Look at the rich and officials with flocks of wives and mistresses … If ordinary people had more children they would be punished or fined to death. He is fine.

“Zhang’s quality is worse than ordinary people. An unfair society can never receive respect.” [Source]

AP has more on the Internet reaction to the news:

Users of China’s lively social media lined up to criticize Zhang and drew distinctions between how the elite and ordinary people are treated.

“However many children a person has is their basic right, but in a twisted society, basic rights have become a privilege,” Beijing resident Liu Weiling, who works for a media company, wrote on Sina Weibo.

“Why is China unable to win the world’s respect?” asked author Christopher Jing. “Rich people with groups of mistresses, old celebrities changing wives, Zhang Yimou getting so many privileges. Four women and seven kids, if this was an ordinary person they would have killed you or fined you an unreasonable amount of money, but he is fine … he is no better than ordinary people, such an unfair world will never gain respect.” [Source]

Read more about the one-child policy and about Zhang Yimou via CDT.

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Police from Xinyu, in the southern province of Jiangxi, detained Liu for “inciting subversion of state power”, her lawyer, Zheng Jianwei, told Reuters, by telephone. The charge is often leveled against critics of the party.

Police could not be reached for comment.

Liu, who has also advocated on women’s rights issues, last year started demanding that officials disclose their assets, Zheng said. She took her campaign to the internet and to fellow Chinese.

Zheng said he did not know the exact reason for Liu’s detention, but added that he had warned her “to be aware of her actions” six months ago.

A fellow activist told Patrick Boehler of the South China Morning Post that Liu was one of eight people who were apprehended by unidentified men on April 27 as they prepared to travel to Suzhou to commemorate Peking University student who was executed during the Cultural Revolution for criticizing the Communist Party:

Two of the people detained along with Liu have been released, Jiang said. One of them, Li Xizhen, shared on her microblog photos of bruises from beatings she said she had sustained in police custody. Li could not be reached on the phone.

Liu’s daughter, Liao Minyue, who on her microblog has documented several unsuccessful requests for information on her mother’s fate, declined to comment for fear of harming her mother’s case.

“Because the law doesn’t require relatives to be notified for such charges, we actually don’t know how many people have been arrested and charged,” said Hangzhou-based lawyer Wang Cheng, who has previously helped Liu in legal matters.

He said he could so far only confirm that five people including Liu were still detained, but only the charges against Liu had been made known, he said.

Police in Beijing detained four activists in early April for holding up banners in a public square demanding that top government officials publicly declare their assets, and four more were detained later in the month for participating in the street campaign. The issue of financial disclosure has simmered since last year, when some officials at the 18th Party Congress told foreign reporters that they would be open to the idea as a way to curb corruption. It also became a popular Weibo topic after Global Times Chief Editor Hu Xijin addressed financial disclosure on his own microblog.

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Post tags: assets, detention, financial disclosure, Jiangxi, official corruption, sina weibo, Xi Jinping
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In March, China completed its transition to a new leadership team. The usual fanfare — masses of black limousines bringing nearly 3000 delegates to the Great Hall of the People to hear proud speeches about the country’s three decades of economic growth and waxing international influence — was dampened by a sense that, by the next time the party comes to town, there might not be as much to celebrate. Xi Jinping, the new leader of the Chinese Communist Party, and his colleagues have repeatedly expressed alarm at increasing social protests. According to confidential but widely circulated Chinese police estimates, there are now about 180,000 mass protest incidents each year, roughly 20 times more than there were in the mid-1990s. China’s leaders portray the surge of protests as fueled by popular outrage over the yawning gap between rich and poor — a chasm that the leaders have spent a decade trying to close. In reality, though, Chinese citizens are angry about a different gap: the one between the powerful and the powerless. The CCP has turned a blind eye toward this problem. Unless the situation changes and China’s new leaders start finding ways to temper popular outrage over procedural injustices and official corruption, the prospect that they will maintain political order until the next leadership transition is bleak.

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Sun and other advocates of the One-Child policy say that’s why it should continue, to let China’s population shrink back down to a more sustainable level.

Wang Feng of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center has a different view.

“These assumptions about the maximum population China can sustain was based on the technology of the 1970s,” Wang says. “It’s advanced considerably since then. China now has 30 percent more people, but all of them are eating better, living better, and we’re producing more grain, more efficiently.”

Yes, there’s pollution, he says, but that has less to do with how many people there are than with China’s choice to use mostly coal and poorly refined diesel as sources of energy.

“Whether the population shrinks, and how you get there, is a moral question,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a goal that should be set by anyone other than members of society, responding to the happy effect of longevity, as a result of human progress. It shouldn’t be designed by scholars and implemented by government.”

Read more about the one-child policy in China, via CDT.

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The People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department began supervising the removal of current military license plates that will expire on Tuesday, the PLA Daily newspaper reported.

