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.

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Post tags: bloggers, citizen journalism, Laohumiao
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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.

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With his five cellphones constantly ringing, it is not easy these days to get the undivided attention of Zhu Ruifeng, a self-styled citizen journalist whose freelance campaign against graft has earned him pop-star acclaim and sent a chill through Chinese officialdom.

[…] A former migrant worker with a high school education, Mr. Zhu has become an overnight celebrity in China in the two months since he posted online secretly recorded video of an 18-year-old woman having sex with a memorably unattractive 57-year-old official from the southwestern municipality of Chongqing. The official lost his job. Mr. Zhu gained a million or so new microblog followers.

The takedown was just the opening act, Mr. Zhu says. He promises to release six more sex videos that he predicts will make a number of other men run for cover. “I’m fighting a war,” he said with characteristic bombast, his voice a near-shriek. “Even if they beat me to death, I won’t give up my sources or the videos.”

[…] Mr. Zhu, who began his Web site in 2006, largely relies on whistle-blowers to funnel damning evidence to him. Through the years, he said, he has exposed 100 officials, bringing down more than a third of them. He has been threatened and beaten; more than once, he says, he has been offered huge sums of money to delete an incriminating post from his site, which is called People’s Supervision.

Zhu’s “characteristic bombast” may seem excessive, but is at least in part a matter of self-defense: by courting attention from traditional and social media, he hopes to deter attempts to silence him. That he credits Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption speeches, the Chinese Constitution and his own love of country with inspiring his activities may confer some measure of additional protection.

Nevertheless, his crusade has cost him. He has chosen to end his marriage, he says, rather than see his wife, a P.L.A. officer, suffer retaliation from his adversaries. “To be honest,” he told The Times’ Jonah Kessel, “I would like to tend to the big family in sacrifice of the small family.”

Kessel has also posted outtakes from their conversation on Vimeo, including an extended account of a recent police visit to Zhu’s Beijing home. Chongqing authorities appear determined to contain the sex tape scandal by acquiring Zhu’s remaining videos, but as in the recent New York Times hacking attacks, identifying sources seems to be their primary goal. From Tom Lasseter at McClatchy:

Powerful interests were searching for his sources, he explained over lunch last Friday [January 25th]. Police detained one contact in the southwestern city of Chongqing, where the scandal had erupted, Zhu said. They traced a second source to Henan province, hundreds of miles away, and had questioned that person at least twice.

Two days after that conversation, the police showed up at Zhu’s home in Beijing. They banged on his door Sunday night and demanded that he come with them. He refused but reported to a police station Monday morning, where he was held for more than seven hours. Police officers from Chongqing pressed him to hand over five sex recordings he hasn’t made public and to tell them the identities of his informants. They threatened that “if you don’t present evidence, you will be in violation of national law,” according to Zhu’s account.

The pressure on Zhu suggests that despite Communist Party rhetoric about an all out campaign against corruption, limits remain. The party’s leader, Xi Jinping, said shortly after being installed in November that failing to crack down on corruption would risk the downfall of the state. But while Beijing has dismissed some wayward officials and canceled extravagant banquets that stoked resentment among average Chinese, it so far seems set on keeping a tight grip to keep the process from spinning out of control.

Undaunted, Zhu has offered a cash reward to anyone who can verify the identity of a state-owned enterprise president allegedly caught on one of the videos. Meanwhile, the woman in the videos was formally charged with extortion last week, though she too has been hailed—perhaps less plausibly than in Zhu’s case—as an anti-corruption crusader. From Keith Zhai at the South China Morning Post:

“Zhao was officially arrested on December 31 for extortion,” Zhang said yesterday, adding that she had been “brainwashed” by a company she left in 2009 to secretly record herself having sex with officials to give the firm leverage. “After all, she was young and a victim herself.”

[…] Zhao has drawn support on social media, with internet users hailing her as a heroine for exposing corrupt officials.

Many have compared Zhao’s case with that of Deng Yujiao , a hotel waitress who in 2009 stabbed to death a local party official in Hubei and wounded another after they tried to force themselves on her.

