Beijing police detained Liu Hui on Jan. 31, just before the Lunar New Year and a planned family reunion, and formally charged him two weeks ago over a real estate dispute, lawyer Mo Shaoping said Thursday. He said the criminal charges were unwarranted in a business dispute that has since been resolved.

Liu Hui’s arrest is the latest blow to the family and, Mo said, is particularly painful for his sister, Liu Xia, the wife of democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo. He was imprisoned in late 2008, and ever since he was awarded the Nobel prize two-and-a-half years ago, Liu Xia has been under house arrest. Isolated in an apartment with no phone or Internet, she appears emotionally fragile, allowed only weekly visits with family members and a monthly visit to her husband in prison.

[…] Pu [Zhiqiang], the lawyer and Liu family friend, said arresting and prosecuting Liu Hui in an ordinary business dispute fits a pattern of selectively using the law to harass activists and their families. The artist and prominent government critic Ai Weiwei has faced tax charges, for example, rather than a direct attack against his activism. “State security is increasingly using selective enforcement of the law,” Pu said.

Morillo suggests that Liu’s prosecution may have been prompted by two incidents in December, in which first an AP team and then a group of activists managed to break through the security cordon around his sister’s apartment.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, fraud, liu xia, Liu Xiaobo, Mo Shaoping, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, pu zhiqiang
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The language of the open letter is reasoned and constructive, outlining China’s past achievements on human rights, including the Chinese Communist Party’s early pledge to “fight for human rights and freedom.”

We understand from inside sources that this letter was originally intended for a Thursday release through a prominent Chinese newspaper. Authorities, however, learned of the letter by late Monday and the authors had no choice but to release it to the public today.

Current signers of the letter include prominent legal scholar He Weifang (贺卫方), economist Mao Yushi (茅于轼), activist and scholar Ran Yunfei (冉云飞), well-known lawyers Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) and Xu Zhiyong (许志永), investigative reporter Wang Keqin (王克勤), author Wang Lixiong (王力雄) and many, many others. This is a laundry list of some of China’s most prominent and influential pro-reform figures.

And from CMP’s draft translation of the letter:

As a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council, China has always been an active initiator and participant in the International Bill of Human Rights. China’s government played an important role in the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). International human rights standards are therefore not imported products but in fact include the achievements of Chinese culture and the Chinese people. The signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 15 years ago demonstrated even more our country’s serious commitment to the protection of basic human rights as a responsible world power. Afterwards, both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao said openly on numerous occasions both at home and overseas that China would immediately take the legal steps to ratify the treaty once the conditions were right. In the beginning of 2008, more than 10,000 Chinese citizens signed a call for the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And so there is no longer any need to vacillate. In order to adapt to trends in human rights development, live up to our government’s pledges and answer the demands of the people, in order to behave in a manner consistent with a major power, we must join the treaty without hesitation, with a positive and decisive attitude.

We will post a link to CMP’s full translation once it become available. This is not the first time activists and lawyers in China have called on the government to ratify the ICCPR and the government itself has announced plans for ratification.

UPDATE (11:20 pm PST February 26): The New York Times has reported on the petition:

The petition was the latest display of the demands for political change confronting China’s new leadership. Several people who signed it said they hoped to press Mr. Xi and his colleagues to live up to vows of greater respect for the rule of law and citizens’ rights that Mr. Xi and other officials have made since he became Communist Party leader in November, when Mr. Hu retired from that post.

“This has become increasingly important because on the one hand violations of rights have become so common, while on the other hand citizens’ awareness of their rights has risen sharply,” said Cui Weiping, a translator and essayist in Beijing who signed the petition. “This proposal is really quite mild,” said Ms. Cui, who formerly taught at the Beijing Film Academy. “I see this as giving the government a chance to show that it is willing to make improvements.”

See also a report from BBC.

Tea Leaf Nation has also translated netizen comments on the document, which has been distributed on blogs and other websites inside China:

From comments on Mr. He’s blog as well as scattered discussions on Weibo, it is possible to glean a preliminary sense of Chinese Web users’ reaction to the bold move. Many wrote quick expressions of their “resolute,” “intense,” or “eternal” support.

Others, however, were more cynical. Although the “awakening rights consciousness” the letter describes is real–one netizen’s political manifesto went viral months ago–the phenomenon cuts both ways. As Chinese grow more aware of their legal rights, they also grow more aware of the ways in which those rights are not honored in practice. One commenter wrote, “I think our constitution and our laws aren’t bad, but they haven’t been well implemented.” Another put it less delicately: “Right now, everyone knows that respect for the constitution and protection of individual rights are a joke. ”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: He Weifang, human rights activists, human rights policy, ICCPR, pu zhiqiang, Ran Yunfei, U.N. human rights, United Nations, Wang Keqin, Wang Lixiong, Xu Zhiyong
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The translations are by Rogier Creemers of China Copyright and Media.

11 February 2007, 23:27:07

Concerning the fire that occurred in the Yeosu Foreigner Protection Center on Chonnam Island, South Korea

Concerning the fire that occurred in the Yeosu Foreigner Protection Center on Chonnam Island, South Korea, all websites are only to reprint Xinhua copy, close news trackers, do not reprint corresponding images, do not issue it on the main page of websites and the important news section of the news center.

11 February 2007, 23:28:20

Delete the “Joint Statement concerning Sina Blog Deleting Posts” of He Weifang and others

Concerning the “Joint Statement concerning Sina Blog Deleting Posts” of He Weifang and others, this may not be posted in blogs and forums on any website without exception, where it is present, delete it.

12 February 2007, 17:21:10

Notice concerning setting up an advance link for the People’s Bank of China Director Assistant Yi Gang’s conducting an online interview on a steady monetary policy

The China Government Net will, between about 15:00 and 16:30 on 13 February, invite the Director Assistance of the People’s Bank of China, Yi Gang, for an online interview concerning a steady monetary policy, Sina, Sohu, Netease and other main commercial websites are requested to set up an advance notice link (www.gov.cn/zxft/ft3/) at 9:00 on 13 February in the lower part of the important news section of news centers, and timely reprint reports of the interview content.

13 February 2007, 10:13

All websites, concerning reports on the traditional Year of the Pig, it is not permitted to set up special subjects of the type of “Talking Pigs in the Pig Year” without exception, pay attention to letting pictures or images of “Pigs” appear less in reporting, pages with reports involving the “Pig Year” must avoid advertising related to Islam.

13 February 2007, 13:51

All websites: Please uniformly close the text message recommendation window at 14:00 today, only maintain the voting window. Please acknowledge receipt!

14 February 2007, 17:43

All websites: Please do not let He Weifang, Pu Zhiqiang, Xiao Han or Xu Zhiyong open a blog on your websites.

22 February 2007: 23:32:29

Delete the text on 3000 people jointly signing their name to strongly call upon the National People’s Congress to make a decision: correct the privatization of state-owned enterprises, forums, blogs, and other interactive segments are not to discuss this.

17 February 2007, 11:12:29

All websites, please pay attention: Do not reprint negative reports concerning the text message selection event; negative discourse concerning the text message selection event may not be disseminated on forums or blogs; manage trackers for corresponding reports well, do not let negative discourse emerge.

17 February 2007, 10:38:41

Please maintain the special subject of the text message event; put it on the second line of the main page of websites, and the third or fourth line of the important news section; wait for notification on when to remove it.

All websites: Please continue to maintain the special subject on the text message selection event; put it on the second line of the main page of websites daily, and on the third or fourth line of the important news section of the news center; you must absolutely wait for clear notification to remove it.

16 February 2007, 17:31:43

All websites: At present, the State Post Bureau is conducting post reform, and is currently researching new rules for express delivery statistics, all websites are requested to not set up special subjects for these two topics, and not to put corresponding reports in the important news section. Websites who have already set up special subjects are requested to push the special subject to the back stage.

16 February 2007, 08:42:29

We salute an early year to everyone, and wish everyone to have a good year.

(1) The first contact person must ensure that their mobile phone is on 24 hours, all websites’ duty telephones, MSN and RTX must remain online for 24 hours, propaganda management service platforms must ensure someone is on duty.

(2) It is necessary to send many articles building an atmosphere of holiday joy, happiness, and auspiciousness, proposing a civilized, healthy, and upward online mood, which fully reflect the richness and variety of the popular masses’ material and cultural lives and the progress that has been incessantly obtained in building a Socialist spiritual civilization.

(3) It is necessary to earnestly implement the “Internet News Information Service Management Regulations” and strictly standardize news sources, it is prohibited to use articles from small newspapers and periodicals in violation of regulations, and it is strictly prohibited to reprint information from foreign media; prevent playing up of negative news influencing social stability; reports concerning sudden or sensitive incidents must be based on Xinhua or People’s Daily content.

(4) It is necessary to strengthen management over information on forums, trackers, blogs, chat rooms, and text messages; news trackers must be closed on reports concerning sudden or sensitive incidents or mass incidents; forums, trackers, blogs, chat rooms, and other columns that are not managed by anyone must timely cease refreshing.

