Central Propaganda Department: Follow Xinhua wire copy in covering the “Older House Sister case.” Do not sensationalize the story. Cease production of independent reports and commentary. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：对“房姐事件”按新华社通稿刊播，不炒作，不再自行作其它报道评论。

Gong Aiai, former vice president of Shenmu Rural Commercial Bank in Shaanxi Province, has used at least four household registration (hukou) identifications to purchase multiple properties in Beijing, Xi’an, and Shaanxi worth over one billion yuan (US$160 million). She is not to be confused with “Younger House Sister,” the daughter of former Zhengzhou Housing Administration Director Zhai Zhenfeng, who used two hukou to purchase 11 homes.

Central Propaganda Department: No media or websites are to recommend, discuss, or republish coverage of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：各媒体和网站对《邓小平时代》一书不推荐，不评论、不转载。

Ezra Vogel, professor emeritus of Harvard University, published a sweeping biography of Deng Xiaoping in 2011. Feng Keli’s translation has just been published.

Central Propaganda Department: Strictly adhere to Xinhua wire copy in covering the Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun incidents and related issues. No media or website is to independently produce any other form of report or comment, or to link to other material. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：关于薄熙来，王立军事件及相关问题的报道严格按新华社通稿刊播，各媒体及网站不自行作其他任何形式的报道、打分，也不作链接回放。

Central Propaganda Department: The trial for the July 28 Qidong case will begin soon. If covering the story, all media are without exception to use wire copy provided by Xinhua or the Jiangsu provincial government. Do not send reporters to the scene of the incident or to the court. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：江苏南通启东728案件近日将开庭审理，各媒体如作报道一律采取新华社通稿或江苏省提供的通稿，不派记者到事发地或庭审地采访。

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, censorship, Deng Xiaoping, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Ezra Vogel, Gong Aiai, household registration, hukou, Internet censorship, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, official corruption, Older House Sister, propaganda, Qidong, Wang Lijun, Younger House Sister, Zhai Zhenfeng
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The term can therefore be translated as “a traitor to the Chinese”–both politically and culturally, with the implicit connotation of being a race traitor. It is commonly associated with Chinese collaborators who worked with the Japanese military during the latter’s brutal occupation of China, and was subsequently applied to a wide array of individuals who were persecuted and often killed during the anti-rightist campaigns of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution. As a result, the term carries with it deeply negative connotations, stemming not only from lingering resentment of the Japanese occupation but from the traumatic experiences of the political purges of the Mao period.

[…] The People’s Daily’s official Weibo account eventually weighed in, encouraging avoidance of the term given the social schisms it could generate:

Recently the term ‘hanjian’ has been thrown around on the Internet. It would seem as if all around us there are concealed supplicants and hidden monsters. This kind of ‘with us or against us’ philosophy can tear apart society and runs counter to prevailing trends. Yet, any phenomenon has its roots. When making biased and narrow-minded representations of different eras and viewpoints, it also ignites resentment against the gap between rich and poor and passive corruption. This word ‘hanjian’ should be abolished, [let’s] turn instead towards the imperative reforms of justice and fairness.

People’s Daily followed up with an editorial urging Han’s arrest, from which the following was translated by John Kennedy at South China Morning Post:

To him, people who hold different views on certain political topics are all “traitors”, and people he sees as “traitors” are to be dealt blows: assaulting “traitors” is worth it, regardless of the legal consequences, and [he] will continue to attack “traitors” on sight, without hesitation. By Han Deqiang’s logic, his views on certain political issues are the absolute truth and must be held by everyone; any divergent opinions are “traitor talk” and must be punished through violence. Where is there logic in that?

Other voices on the far left have spoken up in Han’s defence, echoing his sentiments and vocabulary. Among them is Zhang Hongliang, some of whose Sina Weibo posts Kennedy has also translated. For example, from South China Morning Post:

Compatriots, if we don’t eliminate the traitors among us, a chaotic war is inevitable! The race traitors are making a commotion, wantonly demonising the anti-Japan protests, and the government of Guangdong has arrested “thugs” from the demonstrations, and throughout the country is conspiracy to falsely slander patriotic scholar Han Deqiang, giving Japan the courage it has long sought. Japanese naval ships and jet fighters have already begun dispatching to the Diaoyu Islands, and Japan has given rise to a wave of persecution of Chinese people. The race traitor culture that has inspired our invaders since the First Opium War is now back. The people of China are in danger!

But People’s Daily’s call for Han’s arrest shows the extent to which the tide appears to have turned against China’s hard left, following the fall of Bo Xilai, crackdowns on leftist websites including Utopia and Wen Jiabao’s warnings against a reoccurrence of the Cultural Revolution. One of Utopia’s least favourite “hanjian“, economist Mao Yushi, defended the website after it was temporarily shut down in March, writing on his Sina Weibo account that “although I disagree with the Utopians’ points of view, their right to express them is inalienable. [But] I also hope they will no longer libel people, saying that they’re traitors to China, and urging people to kill them and steal their property.”