Deng was charged with assault, rather than murder, but walked free on grounds of diminished responsibility after having received widespread support from the online community.

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Post tags: anti-corruption, Beijing, bloggers, Chongqing, citizen journalism, citizen journalist, constitution, corrupt officials, Deng Yujiao, extortion, journalistic ethics, lei zhengfu, migrant workers, muckraking, PLA, sex scandals, Xi Jinping, Zhu Ruifeng
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This Generation: Dispatches from China’s Most Popular Literary Star (and Race Car Driver)

What makes Han different from critics of earlier eras is his use of ironic humor instead of historical allegory. Writers in the early twentieth century like Lu Xun explored this voice, but Han makes it his. Born in 1982, he dabbles in the modern forms of evasion: ennui, irony, boredom, and sarcasm. He’s witty and wry and when he’s on, he’s really on. A good example was a blog he wrote last year called “The Disconnected Nation” (also reprinted in The China Story, an illuminating collection of essays edited by the Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé about contemporary China, available in a free downloadable pdf).

[...]

Too often, however, Han seems to lack other arrows in his quiver. Some of the essays are tedious—he goes on and on in one essay about how people should have been allowed to donate old clothes to victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake; the government had wanted only new clothes. It was a worthwhile criticism to make at the time, but hardly the most urgent part of the authorities’ mismanagement of the disaster; now, four years later, it seems obscure. His phlegmatism also dominates a 2010 post on an earlier round of protests about the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu islands—which were also the cause of the recent anti-Japanese riots. He said protesters should concern themselves first with whether they have a decent job or family “rather than worrying about something so remote.” It’s a fair point, one supposes, but sounds like the advice from an overly sensible, mortgaged-to-the-hilt middle-aged father rather than an edgy young blogger. Go home and play with your kids is actually more than that—it’s wrong. In a country where too few people concern themselves with big affairs, the answer should rather be to stay engaged while learning to think more critically and skeptically. Perhaps it’s no wonder that some critics claim in excruciating detail that his father—a frustrated author himself who once used the pen name Han Han—contributed to his son’s essays, or even wrote some of them outright.

Han’s exhausted, burned-out attitude is even less convincing when he discusses political reform. At the end of last year, he published three essays that caused a small uproar in China. Han advocated a go-slow attitude toward democracy, essentially saying Chinese people were not ready for it yet because they weren’t well-enough educated and behaved. The arguments were fair enough, but applicable to almost any country on the planet, especially, in this election season, the United States. The three essays have been interpreted (for example by the editor Chang Ping, whom I interviewed in January) as showing how many Chinese have given up hope for change and so resort to explaining why it shouldn’t happen. They certainly show how careful Han is not to overstep the golden rule of dissent in China: measured criticism is okay, but not advocacy of systemic change.

Read more by and about Han Han via CDT.

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Post tags: bloggers, freedom of expression, Han Han, writers
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Han Han is a big deal in China — and among many China scholars and journalists in the West — and there’s no mystery as to why. He has a large and loyal following among young Chinese, something the three dissidents I listed, as admirable as they are, haven’t attained. And he has consistently been at or near the center of some of the liveliest debates taking place on the Chinese Internet, the closest thing to a public sphere that exists on the mainland.

[...]

How is it that someone so significant and interesting remains largely unknown outside of China? It can’t be because no one has written about him. Back in 2009, Simon Elegant profiled him for Time. In 2010, Foreign Policy included him in its list of 100 top global thinkers and Perry Link celebrated his “Aesopian wit” in an International Herald Tribune op-ed. Last year, the New Yorker ran an excellent piece on him by Evan Osnos cleverly titled “The Han Dynasty,” and Fast Company called him one of the 100 most creative people in business. This year he’s been the subject of an unusually engaging “Lunch with the FT” feature by David Pilling, the Asia editor of the Financial Times, and was discussed in Jacob Weisberg’s Slate essay on Internet censorship in China. And so on.

