Dear Nameless Censor, I know you possess enormous power but you have no right to delete what I write, and you have no right to intrude into my life. Most importantly, you have no right to deprive me of my freedom of speech, because freedom of speech is my inviolable constitutional right.

I know that in this country, at this time, you are far more powerful than me–I am merely an ordinary citizen, a writer who writes for a living, while you, a nameless censor, have the power to push me off a cliff with just one phone call.

Still, I am writing you this letter because I believe your awesome powers are only temporary. You can delete my words, you can delete my name but you cannot snatch the pen from my hand. In the years to come this pen of mine will fight a long war of resistance, and continue to write for as long as it takes for me to see the light of a new dawn. I believe you will not be able to hide in the shadows forever because the light of a new dawn will also expose the place where you are hiding. Dear Nameless Censor, when that time comes, the whole world will know who you are. [Source]

Read more by and about Murong Xuecun via CDT.

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Post tags: Internet censorship, Murong Xuecun, weibo
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Not long ago, scholar Zhang Xuezhong, Xiao Xuehui, Song Shinan and lawyer Si Weijiang all saw their Weibo accounts deleted. They each had large numbers of followers, who spread their words to an even wider audience. But all of a sudden their names have disappeared. Nobody knows why, or who ordered it, but we all know that a new round of a censorship campaign has commenced. As in 1957, 1966 and 1989, Chinese intellectuals are feeling more or less the same fear as one does before an approaching mountain storm: the scariest thing of all is not being silenced or being sent to prison; it is the sense of powerlessness and uncertainty about what comes next. There is no procedure, no standard, and not a single explanation. It’s as if you are walking into a minefield blindfolded. Not knowing where the mines are buried, you don’t know when you will be blasted to pieces.

Two days later, at 10pm on 11 May, my Weibo accounts with Sina, Tencent, NetEase, and Sohu were deleted simultaneously. When the web staff from these sites got in touch with me several minutes later, they told me more or less the same story: they were following an order from a “superior department”, whose identity they could not reveal because of a confidentiality agreement. In fact, such departments are as numerous as hairs on an ox: State Council Information Office, State Internet Information Office, Propaganda Department, Public Security Bureau, the secretary of a dignitary … Almost every department and dignitary can order internet companies to delete information and accounts while they themselves hide in the dark. Seeing speeches that trigger their ire, they can make them disappear for ever by simply picking up the telephone receiver.

I am mentally prepared for such things to happen, but when they do, I still feel dismayed and angry. I am a “big V” [verified user] on Weibo, possessing over 8.5m followers across the four web portals, and 3.96m in Sina alone. In a period of over three years, I had posted more than 1,900 Weibo messages totalling more than 200,000 words, each written with deliberation and care. In a split second, however, they were all brought to naught. [Source]

Read more by and about Murong Xuecun via CDT.

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Post tags: Internet censorship, Murong Xuecun, weibo
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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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Post tags: anti-censorship, Bo Xilai, censorship, Chongqing, freedom of expression, Murong Xuecun, novelists, re-education through labor, writers
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Naw Kham’s wry smile belied his macabre circumstances. “I haven’t been able to sleep for two days. I have been thinking too much. I miss my mum. I don’t want my children to be like me,” the 44-year-old Burmese druglord, chained to a chair, told a Chinese TV interviewer.

On Friday – two days after the interview – the Burmese freshwater pirate was executed for allegedly murdering a crew of Chinese sailors on the Mekong river in October, 2011. His last moments were aired on state television.

In the two-hour live broadcast, black-clad police officers hauled Naw Kham from a detention centre in southern China, bound him with ropes and chains, and bundled him on to a bus bound for the execution site. Three of his alleged henchmen followed in similar fashion. They were each killed – off camera – by lethal injection.

Though a rumored live broadcast of the actual executions failed to materialize, the TV coverage attracted heavy criticism. “It’s hard to see how that spectacle doesn’t violate [the] prohibition on parading condemned in the streets,” tweeted human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig, referring to a 1984 ban introduced to avoid unfavorable foreign media coverage. Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin commented that China had “just wiped away any perception that it was making progress on the death penalty issue.” Within China, reactions to the broadcast were deeply polarized. From Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:

“Rather than showcasing rule of law, the program displayed state control over human life in a manner designed to attract gawkers,” Han Youyi, a criminal law professor, wrote via microblog. “State-administered violence is no loftier than criminal violence.”

[…] In one segment, Liu Yuejin, director general of the central government’s Narcotics Control Bureau, cast the executions as a pivotal moment for a newly confident China and for ethnic Chinese across the globe. “In the past, overseas Chinese dared not say they were of Chinese origin,” said Mr. Liu, who led the task force that spent six months hunting the culprits. “Now they can hold their heads high and be themselves.”

Supporters of the program were many, and enthusiastic. One blogger suggested that death by lethal injection was too lenient, adding “These beasts should be pulled apart by vehicles.”

Some critics said the broadcast, and the subsequent public gloating, displayed an ugly side of China and would hurt its image abroad. To Murong Xuecun, a well-known Chinese author, the program revealed a national psyche, fed by decades of Communist Party propaganda, that craves vengeance for the years of humiliation by foreigners. “It proves that hatred-education still has a market in China,” he said in an interview.

