China Digital Times

CHINA NEWS SECTION: Politics

• Lawyer in China Mob Trial Gets 1 1/2 Years on Appeal

  

  Lawyer Li Zhuang has had his sentence reduced to one and a half years on appeal. From AP:

  The lawyer for an alleged mob boss in southwest China was given a reduced 1 1/2-year prison term Tuesday during his appeal on charges that he helped his client falsely claim torture by police during interrogation, the court said.

  But the Beijing Evening News reported that Li Zhuang yelled out in the court after the punishment was announced that he only confessed during the appeal after a “relevant official” told him that doing so would get him a suspended sentence.

  The Chongqing Municipality No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court upheld Li’s conviction but reduced his original sentence by one year because he repeatedly admitted to the charges against him during the latest trial, the court said on its Web site, without referring to any kind of plea bargain.

  Also from Economic Observer:

  After hearing the court’s verdict, an enraged Li grabbed the microphone before him and announced that his earlier admissions of guilt, made during the open-hearing stages of the trial, were false.

  He said the statements he made admitting to his guilt were induced by the local public security agency and prosecutors who promised him a suspended sentence in return. He also claimed that they said the only way a second hearing would be held, is if he admitted his guilt.

  He went on to declare that “the local public security agency and prosecutors have absolutely cheated me … the local prosecutor even tried to persuade me to give up my appeal. It was a complete deception and it will be exposed to the light of day sooner or later.”

  Li appealed the country’s 160,000 lawyers to continue to struggle in defense of their rights in the handling of criminal cases.

  Read more about Li Zhuang via CDT.

  » Read more
  • February 9, 2010 12:24 PM

• Chinese Police Admit Enormous Number of Spies

  

  The Telegraph follows up on the Xinhua interview with a local police chief about the use of informants in police work:

  Experts said the number of spies in China’s major cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, and in more restive regions, such as Tibet and Xinjiang, was likely to be far higher. The number of spies in Kailu County, extrapolated nationwide, suggests China has at least 39 million informants, around three per cent of its population. By comparison, around 2.5 per cent of East Germans spied for the Stasi secret police under Communism.

  It is unclear whether all the informants in Kailu County were kept on the government payroll, but other Chinese cities have adopted a rewards system. More than 200,000 yuan (£18,730) was awarded in a single month in the southern city of Shenzhen to informants who offered 2,000 tips on criminal activity.

  Meanwhile, researchers at China Digital Times have translated leaked internal documents that spell out the role of China’s Domestic Security Department (DSD), the huge security operation that is dedicated to “preserving public harmony”.

  See also “How the Chinese state oppresses: a local police chief explains” from the Economist blog.

  » Read more
  • February 9, 2010 11:33 AM

• Paul Midler: Why China Keeps Poisoning the Milk

  

  An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal looks at quality control in China and the lessons regulators there could learn from Japan’s experience:

  China’s quality challenge has at times been compared to Japan’s efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to transcend a bad reputation for manufacturing low-quality goods. At that time Japan also suffered tragic industrial disasters, like the mercury poisoning in Minamata that left 1,000 people dead. But Japan’s leading companies have since been able to establish strong reputations for quality. Although the automotive recalls currently underway are extensive, design errors and electronic malfunctions are in a different league from China’s instances of willful product manipulation, especially when that manipulation has involved artful efforts at circumventing third-party controls.

  In China, operators display an incredible willingness to place public safety at risk in exchange for only the smallest gains in profit. The dairy industry’s 2008 scandal is instructive. The trouble started when dairy farmers began adulterating milk with water, prompting dairy companies to test protein levels. Milk suppliers next discovered they could trick laboratory equipment into believing protein concentrations were higher by adding a toxic, chemical compound—melamine. Over time, more of the chemical was added, along with more water, and no one knows how little real milk was in the final product by the time scandal broke. We only know the end result: six babies died, 300,000 were sickened and over 50,000 were hospitalized, causing untold grief to Chinese families.