At Global Times—itself often accused of nationalist extremism—Shan Renping argued that the neo-Maoist left do not hold a monopoly on belligerence, pointing out this year’s violence at environmental protests in Shifang and Qidong, and an ensuing altercation between leftist and liberal intellectuals in Chaoyang Park. (For more details on the Battle of Chaoyang Park, see Roland Soong’s account at EastSouthWestNorth.)

Many people applauded Wu [Danhong]‘s being beaten up. From their perspective, Wu deserved it. Today, there are many people who defend Han’s behavior.

Also several months ago, many netizens applauded violent protests aimed at the Shifang and Qidong governments. And recently, some people have preached that Japanese cars and Japanese stores deserve to be smashed.

Although the supporters of the two sides are deeply opposed, they all show the belligerence of Chinese society.

Maybe we should go back to the basics of social morality to stand against all acts of violence. We should try our best to remove ideological conflict and political debates out of the tribunal on violence, making them find their own battleground at other places, so that we can dig out violence from all kinds of shelters.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-Japan demonstrations 2012, anti-Japan protests, Bo Xilai, Cultural Revolution, environmental protests, Global Times, leftists, Mao Yushi, Mao Zedong, maoism, nationalism, people's daily, Qidong, Shifang, traitors, violence, Wen Jiabao, Wu Danhong
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On July 28th, a Shanghai based journalist from Japan’s Asahi Shimbun was beaten by police in Nantong while covering a demonstration. His equipment, worth several thousand dollars, was taken and has not been returned.

On August 10th a reporter for Hong Kong’s Asia Television was assaulted by plain clothes police outside a courthouse in Hefei as he filmed members of the public being arrested.

On August 11th, in Henan province a television crew from ARD German television was attacked by a mob, accused of being spies and forcibly detained for 9 hours at a chemical factory before police escorted them to their vehicles.

On August 13th two reporters from Poland and the United States reporting in Ordos were followed and intimidated by three cars and at least eight individuals in the middle of the night.

While the organisations expressed particular concern that “a number of these incidents have involved members of the official security forces and associated elements”, the German reporters in Henan were rescued by police from an angry mob. From Tania Branigan at The Guardian:

Broadcaster ARD said angry workers shouted “kill the foreign spies” as the four-person team was held at the Do-Fluoride plant near Jiaozuo in Zhongzhan county, Henan province.

Reporter Christine Adelhardt said security guards detained them as they filmed a story on pollution outside the factory.

[…] The German crew escaped only when a team of armed police arrived to escort them off the premises, saying later: “Factory officials appeared to have misinformed workers and agitated against us.

“We were considered spies who had tried to gather intelligence regarding Do-Flouride’s technology.”

According to the Hong Kong Standard, other police also intervened and took away the plain-clothed officer who assaulted the Asia Television cameraman in Hefei. He was covering the trial of four officers later sentenced to prison terms of between five and eleven years for hiding Gu Kailai’s murder of Neil Heywood. CNN’s Steven Jiang was involved in a separate scuffle with Hefei police while reporting Gu’s own trial the previous day.

Asahi Shimbun’s Atsushi Okudera was beaten while photographing environmental protests in Qidong. According to his follow-up report for the newspaper, many of the officers who assaulted him had removed ID numbers from their uniforms, shielding themselves from any later repercussions. The attack on Okudera and the theft of his camera were likely a further attempt to escape identification, as he “had taken hundreds of digital photos by then of police attacking protesters.” (Protesters in Qidong also drew criticism for resorting to violence, which Baixing.com CEO and blogger Jian Shuo Wang wrote “seriously crossed the line”.)

Kathleen McLaughlin was one of the journalists “chased out of Ordos” during the politically sensitive Miss World pageant. She described her experience on Twitter:

In Ordos, the giant property bubble of Inner Mongolia. Construction hasn’t stopped, locals say empty buildings starting to fill up.

— Kathleen McLaughlin (@kemc) August 12, 2012

Ordos govt apparently very unhappy foreign journalists in town. This from the host of the Miss World contest,

— Kathleen McLaughlin (@kemc) August 13, 2012

Walking in Ordos, unsubtly tailed by a Lexus SUV. Fancy!

— Kathleen McLaughlin (@kemc) August 13, 2012

Chased out of Ordos last night by a phalanx of cops and thugs. Apparently the host city for Miss World is not foreigner-friendly.

— Kathleen McLaughlin (@kemc) August 14, 2012

Have not seen such an outsized security response to my presence since Kasghar in 2010. Nuts.