One reason his global fame might trail that of other Chinese figures could be that nothing he has done has garnered international headlines of the sort that came with Ai Weiwei’s arrest, Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel prize, and Chen Guangcheng’s escape. It’s one thing for an individual to be profiled in magazines, and quite another for him or her to do something that lands them on the front page or the CNN news ticker, displayed on muted televisions at airports and in gyms. And there is something about the narrative of the brave, rebellious dissident that appeals to Western audiences in a way that an inside-the-system blogger might not.

And Han Han’s writings have not been readily available in English. There’ve been plenty of translations of his blog posts, but typically only in outlets read by the China-obsessed.

Read much more by and about Han Han via CDT.

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Post tags: bloggers, Han Han, views of China
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From the film’s synopsis:

As the Chinese government expands its efforts to police the Internet and block websites in the country, the rising tide of censorship has aroused a wave of citizen reporters committed to investigating local news stories. Two such rogue bloggers include Zola and Tiger Temple. When tech-savvy Zola noticed that local newspapers were selectively reporting the news, he took matters into his own hands, posing as a curious onlooker at crime scenes and snapping photos and videos that he posts to his site. Called upon for help by rural farmers and displaced city dwellers alike, Tiger Temple bicycles around the Chinese countryside drawing attention to societal issues in communities that otherwise would not have a voice.

And the trailer on Kickstarter:

Read more about Zuola and Tiger Temple via CDT, including a 2007 profile of Tiger Temple (Laohu Miao) and translations of his dispatches from a bicycle trip across China.

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Post tags: bloggers, citizen journalism, Laohumiao, Zuola
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A famous story tells how, in a previous life, the Buddha took pity on a starving tigress, who might otherwise have had to eat her newborn cubs. He sacrificed himself instead. The tale is often recalled by Tibetans in exile in Dharamsala in northern India as they lament a seemingly endless cycle of self-immolations in their homeland. In the past year at least 26 Tibetans, mostly young Buddhist monks, have set fire to themselves. As they burned, usually to death, they shouted slogans against Chinese rule and for the return of the Dalai Lama, their spiritual leader, who has been based in Dharamsala since 1959. The moral of the tiger parable is that, though Buddhism abhors even self-inflicted violence, it can be justified if the sacrifice is for the greater good. The agonising question, however, is whether these brave acts do anybody any good at all.

Tibetan blogger Woeser, under house arrest in Beijing since March 1, has posted an open letter to Tibetans on her blog (zh). In the letter, co-authored by the exiled Arjia Rinpoche, Woeser makes her opinion clear: its time for the 3-year long string of self-immolations to stop. Radio Free Asia reports:

“Expressed through these self-immolations is the will of Tibetans,” the letter said, referring to the 26 self-immolations since February 2009 in protest against Beijing’s rule in Tibetan-populated areas and calling for the return of Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Woeser, who has written critically of the Chinese government’s policies in Tibet, said that the self-immolations by mostly young Tibetans “make one feel grief-stricken,” and that ending the trend “deserves to be treated as a matter of utmost urgency.”

“Twenty-six cases make it clear what Tibetans have wanted to articulate,” said the joint letter by Woeser and a senior Tibetan religious figure, Arjia Rinpoche, now living in exile in the United States, and Tibet’s Amdo-based poet Gade Tsering.

“Yet, articulation of one’s will cannot be an ultimate goal. The will has to be put into practice, transforming into reality,” they said in the letter titled “Appeal to Tibetans To Cease Self-Immolation: Cherish Your Life in a Time of Oppression.”

The Guardian has more on the letter, and also a taste of what Beijing and the Dalai Lama have to say about the issue:

“Staying alive allows us to gather the strength as drops of water to form a great ocean,” it said. “It depends on thousands and more living Tibetans to pass on our nation’s spirit and blood!”

The letter also asks “monks, the elderly, intellectuals, officials, and the masses” to help prevent more immolations.

China blames supporters of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for encouraging the self-immolations.

