A public letter that he wrote on January 6, 1989, urging Deng Xiaoping to release all political prisoners, including Wei Jingsheng , in a “massive amnesty” to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, only annoyed the paramount leader further, Fang writes.

[...] Besides a sole public appearance to persuade Anhui students to end street demonstrations in 1986, Fang says he tried his best not to show up at student gatherings, especially the remarkable two-month-long Tiananmen protests, which ended with a bloody military crackdown on June 4, 1989.

After the incident, Fang and his wife, Li Shuxian , a Peking University physics professor, found themselves at the top of the authorities’ list of “black hands” behind the protests.

“If there was something we had contributed to the [democratic] movement, it might be our simple [democratic] message, which had struck a chord … with the public,” Fang writes.

See more on Fang Lizhi via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, democracy, dissidents, Fang Lizhi, June 4th, scientists
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The title refers to an incident in prison when he broke the rules by singing; as punishment, he was ordered to sing 100 songs. When his voice gave out, he was tortured with electric shocks from a baton inserted into his anus.

“I felt like a duck whose feathers were being stripped,” he writes.

[…] Even now, he experiences a recurring nightmare. “I am flying and I see people on the ground with guns and knives running after me,” he said. “But I am a bird without legs, and when I can’t fly anymore, I fall to the ground. The people come nearer and nearer, and as soon as they are about to attack, I wake up filled with terror.”

[…] He sees his mission as a storyteller of human suffering, not as a reformer striving for change in what he calls the “foul pigsty” that is China. “I have no interest in what China will become,” he said. “My suggestion would be that China crumbles into dozens of little countries so that it would no longer be the terrible menace it is now.”

See more on the book and Liao’s incarceration via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: books, June 4th, Liao Yiwu, memoirs, prison abuse, prisoners, prisons, torture
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In May, 1989, while student demonstrators were in the streets of Beijing calling for democracy, I listened as a Western journalist interviewed Fang. At the end, the interviewer asked if there were a way he could pursue follow-up questions if necessary. Fang said “sure,” and gave the reporter his telephone number.

“We’ve heard that your phone is tapped,” the reporter said. “Is it?”

“I assume so.” Fang grinned.

“Doesn’t that…bother you?” the reporter asked.

“No,” said Fang, “for years I’ve been trying to get them to listen to me. If this is how they want to do it, then fine!”

See more on Fang, including Link’s earlier tribute and James H. Williams’ biographical appreciation from China Quarterly and the Forum on International Physics Newsletter, via CDT.

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Post tags: 1989 protests, Beijing, democracy, Fang Lizhi, June 4th, obituary, perry link, scientists, surveillance
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[…] In China, the uprising at Tiananmen Square convinced some members of the Party that the old method of indoctrinating people—which relied on the kind of threats and denunciations we hear from North Korea today—was no longer working in the modern age. Since Soviet-style P.R. had failed them, the Chinese turned to the holy land of public relations—America—and found a new, if unlikely, role model: the late Walter Lippmann, columnist, editor, and advisor to Woodrow Wilson. They were willing to overlook his early anti-Communism in order to embrace his efforts to sway U.S. public opinion to enter the First World War. The Chinese comrades took to quoting Lippmann’s belief in the power of pictures, which, in his words, “magnify emotion while undermining critical thought.”

While the late Kim Jong-il was still threatening to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire,” Chinese propagandists were becoming admiring students of Coca-Cola’s strategy, observing, as one Party textbook put it, that Coke proved that “if you have a good image, any problem can be solved.” To learn the art of modern spin, the Chinese Communist Party studied the masters: a five-day seminar for top propaganda officials made case studies out of Tony Blair’s response to mad-cow disease, and the Bush Administration’s handling of the U.S. media after 9/11.

This revamp has struggled to keep pace with more recent developments such as the growth of weibo and other social media, however. The Financial Times’ Jamil Anderlini writes that Beijing is “losing the virtual propaganda war” in the face of a “wave of mockery and cynicism against government”.

In just the past few years it has become fashionable to be anti-establishment and in private, senior party officials worry they have lost control of the public discourse, which now revolves around Weibo.

