Mainland reports suggested that Xiangtan , the city overseeing Shaoshan, planned to spend more than 6 billion yuan (HK$7.5 billion) on organising ceremonial shows, the renovation of Mao’s memorial hall, and construction of related projects.

Beijing-based independent political analyst Chen Zimin said that, judging from Xu’s remarks, the party’s Central Committee was going to hold a high-level and far-reaching ceremony to mark Mao’s birthday, which he said would signify a dramatic turn to the left in terms of politics and ideology.

[...] Professor Yuan Weishi , a historian at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, said there was little doubt the central government would celebrate the anniversary of Mao’s birth in a high-profile manner, and Yuan said he believed that President Xi Jinping might even give a keynote speech. [Source]

Meanwhile, J.M. at The Economist sees dealing with Mao’s history as a dilemma for China’s new leadership:

[...I]n the coming months Mr Xi might be wary of overdoing the adulation. In the autumn he will preside over a crucial meeting of the party’s central committee that he apparently hopes will approve plans for wide-ranging economic reforms. Encouraging Maoists could play into the hands of what liberals in China call “interest groups”, such as large state-owned enterprises, that stand in the way of reform.

Fuelling Maoist fervour could also make it more difficult to handle the case of Bo Xilai, a Politburo member who was expelled from the party in November for alleged abuses of power, including complicity in the murder of a British businessman. Mr Bo is a darling of die-hard Maoists who believe that, for all the party’s lip-service to Mao, the country has fallen prey to the worst excesses of capitalism. He is widely expected to be put on trial in the coming months. Mr Xi does not want to encourage supporters of Mr Bo.

[...] In his final months as China’s leader before Mr Xi took over, Hu Jintao tried to silence these die-hards, whose online criticisms of the leadership—and support for Mr Bo—had become an embarrassment. Censors blocked several of their websites (as Analects reported in April last year). But the Maoists have proved resilient. Utopia, one of their favourite websites, remains closed. But it offers links to new sites where somewhat toned-down material can be read. [Source]

See also Mao’s Faithful May Be Pulling Xi Leftward, via CDT.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Hunan, leaders, leftists, Mao Zedong, maoism, PRC history, reforms, Shaoshan, Xi Jinping
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Chen – whose name is forever associated with the massacre 24 years ago – was known to be in the final stages of terminal colon cancer. He was released from jail on medical parole in 2006 and died just three months before his jail sentence would have ended.

Chen, who was Beijing mayor at the time of the crackdown, was later promoted to Beijing Party Secretary and made a Politburo member.

He was sentenced to jail in 1998 for corruption, making him one of the three highest-ranking party officials – together with Chen Liangyu and Bo Xilai – to be brought down by such charges.

Chen was widely believed to be one of the masterminds behind the crackdown. Former party secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was put under house arrest for sympathising with the students, in his memoir blamed Chen for the tragedy. [Source]

Chen apologized for his role in the crackdown last year, saying that deaths could have been avoided, but maintained that he personally had been powerless to stop them. Following his death, some others have also played down his importance. These include Wang Fandi, whose son was killed on June 4th and who nevertheless says he views Chen’s death as “retribution”. From Gary Cheung and Minnie Chan at South China Morning Post:

“He was just a small potato and a tool manipulated by others,” Wang said of the mayor who was one of the officials blamed for the military crackdown on the movement. “He just said and did what he was instructed to by people in the top echelon.”

[…] “Chen’s death won’t have any bearing on whether Beijing’s official verdict will be reversed,” Wang said. “Li Peng [premier during the crackdown] and [former president] Jiang Zemin are the people who really make the difference.”

[…] Political commentator Johnny Lau Yui-siu, who was sacked by pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po shortly after the 1989 crackdown, said he did not have any feelings about Chen’s death as he was just a pawn during the incident.

[…] “His death won’t have any impact in the political arena on the mainland,” Lau said. [Source]

Less weighty aspects of Chen’s legacy include the concept of patriotic cabbages and an infusion of mock-traditional flavoring into Beijing’s early-1990s public architecture.

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Nearly a quarter century has passed since you were forced into hiding by the Ayatollah’s fatwa. In the ensuing years, how would you assess the worldwide climate for censorship? Have things generally gotten better, or worse?

