If confirmed, Oslo’s move would mark a bold confrontation with the world’s fastest rising economic power and highlight the growing importance of the Arctic, which is opening up for navigation and mineral exploitation as it melts due to global warming.

China’s relations with Norway have been frosty since October 2010, when the Oslo-based Nobel committee announced that Liu, an imprisoned Chinese democracy activist, would be the next peace laureate.

Although the Norwegian government has stressed that the Nobel committee is independent, Beijing has punished its host nation by cutting political and human rights dialogues.

Until now, Norway has tried to use quiet diplomacy to ease the situation but, with little sign of progress, the Aftenposten, Norway’s best selling newspaper, claims the government is preparing to up the stakes.

China has not shied away from its desire for involvement in the development of the rich deposits of natural resources in the Arctic, and recently enlisted the help of Denmark in its campaign to gain permanent membership on the Arctic Council. Still, Business Insider’s Adam Taylor wrote on Wednesday, Norway could be the key roadblock for China.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Arctic Council, Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Prize, norway
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In a lengthy statement, the 38-year-old said government censorship had made him “a non-existent person in the public space”, unable to publish any work on the mainland. But his problems escalated when Liu’s award was announced in October 2010 and “illegal house arrests, torture, surveillance, tracking, and being taken on ‘trips’ became part of my everyday life”.

His family was placed under house arrest and even their phone and internet connections were cut, leaving them in “an endless black hole”. The day before the Nobel ceremony in December, plain clothes officers hooded and abducted him and began beating him in the head and face, he said.

“They stripped off all my clothes and pushed me, naked, to the ground, and kicked me maniacally. They also had a camera and were taking pictures as I was being beaten, saying with glee that they would post the naked photos online,” Yu added.

“They forced me to kneel and slapped me over a hundred times in the face. They even forced me to slap myself … They also kicked me in the chest and then stood on me after I had fallen to the ground.”

Yu devoted a large portion of the statement to describe his treatment after friend and fellow activist Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. The activist group Human Rights in China has posted the full text of the statement, in which Yu also explains his plans now that he has arrived in America:

After arriving in the U.S., my main writing plans for the near future are: publish the Chinese edition of Liu Xiaobo’s biography two months from now and various foreign language editions afterwards. I began writing the biography in early 2009, and it is the only biography of Liu Xiaobo authorized by Liu Xia. I hope, through this biography, to comprehensively introduce Liu Xiaobo’s life, philosophy, and creativity, and give readers around the world, including those inside China, a deeper understanding of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. I will use this book as an opportunity to call on people on every possible occasion to continue to pay close attention to Liu Xiaobo’s and Liu Xia’s fates so that they can be freed as soon as possible.

I also plan to publish a new book, Hu Jintao: Cold-Blooded Tyrant (冷血暴君胡锦涛), within the next six months. This will be the companion book to China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao and will be a eulogy for Hu Jintao as he exits the stage of history. Hu Jintao will be a comprehensive analysis of Hu’s governance and provide analysis and commentary on the major features of the Hu era, including “harmonious society,” “the rise of a great nation,” “China model,” and “stability maintenance.” It will enable readers in China and beyond as well as the international community to see the truth behind China’s economic growth—reckless autocracy, rampant corruption, deterioration of human rights, damage to the environment, moral decline—and that Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are sinners of history whose sins cannot be forgiven.

…

I am a true patriot. There is a line in Macbeth that goes, “I think our country sinks beneath the yoke; / It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash / Is added to her wounds.” I worry and suffer about this. I will make exposing and criticizing the tyrannical rule of the CPC my life’s cause. For each day that this government that has robbed and plundered China’s riches and enslaved and crippled the Chinese people does not fall, I will not stop exposing and criticizing it. I further believe that in the near future I will return to a China that has achieved democracy and freedom. Then, our lives will be like those described in the Bible, “[Behold,] how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” And those kleptocrats and traitors who wrought tyranny, from Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to every wicked state security officer, will be put on trial to await an even more shameful end than that of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and Muammar al-Gaddafi. Let us work together so that that day may come as soon as possible.