(5) Do website technology protection well, ensure anti-distortion, anti-attack, anti-suspension, prepare security plans, where problems are discovered, deal with them timely, and resume service speedily.

(6) Concerning major sudden incidents in Beijing, notify our office for agreement before issuance.

(7) During the holiday period, contact us at all times if there is something, we are also online 24 hours.

28 February 2007, 18:19

(1) Concerning the matter of Huarui Company having raised an administrative lawsuit with the National Development and Reform Commission concerning the overall development of hydroelectricity in the middle reaches of the Jinsha River, there are to be no reports without exception, forums, blogs, and other interactive segments may also not discuss this.

(2) Concerning the matter of First Steel Company transferring shares of Peruvian iron mines, there are to be no reports without exception, forums, blogs and other interactive segments may also not discuss this.

28 February 2007, 19:12

All websites: Please clean up negative posts concerning Premier Wen Jiabao’s text talking about the tasks during the primary stage of Socialism and our country’s foreign policy.

2007年2月北京网管办发出的禁令（四）
2007-02-11 23:27:07

关于韩国全南道丽水外国人保护所发生火灾事

关于韩国全南道丽水外国人保护所发生火灾事，各网站只转新华社稿件，关闭新闻跟贴，不转载相关图片,不发网站首页和新闻中心要闻区。

2007-02-11 23:28:20

删除贺卫方等人”关于新浪博客删贴的联合声明”

有关贺卫方等人”关于新浪博客删贴的联合声明”各网站一律不得在博客和论坛中贴发，已有的删除。

2007-02-12 17:21:1

关于做好中国人民银行行长助理易纲就稳健的货币政策进行在线访谈的预告链接的通知

中国政府网将于2月13日下午15：00-16：30约请中国人民银行行长助理易纲就稳健的货币政策进行在线访谈，请新浪、搜狐、网易等主要商业网 站在2月13日9：00前在新闻中心要闻区下部做好在线访谈的预告链接（WWW.gov.cn/zxft/ft3/）,并及时转载报道访谈内容。

07年2月13日10时13分

各网:关于传统猪年的报道,一律不得做”猪年话猪”一类的专题,在报道中尽量少出现有关”猪”的图画及形象,涉及”猪年”报道的页面要回避与伊斯兰教有关的广告.

07年2月13日13时51分

各网:请在今天14时统一关闭推荐短信的窗口,只保留投票的窗口。收到请回复！

07年2月14日17时43分

各网:请不要给贺卫方、浦志强、萧瀚、许志永四人在各自网站开博客。

2007-02-22 23:32:29

三千人联名强烈吁请全国人大做出决议：纠正国企私有化一文删除，论坛、博客等互动环节不讨论。

2007-02-17 11:12:29

各网请注意: 不要转载有关短信评比活动的负面报道; 有关短信评比活动的负面言论不要在论坛\博客中传播; 管理好相关报道的跟帖,不要出现负面言论.

2007-02-17 10:38:41

请保留短信活动专题;放网站首页二条、要闻区第三、四条位置;何时撤下等通知.

各网: 请继续保留短信评比活动的专题; 每天挂在网站首页二条位置,挂在新闻中心要闻区三、四条的位置; 一定要等到明确通知后,再撤.

2007-02-16 17:31:43

各网:目前国家邮政局正在进行邮政改革，并正在研究快递统计新规,请各网不要就这两个题材设立专题，相关报道不放要闻区。已经开设专题的网站，请将专题压到后台。

2007-02-16 08:42:29

给大家拜个早年 祝我们都过个好年

1、第一通知人必须保证手机24小时开机，各网站值班电话、MSN、RTX必须保证24小时在线，宣传管理服务平台必须保证有人值守。 2、要多发营造节日喜庆、欢乐、祥和的气氛的稿子，倡导文明健康向上的网风，充分反映人民群众物质文化生活丰富多彩、社会主义精神文明建设不断取得新的进 展。 3、要认真执行《互联网新闻信息服务管理规定》，严格规范新闻来源，不得违规使用小报小刊的稿件，严禁转载境外媒体消息；制止影响社会稳定的负面新闻炒 作；对突发、敏感事件的报道要以新华社、人民日报稿件为准。 4、要加强对论坛、跟帖、博客、聊天室、手机短信息的管理；突发敏感事件或群体性事件报道要关闭新闻跟帖；没人管的论坛、跟帖、博客、聊天室等栏目要暂时 停止更新。 5、做好网站技术防范，做到防篡改、防攻击、防中断，要准备安全预案，发现问题及时处置，迅速恢复。 6、事关北京的重大突发事件，要报经我办同意再发。 7、节日期间，有事儿随时联系，我们也24小时在线。

07年2月28日18时19分

1、关于华睿公司就金沙江中游水电整体开发向国家发改委提起行政诉讼一事，一律不报道，论坛、博客等互动环节不讨论。

2、关于首钢总公司转让秘鲁铁矿股权项目一事，一律不报道，论坛、博客等互动环节不讨论。

07年2月28日19时12分

各网：请清理关于温家宝总理谈社会主义初级阶段任务和我国对外政策一文的负面跟帖

These translated directives were first posted by Rogier Creemers on China Copyright and Media on December 17, 2012 (here). This post is the 40th in the series.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing Internet Instructions, censorship, Censorship Vault, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, He Weifang, Internet censorship, mass incidents, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, pu zhiqiang, social stability, Spring Festival, sudden incidents, Xiao Han, Xu Zhiyong, Yi Gang
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Breathless from disbelief at receiving unexpected visitors into her home and with a shaking voice, Liu Xia told The Associated Press in her first interview in more than two years, that her ongoing house arrest has been a painfully surreal experience. She said she has been confined to her duplex apartment in downtown Beijing with no Internet or outside phone line and only allowed weekly trips to buy groceries and visit her parents.

Once a month, she is taken to see her husband who is four years into an 11-year prison term for subversion for authoring and disseminating a sweeping call for democratic reform known as Charter ’08.

[…] “I felt I was a person emotionally prepared to respond to the consequences of Liu Xiaobo winning the prize. But after he won the prize, I really never imagined that after he won, I would not be able to leave my home. This is too absurd. I think Kafka could not have written anything more absurd and unbelievable than this.”

[…] “I can’t remember [when I last saw my husband],” she said. “I don’t keep track of the days anymore. That’s how it is.”

Watch the AP video of the interview:

See also photographs of an emotional Liu Xia taken by the AP.

On Tuesday, a group of 134 Nobel laureates wrote to Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, urging him to release Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia [.pdf]:

On December 25, 2009, your government sentenced Dr. Liu, a highly respected intellectual and democracy advocate, to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion.” The charges were based on his political essays and co-authorship of “Charter 08,” which called for peaceful political reform in China based on the principles of human rights, freedom, and democracy. Shortly after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Dr. Liu its Peace Prize, the government placed Liu Xia under house arrest, where she remains cut off from the outside world two years later without charge or the benefit of any legal process. In response to the continued detentions of Dr. Liu and Liu Xia, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, an independent and impartial body of experts, issued Opinions No. 15-16/2011, finding their detentions to be in violation of international law; however, despite this finding their cases remain unresolved.

Across all disciplines, the distinguishing feature which led to our recognition as Nobel Laureates is that we have embraced the power of our intellectual freedom and creative inspiration to do our part to advance the human condition. No government can restrict freedom of thought and association without having a negative effect on such important human innovation. Indeed, we Laureates are distressed that your government continues to block access to the main Nobel Prize web site (www.nobelprize.org).

Archbishop Desmond Tutu also launched a public petition calling for the couple’s release, which has now almost reached 200,000 signatures. Another letter came from within China on Tuesday, from a group of 40 activists including Hu Jia, legal scholar He Weifang and rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang:

Inside China and abroad, people are hoping to see signs for political reform as China ushers in new leadership. Systematic political changes are complex and many-faceted, requiring rational deliberation and orderly actions, and we would like to see various social forces working together to advance this process.

we propose the followings as initial steps for political and social change:

1.Initiate legal procedures immediately to reverse the wrong verdict against Dr. Liu Xiaobo, and set him free as soon as possible;

2.Immediately lift the restrictions imposed on Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo’s wife, ending forced isolation, and allowing her to live her normal life;

3.Immediately free those who have been detained or sentenced for their political stand, expression, or religious beliefs;

4.Immediately cease surveillance of people who hold independent political positions or/and expressing independent opinions, and remove all forms of restrictions on their freedom of movement.

We believe that the existence of political prisoners does not help China to build its image of a responsible world power. Ending political imprisonment is an important benchmark for China to move toward a civilized political system.

China faces complex problems, and reform is a difficult endeavor that requires all the effort from all the people.

The BBC reports that signatures added since Tuesday have brought the total to almost 300.