At Bloomberg World View, Adam Minter described the spectacle as a “graphic extension” of a broader political strategy:

[…] Over the last two years the Chinese government has found itself embroiled in increasingly dangerous sovereignty disputes with its Southeast Asian and Japanese neighbors. So far, diplomacy has been the preferred course of action. Yet on China’s decidedly nationalistic and highly influential microblogging platforms, diplomacy — especially on sovereignty issues — is unpopular and viewed as a sign of weakness.

In response, the Chinese government and its official media tribunals have carefully ratcheted up the aggressive rhetoric, especially toward Japan, since the fall of 2012, reminding Chinese that they will not be bullied by outside forces. Rather, if there will be any bullying, China will be doing it.

A 2012 Reuters investigation into the Mekong murders described the web of trafficking in drugs, humans and endangered animals in Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle”, and Naw Kham’s legendary or perhaps mythical place in it. The report also highlighted the possible involvement of an elite Thai anti-drugs unit in the killings.

China’s Global Times recently revealed that authorities had considered killing Naw Kham with a drone strike instead of capturing him. See more on China’s drone programs, and more on the death penalty in China, via CDT.

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Post tags: CCTV, death penalty, diplomacy, drug trafficking, execution, Golden Triangle, human rights watch, Japan, legal system, Mao era, Mekong river, murders, Murong Xuecun, Myanmar, Southeast Asia, territorial disputes, thailand
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Artist: BrickWeave

New Internet regulations, announced by state media in the final days of 2012, threaten to stifle the vibrant world of the Chinese netizenry. The regulations, which include required real-name registration for all Internet users, were announced in a December 18 People’s Daily editorial, which was in turn covered by CCTV’s primetime news show, News Simulcast (新闻联播 Xīnwén Liánbō). Twisting the CCTV report, BrickWeave casts disgraced politician Lei Zhengfu as the News Simulcast anchor in the mock segment “Netizens Call for Legislation to Protect Online Information.” Ordinary people have exposed corrupt officials like Lei through Weibo, forcing the authorities to do more firing and apologizing than they could have imagined before microblogging began.

Artist: Simon

“Don’t… don’t! I just want to write a weibo…” What exactly does real-name registration mean for Chinese Internet users? Officials say people will still be able to use nicknames online, but that offers little protection from identity theft. South Korea provides a sobering example of who mosts benefits from an online real-name registration system. The ninja inspectors going through this man’s pockets could be government regulators–or cyber-criminals.

Artist: Tango

Be careful what you wish for. A netizen-turned-puppet asks for a little freedom, but the very tool which could liberate him is used to control him instead.

Artist: Yuanzi

In “Getting Rich Through Hard Work” (劳动致富), ordinary men fish for their fair share–but the official, sitting on his throne at the tip of the iceberg, has cast his lines with something else in mind. The online public boiled with rage last year at the luxury watches, designer suits, and Italian cars sported by officials at all levels of the government food chain. Bo Xilai’s humble US$1600 monthly salary was apparently more than enough to send his son to Harrow and Oxford. “Watch Brother” was identified wearing at least 11 different watches in various photos. Guangzhou official Cai Bin was caught owning 21 houses, 20 more than the legal limit. The list goes on.

Artist: Fenzi

This menacing Pinocchio is not ashamed of the florid lie sprouting from his nose. Like a propaganda poster from the Great Leap Forward, it glorifies a bounty that never existed. Retired journalist Yang Jisheng has just published Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, the fruit of 20 years of research about the horrors of the Great Famine of 1960-1962. In Foreign Policy, Murong Xuecun writes that the crucial debate in China today is not how the famine happened, but whether it happened at all. He references Frank Dikötter’s landmark book Mao’s Great Famine, which estimates “‘at least’ 45 million premature deaths.” But, says Murong, “the people who spoke the truth are all dead.” Dikötter also examines the country’s collective amnesia in Foreign Policy.

Artist: Padme

What does the New Year have in store for China? Will the Party hold the country together, or will an explosive situation of its own making finally burst forth? The first controversy of 2013 has already charged ahead, as Southern Weekly’s editorial calling on China to uphold its constitution was torn to shreds by the censors. Some people like Eric X. Li may argue that the “China model” offers an alternative success story to democratization, but as China’s economy slows and middle-class discontent grows, it’s clear the whole story has yet to be told.

Browse CDT Chinese’s cartoon collection on Google+.

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Post tags: Drawing the News, famine, Frank Dikötter, great leap forward, history, Internet censorship, Internet regulation, lei zhengfu, Murong Xuecun, News Simulcast, official corruption, political cartoons, political humor, real name registration, Yang Jisheng
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A decade after the Communist party took power in 1949, promising to serve the people, the greatest manmade disaster in history stalks an already impoverished land. In an unremarkable city in central Henan province, more than a million people – one in eight – are wiped out by starvation and brutality over three short years. In one area, officials commandeer more grain than the farmers have actually grown. In barely nine months, more than 12,000 people – a third of the inhabitants – die in a single commune; a tenth of its households are wiped out. Thirteen children beg officials for food and are dragged deep into the mountains, where they die from exposure and starvation. A teenage orphan kills and eats her four-year-old brother. Forty-four of a village’s 45 inhabitants die; the last remaining resident, a woman in her 60s, goes insane. Others are tortured, beaten or buried alive for declaring realistic harvests, refusing to hand over what little food they have, stealing scraps or simply angering officials.