The Dalai Lama has praised the courage of those who engage in self-immolation and has attributed the protests to what he calls China’s “cultural genocide” in Tibet. He also says he does not encourage the protests, noting that they could invite an even harsher crackdown.

Voice of America reports on how the situation in Tibet has been “downplayed” in press conferences surrounding the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress.

As a wave of self-immolations continues in Tibetan areas of China, Chinese authorities not only are tightening security, but also are stepping up efforts to discredit those who have set themselves on fire to protest China’s policies in the region.

[...]On Wednesday, Wu Zegang, an ethnic-Tibetan and head of Aba prefecture – where most of the recent self-immolations have taken place – blamed separatists for the unrest.

Wu said that most of the people who are carrying out acts of self-immolation shout out separatist slogans such as “Independence for Tibet” or aim to divide China.

He also said that many of those who have committed suicide have criminal records and are outcasts.

More on Beijing’s attempts to “downplay” the situation from the LA Times:

In an effort to instill Chinese values, authorities have in recent years stepped up what they call “patriotic education” in schools and monasteries, forcing Tibetans to renounce the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, and to study communist theory. Such efforts have backfired.

“There is an escalation of control and restrictions in daily life, and that burst out in frustration,” said Lobsang Jinpa, a 29-year-old former monk from Nyitso Monastery in Dawu, Sichuan province, which, like Gansu and Qinghai, has a large Tibetan population. He knew two people who died by self-immolation. He left China last year and now lives in Dharamsala, India.

The government has tried to downplay such motivations. China’s New China News Agency reported Wednesday that Tsering Kyi [a recently deceased self-immolator] had been suffering from fainting spells after hitting her head on a radiator while playing in a classroom. “The medical treatment held up her studies and her school scores began to decline, which put a lot of pressure on her and made her lose courage in life,” the agency reported.

Also see a recent High Peaks Pure Earth translation of a Woeser blogpost from last month, in which she profiles a monk named Tapey, possibly the first Tibetan to self-immolate in protest.

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Post tags: bloggers, National People's Congress, self-immolations, Tibet Internet, Tibet protests, Woeser
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After a long time of thinking, I gradually began to feel that the good writer who slaughters the powerful elite should also be slaughtering the masses. My posts started to change in early 2011, beginning with my piece on the village head, Qian Yunhui, “Do we need the truth or just the satisfying truth?”《需要真相还是需要符合需要的真相》。Of course, if we put the governing and the governed side by side, we should criticize the rich and powerful first, since it’s easy. The rich and powerful act and the rest of society suffers. But a good writer shouldn’t be unconditionally seeking the good graces of the masses. You talk about how good the average person is, how right, how kind, how noble, that they should receive such and such, that they should enjoy this and that. But people’s eyes aren’t all bright like stars, don’t all have double eyelids— that kind of serial ass-kissing is no different from what Mao Zedong used to promulgate. Perhaps the masses were his most valuable stepping stone to consolidating power. Many years ago, I was still a resolute revolutionary. I believed that as long as a one-party dictatorship existed, we needed to overthrow it. There had to be multiple parties. There had to be separation of powers. The army had to belong to the country, not the party. At the time there were still friends who’d debate me. People will die, they argued. There will be chaos. We’ll go backwards. At the time my point of view was: Not necessarily, how do we know if we haven’t tried? Plus, there’s a price for everything, if you aren’t extreme, aren’t radical, how do you eradicate social ills. Order arises from chaos. We’re already in troubled times, and it’s not like I can’t be Robin Hood. But as time went on I realized that this type of attitude is no different from those dictators who say “After I die, who cares if the world ends.” The feeling is pretty much the same. The extreme idealist who’s escaped reality isn’t necessarily too different from the reality of an authoritarian dictator. In fact they’re from the same stock. It’s just that they’re holding different flags. It isn’t impossible to become the person who once disgusted you.