I’d say that, in general, they’ve gotten worse. But one of the things our report highlights is that people have more tools to resist censorship using new media. For instance, in China,  while there’s increased repression in the form of arbitrary arrests, artists held incommunicado and put under house arrest, and increasing hostility towards literature and free expression, there is at the same time a growing willingness of Chinese citizens to find ways to express themselves. In spite of all the repression, there’s been a  growth of independent, non-state publishers to print things that wouldn’t be approved by state houses, and people have shown the willingness to post things online even if they’re not to the liking of the state.

Is this a battle that China’s citizens will win?

I don’t want to be Pollyannish — it’s entirely possible that they’ll lose. China has been pretty effective over the years in silencing dissident voices — just consider the case of Liu Xiaobao and his wife, who resorted to shouting “not free” in court to remind people of her situation. The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

But I feel that, in the end, China does want to have a more significant role in international affairs, it does want to be seen as a big player in the world, it wants to have authority, it wants to have respect, it wants to be treated as one of the great voices in the world today. They’re beginning to be aware that their behavior is damaging their reputation, though, and I think if you put sufficient pressure on authoritarian regimes they often see that it is in their own self-interest to ease up on repression.

This is not the first time Rushdie has weighed in on China: he has publicly advocated on behalf of political prisoner Liu Xiaobo, has co-authored a letter to Hu Jintao and foreign minister Yang Jiechi protesting travel restrictions on dissident artist Ai Weiwei, has opined that “art will win over tyrants” in reference to China, and has also labeled Mo Yan a “patsy” after the Chinese novelist took the Nobel prize in literature. Also see Rushdie’s recollection of the day in 1989 when he became aware of the Ayatollah’s call to end his life, via The New Yorker.

The Atlantic has also published an excerpt from author Murong Xuecun’s contribution to the PEN report, on “China’s ‘Crappy Freedom’”:

In the past decade or so, the condition of freedom of speech in China has improved remarkably. But if any credit is due the government, it’s due to its powerlessness.

[…] On April 22, 2011, a Chongqing netizen named Fang Hong passed a joke online: When Bo Xilai asked Wang Lijun to eat his shit, Wang Lijun asked the procurator to eat it, who then asked Li Zhuang to eat it. Li Zhuang said: whoever shit it should eat it.

Two days later, Fang Hong was arrested by the Chongqing police and was sentenced to one year of re-education through labor.

Bo Xilai has left Chongqing […]. But the “pile of shit” case has universal significance and symbolism. It’s like the moral of a typical Chinese fable: You have the freedom to take a shit, and you have the freedom to eat it. But you don’t have the freedom to casually comment on it.

Global Times reported last month that Fang, who was cleared of wrongdoing and released in April last year, recently lost a court bid for higher compensation than the nearly 57,000 yuan (about $9,000) he was initially offered. Other high-profile re-education through labor inmates have recently been denied compensation altogether, including Ren Jianyu, also in Chongqing, and “petitioning mother” Tang Hui.

Samuel Wade contributed to this post.

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One question while reading your book that struck me was this: was Bo Xilai an exceptional figure, an outlier? Or was he simply a part of the system and just happened to be the one who got caught?

In a way, both — he was an exceptional politician and a part of the system. On the one hand, he was a very charismatic populist and one of the more capable regional officials under Hu Jintao. The social and economic programs that he initiated in Chongqing brought tremendous changes to the city. On the other hand, he was also an egomaniac who mastered a high-profile, American-style campaign approach toward the media. He basically ran into trouble by taking on entrenched business interests in Chongqing and he used his nationally-known anti-crime campaign to persecute political opponents and business people who refused to cooperate with him. Basically, his ruthless ambition and the excesses of his anti-crime campaign were seen as a threat by senior leaders in Beijing. They felt they had to get rid of this politician because he could jeopardize their own political and economic interest if he was allowed to enter the Politburo Standing Committee. The Neil Heywood murder case provided Bo’s opponents with the perfect weapon to shoot him down.

Ultimately, there aren’t really any liberals in the Chinese political system.
Bo wasn’t the first one to fall — look at [former Beijing Party Secretary] Chen Xitong and [former Shanghai Party Secretary] Chen Liangyu, for example — and he won’t be the last either. There’s a leadership transition every five years, with a big one every ten years, and without transparency and fair competition, more power struggles will occur and another Bo Xilai will emerge.