The fact that the party used to exercise such a stranglehold over all forms of public expression – from newspapers to television to theatre and fine arts – has probably made the online awakening of petty dissent so much more shocking to the mandarins in Beijing.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: George W. Bush, June 4th, North Korea, propaganda, social media, Soviet Union, Tony Blair, weibo
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Have today’s 20- and 30-year-olds become the amnesic generation? Who has made them forget? By what means were they made to forget? Are we members of the older generation who still remember the past responsible for the younger generation’s amnesia?

The amnesia I’m talking about is the act of deleting memories rather than merely a natural process of forgetting. Forgetting can result from the passage of time. The act of deleting memories, however, is about actively winnowing out people’s memories of the present and the past.

In China, memory deletion is turning the younger generation into selective-memory automatons. Memories of history and the present, yesterday and today are all going through this uniform process of deletion and are being lost without trace.

I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place. It now appears the opposite is true. In today’s China, amnesia trumps memory. Lies are surpassing the truth. Fabrications have become the logical link to fill historical gaps. Even memories of events that have only just taken place are being discarded at a dazzling pace, with barely intelligible fragments all that remain for people to hold on to.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accountability, famine, great leap forward, June 4th, PRC history
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The image of Peng in a green military uniform, her windswept hair tied back in a ponytail as she sings to helmeted and rifle-bearing troops seated in rows on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, contrasts with her appearances this week in trendy suits and coiffed hair while touring Russia and Africa with Xi, waving to her enthusiastic hosts.

“I think that we have a lot of people hoping that because Xi Jinping walks around without a tie on and his wife is a singer who travels with him on trips that maybe we’re dealing with a new kind of leader, but I think these images remind people that this is the same party,” said Kelley Currie, a China human rights expert for the pro-democracy Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia.

“It’s using some new tools and new techniques, for the same purposes: to preserve its own power.”

[...]

“The photo probably has a negative impact more so internationally than domestically,” said Joseph Cheng, a political scientist at City University of Hong Kong. He said more scrutiny of Peng is likely and such images could raise questions about Xi’s interest in reforms.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: June 4th, Peng Liyuan, People's Liberation Army, Xi Jinping
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Where the old guard of Chinese contemporary art lived through the Cultural Revolution, the experiences of this new generation are more rooted in the everyday competition of urban life, and the rapid changes that China has gone through as they grew up. For one installation, the 30-year-old artist Li Liao laboured at a Foxconn factory for 45 days. With his wages he bought the very iPad Mini model he had been assembling. He displays it—alongside his work overalls, identity badges and contract—as “Consumption”. (The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos has posted an interview with Mr Li.)

But they are not entirely divorced from the past. In another work, Zhao Zhao, a 30-year-old former assistant of Ai Weiwei, cut cubes out of stone Buddha statues that had been destroyed by Red Guards, “to return them to their original state…in a repetition of history”. And that tank fashioned from leather cannot help but hold a particular charge in a post-1989 Chinese setting, even if the artist who conceived it, He Xiangyu, was only three years old when those tanks rolled into central Beijing.

Bao Dong, himself 33 and one of the exhibit’s two curators, said that “since 2000…China’s artists no longer only face an autocratic system but one of soft power. The market and capitalism [is] a soft, invisible cage.” It takes just as much courage to be original and daring in these conditions, he thinks, and such is the challenge for young artists who have “grown up in a society and culture beset by binaries, constantly toggling between extremes”.

Photographs and more information on the exhibition are available at the Ullens Center’s website.

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Post tags: art, art exhibition, artists, Cultural Revolution, Evan Osnos, Foxconn, IPad, June 4th, Red Guards, Tiananmen Square
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The book was a long time in the making and has come at huge personal cost. Faced with the threat of more prison if he had it published abroad, he decided to flee China in 2011, leaving his mother and others behind.

“They were watching my emails and they knew I was in touch with editors in Germany and Taiwan,” he said at the launch of For a Song and a Hundred Songs in Paris.

“They said I couldn’t publish the book, and if I did, they would put me in prison again, this time for at least 10 years … The German and Taiwan editors got worried about my safety and they pushed back the publication date.

“All in all, they pushed it back three times. The third time, I decided to escape.”

