推若审查，我即停推。 RT @wenyunchao: @aiww 商人在商言商，道这东东，能像谷歌那样最好，不能也不能强求。

— 艾未未Ai Weiwei (@aiww) January 27, 2012

The new policy has been widely read as a concession to allow Twitter to enter China, in a similar vein to Google’s aborted censorship of search results on Google.cn. The speculation has been fuelled by co-founder Jack Dorsey’s recent visit to Shanghai, though that trip may have had more to do with Dorsey’s e-payment company, Square. Speaking to The Associated Press, Google’s chief legal officer played down the focus on China:

“I think what they (Twitter officials) are wrestling with is what all of us wrestle with — and everyone wants to focus on China, but it is actually a global issue — which is laws in these different countries vary,” Drummond said.

“Americans tend to think copyright is a real bad problem, so we have to regulate that on the Internet. In France and Germany, they care about Nazis’ issues and so forth,” he added. “In China, there are other issues that we call censorship. And so how you respect all the laws or follow all the laws to the extent you think they should be followed while still allowing people to get the content elsewhere …?”

“It’s a tough problem that a company faces once they branch out beyond one set of offices in California into that big bad world out there,” said Rebecca MacKinnon of Global Voices Online, an international network of bloggers and citizen journalists. “We’ll have to see how it plays out — how it is and isn’t used.”

It remains to be seen, for example, how high Twitter will set the bar for “what we believe to be a valid and applicable legal request” for blocking, and where the policy will apply: while the change is intended to allow expansion into countries with “different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression”, the company added that “some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there.” Takedown requests are to be catalogued online at chillingeffects.org/twitter, alongside the current list of copyright infringement notices. See more on Twitter’s claimed commitment to transparency at Ars Technica.

Ai would be sorely missed by many Chinese Twitterers. A recent post on the Sinophone twittersphere by Yaxue Cao at Seeing Red in China described his presence there:

You can’t write about Twitter Chinese without talking about Ai Weiwei. Needless to say, he was among the first people I followed. But within 24 hours I unfollowed him, because when I came back on Twitter the next day, OMG, all I saw was @aiww, nothing but @aiww, screen after screen. I figured that I will hear news about him and interesting things he said anyway from retweets ….

Soon enough, I re-followed him, this time feeling the need for a figure like him: he brings to Twitter Chinese warmth, a sense of confidence (although not certainty), street smartness, and he makes you feel a tad stronger, even though he is under surveillance of 9 cameras and multiple police cars permanently parked outside his gate.

See more on Cao’s post via CDT.

In a recent interview with The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, Ai suggested that the government saw Twitter as a threat akin to Christianity as a potential source of independent community. The comparison arose with reference to the recent departure of writer Yu Jie.

“Internally, since they don’t have a way to discuss issues or communicate, it’s really a deadlock for them, and that keeps creating pressure. They had beaten him—Yu Jie—terribly, because he is related to Christianity, and that is what they hate the most or are scared of the most. They are scared of any form of unity. They wouldn’t be scared of me if I don’t get on Twitter, because on Twitter I can form a community. But, as individuals, they don’t care about you. So they crash down on people quite terribly, and subject people to abuse. I don’t think Yu Jie could stay any longer. In that kind of situation, you just have to say, ‘This is not possible,’” Ai said.

Ai and Osnos also discuss the artist’s iconic and widely coveted Sunflower Seeds, now on display in New York, and the “legal burlesque” of the tax evasion charges which followed his detention last year:

Before I left his house, I asked him he thinks he’ll win his tax case. “No,” he said flatly. “We’re only winning by revealing the truth. We can win in a sense of so many people beginning to understand. They will understand that you cannot win a case, but at least you can say, ‘I have to fight because it’s related to at least thirty thousand supporters.’”

Update: At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Eva Galperin asks “what does Twitter’s country-by-country takedown system mean for freedom of expression?”

… Right now, we can expect Twitter to comply with court orders from countries where they have offices and employees, a list that includes the United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, and soon Germany.

… For now, the overall effect is less censorship rather than more censorship, since they used to take things down for all users. But people have voiced concerns that “if you build it, they will come,”–if you build a tool for state-by-state censorship, states will start to use it. We should remain vigilant against this outcome ….