Read Howard French’s review of Huang’s book.

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A Party member and chief engineer for a State-owned enterprise in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, died in suspicious circumstances Tuesday while being held for investigation by the city’s commission for discipline inspection.

The People’s Procuratorate of Wenzhou said the man, Yu Qiyi, “suffered an accident” Monday night and died in hospital at 3:15 am on Tuesday. However, Yu’s family slammed claims his death was accidental, insisting photos circulated online [see Shanghaiist] show he had bruises and appeared to have been bitten.

[…] On Monday night, staff from Yu Qiyi’s company rang his family to inform them he had been hospitalized and his life hung in the balance. Family and friends rushed to the hospital, only to learn Yu junior had died and had bruising over much of his upper-body.

[…] The hospital listed the cause of Yu’s death as drowning, noting he was unconscious when admitted for treatment, his father said.

Another disputed shuanggui death occurred in September, when the family of a retired official from Hunan rejected official claims that he had committed suicide. Photos of his apparently bruised body led to speculation that he had been beaten and murdered: “Inspectors,” one netizen commented, “you guys are as fierce as Japanese bandits!”

The Dui Hua Foundation noted in 2011 that shuanggui—whose name refers to the “dual designation” of the time and place of an investigation—enjoys some popular support, fed by anger at official corruption and other abuses of power. “Sadly,” it added, “acceptance of shuanggui seems to have seeped into international human rights circles and resulted in a dearth of relevant research and advocacy.” But The Guardian’s Jonathan Kaiman reported that state media coverage of Yu’s death might signal positive, if limited, change:

Critics say shuanggui detainees, bereft of legal protection, are particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses. According to Flora Sapio, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong who has written a book on the subject, Xinhua’s sympathetic coverage could represent a high-level decision to begin addressing the rights of detainees while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged.

“What they’re trying to do is get people in the system to treat criminal suspects in a different way,” she said. “At the same time you, as the party state, want to be the only voice with the power to talk on matters of justice.”

The vast majority of shuanggui detainees stand no chance of rescuing their careers and many kill themselves in detention. Most cases are eventually transferred to the judiciary, where they usually end in death sentences or long imprisonments. Bo Xilai, the disgraced Chongqing party chief, spent 10 months under such detention before his case was sent to the courts in January. He has yet to be formally tried.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Global Times, party discipline, prison abuse, prisoners, prisoners' rights, Shuanggui, state media, wenzhou, Xinhua
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The source said Wang’s food and accommodation were better than expected. “Wang lives in a single-room which has everything one could expect to find, including a television to watch and newspapers and magazines to read,” the source said.

However, he has no computer and no access to the internet.

He is being held in Qincheng Prison, which is administered by the Ministry of Public Security and was built to hold officials above vice-ministerial level.

[…] The source said some supporters from Chongqing or Wang’s hometown in Liaoning province had taken dishes of dumplings to the prison and dedicated them to Wang on the eve of Lunar New Year last month. “It was a heartfelt gesture even though he [Wang] failed to receive the gifts,” the source said.

Confiscated dumplings aside, Wang’s reported circumstances are rather softer than those he is said to have presided over as police chief. The municipality’s new administration has promised to “banish” his and Bo’s influence. Supporters of Bo, who is still awaiting trial, gathered in Chongqing on Thursday to protest the exorcism. From Patrick Boehler at South China Morning Post:

“The people of Chongqing do not welcome an organised crime lawyer,” one banner read, according to photos that spread on Sina Weibo and forums. “Fight organised crime, eliminate the evil.” Many of the comments on Weibo reflected some nostalgia for Bo’s rule, which ended last year and became China’s most spectacular political scandal in decades. “I only trust Bo Xilai,” one person commented on the photos. “Justice will prevail.”

The red banners they were holding were directed against lawyer Li Zhuang, who is leading appeals against what he says were politically motivated convictions during Bo’s tenure. He himself has been sentenced to two and half years in prison for fabricating evidence in 2010. The small protest shows that Bo, son of revolutionary hero Bo Yibo, still has at least some support in his former Central Chinese power base.

Li himself has memorably described Bo and Wang’s rule as “like a crazy mouse on a rollercoaster going to a slippery slide“.

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@老聊V: Is it true: One thin and one thick, like peas in a pod?