Any hope that the new Party leadership might be receptive to these requests will be dampened by news that Norwegians, alone in Europe, will be ineligible for Beijing’s new 72-hour visa waiver scheme. Their exclusion appears to be an extension of the feud against Norway that began with the announcement of Liu’s award. According to The Financial Times, a travel administration official declined to confirm this suspicion, but said that “some countries were not eligible because their citizens or government were ‘of low-quality’ and ‘badly behaved’.”

The state-owned Global Times accused the 134 Nobel laureates of ignoring China’s progress and—despite the presence on the list of figures such as the Dalai Lama—of opposing “non-Western” ideologies.

In recent years, the choice of the Nobel Peace Prize winners, from US President Barack Obama in 2009 to this year’s pick of the European Union, has increasingly made the public scratch its head. Certainly, the decision to award the prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo infuriated Chinese society.

It seems that the Nobel Committee has missed the real focus of the world, and consequently has seen its influence dwindling.

Among these 134 members, we wonder how many of them have first-hand experience of China, let alone are aware of the changes that have taken place in terms of China’s political freedom in recent years.

By speaking with one voice, the 134 Nobel laureates have only demonstrated their firm opposition to non-Western ideologies. In their eyes, a few dissidents speak for all of China. A sense of moral superiority still persists among Western elites and their followers.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei also condemned the letter. From the BBC:

“China is a law-abiding country. Liu Xiaobo was lawfully sentenced to a fixed-term imprisonment by the judicial organ because he committed an offence against Chinese law,” he said.

“The Chinese government opposes outsiders handling matters in any way that would interfere in its judicial sovereignty and internal matters.”

On the other hand, he congratulated Mo Yan, who he said “loves his country and people”.

In fact, Mo Yan also expressed his hope for Liu Xiaobo’s release after being named the 2012 Literature Prize winner in October. His public support surprised critics who had accused him of being a government puppet. But Tom Hancock wrote at the AFP that Mo is unlikely to mention Liu again while in Sweden to receive his prize:

Mo Yan has long trodden a fine line between criticising China’s political establishment and cooperating with it, said Ma Xiangwu, a literature professor at the People’s University in Beijing.

“For a long time Mo has occupied a position within the system, but not totally within it,” he said. “His works are often very critical of society and politics — he’s too complex to be put in a box.”

In keeping with that, he said there was “absolutely no chance” Mo would refer to Liu in his Nobel lecture.

“He won’t mention sensitive issues during his speech. I think he will be quite moderate. I don’t think he will directly criticise the government… but I also don’t expect he will heap extravagant praise on China,” he added.

Sure enough, Mo told a press conference in Stockholm on Thursday that “I have already issued my opinion about this matter”, and that his prize is for literature, not politics. Chinese media, meanwhile, have preferred to focus on whether Mo will wear a tuxedo or a Mao suit to next week’s ceremony, or one of the three other outfits he is said to have taken with him when he left on Wednesday.

See also ‘You Wait for Me with Dust‘, a poem from Liu Xiaobo to Liu Xia (via Tania Branigan), and more on Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia, Mo Yan and the Nobel Prizes at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, european union, He Weifang, house arrest, Hu Jia, illegal detention, liu xia, Liu Xiaobo, mo yan, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, norway, pu zhiqiang, Xi Jinping
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Fortunately for Ren, he had thousands of impassioned web users in his corner, who seemed aware that Ren’s case would have repercussions for their own ability to use social media. In October, thousands tweeted their support for Ren and outrage at his treatment. What most stirred online ire was not simply Ren’s imprisonment., but the evidence against him. When Ren’s case was initially tried, authorities introduced as evidence a T-Shirt, found in Ren’s home at the time of his arrest, with the words “Freedom or Death” printed in Chinese.

[…] Ren also has his lawyer to thank. Pu Zhiqiang (@哈儿浦志强有戏) is well known for taking cases involving press freedom, and Pu was aggressive not only in bringing Ren’s case to trial, but in using social media to enlist public sympathy. Pu recently told the Global Times, “Ren Jianyu’s case has a certain amount of resonance and social influence. Our nation’s laws protect the right to free speech, but Ren was imprisoned for a speech crime. His receiving ‘re-education through labor’ was extremely unreasonable.”

Weighing against encouraging signs from Chongqing, however, is news from Beijing of a 36-year-old fund manager detained on the eve of the 18th Party Congress for “spreading false and terrible information”. Zhai Xiaobing, or @stariver, posted a satirical tweet based on the Final Destination series of horror films on November 5th. He has not yet been released. With translation by Yaxue Cao at Seeing Red in China:

#剧透推 #慎入 死神来了6即将上映。大会堂突然倒塌，正在开会的2000多人只有7人幸免，事后却又一一离奇死亡。是上帝的游戏，还是死神的怒火，神秘数字18怎样开启地狱之门？11月8日全球院线震撼登场！

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) November 5, 2012

.#SpoilerTweet #Enter-at-your-own-peril “Final Destination 6” has arrived. In which the Great Hall of the People collapses all of a sudden. All 2,000+ people meeting there died except for 7 of them. But afterwards, the seven die one after another in bizarre ways. Is it a game of God, or the wrath of Death? How will 18, the mysterious number, unlock the gate of Hell? Premieres globally on November the 8th to bring you an earthshaking experience!

Twitter is sometimes seen as a relatively safe haven compared with domestic services like Sina Weibo, but as past cases show, the service is actively monitored. In 2010, user @wangyi09 was sentenced to a year of re-education through labour for tweeting the five characters, “Go, angry youth!”, jokingly encouraging anti-Japanese protesters.

A petition has been set up to call for Zhai’s release, with signatories so far including Bei Feng, Hu Jia, Mo Zhixu, and Ai Weiwei. The petition letter concludes, from Oiwan Lam’s translation at Global Voices Advocacy:

We hope the the Beijing police shows a sense of humor and do not create a big incident out of a small issue. In particular, do not ruin the image of the new leadership soon after the 18th Party Congress. Such groundless prosecution against citizen who exercise their freedom of expression is disgraceful. We urge the immediate release of Twitter user @stariver.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Ai Weiwei, anti-Japan protests, Beijing, Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Internet censorship, netizens, pu zhiqiang, re-education through labor, sina weibo, social media, Twitter, wang yi
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I began looking into the business dealings of Wen Jiabao’s family late last year. I had been working on a series called “Endangered Dragon,” which looked at China’s government-managed economy, and wanted to include a piece that would give deeper insight into how China’s capitalism worked at the top. It is a broad subject, which I decided would be made more manageable by focusing on one family. I chose the prime minister’s family because I had heard conjecture about their business dealings for many years. People talked openly about the family’s wealth as if it was fact, but there was really no reporting on the subject that I could find that cited hard evidence backing up the claims. I kept scratching my head about why no one had tried to truth-squad the widespread rumors.

My only real source for this lengthy article was a filing cabinet full of documents I requested from various Chinese government offices over a period of about a year. After having some luck with my initial requests for corporate registration documents from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce bureaus, I went on a reporting spree: requesting and paying fees for the records of dozens of investment partnerships tied to the relatives of Wen Jiabao.

Barboza has previously explained how he gathered publicly available corporate records.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, who accused the article last week of having “ulterior motives” and trying to “smear” China, attacked it again on Monday. “There are always some voices in the world that do not want to see China develop and become stronger,” he said, “and they will try any means to smear China and Chinese leaders and try to sow instability in China. Your scheme is doomed to failure.”

People’s Daily’s former international news editor Ren Yujun has also attacked The New York Times. Instead of challenging Barboza’s report itself, however, he brought up the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal in which the Times’ new chief executive, formerly at the BBC, has become embroiled. In another article [zh], Ren wrote of “an explosion in plagiarism and fabrication” at the newspaper, pointing out the 2010 Zachery Kouwe and 2003 Jayson Blair scandals. The Financial Times’ Simon Rabinovitch noted, however, that Ren’s own piece consisted almost entirely of unacknowledged passages from other articles, from Xinhua, People’s Daily and beyond.

While Barboza accused neither Wen nor his family of anything illegal, Donald Clarke wrote at China Law Prof Blog that Wen may still have broken Party disciplinary rules which “as written are arguably tighter than is reasonable”:

The bottom line is that Wen appears to be in violation of a Party rule requiring senior officials to prevent their close relatives from engaging in business in areas (geographical or subject-matter) under their jurisdiction or, failing that, to resign. Since Wen is the premier, all of China falls within his geographical jurisdiction, and pretty much all areas of business would be within his subject-matter jurisdiction as well. This, of course, means that his close relatives can’t engage in any business in or even relating to China at all. I don’t claim that this is a reasonable or practical result, or that it was intended by those who wrote the rule, but that’s how I read it. My reasoning is below.

Following a statement from Wen family lawyers on Saturday, Clarke also briefly discussed the prospect of legal action by Wen’s family within the United States. He linked to a more in-depth analysis by Jonathan Turley, who concluded that:

Wen may have lawyers but he may not have a particularly good lawsuit. The most important defense to defamation remains truth. That could put the family in a difficult position. As a highly secretive family in a highly secretive country, they are not used to American discovery rules. They could be forced to disclose copious amounts of financial records to make their case. Many could find that even a few million dollars as opposed to hundreds of millions as a curious nest egg for “Communist” leaders and their families.