So what should Twitter users do? Keep Twitter honest. First, pay attention to the notices that Twitter sends and to the archive being created on Chilling Effects. If Twitter starts honoring court orders from India to take down tweets that are offensive to the Hindu gods, or tweets that criticize the king in Thailand, we want to know immediately. Furthermore, transparency projects such as Chilling Effects allow activists to track censorship all over the world, which is the first step to putting pressure on countries to stand up for freedom of expression and put a stop to government censorship.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, censorship, Christianity, google.cn, Rebecca MacKinnon, Twitter, yu jie
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As evangelical schools capitalize on the desire of affluent Chinese families for the prestige of an American education, many Chinese students are learning first-hand how the Bible Belt got its name.

While proselytizing is banned in China, Protestant — and, to a lesser extent, Catholic — high schools are doing their missionary work on this side of the Pacific Ocean. Through placement agents and religious networking, they’re recruiting growing numbers of students from China, most of them atheists, and encouraging them to convert, in the hope that some of them will spread the faith back home.

Plunged with little preparation into an intense religious environment, Chinese students often struggle to fit in. Some shed their skepticism and become Christians, delighting school officials and dismaying their families in China.

Eighty of Ben Lippen’s 108 international students come from China, up from hardly any five years ago, said Emery Nickerson, director of the boarding program. A “large minority” commit to Christianity, he said.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, overseas students, religion, study abroad
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Party members are required to be atheists and must not believe in religion or engage in religious practice, said Zhu Weiqun, a member of the party’s Central Committee and executive vice director of its United Front Work Department in charge of dealings with nonparty groups ….

“Voices have appeared within the party calling for an end to the ban on religion, arguing in favor of the benefits of religion for party members and even claiming the ban on religion for party members is unconstitutional,” Zhu said.

“In fact, our party’s principled stance regarding forbidding members from believing in religion has not changed one iota,” he said.

Many religious practitioners outside the Party, meanwhile, face continued pressure. Last week the AP reported the shutdown of a public Christmas party in Xitan, Zhejiang:

The Xintan [sic] Village Church, in a video posted on YouTube, said the local government authorized the event. But a higher-level official in charge of religious affairs said the believers were asked a day earlier to cancel because regulations forbid worship outdoors and Buddhists in the community complained.

“We told them that any outdoors event of a religious nature is strictly banned from being organized, and that’s what it states in the government rule on religion,” said Zeng Jianhua, deputy director of religious affairs in Ruian city, which oversees Xintan.

Ruian has become home to makers of toys and Christmas ornaments. Xintan bills itself as “Christmas village.” Local factories produced more than $78 billion, or 500 million yuan, in Christmas products this year, prompting local officials to stage a Christmas arts and culture fair last Saturday in celebration. That inspired the Xintan Village Church to hold its own nighttime Christmas party Tuesday, the church statement said.

Video, via Shanghaiist:

Also last week, Christian organisation CHINAaid announced an unprecedented National Day crackdown on a house church in Lhasa, in which 11 members were detained for almost a month. The group published the account of Song Xinkuan, “a Chinese citizen & Christian believer”:

At the NSPA (National Security Protection Agency) office, the officer I met at the very beginning and his young coworker said they would interrogate me according to the law and I was demanded to truthfully answer the questions they were going to ask. I said, “Christianity is a legal religion. Why do you keep saying that we (Christians) are illegal?” They would not allow me to defend or explain for myself and insisted that I answer their questions. In the meantime, another office joined the interrogation, and then the female boss joined us too. The questions they asked became so strange that I did not have answers for them. They asked about some people and events that I had no knowledge of, and they emphasized repeatedly that Christianity is not only illegal in Tibet, but also is an alleged cult that undermines ethnic unity and social stability. I had to state repeatedly that Christianity is a legal religion anywhere in China and I asked them how it had become illegal in Lhasa, Tibet or even an alleged cult?

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, Christmas, religious freedom, religious persecution, Tibet
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In the city of Tianjin, over the course of one summer afternoon in 1870, thousands of residents, led in part by local volunteer militia known as the “Fire and Water Brigades,” stormed the French consulate and a cathedral before turning their sights on an orphanage run by a group of Catholic nuns. Before the day ended, 21 foreigners – including all 16 of the nuns – had been killed, many of them brutally stabbed, beaten, burned, or simply ripped apart by the furious crowd. Three decades of foreign aggression and unequal treaties had created a lot of anger and hostility toward foreigners, and there had been a few instances of foreigners being killed in local disputes, but never before had there been such a display of rage and violence against the foreign presence in China and it didn’t take long for the overseas press to dub the event “The Tientsin Massacre.”