[…] Page after page – even in the drastically edited English translation, there are 500 of them – his book, Tombstone, piles improbability upon terrible improbability. But Yang did not imagine these scenes. Perhaps no one could. Instead, he devoted 15 years to painstakingly documenting the catastrophe that claimed at least 36 million lives across the country, including that of his father.

[…] The death toll is staggering. “The most officials have admitted is 20 million,” he says, but he puts the total at 36 million. It is “equivalent to 450 times the number of people killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki … and greater than the number of people killed in the first world war,” he writes. Many think even this is a conservative figure: in his acclaimed book Mao’s Great Famine, Frank Dikotter estimates that the toll reached at least 45 million.

At Foreign Policy, Dikötter describes the almost total absence from available archives of any photographic record of the famine:

I read through thousands of documents: secret reports from the Public Security Bureaus, detailed minutes of top party meetings, investigations into cases of mass murder, inquiries compiled by special teams tasked with determining the extent of the catastrophe, secret opinion surveys, and letters of complaint written by ordinary citizens. Some were neatly written in longhand, others typed out on flimsy, yellowing paper. Some were excruciating to read, for instance, a report written by an investigation team noting the case of a boy in a Hunan village who had been caught stealing a handful of grain. A local Communist Party cadre forced his father to bury the boy alive. The father died of grief a few days later.

[…] For four years, I studied Mao’s famine, and only once have I seen a visual illustration of its awfulness. In 2009, I visited a historian in a drab concrete building in the suburbs of Beijing. He, too, had been working on the history of the Great Leap Forward, burrowing in archives for more than a decade and obsessively documenting the starvation that had decimated the region of his birth, a county barely 100 miles north of Mao’s hometown in Hunan. Stacks of photocopied archival material bulged out of filing cabinets in his sparse office. I asked him whether he had ever seen a photograph of the famine. He frowned and reluctantly pulled out a folder with a reproduction of the only picture he had discovered. It came from the files of the party committee in his home county and was from a police investigation into a case of cannibalism. The small, fading picture showed a young man standing against a brick wall, peering straight into the camera, seemingly emotionless. By his feet stood a large pot containing the parts of a young boy, his head and limbs severed from his body.

Another visual record of the period has survived, however. A slideshow of Great Leap Forward-era propaganda posters at Foreign Policy shows smiling farmers and bumper harvests. These images helped preserve the illusion that Yang Jisheng himself laboured under for many years: that starvation was local, and deaths were isolated tragedies, rather than part of a wider catastrophe of the government’s making.

Foreign Policy also hosts an article, translated by Martin Merz, in which Murong Xuecun angrily discusses present day arguments over the causes, extent and reality of the famine, and the government’s continued efforts to control the narrative. He writes scathingly about Chinese youth’s supposedly unquestioning acceptance of official information, and blames the Party’s stifling influence for this, the polarised recent debate over the famine, and other evils (“in which case he’s in for a nasty shock if he ever leaves China“, as Jamie K commented at Blood and Treasure).

For some 40 years, official publications in China have called the Great Famine of 1959-1962 “the three years of natural disasters.” But no one seems to know exactly what these disasters were: Floods? Drought? Earthquakes? Landslides? Hail storms or locust plagues? No one has the answer, and no one is brave enough to stand up and demand an answer from the government — because the official pronouncement of “natural disaster” is sufficiently intimidating to close all mouths.

Motivated by the desire to be “responsible to history and the truth,” a phrase churned out ad nauseam in China’s mass media, official accounts over the last 10 years have become more circumspect, employing the more neutral term “the three years of difficulties,” which seems to cover both the natural and manmade. This approach obviates the need to examine contributing factors and that Mao and other leaders caused the famine.

[…] The memories of those who experienced the famine are fading away. The current generation, like their parents, were force-fed state CCTV newscasts and party mouthpiece People’s Daily reports, but also fattened to the point of obesity with Coca-Cola and hamburgers. Of course they now find it difficult to imagine that people once starved to death. And so they ask: If they didn’t have rice, why didn’t they eat meat?

While stories of the disaster may seem far-fetched to the young, older generations’ memories of the famine might actually be fuelling China’s ballooning childhood obesity problem. From Debra Bruno at The Washington Post:

Although the era of famine is long past, many grandparents and parents still push their children to eat a lot.

Setsuko Hosoda, a family doctor at Beijing United Family Hospital, says the parents and grandparents she sees are “always worried that their child is not eating enough.” A 2012 Penn State study of 176 Chinese children ages 6 to 18 found that 72 percent of mothers of overweight children thought their children were normal or underweight.

Sissi Zhong, a 26-year-old Beijing secretary, recalls that her grandparents got angry if she left food on her plate when she was a child. “They said, ‘Do you know, in my time of food shortages, people didn’t have food, so how can you waste your food?’ ” Zhong says. So she cleaned her plate even if she was very full.

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Post tags: censorship, famine, great leap forward, historical record, history, Murong Xuecun, obesity, photography, propaganda posters, Yang Jisheng
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Tang Hui, whose daughter was raped and beaten for three months in 2006, is in a re-education through labor camp.