See also an AFP video report on Wednesday’s press conference which has been posted to YouTube.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dissident, Liu Xiaobo, torture, United States, yu jie
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In over forty years of writing about China, I have been subjected to many forms of pressure. But this has never happened to me. What had I said this time that attracted the attention of the official shredder? The article, titled “China: Richer but Repressed,” mentioned Ai Weiwei, the outspoken artist and designer of the Beijing Olympics’ Bird’s Nest stadium, who was detained last year for 81 days; Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, now serving eleven years; the blind civil rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng, long under house arrest and prohibited contact with all visitors; and Wang Yi, who published exposes of tainted milk and enforced abortions, and spent a year in detention. I included quotes from books by Harvard scholars. Surely everything I wrote is well known in China, especially to the tiny number of English-reading urban people who buy Newsweek.

Then I learned that a few months earlier, on August 28, 2011, Ai Weiwei had also published a piece in Newsweek that the Chinese censors cut out. In it he called Beijing a “nightmare,” a city of “desperation” in which those who don’t have money or connections “hold no hope.” As for the authorities’ methods of suppressing information about those who are detained or made to disappear, he wrote:

They see you or they don’t see you, it doesn’t make the slightest difference. There are thousands of spots like that. Only your family is crying out that you’re missing. But you can’t get answers from the street communities or officials, or even at the highest levels, the court or the police or the head of the nation. My wife has been writing these kinds of petitions every day, making phone calls to the police station every day. Where is my husband? Just tell me where my husband is. There is no paper, no information.

Of course, as a Chinese citizen, Ai Weiwei risks another round of detention by saying such things. But what is the worst that can happen to a foreign writer who displeases the Party? In China, he can be threatened, even when walking in the street, or his phone can be tapped, deliberately audibly. He can be banned; this is very rare. (It has happened to Perry Link and to me.) Or, if he lives and writes abroad, as I do now, what he publishes in China can be expunged. There are two messages here: we don’t like your ideas, and nothing like this is going to be published in China if we can prevent it.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, censorship, freedom of expression, jonathan mirsky, Liu Xiaobo, media censorship
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In No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems (Belknap/Harvard University, $29.95), the well-­translated collection edited by Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao and Liu Xia — Liu’s wife — Liu demonstrates a considerable amount of anger while retaining his Gandhian nonviolent spirit. Taken together, his essays offer the best analysis I have read of what’s wrong in the People’s Republic of China.

Liu was the prime mover (although not the originator) of Charter 08, the petition signed by several thousand Chinese who demanded an accountable government and freedoms of speech, assembly, press and religion. The petition was the main evidence the Chinese government used against Liu when it sent him to prison in 2009, but his accusers might have reached further still, through his hundreds of articles and poems, and his 17 books. Even his 1988 Ph.D. dissertation, “Aesthetics and Human Freedom,” was “a plea for liberation of the human spirit,” as Link explains in his introduction.

Liu has always been most animated by democracy. This concern underlies his essays on Taiwan, Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union, the failures and lies of the Mao era, the “miracle” of the Deng Xiaoping reforms after Mao’s death in 1976 and, perhaps most emotively, Tibet. Even while Beijing condemned the Dalai Lama as “a wolf in monk’s clothing,” Liu breathtakingly suggested in 2008 that China could solve its ethnic unrest by inviting “the Dalai Lama back to China to serve as our nation’s president. . . . Such a move would make best use of the Dalai Lama’s stature in Tibet and around the world.”

An accomplished poet, Liu pays close attention to the power of language. Noting that the party charged him with “incitement of subversion of state power,” he said this was an excellent example “of treating words as crimes, which itself is an extension into the present day of China’s antique practice called ‘literary inquisition’ ” — a practice exemplified by the 18th-century emperor Qianlong’s purge of subversive books.

Guernica magazine has published one of the essays contained in the book, about a TV mini-series produced by CCTV which explores the rise and fall of great world powers. From the essay:

The group that planned and designed the project included many Chinese scholars who work within the political system but hold values that are liberal and open-minded. The group also interviewed more than a hundred scholars from China and abroad, so the series can be seen as a genuine cooperative effort between academics and CCTV television producers. It largely avoids the propaganda colorations of the past in favor of a relatively objective and neutral narrative voice, and presents the nine world powers in fairly rich historical contexts. It puts special emphasis on Great Britain and the United States, two democratic countries that have had major impacts on world history, and accords a certain affirmation to the value of modern institutions from the West such as free trade, market economies, and constitutional democracy.