@老聊V：求证：一薄一厚，成难兄难弟了？

March 20, 2013 at 2:57 p.m. (via FreeWeibo)

In this undated photo, now wiped from Sina Weibo, Bo Xilai converses with General Xu Caihou during a National People’s Congress (NPC) session. Bo has since been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and awaits trail. His name has often been a “sensitive word” online, blocked from search results on various platforms, since his former police chief Wang Lijun fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu last February. Since Bo’s surname (薄 Bó) is the same character for “thin” (薄 báo), netizens have at times referred to him as “Not-Thick Xilai.”

Xu Caihou was not seen at this year’s NPC, fueling rumors that he, too, has been brought down by a right-hand man [zh]. One of the outgoing vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xu is suspected of involvement with the corruption case of former Lieutenant General Gu Junshan, who was removed from his post in February 2012. Weibo user @老聊V sees the link in his given name, Caihou: the second syllable (厚 hòu) means “thick.”

Via CDT Chinese.

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According to news portal China.com.cn Huang yesterday urged judges to watch these types of foreign films as they would improve their ability to make decisions on important legal cases. But, he added, they should leave their viewing until Sundays – their day off.

[…] Watching action-hero films, Huang said, would improve judges’ abilities to balance emotion with rational thinking when making decisions.

Huang also encouraged judges to study Western courtroom dramas, particularly films about American jury trials in which defendants and plaintiffs try to influence the jury’s final decision.

Sadly, Huang did not offer specific recommendations, but the recent unblocking of film site IMDb may assist English-literate judges in their research.

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About 2,200 members of the 12th CPPCC National Committee will discuss major issues including the election of new leaders of the top advisory body and proposals for the coming National People’s Congress (NPC) on Tuesday. They will also review government work reports and hear recommendations for improvement.

“This year’s two sessions have a distinct feature, which is to witness the transition of the top government leaders,” Yun Jie, director of the administration research department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday, adding that a smooth leadership transition is crucial to China’s future over at least the next five years.

Chi Fulin, director of domestic reform think tank the China (Hainan) Institute for Reform and Development, expects the meetings to shed light on China’s future reforms because NPC deputies and CPPCC members will make proposals to the government on issues concerning people’s livelihoods and state affairs.

Lü Xinhua, a CPPCC spokesman, said 840 proposals had been submitted by members as of Saturday noon. The Global Times found many of the proposals tackle issues including fighting corruption, institutional restructuring and environmental protection, particularly curbing air and water pollution.

While last year’s congress was held amid the breaking scandal involving former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai, this year’s congress aims to refocus public attention elsewhere. From the New York Times:

Most analysts agree that the proceedings this year will ignore the plight of Mr. Bo, who is being detained awaiting prosecution on charges of corruption, abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

This year, the party’s new top leaders, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, have paved the way for the 13-day session with vows to end flagrant privileges and self-enrichment by officials and their families. They have also vowed to create a more efficient government, and reduce the acrid smog that has enveloped Beijing and other northern Chinese cities for weeks this winter.

“They’ve already taken many steps that have raised hopes among ordinary people — now we’re looking for signs that the hopes can be satisfied,” said Deng Yuwen, an editor for The Study Times, a weekly newspaper published by the Central Party School in Beijing. “The congress won’t have any breakthroughs, but it can indicate where and how fast the leaders want to take things.”

Yet the congress itself is widely viewed as a rubber stamp, with any debate or negotiations taking place behind the scenes. For the many journalists who attend the proceedings, it can be difficult to gain access to key players or to inside information about how proposals are introduced and debated. The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time reports:

While delegates to the two meetings will get to discuss key plans for streamlining the government and even make recommendations, it’s hard to conceive of this pageant as much more than a talk shop when there is only one full session a year.

The quest for authoritative and objective reporting might be easier with a little less secrecy surrounding even the simplest information. A list of all delegates to the advisory body was released without explanation of what any of the more than 2,000 representatives did to get into this august body. Even the time of the CPPCC’s opening session was kept under wraps until the last moment – and they were similarly coy with the closing date for the parliament session, which formally opens Tuesday.

That presents a bit of a challenge for serious news coverage, leaving state media to occupy the role of stenographer. CPPCC chairman Jia Qinglin noted that over the last five years the advisory body had organized more than 500 in-depth studies, zeroing in on the economy, people’s livelihood and regional development, state media reported. Xinhua revealed that a total of 28,930 proposals had been submitted by CPPCC members over the past five years, and 26,583 of these had been addressed. There were no details on which had actually made it into policy or law.