The mother of a rape victim in Hunan Province has been sent to a re-education through labor camp for “disruption of social order.” Tang Hui’s 11-year-old daughter went missing for three months in 2006. Tang eventually found her daughter being prostituted in a local spa, the victim of repeated beatings and rape. In 2008, two suspects in the abduction were sentenced to death, two others to life in prison. Another two defendants were charged with rape and given jail terms. Unhappy with the verdict and fighting the defendants’ appeals, Tang wrangled with the courts until this June, when the sentences were strengthened to two death penalties, four life imprisonments and one 15-year term for another defendent. But Tang, who had blocked traffic in front of the court and slept in its hallways, was given 18 months of hard labor for being a nuisance.

Netizens have been up in arms about Tang’s fate. Under the re-education through labor system, established in the 1950s, suspects can be detained and sent to the camps without a trial or conviction. On Weibo, over 11,600 survey participants have voted for the system to be abolished. The survey compares labor re-education to the defunct custody and repatriation system, a policy upheld from 1982 to 2003 under which Chinese citizens found without a hukou (household registration) or permit for their place of residence could be detained and sent back home.

Weibo survey on re-education through labor. It reads, “Labor re-education is a form of punishment administered according to the relevant laws and regulations of the State Council. Under the system, public security organs do not need a trial to convict someone of a crime and may immediately put the criminal suspect into a re-education labor camp for up to four years, where (s)he is subjected to restrictions on his/her personal liberties, forced labor and ideological education. Many scholars believe the system had a positive effect during a specific moment in Chinese history, but that it is no longer suitable. The system has therefore come under increased scrutiny. The situation became even more prominent after the abolition of the custody and repatriation system.” Over 97% of respondents believe “re-education through labor must be abolished immediately,” while almost 3% think “the system is good and practical” and “should not be abolished.”

Prominent voices have come out against labor re-education in the past few days, most notably the author Murong Xuecun. “Tang’s case shows barbarism and inaction of the law enforcement agencies, but also the darkness and cruelty of the labor re-education system,” he writes. “If labor re-education is not abolished, citizens will never be secure” (Tea Leaf Nation). Sadly, the anger made so visible on Weibo has been simmering for years. In late 2009, legal scholars circulated a “Citizens’ Petition to Abolish Labor Re-education” (关于废除劳动教养制度的公民建议). Economist Mao Yushi, lawyer Jiang Ping and 67 other public intellectuals signed the document, which recommended the National People’s Congress investigate the constitutionality of the practice. A separate petition written in the summer of 2010 garnered over 1000 signatures May 2011 [zh]. Clearly, these efforts bore no fruit.

Weibo changes the equation. The outrage on display there has fed into the decision to investigate Tang’s case, a development reported in the People’s Daily. The government mouthpiece also written a shockingly progressive Weibo post of its own, saying “a country’s greatness cannot be solely supported by GDP and Olympic gold medals, but should encompass people’s rights and dignity, social fairness and justice” (WSJ). Netizens have applauded the People’s Daily for “serving the people” at last. But even if public pressure wins Tang her freedom, it remains to be seen if the re-education through labor system itself will remain intact. Weibo has brought justice to individual cases like Tang’s, but has failed to affect systemic change.

Read more netizen reactions from CDT Chinese.

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Post tags: household registration, hukou, Hunan, Jiang Ping, Mao Yushi, Murong Xuecun, National People's Congress, Netizen Voices, netizens, people's daily, re-education through labor, sina weibo, Tang Hui, weibo
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We live in an age when dust blocks the sky. Politics is dirty, the economy is dirty, and even culture smells like it’s rotten. Our heart is supposed to be clear like the water in the autumn and the unending sky, but if we place it in the dust for a long time, then it can’t help but getting dirty and frangible. When we mail fragile items at the post station, the staff there will stamp the image of a red glass on the package to show that what’s inside is fragile. I hope everyone stamps a red glass on their heart too. It will remind us that this is a heart that needs sympathy and a heart that needs clarity. It is precious, but it is also fragile. We should take care of it every day and keep it free of dust. It should be as clear as the water in autumn, and as clean as the sky.

The essay echoes a widespread angst about moral decay:

[…] If you could quantify empathy, it might sadden you to discover that residents of Mainland China rank very low. In the famous Wang Yue incident [CDT's link], a two-year-old girl died in the middle of the road, and 18 people walked by without helping. These 18 people represent a greater number, a very unkind number of people that will yell at beggars, ignore victims of distant disasters, and even lack empathy for their own relatives. If people are beaten, they’ll just stand around and watch. If people are complaining, they’ll just coldly mock them. […]

A somewhat more optimistic view of the Chinese moral character appeared in Li Chengpeng’s recent reaction to the Beijing floods. From chinaSMACK’s translation:

Chinese people’s characters are ordinarily suppressed by a certain power. When a nation is only keen on purchasing cars for officials instead of building up public transportation, when the Ministry of Railways only cares for major construction projects instead of doing a better job on public service, people have to have low characters simply for self-protection. But the humanity is there, like a luminous pearl, normally ordinary and unremarkable like a rock, but in the key moment shining brightly. Everybody knows——that old man in the water clearing the clogged drains and sewers, those sanitation workers who stood in front of the open sewer manholes [to prevent others from falling in], those men carrying bottled water and bread who rushed into the rainy night to search for trapped people, those city residents who normally would be paranoid by by a crossed line at this moment bravely publicizing their own addresses and cell phone numbers to provide food, shelter, and a hot bath ….

See more about and by Murong Xuecun via CDT.

