Chinese Internet users should understand all the difficulties the State is facing because of the weakness of our cultural position, and reach an understanding of the Internet monitoring and management from the height of national interest as a whole. On this difficult issue, Chinese cultural elites should play more of a role of communication and explanation between monitoring and management agencies and Internet users; at least, their words and actions should not exacerbate society’s misunderstanding of the monitoring and management of the Internet.

“??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????”

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Post tags: Global Times, Internet censorship, notable quotes
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The following quote by Dr. Zhao Yanqing (???), Director of the Planning Bureau of Xiamen City, Fujian Province is from his interview with Beijing-based paper First Finance Daily (Yicai) on September 2, 2010, translated by CDT:

Our land finance system (????), based on the monopoly of a primary land market, is the only one in human history, and our success is also unprecedented in human history.  In the past twenty years, has anywhere in the world history experienced the same speed and scale of urbanization?

Why are developed countries so worried about China but not India? That is because China has institutional innovation, and created a government model which is unprecedented in human history. This model is what they can not imitate!

Under the land finance system (????), local governments have the power to sell usage rights to land, which has become a major source of income for local governments.

According to yicai.com, Dr. Zhao has a doctorate degree from Cardiff University in the UK  and also is a member of the executive board of China’s Real Estate Study Association and a Professor at Xiamen University.

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Post tags: land rights, notable quotes, urbanization, xiamen
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On June 23, the 58-year old Chen Yulian, wife of a Hubei provincial politics and law committee official, was mistaken for “a petitioner” and was badly beaten by plain-clothes policemen when she walked to the gate of the provincial party committee’s office buildings… The head of the local public securities bureau apologized to her stating, “It was a mistake; a complete mistake. We were not aware that we had beaten the wife of an important official.”

Shanghaiist has more details about the incident:

Chen Yulian, who is still in the hospital from her injuries a month ago, confirmed that police had apologized to her afterwards, saying they hadn’t known she was the wife of such an important official. “An official’s wife you can’t hit,” she spit out, “but a commoner you can?”

The original article appeared in forum posts all over the net. Chen Yulian had been going up to the offices to meet her husband, and was at the gate making a call on her cellphone when, lal of the sudden, six plainclothed men knocked her to the ground and began hitting and kicking her. Seeing stars, Mrs. Chen yelled that she was the family of the provincial cadre and could they please stop hitting her.

She later said that the six men continued to kick her down as she struggled to get up. One time, they kicked her upper body, slamming her head against the booth railing pole. Altogether, the beating lasted roughly 16 minutes.

Neighbors who saw the beating happened rushed up to defend her, telling the men that “she is from one of the provincial leader’s families, how can you play like this?” The six men told them to butt out. As more and more people came up with the same story, the men finally told them they could get the family to come prove it.

It was only after a half an hour that a car came to take the half-delirious Mrs. Chen to a security room, where she sat guarded by two policemen. And it was only after she woke up enough to call her husband, that her identity was confirmed and she was sent to a hospital.

See also a report from China Daily.

Update: Duihua translates a piece in Southern Daily by Zhou Hucheng which argues that this case show the need for reform in the petitioning system as a whole:

First, let’s look at what public security officials told family members: “It was a mistake—a simple mistake. They didn’t recognize you and didn’t know that you were the wife of such a high official.” A person at the scene asked them in retort: “You say the beating was a mistake and it’s not allowed to beat the wife of an official. Does that mean ordinary people can be beaten?” Looking at all of the rules governing [police] work that have been made public, the law does not authorize police to beat petitioners at will. Moreover, if it is legal for those possessing public authority to beat ordinary people as they wish, this would theoretically shake the foundation of our governance. However, in real life, instances of petitioners being beaten, locked up in psychiatric facilities, or even sent to re-education through labor are too numerous to count. Again, why is this?
It is primarily because of the pressure felt by local governments over petitioning quotas. Petitioning is linked to official performance, so that if there are many petitioners it is seen as meaning local society is unstable and officials bear responsibility for ineffective governance. If, on the other hand, there are few petitioners, it will be seen as effective construction of a harmonious society. When maintaining stability becomes such an extremely important—even the most important—job, one in which the quality of the work of [dealing with] petitions is closely linked to official performance, some places have even established a one-strike policy for petitioning, where even a single case of petitioning to higher authorities will result in officials from the petitioner’s locality being penalized with a warning or removal from office. Under such circumstances, the petitioning system has become a sharp sword hanging over the heads of local government officials, for whom the slightest mishandling [of a dispute] could have an impact on their personal futures and fates.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hubei, local power, notable quotes, petitioners, police violence
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“With a wave of my hand, tens of millions of posts about the Deng Yujiao incident were all deleted.” (??????????????????? ???”

–  Li Baozhu (???) speaking at Peking University

Li Baozhu is currently the director of the Propaganda and Education Supervision Office of the the Politics and Law Committee of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. He has worked in the Political and Law Committee since 1992. He also worked in the Bureau of Theory of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party from 1985 to 1992. He received Master’s (1985) and Bachelor’s degrees from the Department of History of Peking University.

The quote above is from Director Li’s recent public lecture at Peking University, and has been one of the hottest micro-blog posts in Chinese cyberspace since yesterday.