Liao discussed the book’s origins with Mariana Grépinet (article in French) at Paris Match:

This book almost never saw the light of day. Why is that?

I started writing it upon leaving prison. I’d formed the habit of scribbling poems in very small writing, because they only gave us pencil and paper for a couple of hours each month. The first time, it took a little over a year. I had over 300,000 characters! On April 4th, 1995, the police came and confiscated my manuscript. At that point, I wasn’t using a computer, I wrote it all by hand. So I had a choice: I could forget about it, or rewrite the whole thing. I spent two years rewriting it. That was a formidable memory exercise! And paradoxically, it helped a lot with the literary structure as well as my reports on the dregs of Chinese society: I was able to record everything down to the slightest details …. Then the police came back. I’d written even smaller so I could hide the pages more easily, but they stole it again anyway. The third time, I had a computer, a big one, and took the precaution of making extra copies. Of course, each version was different. Only the police could say which was best: they are my most loyal readers!

[…] You seem bitter ….

In China, the air, the blood, the milk, and even the values are polluted. If the west continues to import from China, it too will end up as one vast dustbin.

Fragments of Liao’s time in prison can be seen in Nineteen Days, his recollections of June 4ths from 1989 to 2009, translated by Wenguang Huang and published in The Paris Review:

June 4, 1993

I was transferred from the No. 2 Sichuan Provincial Prison in the suburbs of Chongqing. I will serve out the rest of my sentence at the No. 3 Prison in Dazu County, in northern Sichuan Province. Tonight, a dozen convicted counterrevolutionaries gathered spontaneously in the courtyard, squatting down and silently watching the sky like those fabled frogs stuck at the bottom of a deep well.

I was holding a flute in my hand. The crowd surrounded me, asking me to play a tune. I was still an amateur, though, and hadn’t yet mastered the instrument. I became really nervous in front of the crowd and played out a string of dissonant notes.

Li Bifeng, an inmate, patted me on my shoulder and said: “Old Liao, I’m glad that you will be released soon.” Another inmate, Pu Yong, who died soon after his release, interrupted us: “We will all be released soon. I bet you that on the fifth anniversary, the verdict will be overturned and all of us, no matter what type of sentences we are serving, will be released.”

In November, Li was sentenced to 12 years in prison for charges related to a property deal. According to Liao, the case was actually motivated by officials’ misplaced suspicions that Li had financed his escape to Germany.

See also Philip Gourevitch on Liao’s move to Germany at The New Yorker, and an interview with Ian Johnson at The New York Review of Books soon afterwards, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: exiles, France, Germany, June 4th, Liao Yiwu, prison, prisoners, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square, writers, writers and literature
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Zhao pressed forward with bold political reforms while in office, but he was never seen in public after May 19, 1989, when he made a tearful appeal in Tiananmen Square for pro-democracy demonstrators to leave. He has since become a symbol of thwarted political reform.

Du Guang , a veteran Central Party School scholar, wept and said Zhao had died while still smeared by false charges and he could never forget him. “Zhao initiated political reform but regrettably everything was terminated after June 4, 1989,” said Du, who helped found a semi-official think tank that analysed reform issues in 1988 but was forced to close after the Tiananmen crackdown.

People who visited Zhao’s home yesterday bowed in the mourning room, where a large picture of a smiling Zhao was surrounded by dozens of flowers, including ones from his former aide Bao Tong , who is under house arrest in Beijing.

Some netizens also commemorated Zhao online, though searches for his name remained blocked on Sina Weibo, and posts which mentioned him directly were reportedly removed. Many, though, had no idea who he was:

Just re-Weibo’d a photo of Zhao Ziyang, 1-17 the anniversary of his death in 2005.Typical of comments was this one: 弱弱的问一下，他是谁？

— David Moser (@david__moser) January 18, 2013

“If I may ask, who is he?”

At The New York Times, meanwhile, Andrew Jacobs reported the death of another “largely forgotten” figure of the era: General Yang Baibing, who led the suppression of the protests in 1989 but was later sidelined for conspiring to usurp Jiang Zemin’s succession.