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Post tags: floods, Li Chengpeng, moral crisis, morality, Murong Xuecun, social decay
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Exactly how Chinese writers navigate this complex political landscape can be seen in a single tweet inspired by a speech by Ma [Jian] at Oslo’s House of Literature during a special “Chinese week” conference last November. In his talk, Ma described how “tanks crushed Chinese people’s bodies and crushed their morality to death” on June 4, 1989. But Murong Xuecun, China’s latest literary bad boy, made the line censor-friendly by changing “tanks” to “tractors.” On the Chinese version of Twitter, a politically neutral word like “tractors” will probably be ignored by censors for several hours, while “tanks” would be deleted immediately.

This is the confusing world of the People’s Republic 2.0, with its sliding scale of dissidence, a gray zone where authors are constrained but can flout the official rules without their work necessarily being banned. They carefully calibrate what can be communicated in English but not in Chinese; in Hong Kong but not in Beijing; online but not in print; via allegory but not direct exposition. The tank-to-tractor substitution — as well as related techniques, like taking advantage of Chinese’s rich store of homophones to substitute a sound-alike anodyne term for a politically charged one — illustrates how the ever-present censorship machine turns Chinese writers into verbal acrobats. Put more bluntly, it forces them to lie to get their voices heard.

When Murong himself spoke in Oslo, he sounded unequivocal: “In my country, writing is a dangerous occupation. Writers are not allowed to talk about history, or to criticize the present, let alone fantasize about the future. Many words cannot be written, many things cannot be spoken.” But even this verbal assault carefully avoided hot-button words like “politics,” “Communist” and “party.” Perhaps more important, it contained no direct or implied call to action.

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Post tags: arts censorship, censorship, literature, ma jian, Murong Xuecun, writers
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Several other outlets, including QQ.com, republished the article under a title which some felt better conveyed its argument: ‘China Must Permit Some Corruption, the Public Should Understand’ (both headline translations from China Media Project). Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin disagreed, and demanded—and received—an apology. An abridged translation appeared on the newspaper’s English-language site under a third heading, ‘Public should have realistic view of anti-graft drive‘, whose tone fell somewhere between the others.

Corruption is obviously thriving in China with limited resources to curb it. Some assume it can be rooted out if a democratic system is adopted. This is naïve thinking.

[…] Public supervision needs to be enforced, so that it can drive the government’s determination in its anti-corruption campaign. But the public should also be objective and realistic. They need to understand the reality that corruption cannot be completely banished from China at this time, rather than suffer in the pursuit of an unrealistic goal.

[…] Corruption derives from officials’ own misbehavior and the flaws in our system. But they are not the only causes. Corruption is also a result of our current level of development.

David Bandurski posted a full translation of the Chinese original at China Media Project.

Appeals to “our current level of development” are common regarding issues as diverse as human rights and environmental degradation. As Helen Gao wrote at The Atlantic, however, many observers found the Global Times’ argument deeply unconvincing:

… [The] editorial has drawn disbelief, ridicule, and satire on social media here. The editorial is surprising not for acknowledging that corruption is a widespread problem but for telling readers that they should resign themselves to accepting that “proper level” of corruption. In appearing to diverge from the official line that the Communist Party is committed to fighting corruption in all its forms, and suggesting that it is even willing to accept some corruption, the editorial has unwittingly reinforced many peoples’ worst beliefs about their government and its true intentions.

[…] “Yes, we should also understand a proper number of high-speed rail crashes, a proper level of poison in milk, a proper amount of leather in food, a proper use of torture in extracting testimonies, a proper sum of compensation for forced eviction and demolition, a proper reduction in reported embezzled money, a proper degree of lies in news, proper distortion of truth, proper screening of public opinions, proper social regression, and proper loss of civilization…” vented Xu Xin, a prominent Chinese legal scholar.

Zhaobudaoedeganjue summed up the public reaction on Weibo with one line: “You can be properly corrupt, so can I properly protest!”

China Media Project followed up its translation with a scathing response by program fellow Yang Hengjun, originally posted in Chinese on his blog:

On the Global Times take on the issue of corruption, response to Web user 1: It is all true to say [as the Global Times editorial does] that, to varying degrees, all countries in the world have corruption, that in China it is relatively serious, and that at present there is no way to utterly root it out. Some web users believe that the Global Times … has spoken the truth, that it is like the courageous child pointing out that the emperor’s news clothes [are a fraud]. But this isn’t where the problem lies. The problem lies in the conclusion the paper comes to after it has pointed out that the emperor is wearing no clothes — that the naked emperor is pleasing to look upon. They have broken through the floor of universal human values.

On the Global Times take on the issue of corruption, response to Web user 2: Some official media go even faster and farther than the authorities in challenging universal values, as though they are testing the intelligence and patience of the people. Monopoly media that go unchecked are not an outgrowth of freedom of speech, but rather brainwashing propaganda, a hotbed of fascism. If we do not refute them, they will someday reach the following conclusion — that in fact rape exists in all countries, that it cannot be utterly eliminated, and therefore a moderate level of rape is reasonable, something that women who are raped should understand and accept.

At The Diplomat, Mu Chunshan paired the row over the editorial’s headline with another recent media controversy as illustrations of ideological debate in the run up to this year’s leadership transition:

Recently, the official Beijing Daily ran a commentary arguing that issues such as social instability and food insecurity were being exaggerated by the media, risking public panic. The paper added that the media had forgotten the values of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Guangdong-based Time Weekly interviewed a number of analysts who lashed out at the commentary, arguing that reporting the truth is the media’s responsibility. Soon after, though, the president of Time Weekly reportedly headed to Beijing to apologize, adding that the outlet would deal strictly with the journalists involved in producing the story.