Update:
Han Han recently wrote a trio of articles on the topics of freedom, democracy and revolution which inspired a heated debate in Chinese cyberspace. Southern Weekend interviewed Han Han about these three essays (translated by ESWN):

Q: I spoke to your colleague Ma Yimu recently. He said that he did not know what you were thinking or doing, but suddenly these three essays appeared. He thought that this was very mysterious.
A: Many people thought that I had an abrupt change in attitude. Actually, my attitude has not changed in any way. Any change is superficial. I did not change much inside, because I basically detest extremism. I think any form of extremism is frightening. In 2010, my attitude was very clear already. If readers bothered to read my essays carefully, they knew that the so-called change did not occur abruptly. It has always been inside me.

Q: Did it begin with the essay on Qian Yunhui in early 2011?
A: It was there before the incident, including speaking out on behalf of Sharon Stone, opposing the boycott of French merchandise and Carrefour and so on. I have always stood on the opposite side of the people. But the opposite side in those cases was relatively speaking more readily acceptable to the liberals or elites. Today I may be standing on the opposite of these liberals or relatively radical liberals. I think all this is quite normal, because I don’t want to belong any particular side and be used as a gunner.

Q: Previously you give everybody the impression of being somewhat incisive, but now you seem to be moderate. Does this change have anything to do with your maturation or becoming a father?
A: I don’t think so. Because I think that when a person becomes a father, he should have even less to fear because he has already completed the mission of leaving behind his genes according to anthropology and biology. He should be able to do what he needs to do in an even more carefree manner. What many people think is the expression of my conservatism is actually the expression of my radicalism, because I will offend even more people. That is radicalism. But no matter how far I traveled on what they considered to be the radical path, nobody will take action against me as long as I don’t go over their bottom line. That attitude is actually conservative. Every day, I can scold the ruling party, I can scold the government, I pander to the masses and I lick the stinking feet of the public intellectuals. But now I have offended many more people, including the rightists, the leftists and the masses.

Read more by and about Han Han via CDT.

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Post tags: bloggers, Han Han
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(h/t Shanghaiist)

Read more by and about Han Han via CDT.

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Post tags: bloggers, Han Han, Internet censorship
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Ran Yunfei was among the first detained amid the government’s recent expansive crackdown on dissent. He returned Tuesday night to his home in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern Sichuan province, said Wang Wei, his wife ….

Ran was an uncompromising voice for free speech before he was taken away in late February as anonymous online calls circulated for Chinese to imitate the uprisings sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East ….

… [A] court in Chengdu charged him in late March with inciting subversion of state power, but prosecutors recently sent the case back to police, said Ran’s friend Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent rights lawyer who spoke briefly to the blogger on Wednesday morning.

Pu said Ran was released into “residential surveillance” for a six-month period, under which he is not allowed to leave home or meet people without permission, and he may not speak publicly. Still, Pu welcomed Ran’s release as a sign the crackdown could be easing.

The New York Times explains Ran Yunfei’s writing and political stance:

Until his detention, in the city of Chengdu, Mr. Ran’s daily blog writings and micro-blog postings provided readers his thoughts on a range of topics, including the value of an uncensored media, the importance of charitable giving and his personal struggle with chronic back pain. Although he wrote about the so-called Arab Spring and his yearnings for a more open political system, he did not call on his followers to take to the streets against the ruling Communist Party.

Mr. Ran was a reluctant critic, saying he would rather be traveling, drinking wine and reading. “In a free country I would happily spend my life in the library doing research,” he said in one post. “But I live in a country where I cannot in good conscience merely live such a life. I feel that I have no alternative. I have to voice my criticisms of our messed up social reality. Otherwise I would be uneasy. I would not be able to sleep well.”

Hours earlier, Ai Weiwei had, apparently coincidentally, tweeted that “If you don’t speak for Wang Lihong, and don’t speak for Ran Yunfei, you are not just a person who will not stand out for fairness and justice; you do not have self-respect.”