  » Read more
  • February 9, 2010 11:28 AM

• Han Han: Fifty Cent Party Must Work Overtime

  

  Popular blogger Han Han comments on the Fifty Cent Party; chinaSMACK translates:

  I have a different reading of the Fifty Cent Party. First, I feel we should permit the Fifty Cent Party to exist; everyone has the right to hire someone else to speak for them and those hired have the right to speak anywhere they please. If you can beat Xiao Ming* once, and then with the money stolen off of him hire someone to curse him once, that counts as a talent. Every government has a mechanism for propagating their perspective, [so] that is excusable. But the Fifty Cent Party is the government’s mistake, before I thought they existed to guide public opinion, but it seems I was wrong, because you wouldn’t, upon seeing a crowd of people eating shit, squeeze your way in to have a bite yourself. The Fifty Cent Party is a result of the higher levels toadying to the highest level, but in the wake of the Fifty Cent Party’s rampage, many glorious and correct personages need only to open their mouths, which clearly costs nothing, and they become [referred to as] Fifty Cent Party members, which greatly hurts their enthusiasm. Originally, if you went into a hotel and booked a room for a one night stand, when you came out the next morning the whole world would call you a chicken [i.e. dick], this goes without saying. If you suddenly found the Fifty Cent Party, [... suddenly] all of your former supporters are suspicious of the Fifty Cent Party. Why do I rarely praise the government? First, I fear being called a Fifty Cent Party member; second, if you criticize the lack of freedom then praise is meaningless; third, I have already paid my taxes, and the people’s taxes pay the fees of the Fifty Cent Party, which is equivalent to me indirectly supporting the government.
  

  » Read more
  • February 9, 2010 11:12 AM

• China CIC to Manage More of its Funds in House

  

  Reuters reports on the China Investment Corp, the $300 billion sovereign wealth fund:

  Lou Jiwei, the chairman of CIC, said the fund would steadily accelerate its overseas investments in 2010, the China Securities Journal reported, citing an article he published on Monday. It did not say where the article appeared.

  “As of now, most of CIC’s overseas funds are managed by outside portfolio managers, but we will gradually increase in-house investment in more efficient developed markets in the future,” the newspaper paraphrased Lou as saying.

  His comments follow a regulatory filing last Friday by CIC with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission detailing some of its investments in the United States. here

  CIC said in its Form 13F filing that it owned equity stakes in more than 60 U.S. companies worth $9.63 billion at the end of 2009, including small holdings in Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Citigroup (C.N), Coca Cola Co (KO.N) and News Corp (NWSA.O).

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  • February 8, 2010 10:55 PM

• Chinese-born Engineer Gets 15 Years in Spying for China

  

  The Los Angeles Times reports on the sentencing of a Chinese-born aerospace engineer who worked in Southern California on charges of spying for China:

  U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney in Santa Ana imposed a 188-month prison term on Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 73, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Orange.

  Carney declared that he could not “put a price tag” on national security and sought to send a signal to China to “stop sending your spies here,” according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

  Chung, who worked at Boeing’s Huntington Beach plant, denied being a spy and said he was gathering documents for a book, not for espionage. His attorneys argued that much of the material was already available on the public record.

  …Whether loyalty to his homeland or financial gain was Chung’s motive remained unclear. The case is one of a number of prosecutions that have shed light on alleged Chinese efforts to gain access to U.S. technology and research through espionage.

  » Read more
  • February 8, 2010 9:54 PM

• China Sentences Quake Activist to 5 Years’ Jail

  

  Activist Tan Zuoren, who had been investigating the deaths of schoolchildren in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, has been sentenced to five years in prison after being tried in August. From AP:

  Attorney Pu Zhiqiang said activist Tan Zuoren was convicted of the charge Tuesday by the Chengdu Intermediate Court. Tan’s trial in August had concluded with no ruling, while police detained and threatened the man’s supporters.

  Tan’s supporters say they believe the authorities were trying to silence him for his investigation into the collapse of schools in the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck in Sichuan province in May 2008, leaving almost 90,000 dead or missing. Tan estimated at least 5,600 students were among the dead.

  The charge of inciting subversion of state power is believed linked to his quake investigation as well as essays he wrote about the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square that ended in a deadly military crackdown. Beijing routinely uses such broad and vaguely defined accusations to imprison dissidents, sometimes for years.

  Pu said Tan would appeal the court’s decision.

  See also a Reuters report. ChinaGeeks has translated selected tweets about the verdict.

  Update: The BBC has posted a profile of Tan.

  » Read more
  • February 8, 2010 9:30 PM

• Liu Xiaobo: I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement

  

  Writer Liu Xiaobo, one of the drafters of Charter 08, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on December 25, Christmas Day. On December 23, the day he was tried, Liu Xiaobo wrote a “final statement” which is being widely passed around online. CDT thanks David Kelly, Professor of China Studies, China Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney, for the translation (the original Chinese version can be found here):