Among democracy advocates, General Yang is best remembered for carrying out Deng’s order to clear unarmed demonstrators occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the spring of 1989. In May, his older brother appeared on television with Li Peng, the prime minister at the time, to justify the imposition of martial law to quell demonstrations that had paralyzed the heart of the capital. As general secretary of the Central Military Commission and the army’s political commissar, General Yang mobilized troops whose gunfire would claim hundreds if not thousands of lives.

[…] In recent years General Yang was said to have sought a publisher for his memoirs, which included a justification for the use of force against the Tiananmen Square demonstrators. Bao Pu, a publisher in Hong Kong, said party leaders had rejected the manuscript, presumably because it broached a subject that remains taboo here.

Mr. Bao, whose father was purged as Communist Party secretary general for opposing the use of force in Tiananmen Square, said many historians were eager to know whether in his memoirs General Yang had expressed regret for the killings.

“Thanks to the Yang brothers, China’s only military victory of the last 30 years involved cracking down on its own people,” Mr. Bao said. “You can’t help but wonder if he had any reflection on that.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bao Tong, Central Military Commission, June 4th, Li Peng, Tiananmen Square, Zhao Ziyang
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A source close to Guangdong’s provincial government said Wang Genghui, a deputy editor-in-chief of Nanfang Media Group, which owns the newspaper, had taken over from Huang Can, Southern Weekly’s editor-in-chief since 2009. Huang had been sidelined and was likely to be transferred to another post in the group.

“Wang has a rather popular image as he is more willing to listen to editors and journalists,” the source said. “But this is likely to be a transitional role to restore normal operation at the newspaper as soon as possible.”

This week’s newspaper included a veiled protest saying that editorial procedures should be respected and made corrections – a typographical error, the erroneous numbering of the edition and a factual flaw that said flood control work by “Yu the Great” happened 2,000 years ago, instead of 4,000 years ago.

A comment below the corrections, signed by editorial staff, read: “Newspaper mistakes are always in black and white. In every link of editing and publishing a newspaper, its standard processes should always be respected and followed. We have never been more keenly aware of this.”

A report at Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, meanwhile, described Xi Jinping’s alleged displeasure at propaganda chief Liu Yunshan’s handling of the affair. Though the account is based on information from unnamed sources, Bill Bishop commented in his Sinocism newsletter that “[I] hear from other reporters that this report could be credible, that this paper has had other scoops recently..if true then very interesting.” One sign of the report’s accuracy might come in or after March when, it predicts, Guangdong propaganda chief Tuo Zhen will be removed from his post.

At a meeting in Zhongnanhai in Beijing on the night of Jan. 9, Xi, visibly displeased, asked if the media control division was not adding to confusion, sources familiar with the discussions said.

[…] Liu had decided to impose penalties, including dismissals, against editors and reporters who disobeyed the order. But Xi gave instructions not to punish journalists who protested the propaganda department, according to a party source formerly involved in media control.

Xi has apparently attempted to contain the fallout even by accepting demands from Southern Weekly reporters.

He decided to remove the chief of the propaganda department of the Guangdong provincial party committee, who led prior screening of the Southern Weekly.

The official is not expected to leave the post until at least March, when the National People’s Congress is scheduled to convene, because an immediate removal would reveal confusion within the party.

In particular, Xi reportedly suggested, Liu’s order for other outlets to republish a Global Times editorial expressing the Party line had turned a local problem into a wider one. (The order was conveyed by a Central Propaganda Department directive obtained and published by CDT.) Certainly, it spread the stand-off as far as Southern Weekly’s half-sister, the Beijing News, which initially refused to republish the article at all, and eventually buried an abbreviated version under a non-committal headline deep within the paper. At Reuters, Sui-Lee Wee described what had threatened to become the Beijing News’ last stand:

“This is the first time in China’s history, with the exception of June 4th, that there’s been such a large-scale collective protest by Chinese journalists against the central government’s propaganda department’s restrictions and suppression,” said Cheng Yizhong, who co-founded the Beijing News with Dai [Zhigeng], referring to the Tiananmen Square protests.

But Cheng said he expected no improvement in freedoms, predicting authorities would try to pre-empt any direct challenges by strengthening controls over social media. Cheng was arrested in 2004 on embezzlement charges that his supporters said were politically motivated. He was later released.

The editor at the Beijing News said management had warned staff not to talk about the incident, especially to foreign reporters, who “could make the higher-ups lose face”.