Legal action at home might be more easily controllable; Isaac Stone Fish suggested at Foreign Policy that the Times’ past legal defeats in Singapore offer a precedent. But both He Weifang and Pu Zhiqiang told the South China Morning Post that even this would probably be considered too risky. Evan Osnos, assessing the fallout from Barboza’s report at The New Yorker, agreed, and dismissed “conspiracy theories” that the newspaper had been manipulated by Wen’s political enemies. He concluded:

• Not Surprised by This Story? Perhaps you should be. One of the standard lines going around in recent days has been the notion that this subject is somehow old news, that people already “knew” that Chinese leaders benefit from public office, so why bother? To me, that’s akin to saying that since we “knew” that campaign finance corrupts American government, we shouldn’t have bothered to unearth the crimes of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff; and since we “knew” British tabloids would walk a fine line to get a story, we shouldn’t have gotten so exercised about digging out the details of phone-hacking and the paying of police for information. In the end, that’s the nature of investigation: it puts details on what we don’t know but think we do. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right, and sometimes it’s wrong, but you never know until you look. Corruption in China, after all, is hardly a scoop in itself. Lin Yutang, for one, wrote, “In China, though a man may be arrested for stealing a purse, he is not arrested for stealing the national treasury.”

He wrote that observation in 1935.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: donald clarke, He Weifang, investigative journalism, journalism, journalistic ethics, legal dispute, Lin Yutang, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, new york times, people's daily, plagiarism, pu zhiqiang, singapore, transparency, Wen Jiabao
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The lawyers claimed that those of Wen’s relatives who have engaged in business activities have done nothing illegal, and hold no shares in any companies; that his mother has never received any income or property besides her regular salary and pension; and that Wen himself has never interceded on their behalf or allowed policies to be affected by his family’s financial interests. Several points addressed statements not made in the Times article. “In fact,” wrote Donald Clarke at China Law Prof Blog, “the statement disputes remarkably little […. T]he lawyers’ statement really challenges only one specific assertion – that Wen’s mother is a multi-millionaire – and one general assertion – that several of his relatives own shares in various corporations.” From Keith Bradsher’s report on the statement at The New York Times:

The statement was not a sweeping denial of the article. The statement acknowledged that some family members were active in business and that they “are responsible for all their own business activities.”

While the statement disputed that Mr. Wen’s mother had held assets, it did not address the calculation in the article that the family had controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, expressed confidence in the article. “We are standing by our story, which we are incredibly proud of and which is an example of the quality investigative journalism The Times is known for,” she wrote in an e-mail.

The lawyers’ statement represents an unusual move for the family of a senior Chinese leader. When Bloomberg News published an article in late June describing real estate and other assets held by the family of Vice President Xi Jinping, his family did not respond publicly.

(See CDT’s coverage of the Bloomberg article and subsequent censorship.)

Speaking with Simon Rabinovitch of The Financial Times, the Brookings Institution’s Cheng Li said that this “unprecedented” response is encouraging: “Wen Jiabao is behaving differently from other Chinese leaders. His reaction can potentially be a positive example.” At the South China Morning Post, Shi Jiangtao discussed the different reactions to the two investigations, and the Times article’s possible impact on transparency reforms:

Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based political analyst, said the image-conscious premier, who had always boasted a “clean” image, had no choice but to fight back.

“The Times’ report has forced Wen’s hand … Of course the best way to dismiss allegations is for Wen to become the first mainland leader to disclose his personal assets,” Zhang said.

Both [Zhang and Zhu Lijia, of the Chinese Academy of Governance] noted that when the family of Vice-President Xi Jinping was subject to similar attacks in June by Bloomberg he kept quiet.

“Xi apparently chose to bide his time as the leader-in-waiting while Wen, who will step down next year, chose to fight as he has nothing much to lose,” Zhang said.

Experts consulted by the Post’s Keith Zhai felt that the statement’s threat of legal action against the Times would probably come to nothing:

He Weifang, a law expert at Peking University, said the statement was more of a gesture than a substantial legal document. “It was a demonstration of the attitude of a single party [the Wen family], intended to show the Chinese public that [The New York Times] report wasn’t factually correct,” He said.

If the Wen family does take the Times to court, it could be a formidable undertaking.

“Then the case would get bigger … and even out of control,” He said. “Based on this rationale, I reckon it’s not likely [the Wen family] would sue The Times.”

[…] Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing-based civil rights lawyer specialising in press freedom and defamation cases, said the statement was more like a declaration of innocence. “It’s understandable why the family asked the lawyers to make the statement, but to me it didn’t say anything. It’s more like a public oath or some act of public relations.”

At IHT Rendezvous, Mark McDonald described Chinese authorities’ efforts to stifle discussion of Barboza’s report, citing CDT’s Sensitive Words post on blocked weibo search terms. Delivery in China of the the hard-copy Tribune carrying the article, meanwhile, was variable. From NPR’s Louisa Lim and the Los Angeles Times’ Julie Makinen:

Surprised my IHT arrived intact today.Expected to see whole WJB-related pages torn out.

— Louisa Lim (@limlouisa) October 27, 2012

Hilarious. This is how a hotel explained why the IHT (with NYT story on Wen $$) would not be delivered in Beijing Sat. twitter.com/JulieMakLAT/st…

— Julie Makinen (@JulieMakLAT) October 28, 2012

For more on fallout from the investigation, see ‘New York Times Wen Exposé Makes Waves‘ at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bloomberg, donald clarke, He Weifang, Internet censorship, new york times, newspapers, pu zhiqiang, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping, Zhang Lifan
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Interference is not limited to high-profile cases, however, and is not always so aggressive. At Caixin, criminal defence lawyer Zhang Yansheng recalls advising a client through a frosted plastic partition, which blocked effective communication for much of their meeting.

As a professional criminal defense lawyer, I have been to detention centers everywhere. They are of course all different, but at a recent visit with an inmate, we were separated by pane of frosted glass.

[…] It has been more than a month since I came back from Foshan City, but I just can’t wipe that blurred face and muddy voice from my memory. A colleague laughed at me by saying, “You were not there on a date. What does it matter that you didn’t see the person’s face?”

But yes, we are often forced reluctantly to work under such conditions and people much too often accept it as normal. But has anyone thought about how many wrong verdicts have come about because of such tough conditions? How many have lost their lives unjustly because of these restrictions?

In the detention center, ripping away those plastic boards and replacing them with steel bars would have transformed the way the lawyers meet their clients and would have made the meeting much more productive. Effective communication would be beneficial to the criminal proceedings themselves, but would also show criminal suspects that they are fairly treated. Would the detention center ever think to allow that?

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Bo Xilai, Chen Guangcheng, criminal rights, detention, Foshan, gu kailai, Guangdong, Jerome cohen, lawyers, legal defense, legal system, Liu Xiaoyuan, pu zhiqiang
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The trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai, is expected to start Thursday in the eastern city of Hefei, according to the friend, who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Gu and a family aide were charged in the November death of British businessman Neil Heywood. If convicted, Gu could face the death penalty, but the friend said her life is expected to be spared.

Each of the defendants will be allowed to have two relatives at the trial, which is expected to be speedy, according to the friend.

Reuters reported that two sources, also anonymous, had given the same start date, and that British diplomats had requested access to Gu’s trial.

Much else about the trial remains unknown, as NYU law professor Jerome Cohen wrote in a South China Morning Post article republished by the US Asia Law Institute. He recently argued in the same newspaper that infringements of criminal defendants’ rights “make a mockery of China’s claims to have established ‘a socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics’“, and sees signs of similar infringements in Gu’s case:

What kind of trial can Gu and her present co-defendant, a former assistant, expect? Will it be open to the public and foreign and domestic media? Thus far, the indictment has not been released and we do not know whether the trial has been officially characterised as secret. It is likely to be closed if the authorities believe there might be a risk of disclosing, for example, either how the defendants allegedly obtained the cyanide that reportedly killed their victim or lurid details of personal and business relations among Bo, Gu, Heywood and others. An open trial might also risk a defendant’s revealing emotional outburst.

Will the accused have capable, independent defence counsel? They have been denied the right to select their own lawyers. Their families retained experienced Beijing attorneys many weeks ago, but neither lawyers nor family members have been allowed to contact defendants. Instead, Hefei authorities have reportedly appointed local lawyers, who are plainly under their control and can be relied on to follow orders. This is common practice in “sensitive” mainland cases, including that of Chen Guangcheng’s nephew, Chen Kegui, for attempted murder.

Amidst this uncertainty, the verdict—though not the sentence—appears to be a foregone conclusion: Xinhua’s announcement of the charges last week stated that “the facts … are clear, and the evidence is irrefutable and substantial.” From Tom Lasseter at McClatchy:

Unless there’s a radical departure from established practice, the proceedings will serve as yet another reminder that while this nation has the trappings of government and a court system, it’s the Communist Party that wields ultimate power.