A significant point in the genesis of the project is that, according to Ren Xuean, the chief editor of the series, the earliest impetus for its creation came from the very top of the Communist Party of China. On November 24, 2003, Party leader Hu Jintao presided over his Party Politburo’s “ninth collective study session,” the topic for which was “An Historical Investigation of the Development of the World’s Main Powers since the Fifteenth Century.” Two Chinese specialists lectured at that session on the history of the rise and decline of the nine powers in question. Ren Xuean remembers his reaction when he heard about it: “I was listening to the radio one morning on my way to work when I heard that the Politburo was going to study the history of world powers since the fifteenth century—nine great powers over five hundred years. There I was, in the noisy, jammed traffic of Beijing’s Third Ring Road, and a voice was coming at me out of the hoary past. It was exciting!”

Foreign media reported that after the Politburo’s study session was over, the top leaders issued instructions that Party and government officials at all levels study this period of Western history. CCTV’s goal in producing the huge project was to spread the theme from within the Party to the whole of society, to expand the Chinese people’s awareness of the issue, and to prepare them psychologically for China’s own rapid rise. Some of the foreign media speculated that the move was a sign that the top leaders were preparing to initiate political reform.

One would have expected to see a series as important as this aired on CCTV-1, the higher-rated of the CCTV channels. Maybe the authorities put it on CCTV-2 just to try to keep the controversy down, but in any case the series was a major production, appeared on the Party’s main television outlet, and in so doing broke the long-standing policy in the official media of keeping issues of major public concern off the air. It provided the Chinese people, with their pent-up longings to participate in public discussion of any kind, an excuse to speak up, and the torrent of heated comments that gushed forth as soon as the series aired should not, therefore, surprise us. Whether or not the series clearly explains the history of the rise and fall of world powers is of course a matter of individual opinion. What we know of the reactions of the viewing public—whether we speak of netizens or scholars, Chinese or foreigners—can only be summed up as “mixed.”

See also a review of the book from the Wall Street Journal.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: book reviews, Liu Xiaobo
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The brother, Gao Zhiyi, told two news agencies that he had been informed that Gao Zhisheng was in a prison in Shaya County. The brother said he had received an official notice on Sunday telling him that Mr. Gao was now back in prison because a court had revoked his probation, and that he would have to serve three more years.

Mr. Gao, a Beijing lawyer known for taking politically delicate cases, was sentenced to three years of probation in 2006 for inciting subversion of the state. The official Xinhua news agency reported last month that his probation had been revoked.

But human rights advocates say Mr. Gao was never on probation because he had been missing for 20 months, presumably in police custody. Over the years, Mr. Gao has disappeared for lengthy periods and re-emerged to say he had been tortured by security forces.

Gao Zhisheng’s disappearance in April 2010, which the United Nations claims violated international law, marked the third time he had gone missing since the Chinese government shut down his law practice in 2005. The United Nations also expressed concern when the government revoked Gao’s probation last month.

Human rights observers have heavily condemned recently proposed changes to China’s criminal procedure law which would allow the government to secretly detain and torture critics such as Gao, Ai Weiwei, Liu Xiaobo and others. Zhou Xiaohui of The Epoch Times says that Gao’s continued detention offers an opportunity for the United States to walk the walk with regards to its intention to return to Asia and speak up about human rights abuses by China:

By supporting with concrete actions those whom the Chinese regime suppresses, America will strengthen itself by remaining true to itself.

At the same time, such a policy would provide real protection for U.S. national interests. It would give nations in East Asia a clear choice between the Chinese regime and the United States, between tyranny and freedom.

By helping China’s dissidents, the United States will help those who seek for China a future that is harmonious with the universal principles America is based on. America will be supporting those who are its true friends and in doing so win the friendship of the Chinese people.

As the new year approaches, the United States has an opportunity for a renewal of its approach to China. The individual who has most boldly criticized the Chinese regime’s violations of basic human rights is Gao Zhisheng. Let an American foreign policy based on the principles and true interests of the United States begin by rescuing Gao.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, dissidents, Gao Zhisheng, illegal detentions, lawyers, Liu Xiaobo, u.s.-china relations, United Nations, United States
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Chen, 42, was one of hundreds of dissidents, rights activists and protest organizers swept up in a crackdown on dissent from earlier this year, when the ruling Communist Party sought to stifle potential protests inspired by anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world …. Chen’s defense lawyer, Liang Xiaojun, confirmed that Chen is accused of “inciting subversion of state power” for 26 essays he published online and for an overseas magazine …. Chen, who was detained February, signed the “Charter 08″ manifesto for democratic reform that was co-written by Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Two other dissidents from Sichuan detained at about the same as Chen — Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao — have been released.