[…] If nothing else, the two incidents have offered the people the chance to better appreciate the importance of the media in helping understand society. And despite their apologies and backtracking, Time Weekly and QQ have done a very good job not only of drawing attention to some important issues, but also of shining a light on the progress (and otherwise) of the Chinese media landscape.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, David Bandurski, economic development, Global Times, Murong Xuecun, QQ, Wen Jiabao, Yang Hengjun
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On March 17, 2012, the Public Security Bureau in Chenzhou, in the central province of Hunan, said it was removing Huang Bailian as head of its drug squad.

Huang’s explanation for the move was simple: “This is retaliation.”

Three years earlier Huang, who is 48 years old and a 25-year veteran of the police force, cracked what he thought was a large drug trafficking case. However, before the case could be handed to prosecutors, his classification of it was changed to clear one suspect. Furthermore, some of the drugs seized during his arrests quickly went missing.

Evidence of the theft pointed to a subordinate of Huang’s, Wang Bin. Furthermore, there were suspicions that Wang and Huang Bailian’s boss, vice-captain of the drug squad Huang Zhongxiang, were protecting traffickers.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corrupt officials, corruption, drug trafficking, Hunan, Murong Xuecun, police corruption, Wen Jiabao
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At The New York Times, Murong Xuecun explains his own view of corruption’s place in Chinese society, recalling an encounter with an entrepreneurial road builder in Sichuan some fifteen years ago. “Like most Chinese people,” he writes, “he was harmed by corruption yet he dearly wanted in.”

I will never forget something Mr. Zhao said to me: There’s not a single straight road in China; they were all built with kickbacks ….

If corruption is inevitable, then people inevitably force themselves to get used to it, and even defend its legitimacy. Most of us Chinese go from being shocked to being numb ….

The leadership in Beijing needs corruption and actually encourages it. Corruption is the system’s natural lubricant, without which everything would grind to a halt. There’s no shortage of upright people in China, but in this system even the upright must study the crooked arts simply to survive.

Not a single person in China can completely break free from corruption, and not a single road is straight.

The South China Morning Post reports that Murong Xuecun is one of a number of prominent weibo users whose accounts have been suspended during the past week.

Hao Qun, a novelist-turned-blogger who uses the pen-name Murong Xuecun , said his microblog, which had 1.85 million followers, was suspended on Thursday and he had learned it could last a month or so, until after the 23rd anniversary of the bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

He said he had also learned that the order to suspend his microblog had come from the government’s top internet censor.

Hao said he imagined that the suspension was punishment for his comments on the ongoing Chen [Guangcheng] saga in the overseas press and his attempt to visit Chen in Shandong in October. “If you’d asked me or any other bloggers, we’d have all told you with confidence that we knew where to draw a line, but apparently we’re all wrong,” he said.

“The order could just come from anyone at the top or even his secretary, who simply call the censors because they bump into a posting they’re not happy with.”

Read an account of the attempted visit to Chen Guangcheng and more by and about Murong Xuecun, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bribery, Chen Guangcheng, corruption, Internet censorship, June 4th, Murong Xuecun, road construction, sina weibo, United States, weibo
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Under the mantle of the China Written Works Copyright Society, nine writers are suing Apple in Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court for copyright infringement of 37 works, seeking 11.91 million yuan in compensation. The group—in conjunction with other authors—has also waged campaigns over copyright infringement against Baidu and Google. In 2010, Google issued a formal apology to the writers, while in 2011 Baidu deleted nearly 2.8 million items in response to complaints from more than 40 authors ….

In August 2011, a writer named Zhu Jintai became the first Chinese individual to file a lawsuit against Apple when he sued the company for the alleged infringement of intellectual property rights. He resorted to litigation, he said, after Apple refused to provide any information about Apple’s developers.

Apple eventually removed the novel and issued a statement saying that developers, according to the terms of their agreement with Apple, may not violate, misappropriate or infringe copyright. The lawsuit is still pending.

Read more about Apple, ebooks and the Baidu Wenku case via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, Baidu, Baidu Wenku, Google, Han Han, Murong Xuecun, piracy, writers and literature
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Reuters reported last week that, faced with intransigent officials and empty guarantees of safe passage in Linyi, some of Chen’s would-be visitors have taken their complaints to Beijing:

Some of the supporters were beaten by dozens of men in plain clothes while trying to visit Chen on Sunday, and their complaints were later ignored by the local police, said Mao Hengfeng, a petitioner from Shanghai.

She said the petitioners then went to Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security, but it was not clear whether officials accepted their petition expressing concerns about Chen’s treatment.

“We were roughed up and pushed around, and some of us were hurt, but the police didn’t lift a finger and ignored our complaints,” Mao told Reuters about the weekend incident in Linyi.

“Now we want the Ministry of Public Security to do something about Linyi — it’s a place without any law or rights.”

But Jerome Cohen, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed based on his Nov. 1 testimony to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote that the image of the Linyi government as a rogue, independent actor is a misconception. While limited aspects of the story may indeed be cases of local-vs-national government, he argues, the situation as a whole is part of a broader program in which Beijing is entirely complicit.