“It’s possible that after this, they might settle scores.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Asahi Shimbun, Beijing News, Cheng Yizhong, Guangdong, June 4th, Liu Yunshan, media censorship, news media, newspapers, press freedom, Southern Media Group, Southern Weekly, southern weekly protest 2013, Tuo Zhen, Xi Jinping
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10. Bo Guagua: Son of a Fallen Princeling, April 14, 2012

9. Wang Lijun: Tip of the Iceberg?, February 13, 2012

8. Sichuan Earthquake Likely Manmade, December 13, 2012

7. Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen, June 3, 2009

6. Directives from the Ministry of Truth: Naked Officials, August 13, 2012

5. China Begins to Turn Against Iran, January 19, 2012

4. Orgy Photos Making Awkward Waves on Web, August 16, 2012

3. Sensitive Words: The Tiananmen Edition (Update), June 3, 2012

2. Zhang Ziyi Denies Bo Rumours, May 30, 2012

1. Photos: Bo Xilai (薄熙来)’s Red Text Campaign and Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜)’s Award in Britain, May 23, 2009
(Moved up from #5 in 2011)

Top Ten Most Viewed Stories in 2012 – CDT Chinese

10. Inconsistencies in Refutation of Naked Photos of Lujiang Officials; Netizens Pick Them Apart (Photos)
庐江官员裸照辟谣前后矛盾 网民吐槽分析各施其才（图), August 9, 2012

9. CDT Photo Gallery: Ningbo PX Protests (Photos Deleted from Sina Weibo) 1
数字时代图集：宁波px示威（新浪微博被删图片）1, October 27, 2012

8. Xi Jinping’s Daughter Attends Seminar on Bo Xilai Affair
习近平女儿现身薄熙来风暴研讨会, May 19, 2012

7. Bei Keqin: Complete Written Record of “Documents Transmitted by the CCP General Office” on Bo Xilai, Wang Lijun
倍可亲：“中央办公厅传达文件”
关于薄熙来、王立军部分的文字实录, March 17, 2012

6. Apply Daily: Government Tacitly Allows Protest; “Anti-Japan” Becomes “Anti-Government”
苹果日报｜官方默许示威 反日变反政府, September 16, 2012

5. The Riddle of Hu Jintao’s Rise
胡锦涛的崛起之谜, January 27, 2012

4. British Media: Zhou Yongkang Has Wandering Eye; Murdered His First Wife, Second Is 28 Years His Junior
英媒：周永康非常好色，谋杀前妻，第二任妻子小28, April 22, 2012

3. Video: Real Footage of Qidong Police Attacking Unarmed Citizens
视频：实拍启东警察群殴手无寸铁市民, July 28, 2012

2. Deutsche Welle: China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao complete mp3 audiobook
德国之声：《中国影帝温家宝》mp3音频全集, October 30, 2010

1. The Inside Story between Wen Jiabao and Bo Xilai: Meeting with a Witness (1)
温家宝、薄熙来恩怨内幕：一个亲历者的会议1, May 8, 2012

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Guagua, Bo Xilai, June 4th, naked officials
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The translations are by Rogier Creemers of China Copyright and Media.

1 June 2006, 10:27, Chen Hua

Please use the Xinhua Net text “Wang Xiaochu: Network Operators Must Always Keep the Relationship Between Civilization and Money in Mind” (link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/it/2006-05/31/content_4628229.htm) to replace the text “Minors Network Pulse Project Started” in the special subject section on “initiating the wind of network civilization,” please acknowledge receipt!

1 June 2006, Network Management Office, Duty manager 1

http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2006-06/01/content_6107966.htm

Please place this People’s Daily Net article in the special subject section on running the web in a civilized manner on your website.

2 June 2006, 9:45, Fan Tao, Municipal Network Management Office

Please issue the Xinhua Net text “Our Country Begins a Special Campaign on Six Kinds of Mobile Information Service Price Swindles in June” on the main page of websites and the important news sections of news centers, and leave it there for 24 hours, please acknowledge receipt!