  Liu Xiaobo, I have no enemies: my final statement*

  June 1989 was the major turning point in my 50 years on life’s road. Before that, I was a member of the first group of students after restoration of the college entrance examination after the Cultural Revolution (1977); my career was s smooth ride from undergraduate to grad student through to PhD. After graduation I stayed on as a lecturer at Beijing Normal University. On the podium, I was a popular teacher, well received by students. I was at the same time a public intellectual. In the 1980s I published articles and books that created an impact, was frequently invited to speak in various places, and was invited to go abroad to Europe and the US as a visiting scholar. What I required of myself was: both as a person and in my writing, I had to live with honesty, responsibility and dignity. Subsequently, because I had returned from the US to take part in the 1989 movement, I was imprisoned for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement to crime”, loding the platform which was my passion; I was never again allowed publish or speak in public in China. Simply for expressing divergent political views and taking part in a peaceful and democratic movement, a teacher loses his podium, a writer loses the right to publish, and a public intellectual loses the chance to speak publicly, which is a sad thing, both for myself as an individual, and for China after three decades of reform and opening up.

  Thinking about it, my most dramatic experiences after June Fourth have all linked with courts; the two opportunities I had to speak in public have been provided by trials held in the People’s Intermediate Court in Beijing, one in January 1991 and one now. Although the charges on each occasion were different, they were in essence the same, both being crimes of expression.

  Twenty years on, the innocent souls of June Fourth do not yet rest in peace, and I, who had been drawn into the path of dissidence by the passions of June Fourth, after leaving the Qincheng Prison in 1991, lost in the right to speak openly in my own country, and could only do so through overseas media, and hence was monitored for many years; placed under surveillance (May 1995- January 1996); educated through labour (October 1996 – October 1999s), and now once again am thrust into the dock by enemies in the regime. But I still want to tell the regime that deprives me of my freedom, I stand by the belief I expressed twenty years ago in my “June Second hunger strike declaration”— I have no enemies, and no hatred. None of the police who have monitored, arrested and interrogated me, the prosecutors who prosecuted me, or the judges who sentence me, are my enemies. While I’m unable to accept your surveillance, arrest, prosecution or sentencing, I respect your professions and personalities, including Zhang Rongge and Pan Xueqing who act for the prosecution at present. I was aware of your respect and sincerity in your interrogation of me on 3 December.

  For hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy. I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes in understanding the development of the state and changes in society, to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love.

  As we all know, reform and opening up brought about development of the state and change in society. In my view, it began with abandoning “taking class struggle as the key link,” which had been the ruling principle of the Mao era. We committed ourselves instead to economic development and social harmony. The process of abandoning the “philosophy of struggle” was one of gradually diluting the mentality of enmity, eliminating the psychology of hatred, and pressing out the “wolf’s milk” in which our humanity had been steeped. It was this process that provided a relaxed environment for the reform and opening up at home and abroad, for the restoration of mutual love between people, and soft humane soil for the peaceful coexistence of different values and different interests, and thus provided the explosion of popular creativity and the rehabilitation of warmheartedness with incentives consistent with human nature. Externally abandoning “anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism”, and internally, abandoning “class struggle” may be called the basic premise of the continuance of China’s reform and opening up to this day. The market orientation of the economy; the cultural trend toward diversity; and the gradual change of order to the rule of law, all benefited from the dilution of this mentality of enmity. Even in the political field, where progress is slowest, dilution of the mentality of enmity also made political power ever more tolerant of diversity in society, the intensity persecution of dissidents has declined substantially, and characterization of the 1989 movement has changed from an “instigated rebellion” to a “political upheaval.”

  The dilution of the mentality of enmity made the political power gradually accept the universality of human rights. In 1998, the Chinese government promised the world it would sign the the two international human rights conventions of the UN, marking China’s recognition of universal human rights standards; in 2004, the National People’s Congress for the first time inscribed into the constitution that “the state respects and safeguards human rights”, signaling that human rights had become one of the fundamental principles of the rule of law. In the meantime, the present regime also proposed “putting people first” and “creating a harmonious society”, which signalled progress in the Party’s concept of rule.

  This macro-level progress was discernible as well in my own experiences since being arrested.

  While I insist on my innocence, and that the accusations against me are unconstitutional, in the year and more since I lost my freedom, I’ve experienced two places of detention, four pre-trial police officers, three prosecutors and two judges. In their handling of the case, there has been no lack of respect, no time overruns and no forced confessions. Their calm and rational attitude has over and again demonstrated goodwill. I was transferred on 23 June from the residential surveillance to Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau Detention Center No. 1, known as “Beikan.” I saw progress in surveillance in the six months I spent there.

  I spent time in the old Beikan (Banbuqiao) in 1996, and compared with the Beikan of a decade ago, there has been great improvement in the hardware of facilities and software of management.