There are three myths about Mr. Chen’s plight that must be dispelled. One is that such cases of persecution and abuse of lawyers and legal activists are rare in China, and only occur when a few heroic dissidents openly invoke the law to confront injustice rather than rely less confrontational methods ….

A second myth is that Mr. Chen’s recent suffering is merely another example of local government run amok, neither approved nor condoned by the central government. Many attacks on lawyers are indeed local in origin, and Mr. Chen’s case started out that way in 2005 when local authorities first sent thugs to illegally confine him and his family at home. However, the case soon came to the attention of national leaders. After representatives of the Ministry of Public Security reportedly met with local officials to discuss the situation, the authorities launched a criminal prosecution against Mr. Chen, a more conventional type of repression.

A third myth is that there must be some purported legal justification for the suffering that the Chen household has endured since his release from prison last year. Governments, even the Chinese government, normally like to maintain some veneer of plausible legitimacy for their misconduct, however thin it might be. Yet no such justification has come to my knowledge in this case, which seems to have exceeded the bounds of police ingenuity.

See also Andy Yee’s post on Chen’s house arrest as a facet of China’s stability maintenance machinery at Global Voices Online, a slightly different adaptation of Cohen’s testimony at The New York Review of Books, and Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom’s testimony to the same Congressional-Executive Commission:

It is important to note that Chen Guangcheng’s situation reflects the fate of countless other human rights defenders in China subject to extra-legal measures, including being restrained under constant surveillance within closed premises – in their homes, temporary residences such as boarding houses or hotels (also known as “black jails”), or other undisclosed locations – where they are not permitted to leave. As distinguished from formal sentences of imprisonment, in which authorities officially charge and detain individuals pursuant to cited criminal laws and procedures, Chinese government officials have articulated no specific legal basis for these detentions. As a result, extra-judicially detained rights defenders are left entirely outside the protection of the law, without any recourse to procedures to challenge their detention, under circumstances that could permit serious rights violations – including the use of torture or other ill-treatment.

The commission’s chairman, Representative Chris Smith, announced his intention to visit Chen if possible, and to pursue other avenues if not. From the AFP:

“Enough is enough. The cruelty and extreme violence against Chen and his family brings dishonor to the government of China and must end,” said Representative Chris Smith, chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who is active on human rights issues, said he would shortly ask China to allow a US congressional delegation to travel to Chen’s village of Dongshigu in eastern Shandong province.

“I am trying to put together a trip to go there and go to his house. We’re already checking flights,” Smith told AFP after the hearing, saying that the lawmakers “desperately hope” that Chen is still alive.

Even if China does not allow the trip, Smith said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or the US ambassador to China, Gary Locke, should raise the case at the highest levels.

Locke told GlobalPost last Friday that he had actually already expressed his concerns:

“We are very concerned about his treatment and, for instance, the reports his daughter was not allowed to go to school. Although he’s been freed, he is still under severe restrictions on his movements,” Locke told GlobalPost in a private interview Friday. He said the Chinese government has not yet responded to the letter he sent in September ….

Since Locke sent the letter, Chen’s 6-year-old daughter has been allowed to leave her home to attend school, under guard.

The ambassador, who arrived in Beijing in August, added his voice to the chorus calling for China to ease its extreme treatment of the self-taught lawyer, who is known for exposing forced abortions in his hometown in Shandong province.

A new report from the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, ‘Legal Advocacy and the 2011 Crackdown in China: Adversity, Repression, and Resilience‘ (PDF) describes earlier interference with efforts to help Chen (pp. 9-10):

On February 16, 2011, a group of activists and lawyers gathered over lunch to strategize about how to come to the aid of Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught legal activist facing an extraordinary level of government abuse. A week earlier, on February 9, Chen and his wife Yuan Weijing publicly released a series of videos describing the 24-hour surveillance and house imprisonment he and his family had been subjected to since his release from prison on September 9, 2010. There was absolutely no legal basis for these measures or the ongoing deprivation of liberty of Chen and his family. The following day, Chen and his wife were beaten in their home in retribution for releasing the videos online. (For more details on Chen’s case, see Box B. [p. 23])

Authorities barred seven individuals from leaving their homes to attend the February 16 meeting, including Li Xiongbing, Li Heping, and Xu Zhiyong, three lawyers whom authorities would proceed to illegally detain at various times in the following months. Another person prevented from attending the meeting, Internet activist and rights defender Wang Lihong, was detained sometime before March 26 and has since been convicted for “assembling a crowd to disturb social order” and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. The February 16 meeting mirrored other gatherings held during the period of Chen’s pre-trial detention in 2006, making Chen’s case notable because it inspired lawyers, human rights defenders, and activists to coalesce as a community in his support.

Enforced disappearance is defined under international law as the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty of a person either by state agents or with official support, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person. Chinese authorities proceeded to employ this illegal measure against many of the lawyers who managed to attend the meeting. Police seized lawyers Jiang Tianyong and Tang Jitian that afternoon. Tang was disappeared for three weeks, while Jiang was interrogated and beaten before being released in the evening, only to be disappeared for 2 months from February 19 to April 19. Beijing-based rights lawyer and university lecturer Teng Biao was disappeared for 69 days between February 19 and April 29.