Human Rights in China has more details and background:

The procuratorate charged in its indictment that, between March 2009 and January 2011, Chen published “inciting articles” on overseas websites, including Democratic China (民主中国), Human Rights in China (中国人权), and China E-Weekly (议报), to subvert state power. The articles cited in the indictment include “The Illness of the System and the Antidote of Constitutional Democracy” (制度之疾与宪政民主之药), “The Growth of the Civil Opposition Is the Key to China’s Democratization” (民间反对派的成长是中国民主化的关键要素), “The Traps of Harmony and the Absence of Equality” (和谐的陷阱与公平的缺席), and “Sentiments from a Hunger Striker on International Human Rights Day” (人权日绝食的感悟) …. Chen has not been permitted to see his family since being detained. His wife, Wang Xiaoyan (王晓燕), and other family members have been repeatedly summoned and harassed by the police, who warned their employers to “watch out for these people.” Authorities also attempted to keep Wang from hiring Liang Xiaojun as defense counsel and then set various obstacles to prevent Chen from meeting with his lawyers—to date, Chen has been able to meet with Zheng Jianwei only twice and with Liang Xiaojun once. Chen’s wife, brother, and sister have also not yet received permits to attend Chen’s trial.

See also news of Chen’s formal charging in March, via CDT.

Update: Chen received a sentence of nine years’ imprisonment, according to The Associated Press:

Liang [Xiaojun] said the trial at a court in the city of Suining in southwestern China lasted about two and a half hours and that the sentence was handed down 30 minutes after the trial concluded.

“We pleaded not guilty. He only wrote a few essays. We presented a full defense of the case, but we were interrupted often, and none of what we said was accepted by the court,” Liang said.

Liang said that after the sentence was handed down, Chen said: “I protest, I am innocent. The governance of democracy must win, autocracy must die.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Charter 08, freedom of expression, jasmine revolution, legal rights, Liu Xiaobo, online activism, Ran Yunfei, subversion, trials, writers
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In two dozen essays and 15 poems written between 1989 and 2009 and a document collection showing Mr. Liu’s path through the courts and into jail, the book offers “one of the most impressive analyses of China today,” as well as an important warning to those hoping the cash-rich country can “save” the world economy, Perry Link, one of three editors, said by telephone.

“The image of China in the West is superficial compared to Liu Xiaobo’s,” said Mr. Link, a leading scholar of modern Chinese literature at the University of California, Riverside.

“He sees the problems, the corruption, the bullying. There is the China that the Communist Party runs, that has so much money and might try to save the euro, and wants to take over the South China Sea, and then what he’s really talking about, the ordinary people and the ordinary problems from below,” he said.

Read more by and about Liu Xiaobo via CDT.

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Post tags: Liu Xiaobo, writers
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Mr Putin beat other candidates such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Yuan Longping, a Chinese agricultural scientist, to nab this year’s “Confucius Peace Prize”, Qiao Damo, one of the organisers, said.

“This April or May, Putin was against Nato’s idea to bomb Libya and he appeared to the world in a peaceful manner,” Qiao explained.

“This year’s peace prize was given to him because his act this year was outstanding in keeping world peace.”

Last year, the prize was awarded to Lien Chan, a Taiwanese politican, who did not claim the prize. It is still uncertain whether Putin will attend the ceremony. The New York Times adds:

“The committee has already notified the Russian Embassy in Beijing,” Mr. Qiao said. “The committee fully respects Mr. Putin’s decision to attend or not to attend the ceremony.”

When asked about the award on Tuesday, Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, told a reporter in Moscow: “We have only heard about the award from the press. We do not know much about the prize.”

The announcement by the committee in Beijing said that since the award had only recently been founded, “it is allowed that the winner doesn’t accept and even rejects it.”

See also: Demise of the Confucius Peace Prize via CDT.

© melissa chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Confucius Peace Prize, Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize, Russia, Vladimir Putin
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Oftentimes, what state-run news outlets don’t say is as important as what they do say. Today, for example, the Xinhua news agency only has a three-paragraph brief on the Liberian and Yemeni women who won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning, and other major sites aren’t covering the news at all. The Xinhua item includes “Backgrounders” on past winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Physics. But there’s no Backgrounder on Peace. Why? Last year’s winner was dissident Chinese writer and human rights advocate Liu Xiaobo, who remains in prison ….

Also absent from Xinhua’s coverage were denunciations of the prize as “a farce” awarded by “clowns” indulging in “Cold War practices”.