Luxury sedans and sport utility vehicles with PLA and People’s Armed Police license plates gliding through red lights or flashing lights and sirens to push aside cars in front of them are a common sight in China.

…

Luxury German, American and Japanese cars and SUVs with military plates — often given to friends and family members as favors — are one of many manifestations of corruption in China that regularly irk ordinary citizens.

Family members of retired military officers and who have military plates have even claimed free gasoline.

Government officials have felt the squeeze of Xi Jinping’s austerity measures in recent months, as China’s new president has rolled out a number of directives meant to clamp down on corruption within the Communist Party. Xinhua News reported that the PLA is phasing out current license plates and replace them with new plates starting May 1:

Several types of vehicles will not be eligible for the new plates, including luxury cars, private and local government vehicles, and those for local officials who hold concurrent positions in the PLA and armed police forces.

Luxury vehicles were specified as those with the marks Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Lincoln, Cadillac, Volkswagen Phaeton, Bentley, Jaguar, Porsche, and any car with an emission above 3.0 and priced over 450,000 yuan (72,990 U.S. dollars), as well as SUVs including Land Rover, Porshe Cayenne, and Audi Q7, among others.

In recent years, irregularities in the use of military cars have drawn public attention. Some internet users have posted snapshots on popular Twitter-like microblogs featuring limos with military license plates.

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In my kindergarten class of only children, we drew pictures of the things five-year-olds were supposed to know. China was a red flag with dots of yellow stars. Home was the cinderblock high-rises where we, children of the urban Army base, lived. A family was three stick figures: two big, one small. Even when chattering about our “sisters” and “brothers,” as we sometimes did in a flurry of familial intimacy, it was understood that we could only mean cousins.

[...] In the village elementary school where I enrolled for three months—semesters were divided according to the harvest season—I did not know how many of my classmates had siblings. Their questions were not about the fact that I was an only child so much as about the type of tricycle I had and the number of times per week that I ate meat.

[...] A more perceptive child might have noticed that there were fewer only children in the village—that there “brothers” might actually mean brothers—and that my two uncles and my father all went on to earn university degrees, take up residence in cities, and abide by their policy of single births, while all three of my aunts bore two sons each in the village of their birth. Not me.

Nor did I notice the strangely high ratio of boys to girls in the village. Sons have always been preferred, and baby girls are often aborted before birth—in my aunt’s generation, they were sold or sometimes killed. To me at the time, it just seemed advantageous: our teacher ranked grades according to our sexes, and I came in third over-all and first among the girls in my class (I only reported the latter to my mother).

See more on the one-child policy via CDT.

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The exile seat of the Kirti Monastery in Dharamshala identified the two monks as Lobsang Dawa, 20 and Kunchok Woeser, 22.

“The two monks set themselves on fire at 6:40 pm (local time) near the right side of the main prayer hall of the Taktsang Lhamo Monastery protesting China’s repressive policies,” the Kirti Monastery release said. “Both of them passed away at the site of the protest.”

According to reports, the body of the two monks were later taken to their respective monastic quarters where fellow monks carried out prayers.

“Local Chinese authorities have issued orders for the cremation of the two monks by early tomorrow morning,” the release said.

A woman was also reported to have set herself on fire in another part of Sichuan, though few details are available. From Radio Free Asia:

Also on Wednesday, at about 2:00 p.m., a 23–year-old Tibetan woman set herself on fire and died in a protest against Chinese rule in Sichuan’s Dzamthang (Rangtang) county, Tibetan sources said.

The woman’s name and other details of her protest are still unknown.

Well-known Tibetan poet and blogger Woeser confirmed the woman’s protest, describing her in a blog entry as a “shepherdess.”

Last week, a 20-year-old mother self-immolated in Sichuan. Since 2009, more than 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest Beijing’s policies in the region.

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Under the directive, published by the defence ministry, the temporary and symbolic demotion applies to lieutenant colonels and above – although it is primarily aimed at senior officers aged under 55 or who have not come up through the lower ranks.

“It will help to purify the soul and be the prevention and cure for laziness, lax discipline, extravagance and other bureaucratic illnesses,” the official People’s Liberation Army Daily said of the measure in a commentary on Tuesday.

The move recalled a similar one made by former paramount leader Mao Zedong in 1958, the newspaper added.

Some political analysts said the gesture was likely part of Xi’s public campaign to be seen as tough on privilege and corruption, given that media reports of graft in the military are on the rise again after a 1990s crackdown.

The South China Morning Post has more details on the new measure:

It dictates that officers with the rank of lieutenant-colonel or above must serve as privates – the lowest-ranking soldier – for not less than 15 days. Generals and officers will have to live, eat and serve with junior soldiers during the period.

“They need to provide for themselves and pay for their own food. They must not accept any banquet invitation, join any sight-seeing tours, accept gifts or interfere with local affairs,” said the directive, which covers both the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police.