“There’s no use talking about frustrations. I just need to tell you the fact, the conclusion: China’s judiciary is not independent,” said Mo Shaoping, a prominent rights lawyer whose firm represented Liu Xiaobo, a dissident who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while sitting in a Chinese prison cell.

[…] “With a case like this, with a lot of attention and sensitivity, the verdict is not going to be decided by a judge from the . . . intermediate people’s court,” Mo said.

That is, the party, not the jurist, will call the shots.

Perry Link questioned a number of friends—”well-known critics of the regime”—about the case and the political factors driving it. He describes how Bo’s rise and fall have both threatened to disrupt the country’s impending leadership transition, and examines some of the many “black-box mysteries” surrounding the trial. From The New York Review of Books:

Did she really do it? “China’s justice system is the fairest in the world,” quipped one. “They don’t even arrest you unless they know you did it.” Jiang Qisheng, who spent four years in prison for organizing a candlelight memorial for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, has published an essay in which he compares Bogu Kailai’s fate to that of Mao’s wife Jiang Qing after Mao died. Jiang puns on fazhi “rule of law” and fazhi “the law knows.” The prominent rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang notes that Bogu has not, as far as anyone knows, been able to consult a lawyer.

[…] Is it possible, I asked, that Bo’s wife is being targeted as a scapegoat for Bo, in order to leave the way open for an eventual return by Bo? I had seen speculation of this kind in the Western press, but from my friends in Beijing heard only a contemptuous response. “When has the Communist Party ever done this?” asked an eminent historian. “When has any struggle like this ever not ended in total victory for one side and total defeat for the other?” The book dealer said, “The only question now is the length of Bo’s prison term. Nothing can free Bo short of a collapse of the whole system.”

Nevertheless, an article in The Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief suggests that Bo’s punishment may be relatively light:

[… A]s noted Beijing-based human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang pointed out, “if Gu has not been implicated with corruption-related offences, it is likely that her husband Bo will also not be accused of a similar crime.” In other words, since Bo, the 63-year-old son of revolutionary elder Bo Yibo, has only been cited for a “serious breach of party discipline” by party authorities—and not for corruption-related offenses—he need not even appear in a court of law. According to CCP regulations, cadres suspected of breaking party discipline may only be investigated by the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection (CCDI)—and such proceedings are usually not publicized (Ming Pao [Hong Kong], July 28; Cable TV News [Hong Kong], July 26).

If the Bo case will be handled only by CCDI investigators, his punishment is unlikely to be severe. As things stand, Bo may be charged with trying to intercept the phone calls of senior party leaders as well as failing to maintain discipline among his subordinates. The ousted “warlord” might need to take political responsibility for former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun’s attempt last February to seek political asylum in the U.S. Consulate in nearby Chengdu. Wang, a former protégé of Bo’s, had apparently fun afoul of his patron by exposing Gu’s involvement in the Heywood murder. The results of the investigation, which are expected to be announced at the 7th Plenary Session of the Central Committee scheduled to take place about one month before the 18th Party Congress, are likely to be little if anything beyond Bo’s expulsion from the party (Oriental Daily News [Hong Kong], July 30; Sina.com, July 28).

Link continues:

In a larger sense … Bogu Kailai is still a scapegoat—not for her husband but for the whole Communist Party. By focusing all the blame on her, and “bringing her to justice,” the Party, in its tradition of maintaining decorous exteriors, can extend the fiction that everything is basically fine. We, the Party, the center of China, are fine. Shortly after Wang Lijun went to the US Consulate, a joke appeared on the Chinese Internet. Wang Lijun is an ethnic Mongolian, and Bogu Kailai is said to have permanent-resident status in Singapore. The joke said: “This whole case is about a Mongolian who ran to the Americans to expose a Singaporean who killed a Brit. Nothing to do with China.”

The Economist’s Banyan column concluded this week that, in light of the Bo-Gu scandal, “the whole edifice [of Party rule] begins to look rather brittle.”

THUGS and bandits. Any day now, the world will hear the guilty verdict handed down by a Chinese court on Gu Kailai, the wife of Bo Xilai, a disgraced Chinese politician. China’s rulers hope this will draw a line under an embarrassing, lurid murder trial. They may get away with it. But the episode gives the lie to many of the myths they foster: that, despite being unelected, they are “meritocrats”, in their jobs because they are good at them; that they are, if not entirely honest, then at least corrupt within forgivable bounds; and that the way a new generation of leaders is chosen every ten years is orderly and consensual. The Bo Xilai case has lifted a curtain on a world of thuggery, banditry and vicious, personalised power struggles, reminiscent in some ways of the ten-year nightmare from which the country spent a generation trying to awaken: the Cultural Revolution.

[…] China’s leaders are highly sensitive to the notion that the Bo-Gus are not freaks, but actually typical of the ruling class. Bloomberg, a news agency, has suffered sanctions for reporting on the wealth amassed by relations of Xi Jinping, China’s next leader. Mr Xi, like Mr Bo, is a revolutionary aristocrat, the son of a civil-war hero. Some “princelings” feel themselves born to rule.

In an apparent effort to resist any such comparisons, Xi issued a barely veiled denunciation of Bo in a recent speech. From The Telegraph’s Tom Phillips:

In a recent speech, reproduced this week in the Qiushi Journal, an official policy magazine controlled by China’s Communist Party, the country’s current vice-president, Mr Xi, said not staying “in close contact with the people” would lead to “frustration and failure”.

“It should be noted that there are indeed some party members and cadres who have spent lavishly, developing a taste for extravagance and luxury, pursuing personal political performance and individual pleasure,” Mr Xi said, according to the magazine.

“Some party members and cadres are even indulging in feasting and pleasure-seeking, and have consequently fallen into the abyss of luxury and corruption. The lessons are profound,” he added.

Several of the arguments in the Perry Link and Banyan articles above bear on Eric X. Li’s debate with Minxin Pei on ‘China and Democracy’ at this summer’s Aspen Ideas Festival. Also see yesterday’s round-up on CDT for more recent news on the Bo and Gu cases and their fallout.

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Post tags: Anhui, Bo Xilai, CCP, Chongqing, criminal rights, gu kailai, Hefei, Jerome cohen, leadership transition, legal rights, legal system, Liu Xiaobo, Mo Shaoping, Neil Heywood, perry link, pu zhiqiang, Wang Lijun, Xi Jinping
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Pu has a powerful presence. With a crew cut and a strong jaw, this rights lawyer is large, and solidly built. His shoulders and limbs seemed to occupy his entire side of the booth. With a cigarette and a wry grin, he speaks in short declarative bursts, with more of a growl than a voice. Of course, the secret police know we are meeting, he told me straight away …. Knowing that they had listened in on the phone call, Pu informed them of our meeting a day earlier, although he tried to allay their concerns. “I told them we set this appointment a long time ago, that it has nothing to do with the thing you care about, the jasmines,” says Pu. “If you try to stop me from meeting someone, that’s illegal. You can do your job, but you cannot stop me from doing what I’m doing. If you disagree, detain me, take me away.”

I had never met Pu, so I was surprised to hear how brazenly he addressed the security officers who tailed him everywhere. What did they say?, I asked. “They didn’t say anything,” Pu replied, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “I told them without asking them. I meet my friends with their permission? Bullshit.”

[…] What struck me most as Pu talked into the night about how he worked the seams of his country’s authoritarian system was the way he dealt with the people he knew best: the secret police dispatched to monitor his every move. His tactic, as much as anything, seemed to be to humanize them. They may be on opposite ends of a fundamental disagreement—whether the rule of the Chinese Communist Party is legitimate or not—but that did not erase his interest in dealing with them as people. When I raised this with him, his brawny frame rose in its seat. “I respect them, I respect them. I constantly tell them what the procedures are,” Pu replied, stubbing out his fourth cigarette to emphasize the point. “If you come to my office and you want to detain me, OK, then there’s a procedure to go through. You need a certificate to do that. They can’t provide it, so the result is we have dinner, we drink, we talk with each other. We need to face the secret police. Why not try to change them, if you have the chance to do that?”

This approach of Pu’s, similar to Ai Weiwei’s, is illustrated by his tweeted account of his three-day detention in October 2010, after the announcement of Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize. Pu concludes by saying of his interrogator (from CDT’s translation):

Actually [Dong Yansheng, the local Deputy Director in the Domestic Security Department] is not a bad man. He is from the background of criminal police and good at what he does, and basically kind to his buddies and even enemies like me. It is not easy to be in the domestic security police force. He is just in the role of a police officer, so he and I always clash. Once he overcomes his own mental block, I believe we eventually will be friends.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Charter 08, June 4th, lawyers, legal rights, Liu Xiaobo, pu zhiqiang, rights defenders, Tan Zuoren
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Feeling the warm sun on his face, blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng relaxed in an outdoor playground with his family Sunday, basking in perfect spring weather—and not having to worry about being beaten or harassed for the first time in years.