Human rights groups, on the other hand, drew attention to the continued imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo and house arrest of his wife, Liu Xia:

Mr. Liu has rarely been allowed to talk to family members since the Nobel committee made its announcement on Oct. 8, 2010, and he has been allowed to leave the prison where he is being held in Liaoning Province only once, according to the groups, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and China Human Rights Defenders. Ms. Liu has been kept under detention in the couple’s home in Beijing but has not been charged with any crime.

“The only thing that would force the government to reassess the decision is if there was some strong international pressure on China in this case, but the pressure is not there,” Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a telephone interview. “There’s no incentive for the government to revisit this decision. We’re talking about a climate where standing defiantly against the West is reaping more political awards than collaborating.”

Human Rights Watch accused the authorities of attempting to deflect criticism by allowing family visits to Liu Xiaobo ahead of the 2011 Nobel announcement and anniversary of his own award:

In early October, the Chinese government allowed Liu’s brothers to release information that Liu had been allowed out of prison briefly on September 18 to see family members. They also said that Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, who has been held under legally baseless house arrest since the prize was announced, was allowed to visit Liu Xiaobo in August. Liu’s brothers’ reports of Liu’s apparent good health were positive news, Human Rights Watch said, but the Chinese government’s consistent refusal until those visits to allow him the family visits permitted under criminal law are cause for serious concern.

That this information was made available in the days before the Nobel anniversary, a time of renewed interest in Liu’s case, reflects the Chinese government’s calculated and cynical strategy to blunt international criticism, underscoring the extent to which Chinese authorities will go to avoid negative publicity, Human Rights Watch said.

See also China’s Jailed Nobel Laureate One Year Later, on CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amnesty International, human rights defenders, human rights watch, Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, women's rights
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Liu’s prize famously sat on an empty seat during last year’s award ceremony in Olso, Norway, because the Chinese authorities did not allow him or his family to be in attendance. Liu is serving an 11-year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power” when he authored a petition calling for pro-democracy reforms in China.

As for what has changed one year later, 2011 has been marked by the silence of Chinese activists “achieved through disappearance, intimidation and abuse,” Time magazine noted.

Even Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, who was placed under severe supervision after he was awarded the prize last year, is still not allowed to communicate with the outside world. Our ABC News crew found out first hand last year when they tried to visit her home. Uniformed and plainclothes security guards had cordoned off the area.

Time Magazine’s blog has more on the current situation for activists in China a year after the Nobel was awarded:

It is safe to say that any wagers placed on another Chinese winning the Nobel Peace Prize this year would be wasted. The political changes that swept the Arab world this year have crashed impotently against a seawall of state power in China. The government’s response was to unleash a harsh crackdown on activists, disappearing dozens and blocking any attempts at public protest last spring. New legislation now under consideration would make secret detention, without any notice for family members, legal for periods of up to six months in cases of terrorism, state security or serious corruption, which human rights groups fear will be used to silence dissent.

The most significant aspect of Chinese activists this past year has been their silence, which has been achieved through disappearance, intimidation and abuse. Ai Weiwei, the artist and activist, spent nearly three months in detention on tax evasion charges and is now out on a form of bail, his movements and freedom to speak out restricted. Chen, a blind legal activist, is being held with his wife in a harsh form of house arrest in their village in Shandong province, despite completing a four-year prison term for damaging property and organizing an illegal protest. The couple’s six-year-old daughter has been blocked from attending school. Gao Zhisheng, a dissident lawyer who was convicted of subversion in 2006 and has described suffering extensive abuse in detention, remains missing and is presumably being held by authorities.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government’s anger over Norway’s awarding of the prize to Liu is being played out in the trade of fish. Norway has reported China to the WTO over import controls of salmon, the Independent reports:

The Chinese imposed additional import controls on Norwegian salmon last year in apparent retribution for the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in Oslo to the Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo. The result has been a collapse in sales of salmon to China, and the sight and smell of North Sea fish rotting in Chinese warehouses. The Norwegian Foreign Office said overall trade with China had grown by 46 per cent over the past six months. But sales of fresh salmon, meanwhile, have collapsed 61.8 per cent.

Officials said they would not speculate as to why Beijing had ignored trade rules relating to Norwegian salmon. But it seems clear that the threat from the Chinese embassy in Oslo last year, of “damage” to diplomatic ties should the Nobel Prize be handed to “a criminal” has focused on a narrow, iconic target.

Read seven years of reports by and about Liu Xiaobo via CDT.

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Post tags: dissidents, jasmine revolution, Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize, political prisoners
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