  In particular, Beikan’s innovative humane management based on respecting the rights and dignity of detainees, implementing more flexible management of the will be flexible to the detainees words and deeds, embodied in the Warm broadcast and Repentance, the music played before meals, and when waking up and going to sleep, gave detainees feelings of dignity and warmth, stimulating their consciousness of keeping order in their cells and opposing the warders sense of themselves as lords of the jail, detainees, providing not only a humanized living environment, but greatly improved the detainees’ environment and mindset for litigation, I had close contact with Liu Zhen, in charge of my cell. People feel warmed by his respect and care for detainees, reflected in the management of every detail, and permeating his every word and deed. Getting to know the sincere, honest, responsible, good-hearted Liu Zhen really was a piece of good luck for me in Beikan.

  Political beliefs are based on such convictions and personal experiences; I firmly believe that China’s political progress will never stop, and I’m full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future, because no force can block the human desire for freedom. China will eventually become a country of the rule of law in which human rights are supreme. I’m also looking forward to such progress being reflected in the trial of this case, and look forward to the full court’s just verdict ——one that can stand the test of history.

  Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I’d say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Liu Xia. She cannot be present in the courtroom today, but I still want to tell you, sweetheart, that I’m confident that your love for me will be as always. Over the years, in my non-free life, our love has contained bitterness imposed by the external environment, but is boundless in afterthought. I am sentenced to a visible prison while you are waiting in an invisible one. Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.

  Given your love, sweetheart, I would face my forthcoming trial calmly, with no regrets about my choice and looking forward to tomorrow optimistically. I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where all citizens’ speeches are treated the same; here, different values, ideas, beliefs, political views… both compete with each other and coexist peacefully; here, majority and minority opinions will be given equal guarantees, in particular, political views different from those in power will be fully respected and protected; here, all political views will be spread in the sunlight for the people to choose; all citizens will be able to express their political views without fear, and will never be politically persecuted for voicing dissent; I hope to be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech.

  Freedom of expression is the basis of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity and to suppress the truth.

  I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints. Thank you!

  Liu Xiaobo (December 23, 2009)

  Read more about Liu Xiaobo and Charter 08 via CDT.

  Image source: Amnesty International – Hong Kong.

  » Read more
  • February 8, 2010 7:26 PM

• Caixin (财新网): The Li Zhuang Case

  

  Caixin, Hu Shuli’s new publication, has produced an English-language page compiling information about the trial of lawyer Li Zhuang. From one article on the site:

  Li Zhuang, known as the lawyer formerly representing an alleged Chongqing gang leader, shocked court observers in the capitulation of his first sentence appeal.

  On February 2, Li stated to the judge that the January trial was based on “clear facts and sound evidence,” a verbal revision of his grounds for appeal according to local news portal, Hua Long Net.

  However, Li maintains the status of his appeal, and is still pursuing a reduced sentence.

  Read more about Li Zhuang’s case through translated Chinese media reports on ESWN.

  » Read more
  • February 8, 2010 2:03 PM

• Fareed Zakaria: U.S.-China Growing Pains

  

  In the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria writes that the recent tensions between China and the U.S. are merely political posturing. But he continues:

  …There are two trends that could take a manageable situation and make it something more worrisome. The first is a growing perception in China that it is no longer as reliant on the West, and in particular the United States, as it was. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping brought China out of the cold by embracing America and opening up to foreign investment. This was different from the somewhat predatory, export-driven strategy of Japan and South Korea. But, the China scholar Minxin Pei argues, this was not an ideological conversion to free-market capitalism. Ravaged by the Cultural Revolution, Beijing desperately needed Western managerial know-how, technology and capital to develop its economy.

  Today, China is awash in capital; it has many top-notch local companies; and this year for the first time, the primary engine of Chinese growth has been its domestic market, not exports. As China expands, that internal market will probably become its dominant concern.

  A similar reality applies in foreign policy. Mao restored relations with the United States in some measure to buy himself an ally against the Soviet Union. China has needed the United States as a political ally ever since; Jiang Zemin’s fuzzy embrace of the United States was part of a strategy whose goal was concrete: membership in the World Trade Organization. Today, China commands respect across the globe. It is confident, even cocky, in bilateral and multilateral fora.

  None of this is nefarious. But Beijing’s newfound arrogance is not joined with a broader vision. The country does not appear ready to play a global role. In international summits Beijing has been largely focused on pursuing its interests in a fairly narrow sense. At the April Group of 20 summit, for example, China participated actively on only one issue: to make sure that Hong Kong was kept off the list of offshore tax havens being investigated.