For domestic media, reporting on the congress is tightly proscribed. CDT recently translated a list of ten topics that are off-limits for reporting during the session.

One piece of data – the annual military budget – was not revealed at the press conference on the eve of the session’s opening as expected [See update below]. As AP reports:

The legislature’s spokeswoman defended booming military spending Monday, saying the vast investment has contributed to global peace and stability, though she did not announce the coming year’s percentage increase, as usually has been done on the eve of the legislature’s opening.

With China now the world’s No. 2 military spender after the U.S., the amount of this year’s increase will be a barometer of the complicated relationship between Xi and the politically influential military. A big boost would show Xi wants robust backing for the People’s Liberation Army at a time when China has tense territorial disputes with neighbors and wants to reduce U.S. influence in the region. A smaller increase would show that Xi feels he already has strong military support without the need to pander to its recent demands for ever-larger outlays.

Growth in the military budget should match or exceed last year’s rate, if only to keep up with rising inflation, said Ni Lexiong, a military expert at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. Tensions with Japan and others, he said, should ensure a bigger voice for the military.

Other changes that are expected to be announced during the congress include an administrative reorganization of government ministries. Notably, the scandal-plagued Ministry of Railways is expected to be demoted and broken into commercial and operational arms. From Reuters:

“Part of the Ministry of Railways will be merged with a super-Ministry of Transport,” said a second source who has leadership ties, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions for speaking to foreign reporters. The source was referring to the operations of the railways.

A state-owned enterprise will absorb the ministry’s commercial arm, which has responsibility for passenger ticketing and freight operations, the sources added.

The Railways Ministry has faced numerous problems over the past few years, including heavy debts from funding new high-speed lines, waste and fraud. The government has pledged to open the rail industry to private investment on an unprecedented scale.

Individual delegates to the CPPCC and other activists have issued public calls for specific reforms at the NPC. As the New York Times reports, some delegates are calling for an end to re-education through labor, or laojiao, camps, following vague promises from the government on the issue:

“The reeducation-through-labor system to a certain extent makes citizens live in fear,” said Dai Zhongchuan, a delegate and law professor from Huaqiao University in Fujian Province, in a report by china.com.cn, the news portal of the State Council Information Office and the National Internet Information Office.

“Not to go through the courts to decide on a crime is to deprive and limit personal freedoms. Not to take steps to restrict and monitor this can very easily lead to the abuse of power,” said Mr. Dai.

Human Rights Watch issued a letter to Xi Jinping calling for the abolition of laojiao and a number of other reforms.

But as the New York Times article quoted above points out, deeper political reforms are unlikely to come to fruition at the current congress:

The apparent scaling back of the plans for administrative changes reflects how difficult it will be for the leadership to deliver on promises to free up the economy from state-owned enterprises and fight corruption, while still preserving single-party rule, said Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore. “In all these issues, there’s the same basic problem of deep distrust between the people and the government,” Mr. Zheng said. “Because there is so much distrust, the government is reluctant to make deep reforms. What they call reforms turns out be reassigning powers within government, not giving up powers to society. That’s not real reform — and then people feel increasingly frustrated.”

UPDATE: Early Tuesday morning Beijing time, Xinhua released the military budget:

China plans to raise its defense budget by 10.7 percent to 720.2 billion yuan (114.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 2013.

— Xinhua News Agency (@XHNews) March 5, 2013

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In the heady days of the early post-Mao years, as China began opening to the world, a youthful Xi Jinping attended a fortnightly study group with other top leaders’ children to network, enjoy friendship and make sense of the change around them.

Mr Xi, now general secretary of the Communist Party, stayed close with the group as they worked the long and sometimes treacherous path towards the apex of the party, as their fathers had before them, and came to identify as Hongerdai, or “Second Generation Red”.

[…] The Mao faithful are hoping, and liberal intellectuals and private entrepreneurs are worried, that Mr Xi will symbolically foreclose any short-term possibility of political reform by holding a big celebration of Mao’s 120th birthday at the end of this year.

“This is a big test,” said He Weifang, a lawyer who was involved in building the political case against Bo Xilai. “This is an important occasion and requires Xi to deliver a speech or make some decision.”