Read more by and about Ran Yunfei via CDT.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, bloggers, Chengdu, detention, house arrest, pu zhiqiang, Ran Yunfei, Sichuan
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Perhaps everyone knew that this day would come, and the day did come on that day. In the aftermath, there are a couple of points we should think about: Who is it that made everyone believe that a patriotic writer, calm and moderate, who writes stories and reasons things out would eventually come to such a day? Why is it that no one actually supposed that I might have been “kidnapped” by criminals who wanted to hold me for ransom, sold out by traitorous “friends,” possibly suffered a fallout with a business partner, or even maybe even a jealous lover? In a country in which they say a socialist system of rule of law has been fully built, how is it that the rational line of thought for the Chinese media leads them directly to the government in a “kidnapping” case so that they maintain a shameless and numb distance?

Think about the Qian Yunhui case (钱运会), think about the recent hoarding of salt, think about my “kidnapping” case. How is it that they all come to the same point? What I want to say is that the role I have played all along, and will continue to play, is the role of the calm intermediary, connecting the past and the future, connecting domestic [China] to the outside world. Calmly, and progressing step by step, I want to build our nation into a harmonious and stable one, strong and prosperous, a modernized nation that is free and democratic.

The goal isn’t asking too much. And on some level every citizen should take responsibility for realizing this goal. But I don’t want to shoulder that cold and serious joke I hear at every meeting: How is it that you haven’t been arrested yet?

Having been through this experience, I have added another dream. I dream that when I silently take my leave of you all, you will sigh and exclaim, “He’s tired, let him rest. We don’t need him anymore.” I hope when word comes that I’ve been “kidnapped,” our [foreign ministry] spokesperson and government will say, “We can’t lose a single citizen!” I dream that disappearances and missing persons in this country of ours happen because someone is ill, or because their mobile phone ran out of juice. I dream . .

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Post tags: bloggers, dissidents, Yang Hengjun
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Yang Hengjun, who retired from the Chinese Foreign Ministry to become a Sydney-based spy novelist, intellectual and blogger, has not been seen since phoning a colleague from Guangzhou airport on Sunday with news that he was being followed by three men.

If Dr Yang does not promptly reappear, then his name will be added to the list of challenges facing Julia Gillard when she arrives in Beijing next month for her first visit as prime minister.

Mr Yang is understood to carry an Australian passport. Others on her list of Chinese-Australians who have fallen foul of China’s capricious justice system include Matthew Ng, a successful entrepreneurs in China, and the iron ore salesman Stern Hu.

Read more by and about Yang Hengjun via CDT.

Ran Yunfei, another popular blogger and critic of the government, has been charged with subversion in Sichuan. From VOA:

Ran’s wife told VOA’s Mandarin service she received a copy of the formal charging documents Monday, and says they were dated last Friday. She said she will move quickly to hire a lawyer to defend her spouse, and expects formal court proceedings within two months.

Analysts say the formal charges allow police to continue their detention of the activist, while moving him closer to a criminal trial.

Ran, a 46-year-old writer, magazine editor and blogger from southwestern Sichuan province, has been an online presence in China for more than a decade. He was arrested five weeks ago in Chengdu, as police in Beijing and Shanghai moved to squelch protests called for by unidentified activists in Internet postings.

UPDATE: Yang Hengjun’s sister reportedly received a call from him in which he indicated that he had been taken by secret police. The Australian government has asked Beijing for information about his disappearance. From the Washington Post:

The Sydney-based spy novelist phoned an assistant Sunday from Guangzhou airport in southeastern China to say three men were following him, said his friend Feng Chongyi, Associate Professor in China Studies at the University of Technology in Sydney.

Yang was later able to briefly phone a sister in Guangzhou to say “he’s having a long chat with his old friends,” Feng said. This was a prearranged signal that Yang had been taken by the secret police, Feng said.

“I’m 100 percent sure that he was been taken away by the secret police,” said Feng, adding that the current crackdown on political expression in China was the reason.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed Tuesday that it is investigating the disappearance.

In the Age, John Garnaut profiles Yang Hengjun and his work:

He watched how civil society and democracy worked in the West and wrote about how they could in China. ”The true wonder of America and other Western countries is that all their flaws and ills come from the facts that are exposed by their people and even the government itself,” he wrote.