— Kathleen McLaughlin (@kemc) August 14, 2012

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Asahi Shimbun, beauty contest, FCCC, foreign correspondents, foreign journalists, gu kailai, Hefei, Henan, Neil Heywood, news media, Ordos, Qidong, reporting protests
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…with ‘Internet freedom’ as its slogan, they [the Americans] will attack ‘top down’ governance in order to push forward the traditional model of liberal democracy; through the use of ‘rights lawyers’, underground religion, dissidents, internet heroes, and disadvantaged social groups as the core forces, they will push for a ‘bottom-up’ approach to Chinese governance from the grassroots to lay a foundation for changing China…

。。。以“网络自由”为旗号，改变“自上而下”推进民主自由的传统模式，以维权律师、地下宗教、异见人士、网络领袖、弱势群体为核心，以期通过“自下而上”的方式渗透中国基层，为中国的“改变”创造条件。。。

China’s “rights lawyers,” people like Chen Guangcheng and Si Weijiang, struggle under a system that at best selectively enforces rule of law.

Cui Weiping, an outspoken professor at the Beijing Film Academy, gave an especially piquant retort to this editorial on Weibo:

BeijingCuiWeiping: Everyone can relate to at least one of these: “rights lawyers, underground religion, dissidents, internet heroes, and disadvantaged social groups.”
北京崔卫平: 总有一款适合你：“维权律师、地下宗教、异见人士、网络领袖、弱势群体”。

Others have compared the article’s list of five bad influences to the five black categories of the Cultural Revolution:

GuoOldStudent: The old five black categories: land owners, the rich, anti-revolutionaries, bad elements, rightists. The new five black categories: rights lawyers, underground religion, dissidents, internet heroes, and disadvantaged social groups.

郭老学徒: 老黑五类：地、富、反、坏、右。新黑五类：维、教、异、网、弱。

LittleKe: First comes family, then country, then everything else. Average Chinese are just trying to get by in their daily lives. They won’t be able to help the country until their own situation is stable, and after that they’ll naturally consider everything else. The people of Shifang and Qidong are doing just that: protecting their own. They’re perfectly capable of protecting the interests of the country. Whether you believe it or not, I firmly do.

小柯: 圣人训：先家，后国，再天下。小民百姓，讨生活，过日子，保得了家才能卫得了国，而后自然威天下。十方在保家，启冬在保家，他们一定也能护国。不管你们信不信，我坚信。

HeBin: I’ve heard those American devils plan to use rights lawyers and online activists to destroy our Communist society. But how come, to this day, I still haven’t gotten any secret signals from a female spy?

何兵：据说美国鬼子要通过维权律师和网络意见领袖，使我红色江山易帜。怎么到现在，女特务还没和我对暗号？

C_thun: Top-down change? We of the disadvantaged social groups have never seen such a thing.

C_thun：自上而下？弱势群体表示没见过。

MakeCCPDrinkSanlu: All the princesses are in the U.S., and yet you have the nerve to say stupid stuff like this.

冲杯三鹿给傥喝：公主都在美国，好意思说这种屁话

CrazyApe: So you admit the U.S. is the one addressing the most basic, urgent demands of the Chinese people, huh?

疯猿：那么就是承认美国抓住了天朝百姓最基本迫切的诉求了是么

SecondGenZhengjiuFutian: Aren’t the five types of people this People’s Daily articles points out the targets of the government’s security and stability maintenance projects?

二代症久富田： 人民日报所指的五种人是否就是政府的防备对象，维稳对象。

PennyNerd: Liberal democracy is traditionally advanced with the “top down” approach? Did Puyi or the Nationalists pave the way for building the New China? The People’s Daily is talking crazy again.

PennyNerd： 推进民主自由的传统模式是“自上而下”？原来建立新中国也是傅仪或者民国政府禅让出来的？日人民报又抽风了。

 

ChenYoshi: So this is where this article originally comes from. A lot of people haven’t been able to find it because it’s being posted under different titles. Man, they actually put ‘rights lawyers’ in the five black categories… All you lawyers out there, take warning.

陈有西:出处原文原来在这里。好多人未捜到是题目不同。真把「维权律师」列入新黑五类了。律师们清醒吧。

 

SanXiaAncientTea: What this article really means: ‘rights lawyers,’ underground religion, dissidents, Internet heroes, and disadvantaged social groups are the least stable elements of Chinese society, and the Party will take action against them when needed.

三峡自古出好茶：言下之意：维权律师、地下宗教、异见人士、网络领袖、弱势群体属于当前社会极不稳定因素，必要时党要采取措施

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Little Bluegill.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP, Chen Guangcheng, Cui Weiping, Netizen Voices, people's daily, Qidong, rule of law, Shifang, Si Weijiang, sina weibo, stability maintenance, weibo
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Protesters in Qidong.