Chen, his wife, Yuan Weijing, and their two kids started a new life in a quiet, leafy Greenwich Village neighborhood full of university students sunbathing in grassy parks and yuppies walking their dogs. It’s a long way from their rural Shandong farmhouse—a virtual prison with blocked-up windows, surveillance cameras, and dozens of guards who threatened and beat would-be visitors ….

A TV-satellite truck has materialized outside Chen’s apartment block, which has also been staked out by reporters and photographers who scrambled when he appeared in the playground. (“It’s exciting. I’ve never heard so many police sirens as I did last night,” said one of Chen’s new neighbors about his arrival in the building.) But Chen didn’t want to grant media interviews on their first day in America. He and his wife are especially concerned about protecting the privacy of their 10-year-old son, Chen Kerui—who’d lived separately from his parents for several years so his father’s imprisonment and harassment wouldn’t disrupt his schooling—and their vivacious 6-year-old daughter, Chen Kesi, who succumbed to her jet lag by early evening. “She was fast asleep on the couch when I first arrived,” said one visitor, “but then she woke up and greeted me full of giggles.”

Speaking to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, Jerome Cohen explained Chen’s likely course of study at New York University, his long term ambitions, and the negotiation process that brought the family to the US. Cohen also tactfully addressed the risk of Chen becoming a political pinball, and the question of how neatly his work against forced abortion and sterilisation might fit an American pro-life agenda. Chen, he said, “understands China’s need for birth control”, and was concerned primarily with civil liberties. “I don’t think,” he added, “we should associate Mr. Chen with one specific religious organization or with one particular political cause, however important it is.”

Giving his own views on China’s future direction, Cohen said that he is “very optimistic” for the long term and “fairly optimistic” for the medium term, but “quite pessimistic” about the immediate future.

Chen’s studies could begin as soon as next week, according to the South China Morning Post. How long they will continue, however, is unknown.

While in New York, Chen will study Chinese, American and international law. Lectures will be given in Chinese since Chen does not speak English. The programme was scheduled to last a year, but could go longer if necessary, Cohen said. “His study will probably begin next week or the week after,” Cohen said. “We will see when he is ready. There is no rush ….”

Cohen said Chen understood that few activists had had much success trying to influence domestic reform after leaving the country.

Nonetheless, Cohen said he believed Chen had a good chance of returning should he focus on legislation to protect the disabled. He noted that more Chinese activists had been pressing for legal reforms without being jailed, such as civil rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang .

The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reported that Chen may return to China in as little as a year:

The couple … will not be working towards degrees, [Cohen] added. “Maybe he’ll go back to China quickly at the end of the year, if things look good,” Cohen said. “Initially he’s going to put in a year of serious study and he’ll feel his way.”

Chen has said he wants to return to China at some point, although some activists and dissidents who have left have not been allowed back into the country. “The Chinese government has a long history of preventing the return of critics who have been abroad,” warned Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“Some parties involved in the negotiations are fairly confident Chen will be able to return … [But] it is not entirely clear what will happen.”

Another article at The Guardian illustrated what may be the worst case scenario, reporting the efforts of several Tiananmen-era dissidents to secure a safe return to China. They include student leader Wang Dan, who recently welcomed Chen to America and assured him that exile, thanks to the Internet, no longer imposed the same limitations as in the past.

It’s been almost 23 years since the optimism that gripped China during the seven-week Tiananmen protests was brutally swept away. Now, five exiled Tiananmen leaders have written an open letter calling on Beijing to allow them to return home in the spirit of human rights at a time when “China is undergoing profound changes”.

“I want to be able to visit my parents,” said Wang Dan in an email. “The Chinese government not allowing us to return is another continuous punishment ….”

While a number of dissidents have returned to China, the permission to do so comes attached with stipulations that most dissidents refuse to accept.

Xiang Xiaoji, now a lawyer in New York, explains: “I will never apologise for anything. What I did was right, and I will never promise to stop pushing for democracy in China. I will not accept their political conditions to return home,” Xiang says. “Besides, I’m not scared of a jail sentence. I’ve been in exile for 23 years, and I’m 55 now. I’ve never regretted what I did in the past, so why would I be scared of what I’ll do in the future?”

At TIME’s Global Spin blog, on the other hand, Austin Ramzy raised the possibility that media coverage of Chen’s saga, regardless of its tone, has sown the seeds of an influence that could weather a wintry exile:

… Chen is still not … widely known in China, but the past month’s coverage in domestic media has raised his profile. While many Chinese readers will agree with criticism of the U.S. role in protecting Chen for six days after he escaped from house arrest, they will also be curious to learn more about who he is. And his story is as compelling as the role of officials in Shandong is troubling. Even before Chen’s escape from house arrest, there was a grassroots effort to support him, and average citizens like former English teacher He Peirong found themselves drawn to his cause.

Earlier this spring I interviewed a migrant worker about a strike at the electronics factory where he was employed in Shenzhen. At the end of our discussion he said he knew that TIME had once interviewed the blind lawyer. “Blind lawyer?” I asked, shocked that a factory worker would know about a man who had been under one form of arrest or another since 2005. “Yes, you know, the blind lawyer Chen,” he replied, adding that he had been inspired by him and closely followed his case …. Chen’s influence may, as State media suggest, diminish during his exile. But not if they keep talking about him.

Also uncertain are the broader implications and lessons of Chen’s case. From the Associated Press:

Bonnie Glaser, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, doubted that Chen’s case would start a trend. She pointed to exceptional factors — Chen is blind and had broken bones when he sought US help, while China was eager to ensure smooth talks with Clinton ….

But Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch said that — even if it is unlikely that droves of dissidents will seek shelter at the US embassy — the Chen case showed activists inside China the possibilities of pushing the government.

“I have trouble imagining that people who will have watched this saga unfold won’t in some ways feel empowered by it,” she said ….

Sharon Hom, executive director of Hong Kong- and New York-based group Human Rights in China, said the Chen case did not give simple answers on whether quiet or loud diplomacy works best with China as many factors — from international attention to Chinese netizen activism — had been factors.

At The Atlantic, James Fallows suggested that one lesson was not to rush too quickly to judgement based on incomplete information.

… [L]ooking back on the evolution of the administration’s foreign policy, I contended in my long story about Obama early this year that U.S. positioning toward China was actually one of the more chessmaster-like features of Obama’s overall policy. That is, love the current administration or hate it, you really should consider China-handling one of the more successful parts of its record ….

[The Chen Guangcheng] episode has so far turned out better than it easily might have. And the State Department and White House negotiators on the U.S. side, whatever mistakes or misjudgments they may have made, appear to have been something other than the feckless clowns portrayed in the first wave of press coverage, based on the question of whether they had sold Chen Guangcheng out.

… We naturally crave “what does it all mean?” “who screwed up?” “who won and lost?” certainty, but there are times when the immediately available answers to those questions are likely to be wrong. In our little part of our journo-sphere we will try to do our part by taking this lesson to heart.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, exiles, forced abortions, forced sterilization, human rights in china, human rights watch, James Fallows, Jerome cohen, new york city, news media, pu zhiqiang, State Department, Tiananmen, wang dan, White House
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Hoping to steer the US towards a leadership transition of its own, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney applied some pressure on the issue on Sunday. From The Caucus blog at The New York Times:

“Any serious U.S. policy toward China must confront the facts of the Chinese government’s denial of political liberties, its one-child policy and other violation of human rights,” he said in a statement on Sunday, his first remarks on the issue since Mr. Chen’s escape became known on Friday. Mr. Chen became famous because of his strong opposition to forced abortions and sterilizations conducted as part of China’s policy of limiting families to one child.

“Our country must play a strong role in urging reform in China and supporting those fighting for the freedoms we enjoy,” Mr. Romney added ….

Mr. Romney’s remarks made it clear that the administration would not be able to remain silent on the matter much longer. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner are scheduled to lead a large delegation to Beijing this week for two days of talks on economic and security issues — matters that will surely be overshadowed by Mr. Chen’s case.

The administration has stressed the need to find an appropriate balance between backing Chen and maintaining good relations with China. To clear the way, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell travelled to Beijing ahead of schedule. From NPR’s Louisa Lim:

Chen’s whereabouts have yet to be officially confirmed, though several activists and groups with whom he had been in contact say he is under U.S. protection. There was no comment from Assistant Secretary of State [Kurt] Campbell as he flew into Beijing, days earlier than planned. So far, the U.S. silence is a good sign, according to Susan Shirk, a professor of Chinese politics at UC San Diego, who was a State Department official responsible for China during Bill Clinton’s presidency,

“Rather than making big public statements and dramatic gestures, the United States is using quiet diplomacy,” Shirk says, “which is exactly what I would think is needed at the current time ….”

But time for quiet diplomacy is limited. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrives in Beijing, with a high-profile delegation of about 200 officials for previously scheduled annual talks, known as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Back in November, Clinton urged China to do the right thing in Chen’s case. Now, Shirk says, she’ll have to live up to her words.