At Foreign Policy, Garnaut shows a 2006 photo including the reunited study group which, he writes, “illustrates their dominance over the government and the economy”:

In the middle row in a tan jacket stands businessman Hu Shiying, who runs a plethora of official and quasi-official organisations ranging from martial arts to green technology. The convenor of the close-knit study group, Hu is the son of Hu Qiaomu, Chairman Mao Zedong’s main secretary. […]

[…] Standing next to him is Xi, the son of a vice premier; then Wang Qishan, the son-in-law of a vice premier and a member of China’s top decision making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, where he’s in charge of fighting corruption. Wang stands next to Liu Xiaojiang, who as Navy Commissar is one of the most important officials in the PLA Navy; Liu is also the son of a general and the son-in-law of former Party boss Hu Yaobang.

[…] On Saturday, at the fellowship’s reunion during China’s annual Spring Festival holiday, [Hu Shiying's sister, Hu] Muying urged her fellow princelings to get involved in “affairs of state” — and that they are, continuing the tradition of their ancestors. When the photo appeared on the website, the princelings were described as “brothers and sisters.” At a December speech commemorating Mao’s 119th birthday, Hu described his “eyes welling with tears” when singing revolutionary songs. “We are Mao’s family members,” he said.

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“He was on hunger strike twice and force fed,” one source told Reuters, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case. It was unclear how long the hunger strike lasted.

“He was not tortured, but fell ill and was taken to a hospital in Beijing for treatment,” the source said, declining to provide details of Bo’s condition and whereabouts which have been kept under wraps since his downfall.

[…] The recent lack of information about the case – Bo has not been seen in public since last March – harms the government’s credibility in the eyes of the people, said Bao Tong, the most senior official jailed over the 1989 Tiananmen protests.

“It’s not normal, too much time has past,” Bao told Reuters, referring to the lack of information from the government about the case.

“This is not good for the party’s image. They have not thought about this clearly. If they are able to properly deal with a big shot like Bo Xilai then they will increase people’s trust in the party,” he added.

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In November 2011, just days after Mr Heywood’s body was discovered inside a Chongqing hotel room, Mr Wang allegedly disguised himself as an “old man” and “snuck” into the British Consulate-General in the city of Guangzhou.

[...] A spokesperson for the British Embassy in Beijing said: “We don’t have any record of any such meeting. We have no record of Wang Lijun visiting the consulate at that time.”

[...] Before fleeing to the US consulate in Chengdu on February 6 2012, Mr Wang “contacted officials at the consulates of the United Kingdom and Germany in Chongqing”.

British officials have confirmed that Mr Wang did set up a meeting at the UK consulate in Chongqing but say he failed to show up.

See more on Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai via CDT.

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In China, “bureaucracy lit” is a hot genre, far outselling spy stories and whodunits as the airport novel of choice. In these tales of overweening ambition, the plot devices that set readers’ pulses racing are underhanded power plays, hidden alliances and devious sexual favors. The current craze began in 1999 with “Ink Painting,” by Wang Yuewen, and has become so intense that last year a deputy bureau chief who writes a series under the pseudonym Xiaoqiao Laoshu was named China’s 17th-richest author. “Officialdom lit” is hugely popular, not just as a peek behind the curtains, but also as a go-to guide for aspiring cadres in search of their own sycophancy strategies.

[… But t]he trifling plots of bureaucracy lit look positively petty compared with the grand crimes surrounding the downfall of one of China’s highest-flying politicians, Bo Xilai, formerly the Communist Party secretary of Chongqing, whose wife was found guilty of murdering a former British business partner. Bo’s wife — or a woman rumored to be her plumper stand-in — was given a suspended death sentence, while Bo’s former police chief got 15 years for abuse of power, corruption and defection. Bo himself is facing a criminal investigation into charges including abuse of power, corruption, improper sexual relationships and possible involvement in covering up a murder. It’s hard for any novelist to compete.