Qidong Protests: Protests over the weekend lead to the cancellation of a planned pipeline for waste water from the Oji Paper plant. Production at the plant resumed yesterday. See also the July 29 list of sensitive words.

• Qidong (启冬): The second character in the city’s name, “east” (东), is replaced with the homophone “winter” (冬).
• QiWest (启西): QiSouth (启南) and QiNorth (启北) are still searchable.
• qiEast (qi东)
• Qidong (起东): The first character (启) is replaced with the homophone “rise” (起).
• Oji Paper (王子纸业)

Hong Kong Protests: Students and activists are demonstrating against compulsory patriotism classes to be introduced in the fall, denouncing the curriculum as “red brainwashing education” [zh].

• brainwashing (洗脑)

Other:

• country + army (国家+军队): Wang Yongsheng, an officer in the General Political Department of the PLA, asserted that “our army belongs to the Party” at a press conference yesterday.

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: army, education, education reform, environmental protests, Hong Kong, Hong Kong education, military, Oji Paper, patriotic education, patriotism, PLA, Qidong, Sensitive Words Series, Wang Yongsheng, water pollution
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Authorities in the eastern Chinese city of Qidong dropped plans for a waste water pipeline linked to the factory, which is located in the nearby city of Nantong, after thousands of protesters angry about pollution took to the streets last week.

[…] The water discharge project was part of a planned expansion for the Jiangsu Oji Paper Nantong Mill, which began output in early 2011 with an annual capacity of 400,000 tons, according to the company’s website.

It is unclear if the expansion will go ahead now that the sewage pipeline planned for Qidong has been cancelled.

The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch reported that the the company’s long-term plans in China may indeed be affected:

“The impact (of the suspension) on its business is almost none” because the suspension will be limited to a short period, an official said.

An industry official, however, said the latest incident “shed light on a business risk in China.” Oji Paper could review its strategy in China, industry sources said.

Oji has been expanding its presence in China and other emerging economies where it is seeing demand for its paper products rise, since having seen paper demand falter in Japan.

Although the plant is a joint venture between Oji and the city of Nantong, nationality has become a prominent theme in the backlash against it. From China Real Time Report:

In China, nationalist comments were mixed with lingering calls for further protest on Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblogging service, showing yet again the anti-Japanese sentiment still to be found in China. “How can a Japanese paper factory come and damage Chinese people’s health and our environment? How can we with our 1.3-billion population be afraid of that little Japan?” said one Weibo user claiming to be in southern Guangdong province.

“The whole nation should boycott Japanese products,” says another weibo user.

“Little Japan, get out of my country!” said a third, based in Jiangsu province.

Online users also called for continued efforts against Oji paper itself. A search for the phrase “boycott Nepia” – the brand name of a tissue that Oji sells in China – turned up more than 100,000 posts Monday morning. ”Please don’t use Nepia anymore and kick it back to Japan,” said one Weibo user using the name Wang Xiaosai.

Forbes’ Jack Perkowski hailed the episode, writing that “environmentalism has arrived as a positive force for change in the country” and rightly highlighting China’s shortage of clean water. But as @桔子树小窝 (“Little Tangerine Tree Monkey”) pointed out in a post translated by Tea Leaf Nation, the pipeline’s cancellation will not prevent pollution from the plant:

When I realize that people either start jumping for joy or start slamming people left and right, I felt hopeless for our times.

[…] Basically, the long and short of it is that Nantong doesn’t want Oji Paper to dump its wastewater into the Yangtze River, so they want to build a pipeline to drain the wastewater into the sea. But the people of Qidong are unhappy that wastewater from some other part of the province is going into their backyard.

So the Qidong residents “went for a walk” (散步, an euphemism for street protests). As a result, Nantong shelved the pipeline. Please note that the pipeline is now shelved, but the factory remains open. So as of now…the factory continues to pump wastewater into the river, as usual.

In a Global Times op-ed, Fudan lecturer Daniel Shen made the same point, blaming the protests on the spread of “fragmented information” online and the local government’s failure to fill in the blanks.

People who participated in the protest should at least have known that the paper factory was already operating in 2011 and the waste water was being dumped into the Yangtze River after it was processed to meet the disposal requirement. […]

In fact, if the public can put more of their passion and energy toward researching these questions, their supervision of the government can become more effective. This is something that stripping off the local mayor’s shirt cannot achieve.

As to the government, it must learn how to communicate with the public. Currently, local governments in China often choose to either show a hard-line stance on protests or take the easy route by unconditionally accepting the public’s demand.

But neither way is effective, despite different reactions from the public. Adopting a hard-line stance on public protests is not only wrong but also stupid, while an unconditional compromise only shows how lazy, incompetent and irresponsible a government is.