In an op-ed at CNN, former CIA analyst Christopher Johnson set out his widely quoted view that this may be “the most tense and delicate moment in [the two countries'] bilateral relationship since the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown”:

On many levels, the parallels to 1989 are striking. After the June 4 bloody crackdown on student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, another famous Chinese dissident, Fang Lizhi, became a living symbol of the bilateral conflict over human rights by spending a year in the U.S. Embassy before finally being allowed to leave the country.

Today’s top Chinese leadership, though not yet as deeply divided as its 1989 antecedent, is struggling to maintain unity following the purge of one of its rising Politburo stars for his connections to the security chief’s botched flight and lurid allegations of the murder of a British national. Recent apparent leaks and counter-leaks to the Western media detailing leadership infighting underscore the charged political atmosphere in Beijing as party heavyweights jockey for advantage in the wake of the scandal ….

Add to this cauldron the scheduled arrival in Beijing next week of a Cabinet-level U.S. delegation — led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — for the fourth round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED). If Chen is holed up in the U.S. Embassy, it is hard to fathom how the two sides will stay focused on the many pressing geostrategic and economic challenges in the relationship — especially as they will undoubtedly face a frenzy among accompanying media over Chen’s status.

But the talks’ high stakes provide a strong incentive to quarantine the issue, according to an anonymous Chinese official quoted by The Independent:

A Chinese ministry source suggested that his government is anxious not to jeopardise the talks. “It’s too important to China,” he said. “They will separate out Chen from the dialogue. China really needs this dialogue… because the relationship with the United States is extremely important to China and this is a sign of commitment and even of friendship.”

He added: “I predict that if Chen is in the embassy then he won’t get out for years. But it will merely be an irritant to the Chinese. They won’t do anything in retaliation. They will compartmentalise it from the far more important issues there are between China and the US.”

Besides complicating China’s foreign relations, the episode could sway an ongoing struggle to determine the Party and country’s future direction. Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin described the contenders in a February op-ed for The New York Times, focusing on the then-current battleground of the Criminal Procedure Law revision.

The more progressive-minded factions of the Communist Party and the government consider legal reforms to be integral to China’s modernization. They see enlightened self-interest in giving a greater role to the rule of law, and reforming the criminal code to offer due-process rights that resemble international norms is a key part of this effort.

The other camp is made up of the powerful security apparatus and the more conservative and hard-line elements in the party and the government. This faction has become increasingly powerful since it was assigned the leading role for the security of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

At The New Yorker on Saturday, Evan Osnos described Chen’s escape as perhaps Wen Jiabao’s final chance to leave a concrete legacy as leader of the former group:

For years, Chen’s case has been a confusing blot on China’s aspirations for reform; every step that the country took toward greater rule of law or judicial accountability was cheapened by the fact that, ever since Chen’s legal challenges embarrassed his local government in 2005, central authorities in Beijing have been unwilling or unable to prevent local apparatchiks from systematically abusing him. His case became a kind of authoritarian tragicomedy in 2006, when Chen, who had once been celebrated in the local press for his determination to become a lawyer, was sentenced to four years and three months in jail for “destroying property” and “assembling a crowd for the purpose of disrupting traffic”—even though, at the time, he had been under house arrest. Even the nationalist corners of the Chinese press could no longer understand it. Last October, the Global Times wrote that “the case of Chen Guangcheng has become exaggerated into a mirror of China’s human rights, and it seems that we need more experienced authorities to lance this boil ….”

In his escape and his appeal, Chen has posed several questions. He has asked Premier Wen Jiabao to protect his family and address the corruption at the root of his case. In doing so, Chen has given Wen perhaps his final chance, in the final months of a frustrated ten-year term, to fulfill his oft-stated intentions to reform the system. As of now, Wen will be remembered as a well-intentioned but ultimately ineffective advocate for political reform. If he can protect Chen’s family, and bring his abusers to justice, Wen will have an accomplishment worth noting. It will do nothing to undermine Chinese stability and economic growth—so often the excuses to defer systemic reform—to address the crimes visited upon Chen Guangcheng.

Keith Richburg made a similar argument at The Washington Post:

By appealing personally to Wen, Chen was deftly avoiding the accusation, often used against dissidents in China, that he was “subverting state authority.” To the contrary, Chen was pointing the finger at abusive, corrupt local officials and calling on the premier — a self-styled reformist — to assert the power of the state over the local government and over a security apparatus that many critics feel has run amok ….

“The rule of law is the foundation of the governance of the CPC and critical for realizing long-term stability,” the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main mouthpiece, wrote in an editorial that was widely reprinted in all the state media. “Anyone who breaks the law shall be convicted and punished.”

Now Chen, through his escape and in the videotape, is directly using that same argument in appealing for Wen and the central government to take action against those who abused him and his family members and illegally held him captive for 19 months.

As for the “hard-liners”, Reuters’ Chris Buckley wrote that the affair marked a second strike against security chief Zhou Yongkang following the downfall of his ally Bo Xilai.

The recent crises have intensified long-standing criticisms in China that Zhou’s fiefdom has grown too powerful, unaccountable and yet incapable of meeting the party’s expectations of defending social stability.

“You can’t separate the case of Chen Guangcheng from Zhou Yongkang and his making stability preservation a national policy that has overridden all boundaries and rules,” said Pu Zhiqiang, a lawyer in Beijing who takes on contentious cases about human rights and freedom of speech.

“This all comes down to Zhou Yongkang’s policies for social control and domestic security, and this shows that in the end they can’t work,” added Pu, who said he hoped China’s next leaders would rein in what they call the “stability preservation” apparatus after taking power from later this year.

As Jane Perlez noted at The New York Times, however, the situation’s ultimate effects remain unpredictable:

But at the same time the issue could redound to the benefit of hard-liners, who may see [Chen's] escape as part of a conspiracy to embarrass China that involves the United States, several diplomats here said ….

Perhaps the biggest threat to the leadership is the way Mr. Chen is likely to become a pawn between the major ideological camps that have emerged in the wake of Mr. Bo’s dismissal.

The chief of China’s security apparatus, Zhou Yongkang, would be able to use Mr. Chen as a “told you so” example to push back against the more pro-Western camp, led by President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, two foreign diplomats here said. Mr. Zhou could argue that Mr. Chen plotted to embarrass the leadership at a vulnerable moment after Mr. Bo’s downfall, and did so with the cooperation of the Americans, said the diplomats, who requested anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol. This argument would put Mr. Wen and Mr. Hu on the defensive, the diplomats said.

Another dimension in Chen’s case is the nature of the central government’s involvement in his treatment by the local authorities in Linyi: as instigator, partner, or helpless or oblivious bystander. Wang Xiangwei, writing at the South China Morning Post, gave Beijing the benefit of the doubt:

While the Chinese leaders reflect on the latest developments, the first question they should ask themselves is how this could have happened in the first place. Chen, a self-taught lawyer, merely did the right thing by exposing how officials in Linyi , a city in Shandong, broke Chinese laws by forcing thousands of women, many of them in late stages of pregnancy, to have abortions.

In any other country, Chen would have been hailed as a hero, but in Shandong he was treated as a criminal, jailed and constantly harassed after his release.

Even sadder, the central government seems powerless to stop local officials from committing such sins. This may be very hard for outsiders to believe, but the leaders in Beijing have far less influence than expected in important regional decisions, whether they be economic or social. The latest example is Bo’s case. Bo ruled Chongqing as an overlord for five years, and leaders in Beijing seemed clueless until recently about how to deal with him.

Nicholas Bequelin, on the other hand, argued that Chen’s extra-legal detention was of Beijing’s own making. From Jonathan Watts’ exploration of the escape’s possible domino effects at The Guardian:

“The state security bureau told the Linyi authorities that they had to neutralise Chen but not re-arrest him lest it create more international outcry,” said Bequelin, who said the authorities were increasingly using illegal measures because the old methods of information management have been incapacitated by the spread of microblogs.

“The security apparatus is not able to control and prevent critics and dissidents the way it was before. To make up for this erosion of social control, increasingly unlawful methods are being deployed against activists, including disappearance and torture, so as to silence them and intimidate others,” he said.

And at Chinese Law Prof Blog, Donald C. Clarke agrees that the central government must have been complicit:

He begins the message by saying 敬爱的温总理” (jing’ai de Wen Zongli): roughly, “respected and beloved” or “dearly respected.” Although it’s not nearly so over the top in Chinese as it sounds in English, it nevertheless demonstrates (sincerely or not) a respectful attitude ….

The Linyi authorities don’t have the authority or ability to censor internet search results for Chen Guangcheng, and it wasn’t the Linyi authorities can’t make police in Nanjing detain one of those who helped Chen escape. Chen’s politeness to Wen in his video message is a face-saving fiction.