Lim goes on to describe the “gargantuan irony” of official celebrations of Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for Literature. Also at The New York Times is a spoiler-laden review of Mo’s Sandalwood Death and Pow! by Ian Buruma, who concludes with a sympathetic assessment of the author’s widely criticized politics:

Perhaps Mo Yan really is in tune with the current Communist regime. Perhaps he simply wants to play it safe. But the political perspective of his fiction is also a reflection of his peasant spirit. To a villager, all politics are strictly local, especially in China, with its vast distances. The capital is far away. National politics aren’t the peasant’s concern. What counts is food on the table, fertility, sex and staying out of trouble, if necessary by appeasing the powerful, be they local or foreign.

[…] To demand that Mo Yan also be a political dissident is not only what the Dutch describe as “trying to pluck feathers from a frog.” It’s also unfair. A novelist should be judged on literary merit, not on his or her politics, a principle the Nobel committee hasn’t always lived up to. This time, I think it has. It would be nice if Mo Yan were more courageous, but he has given us some great stories. And that should be enough.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, books, bureaucracy, civil servants, corrupt officials, corruption, literature, mo yan, Nobel Prize, officials, Wang Xiaofang, yu hua
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On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal revealed that it, too, has suffered attacks focused on its coverage of China. From Siobhan Gorman, Devlin Barrett and Danny Yadron:

In the most recent incident, the Journal was notified by the FBI of a potential breach in the middle of last year, when the FBI came across data that apparently had come from the computer network in the Journal’s Beijing bureau, people familiar with the incident said.

[…] Among the targets were a handful of journalists in the Beijing bureau, including Jeremy Page, who wrote articles about the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in a scandal that helped bring down Chinese politician Bo Xilai, people familiar with the matter said. Beijing Bureau Chief Andrew Browne also was a target, they said.

[…] “Evidence shows that infiltration efforts target the monitoring of the Journal’s coverage of China and are not an attempt to gain commercial advantage or to misappropriate customer information,” Paula Keve, a spokeswoman for Journal publisher Dow Jones, said in a written statement Thursday. Dow Jones is a unit of News Corp.

The Times noted that Bloomberg News had also been attacked following its investigation of Xi Jinping’s family last year, and that security firm Mandiant had compiled a list of other targeted journalists. The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon added on Twitter that a 2011 intrusion into his own computer had also been aimed at “specific China-related files”. Numerous other targets have been identified elsewhere; in fact, wrote Adam Segal of the Council on Foreign Relations, the “sweeping cyber espionage campaign […] appears endemic”. From Foreign Policy:

As with many cases of cyber espionage, the break-in is assumed to have started with a spear-phishing email, a socially engineered message containing malware attachments or links to hostile websites. In the case of the attack on the security firm RSA in 2011, for example, an email with the subject line “2011 Recruitment Plan” was sent with an attached Excel file. Opening the file downloaded software that allowed attackers to gain control of the user’s computers. They then gradually expanded their access and moved into different computers and networks.

[…] Evidence that the hackers are China-based in all of these cases is suggestive, but not conclusive. Some of the code used in the attacks was developed by Chinese hacker groups and the command and control nodes have been traced back to Chinese IP addresses. Hackers are said to clock in in the morning Beijing time, clock out in the afternoon, and often take vacation on Chinese New Year and other national holidays. But attacks can be routed through many computers, malware is bought and sold on the black market, groups share techniques, and one of the cherished clichés of hackers is that they work weird hours.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence has been the type of information targeted. The emails and documents of the office of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan activists, defense industries, foreign embassies, journalists, and think tanks are not easily monetized and so would apparently have little attraction to criminal hackers. The information contained in them would be of much greater interest to the Chinese government.

Graham Cluley at Sophos’ Naked Security blog summed up the attribution debate:

Security experts brought in by the newspaper have pointed the finger of blame at China. And, in all likelihood, they’re right.

However, it must be remembered that it is extremely difficult to prove who is behind an internet attack like this. That’s because it’s so easy to use compromised computers around the world to route attacks through – disguising the true origin.

Of course, even if China is identified as the starting point of an attack – it doesn’t necessarily prove that it the operation is backed by the Chinese government or intelligence services. It could just as easily be a patriotic group of skilled, independent Chinese hackers upset with how the Western media is portraying their country’s rulers.

But let’s not be too naive… In all probability, the New York Times’s conclusion is correct, and this attack was sanctioned by the powers that be in Beijing.

NPR’s Neal Conan raised a third possibility: that the campaign might have been initiated privately by a member of Wen’s family, to investigate the investigation.