3 June 2006, 22:00, Chen Hua

Continue to expand search and arrangement strength: concerning the 17th Party Congress, the 4 June topic, etc. (Tomorrow’s content), Every channel, every blogging group, every edition must strengthen on-duty supervision and control strength, guarantee that where problems occur, they are rapidly dealt with.

5 June 2006, 9:36, Network Supervision Office, Duty manager 1

In order to convenience the masses to report online unlawful and harmful information, all websites are requested to link to the “Unlawful and Harmful Information Reporting Center” website (http://net.china.com.cn) on their front page. The Reporting Center website logo may be downloaded from the Internet. Please grasp implementation.

5 June 2006, 18:14, Network Management Office, Duty manager 1

In order to guarantee the smooth conduct of the gaokao, before and after the examination period, do not publish negative reports on gaokao migrants, leaking exam questions, mistakes in organization work, etc., during this period, give first place to positive propaganda.

Please pay attention, all websites are to speedily delete reporting of the Yanzhao Metropolitan Daily and other media on forums and websites concerning Tianjin gaokao migrants, with main titles: “The Incident of Tianjin Returning College Entrance Exam Migrants and Investigation Behind the Scenes,” “More than 100 Students from the Huabei Oilfield Have Hukou Problems, College Entrance Exam Migrants Returned,” “Tracking Tianjin Returning College Entrance Exam Migrants,” “How Many More People Are Gaining Ill-Gotten Wealth through the College Entrance Exam,” “On the College Entrance Exam, Tianjin Clears up Hundreds of College Entrance Exam Migrants,” “Focus on the Incident of Tianjin Clearing Up ‘College Entrance Exam Migrants.’” Please pay attention, absolutely do not report on the matter of “college entrance exam [gaokao] migrants” in the near future. Please acknowledge receipt!

7 June 2006, 12:36, Fan Tao

All websites are required to use these two articles from Qianlong Net: Citywide, 6 Unlawful Internet Cafés’ Permits Cancelled, 30 Black Internet Cafés Banned, and Internet Café Management and Coordination Small Group Praises the Good Results of Beijing Internet Café Governance, to replace the old articles in the special subject section on “initiating the wind of network civilization.” Please acknowledge receipt!

7 June 2006, 13:20, Network Management Office, Duty manager

Everyone, the article “The First Cartoon Worldwide with Olympic Mascots as the Theme is Born in China” published on 6 June does not conform to reality, all websites may not reprint it, where it has been reprinted, please delete it immediately.

8 June 2006, 17:13, Network Management Office, Duty manager

Everyone, do not reprint information on “netizens sending posts are summoned by police, and required to write and examination” and corresponding articles, where it has been reprinted, immediately delete it.

2006年6月北京网管办发出的禁令（一）

2006年6月1日10时27分 陈华

请用新华网“ 王晓初：网络运营商要时刻牢记文明与金钱关系”一文（链接：http://news.xinhuanet.com/it/2006-05/31 /content_4628229.htm）替换现“大兴网络文明之风”专题内“未成年人网脉工程启动”一文，收到请回复！

2006年6月1日14时58分 网管办值班1

http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2006-06/01/content_6107966.htm

请把人民网该稿发入自己网站的文明办网专题中

2006年6月2日09时45分 范涛 市网宣办

请在网站首页、新闻中心要闻区转发新华网《我国6月开始专项治理六类移动信息服务价格欺诈》一文 （http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2006-06/01/content_4634235.htm），并放 置24小时，收到请回复！

2006年6月3日22时00分 陈华

继续加大搜索清理力度：有关17大、64话题等。(明天内容个频道、各博客群组、各版块)务必加强值班监控力量，确保发现问题迅速得到处理。

2006年6月5日09时36分 网管办值班1

为便于群众举报网上违法与不良信息，请各网站在首页链接“违法与不良信息举报中心”网站（http://net.china.com.cn）。举报中心网站标识可从网上下载。请抓紧落实。

2006年6月5日18时14分 网管办值班1

为保障高考顺利进行，在高考期间及前后，不要刊发如高考移民、试题泄密、组织工作上的失误等负面报道，在此期间以正面报道为主。

请注意，各网迅速删除新闻、论坛中《燕赵都市报》等媒体近期有关天津高考移民的报道，主要标题有《天津遣返高考移民事件及幕后调查》、《华北油田百 余名学生户口被查出问题 高考移民被遣返》、《天津遣返高考移民追踪》、《还有多少人在发高考的不义之财》、《高考前天津清退数百高考移民》、《关注天津清退“高考移民”事件》。 请注意，近期一定不要报道“高考移民”的事情。收到请回复！