What sparked such fury? Well, the short answer is that you can build concessions, sell opium, and burn a few palaces and people might be pissed off about it, but there are few quicker ways to get a man to take action and do battle than to mess with his kids.

Note the accompanying image of a ‘souvenir fan’ decorated with a picture of the burning cathedral, and compare with the made-in-China Free Libya memorabilia now available in Tripoli.

Kidnapping remains a threat to children in China today, alongside dangers such as road accidents and food contamination: see the trailer for ‘Living with Dead Hearts‘, a forthcoming documentary on child kidnapping in China by Charles Custer, who is currently raising funds for its completion.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child safety, child trafficking, Christianity, France, history, kidnapping, qing dynasty, riots, Tianjin
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Yunnan province, in southwestern China, has long been the exit point for Chinese who yearn for a new life outside the country. There, one can sneak out of China by land, passing through pristine forests, or one can go by water, floating all the way down the Lancang River until it becomes the Mekong, which meanders into Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

So each time I set foot there, in a land where red soil gleams in the sun, I turned restless; my imagination ran wild. After all, having been imprisoned for four years after I wrote a poem that condemned the Chinese government’s brutal suppression of student protesters in 1989, I had been denied permission to leave China 16 times.

I felt very tempted. It doesn’t matter if you have a passport or visa. All that counts is the amount of cash in your pocket. You toss your cellphone, cut off communications with the outside world and sneak into a village, where you can easily locate a peasant or a smuggler willing to help you. After settling on the right price, you are led out of China on a secret path that lies beyond the knowledge of humans and ghosts.

The Huffington Post, meanwhile, has posted Liao’s account of an earlier visit to Yunnan to research his most recent book, ‘God is Red’. (The book’s review in Christian Science Monitor was featured on CDT yesterday.)

“Every inch of soil beneath my feet was red, glittering under the frail winter sun, as if it had been soaked with blood.”

I jotted down this observation in my journal in the winter of 2005 while trekking on a narrow mountain path in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan.

I had met a Christian, known among local villagers as Dr. Sun, a medical doctor. Following his conversion, he quit his position as the dean of a large medical school near Shanghai and came to the rural areas of Yunnan, healing the sick and spreading the gospel. After learning that I was writing a book about Christianity, he promised to take me to the mountainous villages, where he said I could discover extraordinary stories.

Dr. Sun and I set out on a month-long journey that took us deep into the mountains, first by bus and then on a small tractors along perilous mountain paths paved with small rocks. Then, we trudged along on winding red mud trails and reached a cluster of small villages hemmed in by tall mountains. According to Dr. Sun, there was a vibrant Christian community there.

See also news of Liao’s departure from China and a later interview about his reasons for it, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, Liao Yiwu, writers and literature, Yunnan
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Mr. Liao is a “nonbeliever,” as he puts it, but he became mightily impressed with China’s estimated 70 million to 100 million Christians. (By comparison, the Communist Party has about 75 million members.) Their heroic tales of a reliance on the “life-sustaining” message of Jesus Christ “exhilarated me, lifting me out of my drunken depression,” he writes.

When they all go to worship on Sunday – either at a state-approved church or, more commonly, in private homes – China’s Christians tally more than all the churchgoers in Europe. But their influence as the largest formal religion in China (about 5 percent of the population) extends far beyond their numbers. Christian concepts, such as unconditional universal love, are now also seeping into Communist Party policy.

Published by HarperCollins, Liao’s book is called “God Is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China.” Its 18 interviews and essays are a journalistic chronicle of how Christians survived the repressive Mao era as well as a glimpse into why their numbers are rising so rapidly.

One clue: China suffers a spiritual crisis, caused by the collapse of communist ideology and a pell-mell race toward Western-style material prosperity. And China’s native religions, from Confucianism to Taoism, are not sufficient to meet the challenges facing Chinese youth.

“In our society today,” Liao writes, “people’s minds are entangled and chaotic.”

Read more about Liao Yiwu and about Christianity in China via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, Liao Yiwu
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Mr Gao’s older brother, Gao Zhiyi, 57, issued a missing person notice pleading for any information. “August 14 is the end of his five-year sentence and he should be released,” said Mr Gao.

“Our biggest concern now is whether he is still alive. I am worried they have already murdered him. Otherwise why should his family not be told anything about him?”