Yang is a former Chinese diplomat and his classmates from Fudan University’s department of international relations are now spread through the bureaucracy and business. His most important teacher was Wang Huning, who now accompanies President Hu Jintao on every overseas trip.

These connections provided endless fodder for his fiction and sources for his views. And they partly explain the miracle of how he has been allowed to survive so long and attract the phenomenal following that he has on the Chinese-language internet.

Yang also stood at the centre of a network of writers, intellectuals and activists.

The China Human Rights Lawyer Concern Group gives a rundown of all the lawyers who have been detained or harassed in recent weeks.

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Post tags: Australia relations, bloggers, Yang Hengjun
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Zheng Yuanjie is psychologically unstable

I am sixty- five years old, I have a Beijing hukou (household registration), I am a citizen of Beijing. I have a Hukou Record and National Registration Identity Card. However I have never had a Voter Registration Card.

Since China is holding the yearly National People’s Congress now, I have checked the “Election Law of the People’s Republic of China.” There are only three types of people who are not eligible to have the Voter Registration Card:
1. Younger than eighteen years old
2. A convicted criminal who is deprived of political rights
3. Psychologically unstable person

I am neither 1 nor 2; so the only reason that I have never had a Voter Registration Card must be the third one.

Beijing came out with a policy this year that only outsiders who have paid taxes for five consecutive years are allowed to buy cars and houses. My question is, will outsiders who have paid taxes continuously for five years be eligible to stand in the election for deputy to the National People’s Congress?

Following is the cover of yesterday’s “Beijing Youth Weekly”. Indeed it looks like I am a psychologically unstable person who is not eligible for Voter Registration Card.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bloggers, Election law, hukou, npc 2011, voting rights, zheng yuanjie
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Mubarak has already stated that he wants to expand democracy [in Egypt] and that he also wants to make sure that this democratic remedy is suitable for the Egyptian digestion and is not too hasty. This type of statement is, of course, “true,” [but at the same time] proves extremely confusing, as this is often the type of excuse rulers offer in order to delay a transfer of power. People’s ability to adapt to democracy must be tested through democratic practices, and cannot remain the decision of the any one person—certainly not that of the ruler.

For example, in China, those peasants who are “low-quality” and “most unsuited to carrying out democratic procedures” were the first to experiment with democratic elections through direct elections of village heads. After 20 years of these direct elections, the cool breeze of democracy still blows only in China’s rural areas, not in the urban areas most suited for democracy. Even now, there are still people who will claim that the low quality of Chinese people is not suited for democracy, echoing faint words that a Chinese democracy would bring about chaos.

Democracy is a good thing—this isn’t even any longer a matter of debate, as the majority of Chinese people have already reached a consensus. But how to implement this good thing in China, and to what extent to implement it remain questions that still need to be resolved. Judging from the statements of the ruling authorities, one could conclude that China is not fully ideologically prepared for democracy. This can be seen from the organized public criticism of the concept of “universal values.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bloggers, Egypt
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Because I coordinate the Beijing Foreign Language University’s international news broadcast master’s training, I am sometimes summoned to the Central Propaganda Department and Central Education Department for meetings with five other test colleges. In the past, due to business trips, not being of an adequate status and other inconveniences, I didn’t attend a Central Propaganda Department meeting. On Nov. 25 I was again notified to attend a meeting. The notice gave the topic of discussion and the time, but didn’t give the location of the Central Propaganda Department. It said only what floor and what room in the department. The notice requested the name of the attendee and the number of their car be reported to a contact in advance.

Because my leader was busy, the responsibility to go fell on me alone. I didn’t dare request a car from my work unit. I was reluctant to spend money on a taxi and unwilling to drive my own car (worried about getting lost and not finding a parking space). So only the option of taking a public transportation was left.