2006年6月7日12时36分 范 涛

请各网用这两条千龙网的稿件：全市吊销6家违法网吧许可证、取缔黑网吧30家（http://beijing.qianlong.com/3825/2006/06/05/1060@3214561.htm）、

网吧管理协调小组赞北京网吧治理成绩好（http://beijing.qianlong.com/3825/2006/06/07/2560@3217798.htm），替换“大兴网络文明之风”专题中的旧稿。收到请回复！

2006年6月7日13时20分 网管办值班

各位：6月6日刊发的’全球首部以奥运吉祥物为主题的动画片在华诞生’一文与事实不符,各网站不得转载,已转载的请立即撤除.

2006年6月8日17时13分 网管办值班

各位，不要转载“网民发帖文被警方传唤要求写检查”的消息及相关文章，已经转载的立即撤除。

These translated directives were first posted by Rogier Creemers on China Copyright and Media on November 26, 2012 (here).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 17th Party Congress, 1989 protests, Beijing, Beijing Internet Instructions, censorship, Censorship Vault, Chen Hua, college entrance exam, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, hukou, Internet cafes, Internet censorship, June 4th, Ministry of Truth, netizens, people's daily, propaganda, Tianjin, Xinhua
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[…] When asked by a reporter if his “four principles of academic freedom” might be seen as contradicting the regime’s “Four Upholds” (the socialist path, dictatorship of the proletariat, CCP leadership, and the leading role of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought), Fang responded: “Is it possible that science, democracy, creativity, and independence are in conflict with the Four Upholds? If so, it’s because the Four Upholds advocate the opposite of science, which is superstition; the opposite of democracy, which is dictatorship; the opposite of creativity, which is conservatism; and the opposite of independence, which is dependency.”

[…] Fang’s research focused on the structure and evolution of the early universe, the formation of galaxies, and the role of dark energy and dark matter. The range of phenomena he was conversant with was extremely broad, from quantum processes to the expansion of the universe. The bulk of his papers might best be characterized as observational cosmology, in that they took the limited data available from astronomical observations – mostly, the spectral lines of light emitted eons ago from impossibly distant objects – and applied many kinds of rigorous mathematical analyses to them, to tease out the patterns and test which theoretical models were consistent or inconsistent with the data. One of Fang’s great skills in science was to recognize the patterns and underlying dynamics of the universe given the observed data, and then to explain it to people in a very simple and direct way. This was perhaps his greatest skill as an observer of Chinese society as well.

Writing shortly after Fang’s death in April, Perry Link also described the connection between the physicist’s work and political views, summarising the arguments he had contributed to a co-authored book review. From The New York Review of Books:

He was good at explaining how, for him, concepts of human rights grew out of science. In an essay in these pages, he named five axioms of science that had led him toward human rights: 1. “Science begins with doubt,” whereas in Mao’s China students were taught to begin with fixed beliefs. 2. Science stresses independence of judgment, not conformity to the judgment of others. 3. “Science is egalitarian”; no one’s subjective view starts ahead of anyone else’s in the pursuit of objective truth. 4. Science needs a free flow of information, and cannot thrive in a system that restricts access to information. 5. Scientific truths, like human rights principles, are universal; they do not change when one crosses a political border.

Fang’s stay in the U.S. embassy was brought back into the spotlight soon after his death by the escape of Chen Guangcheng, who also received shelter there. See ‘Chen Guangcheng Speaks from New York‘ and ‘“Free Citizen”, Uncertain Future‘, at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, Deng Xiaoping, Fang Lizhi, Human Rights, June 4th, Mao era, Mao Zedong Thought, perry link, physics, scientific advancement, scientists
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III, Continuing to do propaganda end education work well to stop the rebellion, put down the riot and stabilize the situation.