That fiction might provide sufficient cover, in any case, for the government to break from its past role. Yiyi Lu wrote at China Real Time Report that Beijing’s conduct in Chen’s case has been “baffling”, but that its way forward is clear:

The first, and probably least likely, possibility is that higher authorities know about Chen Guangcheng but are not aware that he has been subjected to illegal treatment ….

The second possibility is that higher authorities know the illegal treatment of Chen is a mistake but are loathe to admit it and make amends out of a fear of “losing face” or being seen as weak ….

The third possibility is that nobody, not even higher up in the hierarchy, was willing to intervene once the decision on how to deal with Chen had been made by a certain agency or official, even if it was an unwise decision that severely damaged the government’s image and put it in an awkward predicament ….

International media have suggested that this new development puts China’s leadership in a quandary. In fact, it should not be a difficult problem for Beijing to solve …. Beijing recently sacked a powerful and well-connected member of the Politburo and put him under investigation. If it can take that action without splitting the Party, bringing down the government or losing so much face that it can no longer go about its business as usual, then surely conducting an investigation into Chen Guangcheng’s allegations and rectifying any illegal practices cannot be that difficult a move to make.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bo Xilai, Chen Guangcheng, Global Times, Hillary Clinton, house arrest, Hu Jintao, human rights watch, illegal detentions, jonathan watts, pu zhiqiang, U.S. relations, United States, Wen Jiabao, Zhou Yongkang
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“In the handling of the whole process for Fake [Ai's design company], some of their actions were illegal and violated regulations,” Ai told Reuters by telephone, adding that he is waiting to hear whether the court would agree to hear the suit.

The company’s lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, told Reuters previously that authorities had not shown him any original documents with evidence of the alleged tax evasion and held a closed hearing last July.

Pu said it was illegal for them to do so. Ai was barred from attending the hearing, but his wife, Lu Qing, was present.

Ai said officials had also prevented the company’s accountant and manager from communicating with Ai or his lawyer since the case began.

The court’s decision on whether to hear the case is expected within a week. In any case, Ai told The Wall Street Journal’s Carlos Tejada, he thought it “hard to say” whether he might succeed. “It’s really a case decided by high officials. Other people [below them] just try to fill in the blanks.”

The Economist’s Analects blog discussed Ai’s predicament following the order last week to shut down four webcams broadcasting from his studio-home:

It would seem a thoroughly Orwellian absurdity that police could put him under near-total surveillance while forbidding him from surveilling himself. Asked about this, Mr Ai thought for a moment before saying, “Yes, Orwell. Or maybe Kafka.”

Indeed, that description—part Orwellian and part Kafkaesque—applies to much of Mr Ai’s experience over the past year. While it is always the police who deal with him (and always very politely, he is quick to add), he has no idea who in the government is handling his case. “Nobody even knows. That’s so beautiful!” the artist said.

This, he said, is how the Chinese regime works. “It’s there, but it’s not there. It’s not there, but it’s there. So freedom, anyone who pushes extra, just a little bit further, is always dangerous for the people who want to have absolute control,” he said.

See also an interview with Ai Weiwei conducted by netizens on Al Jazeera’s The Stream, and much more about the artist, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, courts, legal rights, pu zhiqiang, surveillance, tax evasion
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The oath requires lawyers to “pledge to faithfully fulfill the sacred mission of a legal worker under the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.” It also demands that they “be loyal to the motherland, loyal to the people, uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system.”

Lawyer Pu Zhiqiang tells VOA’s Mandarin service that confusion has long surrounded directives from the Communist Party’s Politics and Law Committee.

“For instance, we often face the problem of whether the Communist Party’s Politics and Law Committee represents the Party when it gives directions in regard to public security, procuratorial and legal work. If so, we as lawyers are indeed interfered with in our legal activities.”

Chinese authorities in recent years have stepped up pressure on activist lawyers who represent clients in some of the country’s most politically sensitive rights cases.

On his blog, Siweiluozi has posted a translation of the full oath, posted in the Legal Daily:

I volunteer to become a practicing lawyer of the People’s Republic of China and promise to faithfully perform the sacred duties of a socialist-with-Chinese-characteristics legal worker (中国特色社会主义法律工作者); to be faithful to the motherland and the people; to uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system; to safeguard the dignity of the constitution and the law; to practice on behalf of the people; to be diligent, professional honest, and corruption-free; to protect the legitimate rights and interests of clients, the correct implementation of the law, and social fairness and justice; and diligently strive for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics!

Read more about lawyers in China, including those who actively defend politically sensitive cases, such as Teng Biao and Pu Zhiqiang, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: defending rights, lawyers, legal system, pu zhiqiang, Teng Biao
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Human Rights Watch describes the law as it now stands:

Human Rights Watch welcomed provisions that could – if translated into practice – strengthen procedural protections and due process for ordinary criminal suspects, such as stricter time limits for detentions, better guarantees for access to a lawyer, and greater protection for juvenile and mentally ill defendants ….

However, under the revised law’s “residential surveillance” provision (article 73), law enforcement agencies would still have the power to detain national security or terrorism suspects in a designated location of the agencies’ choice for up to six months. Although the law enforcement agency imposing the measure would have to notify relatives within 24 hours, the notification would not require them to disclose the whereabouts of the person. The draft provision would also allow police to deny suspects’ access to a lawyer for the duration of the detention ….

Other provisions in the proposed legislation that would allow the secret detention of criminal suspects in “national security, terrorism and major bribery” cases for up to 37 days are found in articles 37 and 83.

These exceptions suspend the requirement to notify relatives within 24 hours if the law enforcement agency believes that such notification could “impede the investigation.”

While “national security” may suggest spying and sabotage, in China it can stretch to include poetry, as in the case of Zhu Yufu’s conviction earlier this year. The loophole is extremely elastic, and would comfortably have accommodated Zhu and others in the recent procession of subversion and incitement of subversion cases. At the Economic Observer (translated at WorldCrunch), Chen Jieren argued that:

… [In] China, the accusation of endangering state security is really a way of saying endangering the regime’s security. In other words, if the secret arrest of a suspected person is allowed, it means that China’s political ideas and values have more respect for a regime’s rights than individual human rights — and the state is more important than the public.

However, in a truly modern country that exists under the rule of law, human rights stand at the forefront of the order of society’s values ….

If we permit secret detention, then a law enforcement agency can always place the hat of a suspected terrorist on an arrested person ….

We believe that exposing all judicial proceedings to the bright light of the sun will not cause the sky to fall upon us, but will actually guide our society to the place where it may be illuminated by the rule of law and the supremacy of human rights.

As Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing-based rights lawyer, told The Guardian’s Tania Branigan, “the real issue is not what the laws say, but how they are enforced.” (Police obstructed later attempts to contact Pu by Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan and McClatchy’s Tom Lasseter.) How far the revised CPL will govern actual practice is an open question: if even the generous latitude it allows is felt to be overly restrictive, authorities may simply conduct outright illegal detentions as in the past. Chinese Human Rights Defenders’s newly released 2011 report (PDF, pp. 4-6) counts 3,833 documented cases of arbitrary detention last year, with 45% of the activists surveyed saying that they had been held at some point. Of these nearly four thousand cases, CHRD says that only 8% had a clearly established basis in law: 86% had none at all.

The Committee to Protect Journalists suggested last week that we ask Chongqing businessman Zhang Mingyu whether the new detention law will matter:

… From his apartment in Beijing on Wednesday morning, Zhang blogged that “the jigsaw puzzle of Wang Lijun should be revealed.” He didn’t have a chance to explain what he meant by that. Chongqing police had arrived at his door by the afternoon, and had told him to return to his city and stop writing about Wang, his lawyer Pu Zhiqiang told international reporters ….

What was Zhang about to reveal? Pu says that his client had a compromising voice recording of Wang Lijun, the ousted former Chongqing police chief, The Wall Street Journal reported. More damning news of fallen comrades would complicate the official picture of consensus in Beijing.

It is unclear where Zhang is now, or if he’s been accused of any crime. He hasn’t written anything since he noted “danger” on Wednesday evening, and he hasn’t been in touch with his lawyer. The Chongqing police have no jurisdiction in Beijing, Pu noted. Zhang’s sudden silence is one more reason for skepticism over the importance of Chinese laws as they are written.

Even if the new law is not honoured, however, it is significant as an indicator of the balance of power within the government. Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin described the battle over the law’s provisions between conservative and relatively progressive elements in a recent New York Times op-ed; in a talk at Washington’s East-West Center earlier this month, he explained (24:50-30:30) the draft’s importance in the context of this year’s leadership transition. The new CPL is not only a “capstone legislation for the Hu-Wen administration”, but also a weather vane for rule of law and the influence of the security apparatus under its successor.

Human Rights in the Year of China’s Leadership Transition from East-West Center on Vimeo.

See more on the criminal procedure law via CDT, including the latest cartoon in Hexie Farm’s CDT series.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Jieren, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Chongqing, criminal procedure law, human rights watch, illegal detentions, leadership transition, legal reform, NPC, pu zhiqiang, rule of law, Wang Lijun
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