Leaders of regiment- and brigade-level units have to serve on the front line once every three years. Division- and army-level commanders must serve once every four years. Top leaders from army headquarters and military districts will do so once every five years.

The move is seen as an extension of Xi’s push to curb excess and corruption within the Communist Party elite.

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At first it seemed that Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong daily, had a big scoop, with its tale of how taxi driver Guo Lixin had picked up Xi and ferried him to the Diaoyutai hotel, part of the state guesthouse.

The story claimed the Guo realized this was no ordinary fare when – in response to the taxi driver’s complaints about the pollution — the mystery passenger launched into a spirited defense of government policy.

According to the newspaper, the driver asked, “Has anyone ever said that you look like General Secretary Xi?” Guo’s passenger then chuckled, saying, “You are the first one to ever recognize me.”

Weibo went wild. From the South China Morning Post:

The unusual story drew a warm response from Chinese social media users, with overwhelming praise for Xi’s apparent easy-going, down-to-earth manners, as well as his candour in openly addressing social issues such as pollution in his conversation with the driver.

But not everyone was impressed.

“Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe goes to convenience stores to buy drinks all the time. This is no news at all in Japan,” wrote a weibo user. “This smells strongly of the class consciousness in Chinese people’s minds.”

Other sarcastic responders made jokes about the incident.

“Beijing police has alerted the public that some suspects have been posing as state leaders to swindle taxi drivers, passing out fake 30-yuan notes as taxi fares,” read one joke. There are no 30-yuan banknotes in China.

But, it has now been revealed, the whole story was a sham. Xinhua has acknowledged it was fake and Ta Kung Pao has issued an apology. From AP:

The report generated suspicions among some Chinese readers almost from the start, in part because Xi supposedly hailed and got a taxi at rush hour on a Friday in Beijing, a usually difficult time to find a cab. A call to the Shengdali taxi company, where Guo supposedly works, to ask about Xi’s alleged ride was answered by a woman who said, “I don’t know about this,” and then hung up.

It wasn’t clear how a newspaper that has close links to China’s ruling Communist Party and is usually considered authoritative on political matters would run a false report, especially one so apparently bizarre.

The story inspired poetry on Twitter:

So Xi’s taxi ride was a fake&Xinhua’s stepped hard on the brakePropaganda is fineTill it crosses a line:Much better aloof and opaque

— Leo Lewis (@Urbandirt) April 18, 2013

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About 1.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty in 2010, subsisting on less than $1.25 a day [in 2005 PPP U.S. dollars]. That’s down from 1.9 billion three decades ago despite a nearly 60% increase in the developing world’s population.

[…] The sharpest decline came in China, where the extreme poverty rate fell to 12% in 2010 from 84% in 1981. India’s extreme poverty dropped to 33% of the population from 60% three decades ago.

[…] More than three-fourths of the world’s 1.2 billion poorest people live in rural areas, the bank said in a separate report Wednesday. Urbanization has been a key driver in reducing extreme poverty. About half the world’s total population now lives in rural areas.

China’s share of the world’s extremely poor population also fell from 43% in 1981 to 13% in 2010. Despite the country’s overall population growth of over 300 million during this time, the number of Chinese living in extreme poverty crashed from 835 million to 156 million people. Life expectancy at birth climbed from 67.8 to 74.8 over the same period from just 35 in 1949, according to China’s Ministry of Health and National Bureau of Statistics.

Earlier this month, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim called for an international effort to bring the global extreme poverty rate below 3% by 2030.

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Jugtso set herself alight outside a monastery in Ngaba, eastern Tibet (1) around 3pm local time today, 16 April. Local witnesses confirmed that she died at the scene. Her body was taken into the monastery where religious ceremonies were conducted. Local authorities have ordered her family to cremate the body tonight, in contravention of Tibetan tradition. Hundreds of members of the local community have gathered near the family home in preparation for the cremation.

Jugtso was married with a three-year-old child.

Radio Free Asia has more on the local reaction to her death:

Chugtso died at the scene and was brought to the nearby Jonang monastery, where monks performed prayers. Afterward, her remains were taken to her home, Gyatso said.

“Following this, local government officials and security forces pressured the family to cremate her remains during the night,” Gyatso said, adding, “This has been the usual practice of the government in handling self-immolation incidents.”

The incident brought “thousands” of area residents out in support, Gyatso said.

“Thousands of local Tibetans and monks are gathering at the monastery and her home to show solidarity with the deceased and her family,” he said.

It is notoriously difficult to get accurate details about self-immolation protests as local authorities limit communications in some areas where the protests occur and punish those who spread the information. Tibetan Review reports that four people have been sentenced for “separatism” for transmitting information about self-immolations overseas. Read more about self-immolation protests in Tibetan areas.

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