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Post tags: Deng Yujiao, Internet control, Li Baozhu, notable quotes
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Excerpts translated by CDT:

Reporting from Wuhan, May 27, 2010. Reporter Qin Qianqiao

Between May 26 and May 27, the Ministry of Public Security held a meeting on mental hospitals?ankang yiyuan ????] nationwide. The meeting concluded that hospitals with adequate conditions should center their work around: “interfering ahead of an incident, handling during an incident, admitting patients after an incident, and following up with management.”

According to information, since 1998, mental hospitals nationwide have admitted mental patients who caused accidents 40,000 times. Among these 30% caused serious accidents.

[...] The meeting emphasized: Monitoring mechanisms must be established for mental hospitals. They must resolutely prevent the giving of private favors during legal validation procedures. In the process of admitting mental patients, special attention must be paid to the gate-keeping of admission procedures and objects of treatment. Without checking and agreement from agencies of Public Security, [mental hospitals] must not admit anyone who is not a mental patient.

This news article has been posted on over 1,900 Chinese websites, including national news portals such as sina.com.cn. However, at the time CDT is posting this, most of those webpages within China are quickly disappearing, and many links on Google search are showing error messages.

See also “Video: Chinese Dissidents Committed to Mental Hospitals” via CDT.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: mental hospitals, notable quotes, psychiatry
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May 14, 2010

Report “China-US Human Rights Dialogue” correctly,  do not put related news on the front page, close comment sections.

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While the news media is being ordered what to write, Chinese Twitterers are climbing over the Great Firewall to say whatever they want. CDT has translated the following Tweet of the Day:

I used Fanfou [a Chinese microblogging service] for one month, and then Fanfou was closed. I used Picasa for one month, and then Picasa was “walled” [blocked by the Great Firewall]. I used dropbox for one month, and then dropbox was gone. OK, I want to join the Party.

@Shaoxlee: ????????????????picasa????picasa??????dropbox????dropbox?????????????Xuhaizhou? #

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Post tags: Great Firewall, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, notable quotes, tweets
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If you are grassroots, if you don’t have a backstage supporter like China Pingan Insurance and Tsinghua Tongfang do, if you have strong confidence in the Chinese Internet, if you want to rely on your own efforts to accomplish something in the Internet business, do remember this:

Don’t touch BBS. Don’t touch microblogs. Don’t touch SNS. Don’t touch news. Don’t touch IDC. Don’t touch online photo albums. Don’t touch video. Don’t touch music. Don’t touch search engines. Don’t touch blogs. Don’t touch fiction.

Websites as listed above might bring you charges by the society or the state on such issues as copyright, pornography, censorship, subversion, instigation, etc..

If you remain hopeful, I would recommend you do business on “online shopping” websites.

However, judging from the perspective of the crackdown on pornography, cultural censorship, food safety and Internet: you can’t do business on sex products, foreign publication, dairy products, or online virtual products.

Well, if you still hold a slice of hope, I have nothing to say.

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Post tags: Internet censorship, IT industry, notable quotes
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News from the morning of Feb. 22: Li Yizhong (???), the Party Secretary and Minister of Industry and Information Technology made a report on the economic situation yesterday. During the report, Minister Li pointed out that while the information industry of our country has been growing rapidly, Internet information security is currently facing a severe challenge. The top responsibility is to ensure security. In the meantime, relevant departments are studying how to implement real name registration in mobile phones and the Internet.

2?22?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

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Post tags: Internet control, Li Yizhong, notable quotes, real name registration
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“There are no dissidents in China.”

That’s a direct quote from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman.

Ma Zhaoxu was asked earlier today about a Beijing court upholding an 11 year jail term for Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most high-profile activists.

According to him, they simply don’t exist.

Here is the full text of Kristie’s post.

And the following translation is from Siweiluozi Blog:

In response, the well-known artist and prolific blogger Ai Weiwei posted this deconstruction of the “multi-layered” meaning of Ma’s statement, the core of which I translate below:

1. Dissidents are criminals.
2. Only criminals have dissident ideas.
3. The distinction between criminals and non-criminals is whether they have dissident views.
4. If you think China has dissidents, you’re a criminal.
5. The reason China has no dissidents is because they have already become criminals.
6. Does anyone have a dissenting view about what I’ve said?

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dissidents, Foreign Ministry, Liu Xiaobo, Ma Zhaoxu, notable quotes
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Officials in China are a special breed. They tend to be restrained when facing the press and stick to the scripted lines. But occasionally they can be caught off guard and make some of the most unusual remarks one can expect from public servants, including those that are funny, annoying, ironic or simply heartless. You can laud them for speaking their minds, or you can criticize them for their big mouth, but you cannot deny that these retorts, rebuttals and asides add much needed color to an otherwise drab portrait of Chinese officialdom.

1. “We are of high-level positions. So don’t bother to call the police.”

2. “Why doesn’t the public reveal their assets first?”

3. “I will have your website shut down if you (journalist) dare to report it.”

4. “Go straight to the fifth floor. Don’t choose the first or second floor.”

5. “You are doomed to be punished if you fight against the government. Any action against the government is illegal.”

6. “You are a mouthpiece for the party (CPC) or the people?”

7. “Build, baby, build! We will make up for your loss.”

8. “I say 99 percent of repeat petitioners are mentally ill.”

9. “Which media organization do you work for?”

10. “Are you a member of the Communist Party (CPC)?”

Read all of China Daily’s Top Ten Lists of 2009.

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Post tags: 2009, notable quotes
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