At present, among a number of cadres and masses, and especially a number of university students and intellectuals, there still is a confused understanding concerning the truth, the nature and the source of this storm, concerning the policies and measures adopted by the Party Centre and the State Council, and even some erroneous viewpoints still exist here and there. It is necessary to unify people’s thoughts towards the analysis of Comrade Deng Xiaoping and the conclusion of the 4th Plenum, it is also necessary to do great amounts of arduous and meticulous propaganda, explanation and ideological education work. All levels’ Party organizations propaganda departments and the whole body of ideological and political work cadres must vigorously take up this complex and important task.

It is necessary to continue to organize Party members, cadres and the masses to deeply study the Central documents related to stopping the rebellion and putting the riot down. At the same time as earnestly resolving surface problems of ideological understanding, it is necessary to revolve around whether or not China must march the Socialist path after all, or whether it is necessary to persist in Communist Party leadership, and work to resolve deeper-laying ideological problems, fully understand the gravity of this struggle, which relates to the life and death of the Party and the country, fully understand the necessity of determinedly persisting in the Four Cardinal Principles and reform and opening up, fully understand the danger of the international monopolist capitalist scheme to overthrow the Socialist China through “peaceful evolution” schemes, fully understand the long-term nature and arduousness of the struggle against bourgeois liberalization.

It is necessary to target the ideological understanding problems of masses in different areas and at different levels, display facts, discuss reason, all sorts of vivid materials and forms that are easy for the masses to accept to explain this planned, organized and premeditated political rebellion, explain that this is the evil result of the excessive trend of bourgeois liberalization domestically and of anti-Communist and anti-Socialist forces intensifying their ideological and political infiltration. Relevant departments and localities must organize forces to write literary materials systematically exposing the truth of the rebellion and riot and its origins and development, produce a batch of image propaganda works and rapidly distribute them. Clear facts and distinguish right and wrong through exposure. It is necessary to both expose criminals engaging in beating, smashing, robbing, burning and killing, the heads and backbones of illegal organizations, and to expose the schemers, organizers, and inciters behind the screens, to expose these people who have obstinately persisted in their bourgeois liberalization viewpoints for a long time, who were involved in political conspiracy, who colluded with reactionary forces outside the country or the borders or provided Party and State core secrets to illegal organizations. The exposure and criticism of these people is an important content of the cadres and the masses engaging in vivid and realistic Four Cardinal Principles education, and to realistically oppose bourgeois liberalization.

Read the full text of the translation. See also more about the June 4th crackdown via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, ideology, June 4th, propaganda
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CaptainApathy419: What was it like covering the Tiananmen Square protests?

NicholasKristof: I’ll never forget Tiananmen. I was terrified as bullets whizzed over my head. My notebook was stained with my sweat from fear. And that night I saw a level of courage that i’ve never seen surpassed. there were rickshaw drivers who would drive toward the soldiers and pick up kids who’d been shot and drive them to the hospital. they drove toward me, tears streaming down their cheeks, so that i as a foreign reporter could see the carnage. I was awed by their guts.

RedDeadDerp: Do you still feel that sweatshops are still “an unpleasant but necessary stage in industrial development”?

NicholasKristof: yes, i do. i think the critics of sweatshops are right in their criticisms, and on top of those problems some of those factories also have environmental issues (e.g. dump pollution in a river). But the big need in poor countries is jobs, jobs, jobs. And garment factories provide those jobs, often to women who don’t have a lot of other alternatives. i remember a mother in indonesia telling me that her dream for her son was that he work in a sweatshop. My wife’s native area in China, taishan, has been transformed by sweatshops, and women have benefited in particular. In Africa the big problem is that there aren’t enough factories. I know it’s not a popular view, but i think that the one thing worse than being exploited by a foreign investor is being jobless.

supahappyfuntime: Hey Mr. Kristof, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do an AMA. Would you rather fight one horse sized duck, or 100 duck sized horses?

NicholasKristof: Definitely one horse-sized duck. Then I’d distract it with some cracked corn and, as it gobbled it up, I’d jump on its back and take it for a flight. I’m too poor to afford a private plane, so a personal horse-sized duck would be a nice alternative.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: development, industrial pollution, industrialization, June 4th, new york times, nicholas kristof, sweatshops, Taishan, Tiananmen Square
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