Also at Global Times, media commentator Peng Xiaoyun suggested that officials avoid these pitfalls by ensuring proper public participation from the start:

The government should open up its policymaking process for public participation, building up a representative system that allows the citizens to approve its projects. A good example can be found in Panyu, Guangdong Province, where local residents have also been taking a stand against a garbage incinerator project. But unlike what happened in Shifang and Qidong, the petition in Panyu is now undergoing a positive transition from a traditional street demonstration to a professional lobby.

This is because local residents and the government have established a representative mechanism that enables effective public participation in policymaking. For instance, local residents elect their representatives with professional knowledge on this issue. The representatives would then be invited to bring the issue to the government’s work conference for negotiation. The public will also be informed of this process.

The fate of local projects shouldn’t depend on the whim of either local leaders or angry protestors, but experts and professionals. The government should stop shouldering all the responsibilities and instead invite the public to help. This actually can be beneficial to the government as it won’t have to take all the blame if a project goes wrong.

Sharing responsibilities with the public will also help boost the development of a civil society, as people will become more capable in managing their own community’s affairs.

Tang Jun, a social policy researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also stressed the importance of communication and obtaining local consent while talking to China Daily:

“Some local governments failed to release enough information about projects before construction began,” Tang said. “They should let the public discuss the issues from the beginning so the public knows more about the projects, dispelling their concerns.”

Tang also said that closing all possibly polluting manufacturing industries would improve the environment, but it’s not practical.

“A large proportion of the country’s population now works in manufacturing,” he said.

The broad consensus in favour of peacefully pre-empting protests shows recognition of the high stakes in adapting economic development to public concerns. Failure to do so threatens the unwritten contract between government and people, suggests Rob Schmitz on American Public Media’s Marketplace:

Years ago, as China stood on the precipice of an era of unbridled economic growth, its leadership made a deal with the people: you don’t challenge our authority, we give you a better quality of life. For the Chinese, ‘better quality of life’ used to mean the freedom to make money.

Not anymore, says U.C. Irvine China historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: They’re not willing to accept the idea that being able to buy more stuff at the store means your quality of life is improving if you’re worried about the pollution levels of the water you drink, if you’re worried about the quality of the air you breathe, if you’re worried about whether your children will grow up in a decent environment.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-Japan, environmental protests, Guangdong, industrial pollution, Japan, Jiangsu, local government, local officials, nationalism, NIMBY, Panyu, Qidong, river pollution, water pollution
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The Great Wave Off Zhongnanhai, by Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm for CDT.

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: beijing flood 2012, hexie farm, online protests, online public opinion, Qidong
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Qidong mayor Sun Jianhua was stripped by protesters.

Qidong Protest: After their formal application to stage a protest was denied, residents of Qidong, Jiangsu province took to the streets in opposition to the planned construction of a paper mill. Fearing water pollution, demonstrators overturned police cars, broke into government buildings and even stripped the mayor. The construction project has since been permanently cancelled.

• Sun Jianhua (孙建华): The mayor of Qidong, Sun was stripped and forced to wear a protest shirt by the crowd.
• Qidong (启东)
• QD: Pinyin abbreviation for Qidong.
• QDong (Q东)
• QiD (启D)
• Oji Paper (王子造纸): The Japanese company which planned to construct a paper mill in Qidong.

Beijing Flood:

• Fu Zhenghua (傅政华): Director of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: beijing flood 2012, environmental protests, filtered keywords, Jiangsu, NIMBY, Qidong, Sensitive Words Series, sina weibo, Sun Jianhua, weibo
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“People don’t dare to go out in the streets today,” said a local resident, who for safety reasons only gave her name as Qin.

“Thousands of security forces have been deployed to Qidong to prevent further gatherings against the police,” she told AFP, adding that residents were wary of police retaliation after some were beaten in Saturday’s protests.

Up to three people were killed in the violence and scores were injured, while up to 100 were detained by police, according to rights watchdog Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

The violence began after police began violently beating a young female protester, it said, citing witnesses.

A reporter for The Asahi Shimbun, Atsushi Okudera, was reportedly beaten by police while covering the protests. The newspaper has complained to the Chinese government, and Japan’s Consulate General in nearby Shanghai is investigating the incident. From The Asahi Shimbun:

Okudera, 41, was attacked when he was shooting pictures of demonstrators under attack by police. He was on the street in front of the municipal police building in Qidong.

All of a sudden, his camera was seized by police and 15 to 20 officers surrounded him and shoved him to the ground.

Although Okudera identified himself as a reporter, police kicked him for about 20 seconds. One of the officers jumped on him.

Police seized his press ID when he showed it to them after they stopped beating him and didn’t return his camera, which contained images he shot of the protest.