According to The Times report, the organization’s Symantec anti-virus software detected only one of 45 pieces of intruding malware. Symantec would not comment for the article itself, but in a later statement suggested that the newspaper had simply not bought enough of its products:

“Advanced attacks like the ones the New York Times described in the following article, (http://nyti.ms/TZtr5z), underscore how important it is for companies, countries and consumers to make sure they are using the full capability of security solutions. The advanced capabilities in our endpoint offerings, including our unique reputation-based technology and behavior-based blocking, specifically target sophisticated attacks. Turning on only the signature-based anti-virus components of endpoint solutions alone are not enough in a world that is changing daily from attacks and threats. We encourage customers to be very aggressive in deploying solutions that offer a combined approach to security. Anti-virus software alone is not enough.”

While some dissected the NYT attack itself, others pondered its broader significance. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos viewed it in light of Xi Jinping’s professed crusade against official corruption:

The timing of all this is significant for anyone interested in the prospect of reform: this attack has unfolded at the very moment that the new Chinese leadership, under Xi Jinping, has pledged to root out corruption before it destroys the Party. Xi has been making so many gestures of reform that he has persuaded some longtime China-watchers to take him seriously.

[…] The renewed commitment to combating corruption isn’t looking as sincere. On the contrary, this case feels like déjà vu for the Times: in 2004, the Chinese government detained the Times researcher Zhao Yan, accusing him of leaking state secrets. As evidence, the investigators cited a photocopy of one of Zhao’s handwritten notes; the Times pointedly noted, “questions remain about how security agents obtained a copy of the note. One possibility is that agents entered The Times’s Beijing bureau without permission.”

This time, the newspaper claims, the intruders have been exorcised, and no sensitive data was taken. The Times has always maintained that the Wen exposé was based on public records, not human sources. Nevertheless, some feared, the recent episode might raise doubts about its ability to protect such sources in future. At Slate, Farhad Manjoo suggested that a deterrent effect might even have been one of the attackers’ goals:

The most important outcome here might be the chilling effect: Now that a Chinese attack on the New York Times is international news, any dissident or potential whistle-blower in China will be wary of talking to journalists at the paper—or, for that matter, all journalists.

In other words, the hack worked. […]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, computer security, cyberattacks, cybersecurity, Dalai Lama, hackers, hacking, journalism, Neil Heywood, new york times, news media, newspapers, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping
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Central Propaganda Department: Follow Xinhua wire copy in covering the “Older House Sister case.” Do not sensationalize the story. Cease production of independent reports and commentary. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：对“房姐事件”按新华社通稿刊播，不炒作，不再自行作其它报道评论。

Gong Aiai, former vice president of Shenmu Rural Commercial Bank in Shaanxi Province, has used at least four household registration (hukou) identifications to purchase multiple properties in Beijing, Xi’an, and Shaanxi worth over one billion yuan (US$160 million). She is not to be confused with “Younger House Sister,” the daughter of former Zhengzhou Housing Administration Director Zhai Zhenfeng, who used two hukou to purchase 11 homes.

Central Propaganda Department: No media or websites are to recommend, discuss, or republish coverage of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：各媒体和网站对《邓小平时代》一书不推荐，不评论、不转载。

Ezra Vogel, professor emeritus of Harvard University, published a sweeping biography of Deng Xiaoping in 2011. Feng Keli’s translation has just been published.

Central Propaganda Department: Strictly adhere to Xinhua wire copy in covering the Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun incidents and related issues. No media or website is to independently produce any other form of report or comment, or to link to other material. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：关于薄熙来，王立军事件及相关问题的报道严格按新华社通稿刊播，各媒体及网站不自行作其他任何形式的报道、打分，也不作链接回放。

Central Propaganda Department: The trial for the July 28 Qidong case will begin soon. If covering the story, all media are without exception to use wire copy provided by Xinhua or the Jiangsu provincial government. Do not send reporters to the scene of the incident or to the court. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：江苏南通启东728案件近日将开庭审理，各媒体如作报道一律采取新华社通稿或江苏省提供的通稿，不派记者到事发地或庭审地采访。

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, censorship, Deng Xiaoping, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Ezra Vogel, Gong Aiai, household registration, hukou, Internet censorship, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, official corruption, Older House Sister, propaganda, Qidong, Wang Lijun, Younger House Sister, Zhai Zhenfeng
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