But where was the Central Propaganda Department? This place – other than on American satellite images – cannot be found on a Chinese map.  I knew it was close to the Party Central Committee, or even itself is the very “Central.” But I didn’t know the exact location or what street it was on. The number I had been called from in the past appeared as eight zeros on my phone. Was this to be mysterious, or just secretive?

I fearfully called the contact number on the notification. “Where’s the Central Propaganda Department?” I got an answer telling me how to get there by car. Fearful again, I said I had no car and that I was preparing to take the public transportation. There was an obvious and dumbfounded silence followed by low, hesitant instructions on which route to take and how to proceed.

The metro arrived in a prosperous Beijing commercial district. I knew the Central Propaganda Department was near, but no matter how I looked I couldn’t find it. I asked several people but they were unsure. I had no choice but to call the contact again and timidly ask for directions. Following the directions, I walked to an unmarked gate. Seeing the armed police post, I figure this was it. Entry was granted only with reception from someone within. Our Party had been the underground party for so many years, only to become the current ruling party. Yet it has maintained the exceptional tradition of its underground secret workings. Even the omnipotent internet is helpless in dealing with this China’s most powerful, influential and longstanding institution.

I went directly to a great meeting hall. The interior was spacious and bright, decorated exquisitely and housing state-of-the-art equipment. I need not say more. I jotted down the large slogan on the wall:

“Responsibility heavy as a mountain; Diligent as an ox; Meticulous as a hair; With lips sealed like a bottle; United as one.”

(“责任如山、勤奋如牛、心细如发、守口如瓶、团结如一”)

I won’t go on with the other similes. But with sealed lips, how to go about uniting as one?

Because we must keep our lips sealed, I won’t speak of the meeting’s content. The meeting dispersed before long. Although we went to a restaurant, I was positive we wouldn’t be treated to a meal. Prior meetings with the Central Education Department had been like this. In Chinese officialdom, when the superiors inspect the inferiors, the inferiors will certainly prepare lavish eating and drinking, even paying tribute with gifts upon parting. When the inferiors visit the top, especially when working with departments, the saying goes “your entry is difficult, your face ugly, your words unpleasant.” If you are granted a seat and glass of water, the emperor has bestowed unto you his vast beneficence. There is no possibility of staying for a meal. This is a reduction of eating and drinking on public funds. It’s obvious China’s anti-corruption movement has achieved great results.

Imagine these teachers and leaders from Fudan University [in Shanghai] fly all the way here every time just for a one to two hour meeting at the Ministry of Education and the Department of Propaganda, and then take the spirit of the meeting back to implement.

Exiting the meeting, I observed the courtyard’s grand atmosphere and synthesis of Chinese and Western architecture. Many Audis and other luxury cars were parked there. Although I knew this was not the police bureau, nor the Ministry of defense, nearly all of them sported military license plates or the character for Beijing Municipality followed by zeros. Could they be rip-offs so they can make traffic violations, run red lights and drive in the police lane?

I passed through a great hall on my way out. There were many precious items from various different places on display. I only care to mention an incomparably large slab of marble from Dali, Yunnan. Patterns of natural color resembling clouds and mountain ranges ran across the stone. Sitting there, it looked like a traditional Chinese painting of mountains and lakes. It produced a dreamy feeling of relaxation.

I won’t mention the rest of the treasures, but each and every one was magnificent. Because we must keep our “lips sealed,” I’ll stop here.

An endless stream of traffic met me upon leaving the ministry. Those who go with the flow will flourish. Those who go against it will perish.

For more about the work of the Central Propaganda Department and its local branches, see CDT’s series on Directives from the Ministry of Truth.

UPDATE1: The original post has been deleted from blog.sina.com.cn since this translation published. CDT saved the Chinese text here.

UPDATE2: Anne-Marie, a reader of this article made the following comment:
“For those whose curiosity is piqued by Du’s blog and want to include the CPD in their next tour of Beijing, the location is: 5 Chang’an Boulevarde, and the Organisation Dep’t and United Front Bureau are nearby.”

© Don Weinland for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bloggers, central propaganda department, Du Muqiao, propaganda
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