CHRD’s account of how the violence started, if true, may blunt some criticism of the protesters’ conduct. Shanghai-based blogger Jian Shuo Wang wrote on Saturday that “we crossed the line, seriously crossed the line […]. Right goal always cannot prove the rightness of process. If we continue to follow the current thinking too far, China may enter into the next terrible violence-ruled circle.” Others, though, have suggested that violence is inevitable when other avenues for raising grievances are blocked. From Tsinghua professor Patrick Chovanec, for example:

Qidong scary, but would anyone listen if they did not riot? Lack of peaceful ways to hold officials accountable leads to anger, violence.

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) July 29, 2012

@KaiserKuo I’m not justifying violence, but hardly surprising when there are no pressure valves, peaceful petitioners persecuted

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) July 29, 2012

Peaceful protest did seem to have secured the closure of a controversial chemical plant in Dalian last year. But even Dalian was a sign of a dysfunctional system, Tang Hao wrote soon afterwards at chinadialogue, lamenting the “sinister truth[ that] from officials to activists, everyone is ignoring the rules”.

Following the uproar, Dalian authorities ordered the managers of the Fujia Dahua facility immediately to halt production and relocate their plant: the public campaign had concluded with the government bowing to public opinion – on the surface, a triumph. But the whole case highlights how, in the absence of strong rule of law, China’s environmental management has taken the road of what I call “interaction without rules”. This brings its own set of problems.

On environmental issues, “interaction without rules” normally goes through three stages: first, local interest groups and local governments push ahead with a polluting project in violation of environmental regulations. Second, local people spontaneously organise mass protests against the project in question, an activity supported by neither law nor policy. And third, in response to the threat to social stability created by the protests, local government halts the project – again, breaching laws. At every stage, the existing rules are lightly cast aside by all participants.

Tang noted, however, that such protests might ultimately lead to “positive interaction and system reform”, pointing to Taiwan’s environmental and other campaigns of the 1980s. Mark McDonald cited Dalian, Qidong, Shifang and others as possible signs of a developing “Chinese Street” at The New York Times’ Rendezvous blog:

Although there are tens of thousands of civic protests every year in China, most are small-scale, ineffectual and officially smothered. But high profile demonstrations over environmental issues are occurring with more regularity, size, violence and political oomph — in Dalian (a petrochemical plant), in Zuotan (land grabs) and earlier this month in Shifang (a heavy-metals smelter). Deadly floods and a feeble government response in Beijing last week also led to a huge outcry online.

“These demonstrations represent a new grassroots force made possible by social media tools such as Weibo (China’s Twitter), the messenger service QQ and online forums,” said Monica Tan, a Web editor with Greenpeace East Asia, writing on The Diplomat blog. “These protests can be characterized by how swiftly they are organized and the way they happen outside more formal structures like unions, NGOs or political parties.”

Other, offline factors are also at play, Willy Wo-Lap Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong told Bloomberg:

The Qidong protests “demonstrate that ordinary people’s awareness of their rights has increased and they are more willing to assert their rights,” Willy Wo-Lap Lam, an adjunct professor of history […], said in a telephone interview yesterday. “It also demonstrates more sophistication on the part of the authorities in handling protests.”

Cases interpreted by the authorities as potentially “anti- party or anti-government” would lead to a crackdown “mercilessly and with a lot of force,” Lam said. “But if a protest is regarded as basically economic and environmental in nature, they are more willing to strike a deal.”

See also CDT’s collection of photos and video from the protests and an infographic, translated by Tea Leaf Nation, explaining the protesters’ grievances.

[Updated at 23:40 PST]: Global Times reports one arrest for “spreading rumors online saying police had beaten to death a young man and a 9-year-old girl”.

The Japanese paper company at the centre of the controversial plans has again defended its adherence to environmental standards. From AFP:

“There are some reports that discharged water would contain carcinogens but that is totally groundless,” it said.

“We are controlling water quality in a responsible manner by purifying water enough to satisfy China’s national standards.”

[…] Oji Paper had not invested in the planned pipeline, said a company spokesman in Tokyo. Its plant was not operating Monday, he added, and the firm was considering whether to resume operations Tuesday.

In a very extensive round-up of photos, commentary and other information, Minister of Tofu Jing Gao translated a selection of posts by prominent microbloggers, many of whom expressed mixed feelings about protesters’ use of violence.

Han Han, China’s most influential blogger and author, wrote, “The city government has fallen and been occupied. The state apparatus showed restraint. The project has been permanently canceled. The mayor’s top was stripped. But as long as he does not seek revenge later on, he is still more dignified than those well-dressed government officials who ordered a crackdown. I hope people in Qidong can be gratified with the result and stop at it. I will even warn officials elsewhere, stop before it goes too bad.”

[…] Ge Sang, an anchorwoman at Shanghai Media Group, wrote, “Why did you have to charge at the city government while protesting? Can ransacking the mayor’s office help your appeal? The public behave like rogues even before the authorities strike the first blow. Isn’t this going to give others a handle against you?…When activism turns into smashing, beating and ransacking, don’t blame others if you are met with tear gas.”