The Economist cited Chen’s would-be visitors as a key demonstration of the Internet’s potential for coordinating activism in China:

The use of the internet to mobilise people to visit Mr Chen has rattled officials far beyond Shandong province. It is the first time in China that activists have made such a persistent effort to show up in solidarity with someone under house arrest. It also coincides with attempts to use weibo, or microblogs, to gain support for independent candidates in elections to low-level “people’s congresses” that have been taking place around the country. Though the congresses have little power, and it is very difficult for truly independent candidates to stand, the polls still make the Communist Party nervous.

Activists know they have little chance of meeting Mr Chen, whose house is floodlit at night and cut off from mobile-phone networks. But there have been numerous quixotic forays. On October 14th a number of disabled men and women from neighbouring Anhui province were turned away. On October 30th, says Human Rights in China, an NGO based in New York, a group of 37 people who made the attempt to get through was attacked by around 100 thugs.

The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon sees Chen’s predicament as akin to the death of Yueyue and the authorities’ pursuit of Ai Weiwei in reflecting an underbelly sometimes concealed by the bright plumage of China’s economic hi-scores and scientific leaps.

His neighbours stand aside and let it happen. “These people must have known Chen Guangcheng. They might have even been his student, friends, or relatives. But in this place, at this time, no one cared about what was happening to him. These villagers treated him as if he were a stranger, or an enemy. All these villagers had gotten together to gang up against one blind man,” writer Murong Xuecun wondered after he and four friends were roughed up and prevented from seeing Mr. Chen ….

The Communist Party’s supporters will say that dissidents like Mr. Ai and Mr. Chen don’t matter in the big scheme of things. The argument goes that the persecution of these few is a small price to pay for ensuring the stability that allows the People’s Republic to get wealthier, to build a space program, and to experiment – a little – with civil society.

Reading that half of the headlines, it’s hard to argue that progress isn’t being made. But as little Yueyue’s case illustrated so vividly, the costs of that stability – the institutionalized injustice and indifference – are still being tallied.

Italy’s Post Internazionale has interviewed “Crazy Crab”, the cartoonist behind ‘Hexie Farm‘ (which was included in CDT’s recent list of search terms blocked on Sina Weibo) and the ‘Dark Glasses. Portrait‘ project in support of Chen Guangcheng:

The CCP has a long history of using art as a powerful propaganda tool. However, artists can also use art to protest against the one party dictatorship and censorship. If an art work shocks the audience, give them a new perspective and let them think in a different way, then it can help to change the system gradually …. One month ago, I started ‘Dark glasses. Portrait’ campaign to support a blind lawyer, Mr. Chen Guangcheng, who is under house arrest in a village. I received hundreds of photos from unknown people already. Reading their emails I can feel their fear, even from people who are thousands kilometers away from China (in Europe or the US ). But the more I read from participants’ words is still courage and strength.

See more on the Crazy Crab interview via CDT.

Meanwhile, in the Relativity Media Linyi film shoot subplot, Relativity CEO Ryan Kavanaugh was due to appear at the Asia Society’s US-China Film Summit in Los Angeles last Tuesday. He cancelled at the last minute, however, possibly calculating that continued celebration of his firm’s valuable business relationships in China might be derailed by awkward questions about his partners’ other activities. The Washington Post, though, talked to a Linyi official whose enthusiasm for the city’s cinematic prospects remained undented:

In a telephone interview, Su Guiyou, director of the Linyi Propaganda Department’s Culture Industry Office, said that the district hoped to become a center for movie-making and that the American comedy “will be a good chance to publicize Linyi and will help make Linyi famous not only in China, but also the world.” The Hollywood team, he said, filmed for four days last week and shot a “dream scene” in a local quarry.

Asked about Chen and complaints about his treatment, Su said he had never heard of the activist and hung up.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, black jails, cartoonists, Chen Guangcheng, Christopher Smith, congress, congressional hearing, detention, Gary Locke, Hillary Clinton, house arrest, human rights conditions, illegal detentions, Jerome cohen, lawyers, Li Heping, Li Xiongbing, linyi, local government, Mao Hengfeng, Murong Xuecun, petitioners, Shandong, Tang Jitian, Teng Biao, United States, Wang Lihong, Xu Zhiyong
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Murong Xuecun (moo-rong shweh-tswen) is the pen name of Hao Qun. At 37, he is among the most famous of a wave of Chinese writers who have become publishing sensations in the past decade because of their canny use of the Internet.

Mr. Murong’s books are racy and violent and nihilistic, with tales of businessmen and officials engaging in bribe-taking, brawling, drinking, gambling and cavorting with prostitutes in China’s booming cities. He is a laureate of corruption, and his friends have introduced him at dinner parties as a writer of pornography.

That his books are published at all in China shows how the industry, once carefully controlled by the state, has become more market-driven.

But Mr. Murong’s prose inevitably runs up against censorship, which the Chinese Communist Party is intent on maintaining despite the publishing industry’s gradual changes. Mr. Murong says he is a “word criminal” in the eyes of the state, and a “coward” in his own eyes for engaging in self-censorship. His growing frustrations have pushed him to become one of the most vocal critics of censorship in China. After zipping his mouth in Beijing last November, he delivered his banned speech three months later in Hong Kong. He also discussed the issue last weekend in New York at the Asia Society.

Murong Xuecun has been among the activists and others who have traveled to Dongshigu, Shandong to attempt to visit activist Chen Guangcheng, who is under a stringent form of house arrest. Read more about his account of his visit here. And read more by and about Murong via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: art censorship, freedom of expression, literature, Murong Xuecun, writers
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