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  • February 7, 2010 10:48 PM

• Still Counting? 27 More Websites Opened in Xinjiang

  

  According to the Far West China blog, 27 more websites have been made accessible to netizens in Xinjiang, bringing the total number to 31:

  You might be getting tired of counting new sites being opened in Xinjiang as “news”. I know I am. If, however, you’re waiting for a single day when Xinjiang will suddenly “turn on the internet”, I have some bad news for you.

  I believe China is strategically opening small parts of the internet and making headline news out of each event knowing full-well that the international media’s attention span won’t keep up. We’re already getting bored. 27 more sites are opened in Xinjiang today, 50 more next week…who cares?

  Meanwhile the flow of information is being strictly controlled and authorities still take the opportunity to declare a state of freedom on the internet.

  » Read more
  • February 7, 2010 10:29 PM

• Chongqing Example for Real Harmony

  

  An opinion piece in China Daily praises Bo Xilai’s anti-corruption campaign in Chongqing as an example of how to bring real harmony to Chinese society:

  A third-year student from the Southwestern University of Political Science and Law appealed to Chongqing leaders to intensify their efforts to eliminate the “dark and evil forces” and help society regain its sense of security. Many others echoed his demand. Bo was quick to reply that no development could be possible in a place where the basic moral boundary had become blurred.

  The anti-gangster campaign is essentially an effort to restore decency and the good life of the people, he said. In a place run by triads, which used to monopolize many sectors – from mining, roads and transportation to grocery supplies – the already difficult life of wage earners would become unbearable. “And to help them out is what a government is there for,” Bo said.

  But he also had his own complaints. The applause he earned from the college students did not prevent him from saying that at times he has heard “sour remarks”, criticizing him for not being nice and perhaps not handling things properly. Incidentally, some overseas reports have suggested that the Chongqing campaign is politically motivated. But Bo said: “We won’t listen to this kind of twisted reasoning.” That the local government has been able to assure people of their safety and security can be gauged from the number of support messages it got on the Internet on Monday morning. There were hundreds, with the most frequent remark being “When will Chongqing’s campaign spread nationwide?”

  » Read more
  • February 7, 2010 9:59 PM

• China Shuts Down Largest Hacker Training Website

  

  Three members of China’s largest hacker training website have been arrested and the site shut down, according to Reuters:

  The “Black Hawk Safety Net” website taught hacking techniques and provided malicious software downloads for its 12,000 members in exchange for a fee, the Wuhan Evening News newspaper reported this weekend, citing police in Huanggang, just east of Wuhan.

  Hacking from China has received international attention since Google Inc threatened to quit China last month after a serious hacking attempt originating from China, resulting in the theft of its intellectual property.

  China has denied involvement in the hacking episode and said it does not condone hacking.

  The website was shut in late November and three of its members arrested on suspicion of criminal activity, the newspaper reported, without saying why the news was only released now.

  » Read more
  • February 7, 2010 9:13 PM

• After the Summer Olympics, Empty Shells in Beijing

  

  A year and a half after the Olympics in Beijing, the impressive structures built for the event are left without a purpose. From the New York Times:

  In 2008, the Chinese built a ball field — boy, what a ball field — known worldwide for its lattice-like architecture as the Bird’s Nest. Alas, after the 2008 Olympics, the ticket buyers haven’t come. Right now, the Bird’s Nest serves as a winter amusement park known as the Happy Ice and Snow Season. In April, a promoter may stage a celebrity rock concert to “establish China as a world leader for global peace and a healthier planet.” Or not.

  After that, the government says it may build a shopping center there.

  The accompanying photographs, shot at locales for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, succinctly depict the loneliness of where the long-distance runner once strode. In a week when the United States contemplates how long its future will be spent deep in debt, they also hint at how much its greatest creditor is pinning its own hopes of building wealth on dreams.

  Two summers ago, China’s Olympic extravaganza was recognized worldwide, and especially here, as a barely disguised metaphor for this nation’s rise to worldwide importance. Eighteen months later, China is more important than its leaders could have imagined.

  The Times also includes a slideshow of the buildings in their current incarnations.

  » Read more
  • February 6, 2010 6:39 PM

• China’s Hawks Demand Cold War on the US

  

  Due to recent tensions over Taiwan, Tibet, and a host of other issues, the majority of people in China think their country and the U.S. are headed for another cold war, according to a survey by Global Times. From The Times:

  In China’s eyes, the American response — which includes a pledge by Obama to get tougher on trade — is a reaction against its rising power.

  Now almost 55% of those questioned for Global Times, a state-run newspaper, agree that “a cold war will break out between the US and China”.

  An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama’s decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.

  “We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela,” declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference.

  » Read more
  • February 6, 2010 6:30 PM

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