He Zhenbiao, a communications professor at Zhejiang University, wrote, “I support the public for their expression of opinion on the street. This is the lesson 101 in a modern civilized society. But please allow me to remind them, this may be only a step away from the remnants of the Cultural Revolution…Express opinion with reason. Stroll with peace. Oppose personal attacks. Draw the line between public affairs and private matters.”

At Global Voices, Oiwan Lam outlined the heated disagreement between the protesters’ critics and supporters:

Li Kaifu: [The courage to stop a loaded arrow] Back in 2006, a million protesters dressed in red surrounded the Chen Shuibian government in Taiwan, the leader Si Mingde insisted that they should not crush into the building and no blood should be shed. He did not romanticize the means [the use of force]. If the protesters took the wrong path, an army of justice would become sinners in history. He said: “An arrow is loaded and is ready to take the shot, it takes more courage and wisdom to unload it then letting it go off.” I wish people from Jiansu would see this.

布吉-moxie: Mr Li, at least you have to distinguish the difference between the political systems in the two regions, one is democratic, one is authoritative. Could the Jews have negotiated with Hitler? Of course ordinary people don’t want to shed blood, but when there is no other way out, they are brave enough to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause.

Global Times editor in chief Hu Xijin criticised all parties, from the Qidong local government to those who cheered on the violence. The netizen comments chosen to accompany his on the newspaper’s website spread the blame even further, to government control of the media and heavy-handed policing:

The situation in Qidong demonstrates once again that China’s society fears pollution, a sentiment which once stirred will create a desperate and destructive power. This has already become a serious political problem. The government should communicate with the public before making decisions on such sensitive environmental issues. Otherwise, the government should be held accountable for not fulfilling its duty. People who violated the law should also be punished in accordance with the law. I condemn everyone who applauded the violence that took place.

@随事理: Just like in the Shifang event, most people only learn about Qidong through gossip and rumor. The question is when will people have the right to know the whole truth and when will mainstream media provide the public with timely information?

@wsirsir: There is no doubt that violence is not to be allowed. However we must be against violence of all kinds, both among citizens and government. Our society should build an effective system of communication, which is not only needed after conflict occurs, but also to prevent such problems. People should have the right to freely express their opinions through proper channels. The question is whether the government respects this right to expression? Is there any such channel? Does the government represent the people’s interests or their own?

A Global Times editorial even implied that the central government shared some blame for failing to give local authorities sufficient guidance:

The Qidong protest may have been inspired and encouraged by the Shifang incident. They both achieved the same result through extreme approaches. The quick compromise made by the Qidong government may also have been learnt from Shifang.

The two protests have together left the impression that the fastest way to change a government policy is to hold a violent demonstration. If this model is copied widely, it would be disastrous for social stability. It encourages the public to resort to radical methods to realize its demands.

This model must be broken. Policies concerning broad public interests cannot be decided only by officials. Public participation needs to be implemented, and not just as a show. […]

[…] The blame should not be shouldered solely by the two local governments. There is no clear policy or regulation on dealing with mass incidents. Choking under the pressure of public opinion and the tough task of maintaining social order before the coming Party congress proved too much for two small city governments. Their desperate reactions were intuitive.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Asahi Shimbun, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, dalian, dalian px, environmental protests, Japan, NIMBY, pollution, protests, Qidong, Shifang, violence against journalists, willy lam, Zuotan
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[Armed Police use the campus of the Qidong High School as a base]

The following video of Qidong was posted by Boxun News:

See more photos of the unrest via CDT Chinese [zh] (here, here and here), on Cryptome and via the official Global Times.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental protests, police violence, Qidong, riots, social unrest
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Following the clashes, the local police said in their microblog that the pipeline from the paper mill, which belongs to Japanese company Oji Paper, would be “permanently closed” and called on the demonstrators to go home.

[… A protester named ] Qin said there were 50,000 demonstrators, while a microblogger using the name Qidong Longhuisheng estimated numbers at 100,000.

“There are people everywhere, on walls, cars, rooftops, in streets,” said another microblog user writing under the name Jiaojiaotaotailang, adding that “the air is filled with the smell of alcohol, and there are sounds of breaking glass”.

Searches including “Qidong” were blocked Saturday on Sina Weibo, which has more than 250 million subscribers.

On Twitter, NPR’s Louisa Lim recounted weibo reports that the Qidong mayor and another official had been stripped naked (or at least shirtless) by protestors. Despite this, and in contrast with recent protests in Shifang, police appear so far to have reacted with considerable restraint [See update below]. This has been commended by some netizens, including one quoted by Offbeat China:

“[The mayor] didn’t call for tear gas or tanks to crack down the protesters. It’s an improvement. This mayor deserves some applause. Even better, he immediately announced that the project was permanently canceled.”