Mr Gao, who was born into absolute poverty and lived in a cave in Shaanxi province, taught himself law and passed the bar in 1995. In 2001, he was even named as one of China’s top ten lawyers by the Ministry of Justice.

However, he fell foul of the Chinese government after taking on a series of cases involving members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and China’s underground Christian churches.

Reuters reports that the authorities have claimed to have no knowledge of Gao’s whereabouts:

Police officers have told Gao Zhisheng’s family that he is missing or they ignore pleas for information, said Gao Zhiyi. “I’ve tried calling many times, but get nothing,” he added ….

“I’m an ordinary citizen, and there’s nothing I can do,” Gao’s brother Gao Zhiyi wrote in the missing person appeal. “If anyone knows something, please tell his family, and we will certainly show our gratitude,” he wrote.

For more on Gao Zhisheng, see the CDT archives.

Sources:

Gao Zhisheng’s family appeal for his release – Telegraph
Family of missing China rights lawyer seeks news on whereabouts – Reuters

© samuel wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, Christianity, detention, Falun Gong, Gao Zhisheng, lawyers, Shaanxi
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The amiable Mr. Zhang had a propensity for spitting on the lapel of his dark gray suit coat as he preached in a coarse Henan accent about the need for greater religious openness. He founded in 2005 the Chinese House Church Alliance, an organization that brings together dozens of underground church pastors from across China. Unlike in Beijing and other large cities, where the embrace of Christianity is stylish for young and upwardly mobile Chinese, many of the Christians served by Mr. Zhang’s House Church Alliance are those left behind by the country’s newfound economic power.

… At another service at the Beijing Zion church, about 500 miles northeast of Nanyang, … the scene was strikingly different. Women decked out in floral summertime dresses clicked away on iPhones as they waited for Pastor Jin Mingri to begin. At least one Mercedes, Audi or BMW is parked most Sundays outside the office building where Zion is housed ….

The government wouldn’t likely oppose much of what Mr. Jin preaches. He talks a lot about morals and family. Occasionally, however, he’ll delve into politics, at times using biblical allegories to explain repression of Christians in China today.

There are no purely religious questions in China, Mr. Jin told me in one of our conversations, because faith and politics remain deeply intertwined.

Read about suppression of house churches and the parallel resurgence of other religions in China via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, house church, religion, religious freedom, religious persecution, underground churches
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The authorities stepped up a three-week campaign against an underground Christian church on Sunday, detaining hundreds of congregants in their homes and taking at least 36 others into custody after they tried to hold Easter services in a public square, church members and officials said.

[...] Most of those seized on Sunday morning were taken away in buses after they showed up at the plaza, which is not far from several of the country’s top universities. A CNN crew said they were briefly detained and had their credentials confiscated before being turned away by the police.

Several church members, all of whom requested anonymity for fear of further provoking the authorities, say they were confined to their homes by security agents, some as early as Thursday, in an effort to keep them from joining Easter services. ChinaAid, a Christian advocacy group based in the United States, put the number of those under temporary house arrest at 500, although that figure could not be immediately verified.

On Sunday night, Shouwang’s Web site was blocked and its chief pastor, Jin Tianming, could not be reached by phone. In an e-mail circulated last week, church leaders asked parishioners to make their way to the elevated walkway where services were supposed to take place even though they would probably be intercepted by the police.

The letter took note of the upcoming Easter holiday and likened the congregation’s struggle to the tribulations endured by Jesus Christ before his crucifixion.

Read more about the Shouwang Church via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, Easter, house church, religious freedom, Shouwang church
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Police late Saturday also detained Jin Tianming, a senior pastor of Beijing’s Shouwang church, an unregistered Protestant congregation, and other church leaders before releasing them early Sunday, the US-based China Aid group said.

Jin’s detention came after the church called for an outdoor worship meeting following a similar gathering last Sunday that resulted in police rounding up nearly 170 church followers, most of whom were later released.

The action against the church comes amid a growing crackdown on dissent across China in which artists, lawyers, writers, activists and intellectuals have been detained for allegedly calling for “Jasmine” rallies, similar to those that have rocked the Arab world.

The Shouwang church, one of Beijing’s largest “underground” churches, was forced outdoors after the government blocked the rental of its previous place of worship and prevented it from buying a new meeting place, China Aid said.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, house church, religious freedom, Shouwang church
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