A local resident told Global Times on Thursday, however, that efforts to resolve the situation by other means had already proven unsuccessful:

“We have applied for a protest permit but the local government has refused to approve it. We will still walk the streets to express our opinion,” Gu [Bin] said, adding that the government has also refused repeated request to make public the environmental assessment report.

[…] “We have been demanding an answer for three years but every effort ended in vain. We won’t believe the government until they make clear what measures they will take to stop pollution from harming our health,” Gu said in an interview on Thursday.

Offbeat China’s post also includes photos of the crowds, police, ransacked offices, an overturned police car and the unclothed mayor; more photos can be found at QQ.com and at CDT Chinese. See more on the trend of environmental protests in China, including Han Han’s take on ‘The Liberation of Shifang’, via CDT.

[Updated at 16:40 PST]: At The New York Times, Jane Perlez explains the Qidong protests’ context:

The city is part of the vast Yangtze Delta region that has been an engine of China’s manufacturing power in the past decade.

Last year, Qidong was connected to Shanghai by a nearly 40-mile-long bridge, making the local economic enterprise zone, established by the local government to attract business, even more appealing to investors.

One of the most profitable industries in Qidong is the exporting of fish, including processed lobster and shrimp, to the United States. The city boasts freezers certified by the European Union for the export of fish to Europe.

Some of the protesters argued that the wastewater plant would discharge effluent into the sea and harm the fishing industry. But most seemed to be concerned about drinking water.

Reports circulated on Saturday evening of a crackdown in Qidong. A dramatic photograph by the AP’s Eugene Hoshiko showed massed riot police in place of the conventionally uniformed officers pictured earlier in the day. These armoured police reportedly arrived late on Saturday to guard government offices.

Chinese netizens reporting crackdown in qidong, hospitals full of injured, special police brought in from nantong, Internet/cellphones down

— Louisa Lim (@limlouisa) July 28, 2012

Source said the Qi Dong hospital is filled with ppl beaten hard by police. Several ppl dead in the afternoon.

— XQ (@MissXQ) July 28, 2012

At TIME, Austin Ramzy suggested that the violence could prompt harsher responses to future protests elsewhere, even as the pipeline’s cancellation encourages others to take their complaints to the streets.

The success in blocking the pipeline project in Qidong will undoubtedly inspire further environmental protests around the country, just as the success of the Shifang protest earlier this month inspired demonstrators in Qidong. But the scenes of violence and officials humiliated and injured in the streets could also heighten authorities’ fears of activism, and may lead to tough measures to dampen future protests.

“Whenever you have any violent confrontations, people may feel the repercussions politically,” says Dali Yang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Chicago. “But I do think it will stimulate reflection in terms of public policy making, particularly for those kinds of projects that affect many people, to allow for public comment. Having public participation is extremely important, and things would have not have gone this far in Qidong if they had done so.”

Having failed to satisfy the public through engagement, the local government instead tried to head off the protests with mass text messaging. (Their systems for this are apparently more advanced than the Beijing Meteorological Bureau’s.) Tea Leaf Nation translated some of these warning messages:

“Dear parents, after receiving instructions from superiors, we ask that, in order to maintain a harmonious and stable environment in Qidong, you do not organize, participate in, support or stand around to watch the group protests that have no permission from the government. We ask this so that you do not suffer any unnecessary harm! We ask that you cooperate! After you receive this please respond promptly with ‘Child’s name+Name of guardian+Acknowledgement+Guarantee to not organize, participate in, support or stand around to watch.’ We thank you for your understanding of our work.”

“All Students: We hope that during the summer you will respect and follow the law, obey traffic regulations, watch out for your personal safety, finish your summer schoolwork; with regard to that certain movement organized by society persons, strictly adopt the stance of not being curious, not participating, not supporting, not standing around to watch. Have a cultured, safe and meaningful summer vacation. Zhegui [Middle] School Administration.”

Local authorities have not received all the blame, however. Those of the protesters who turned to violence and vandalism have prompted deep unease among observers. Jian Shuo Wang, for example, wrote on Weibo (via Bill Bishop at Sinocism):

Seeing the development of the situation today, felt the pain. We crossed the line, seriously crossed the line, and started a bad beginning, not as restrained as Xiamen [the site of protests against a PX plant in 2007]. If you use violence to get what you want, you will get addicted to violence. Other party’s wrong deed is not the reason of your own wrong deed. Right goal always cannot prove the rightness of process. If we continue to follow the current thinking too far, China may enter into the next terrible violence-ruled circle.

Here is a boxun video on Liveleak:

See also a large collection of photos from Qidong taken by netizens and collected by CDT Chinese.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental protests, Global Times, Jiangsu, NIMBY, police, pollution, Qidong, Shifang
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