“Political reforms didn’t stop under Hu [Jintao] and Wen [Jiabao] – they went backwards. So just like when people started talking about the Hu-Wen ‘new deal’ in 2003, now we start to talk about the Xi-Li ‘new deal’, it’s just wishful thinking.”

[…] Asked what he would say to Mr Obama, if he ever got the chance, Mr Chen said that ignoring China’s record on human rights was undermining America’s standing in the world.

“I would tell Mr Obama there is no small matter in international diplomacy. If an agreement between the US and China can’t be fulfilled, then US credibility as the standard bearer of universal values, freedom and democracy will be jeopardised.”

In op-ed at The Washington Post, Chen and Geng He, wife of vanished rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, urge the White House to push for an end to persecution of activists, lawyers and their families in China:

Our stories are flip sides of the same coin. Geng He sought asylum in the United States after Chinese authorities detained and brutally tortured her husband, the rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. Chen Guangcheng, a legal activist, was a prisoner of conscience for many years before escaping house arrest last spring. Now in America, he is studying at New York University and advocating on behalf of his relatives, who continue to endure persecution in China because of his activism.

While our stories are different, the theme is the same: The Chinese government targets rights advocates and their families.

[…] Our stories are just two examples of Chinese authorities acting with impunity and complete disregard for the rule of law. But the attacks on our families are especially worrisome because they show that the government targets not only activists and their families but also the lawyers who have an ethical obligation to defend their clients’ rights against government abuses. Gao once said that you cannot be a rights lawyer in China without becoming a rights case yourself. And when these essential advocates and their families are targeted by the government, the international community must speak out on their behalf.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asylum, Barack Obama, Chen Guangcheng, Gao Zhisheng, Hu Jintao, Li Keqiang, reform, rights lawyers, rule of law, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

On January 12, 2013, two family members of the imprisoned rights defense lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) were permitted to visit Gao at Shaya Prison in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, according to Gao’s wife Geng He (耿和). This was the first family visit since March 24, 2012, and the only confirmation since that date that Gao is still alive. Gao’s younger brother and Geng He’s father were allowed to see Gao and speak with him by phone through a glass window.

[…] Before being allowed to see Gao, his younger brother was subjected to a body search and told that, during the visit, he was not allowed to discuss Gao’s case, Gao’s prison situation, or Geng He and their two children, who are in the United States, or to accept press interviews after the visit.

Gao’s mind seemed clear and he spoke normally. His younger brother was not able to find out when Gao is scheduled to be released, or whether he received the letters from his wife and children.

When Gao’s brother asked when Gao is permitted to see his family next, he was told that the family has to “follow old ways.” Geng He said, “Last time, it took nine months for the authorities to allow the family to see Gao in prison. How long will it take next time?”

See more on Gao’s case at Human Rights in China and at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Gao Zhisheng, human rights in china, prison, prisoners, rights lawyers, torture, Xinjiang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Yuan offers an unsentimental view of the global environment. His particular concern is not the common fear of direct military conflict with the United States (although he also addresses this), but rather the fortuitous advantage that China presently enjoys due to the international malaise in the wake of the post-Global Financial Crisis, one that, given the right leadership, could well work in favour of the People’s Republic. The essay provides, therefore, valuable insights into the canny calculations of one prominent analyst. Its message was, however, not greeted with universal equanimity. For, among other things, Yuan controversially identified what his critics immediately dubbed the ‘New Black Five Categories of People’ 新黑五类 that threaten China’s social stability and party-dominated top-down reform (groups that he claims are being infiltrated and manipulated by the American imperium for its nefarious ends).

[… O]f the ‘New Five Black Categories’ in Yuan’s analysis, four are not new. Nor indeed is the discussion of social anomie or unruly elements, given the fact that the Chinese party-state is presently much taken with the theory and practice of ‘social management’ 社会管理. What caused particular offence (apart from Yuan’s clear identification of perceived ‘threats’) was that ‘vulnerable groups’ 弱势群体 were included in the list. Critics were appalled that in a booming modern China that boasts of its aspirations to achieve global status the groups most deserving of support, protection and care were being identified as an incipient danger. That such a suggestion came from an analyst working for a government think tank that was itself created to protect the Chinese revolution, and its own elevation of the formerly dispossessed and oppressed classes of the country seemed nothing less than confronting. To offer the state policy advice that overtly targets the marginalised and disempowered appeared, to many, as inhumane and in blatant contradiction of the Communist Party’s founding principles and avowed value system.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP, Cultural Revolution, democracy, dissidents, Geremie R. Barmé, global financial crisis, Internet, people's daily, religion, rights lawyers, U.S. relations, underground churches, United States
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The case involves Zhang Tingzhen, a 26-year-old engineer who had nearly half his brain surgically removed after surviving an electric shock a year ago.

His plight came to light after Reuters reported that Taiwan firm Foxconn sent telephone text messages to his family telling them it would cut off funding for his treatment and other expenses if they did not remove him from hospital in Shenzhen city and submit him for a disability assessment 70 km (43 miles) away in Huizhou, where the company says he was hired.

But his father, Zhang Guangde, is contesting that and says his son was hired in Shenzhen, not Huizhou, where wages and compensation levels are substantially lower than in Shenzhen.

[…] Labour activists say Zhang’s case highlights a common practice among large companies in China, which sign work contracts with employees in inner Chinese cities, where wages and compensations levels are relatively low, and then deploy them to work in more expensive cities.

Meanwhile, after Foxconn recently admitted to using underage laborers on its assembly lines, David Pierson at the Los Angeles Times examines local governments’ role in such labor rights violations:

The controversy also highlights the role of China’s vocational schools, which labor activists say are paid by companies to provide them with low-wage factory hands.

“The basic point of the system is to provide cheap labor to manufacturers,” said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong nonprofit promoting workers’ rights. “Ideally, you go to vocational school to learn a trade so that you’re in a good position to get a job when you graduate. In reality, the vocational schools make money by sending kids to factories. It’s a fairly manipulated form of labor available to manufacturers whenever they need it.”

[…] Many vocational schools are run by local authorities, who are eager to help major employers such as Foxconn fill their assembly lines, especially during peak production periods. In return, vocational schools are paid about $100 for each intern they provide to a factory, according to the New York-based China Labor Watch.

[…] ”None of us wanted to work there, but we had no choice,” said another of the interns, a lanky 15-year-old with a peach-fuzz crew cut assigned to put finished PlayStations into boxes. “You can’t fight the school and the system.”

See more on Foxconn via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child labor, Foxconn, labor conditions, labor disputes, labor rights, migrant workers, rights lawyers
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Wang Lijun, former right-hand man to the “King of Mountain City,” i.e. Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, ran to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu this February, exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s biggest public scandal in decades.

Toxins in baby formula, counterfeit pharmaceuticals and other food and drug safety issues are nothing new in China.

Rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng escaped from his illegal house arrest in April, making his way to the U.S. embassy in Beijing and eventually New York.

Villagers in the Wukan staged a revolt last December, driving local officials out and barricading themselves from the authorities. Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang dialogued with the villagers, leading to a peaceful end to the siege and local elections.

In July, residents of Shifang, Sichuan Province successfully protested the construction of a copper molybdenum power plant.

This could be a reference to the spate of Tibetan self-immolations in protest against Chinese rule. After two self-immolations in Lhasa this May, foreigners were briefly barred from visiting Tibet and security was tightened.

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Josh Rudolph.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, censorship, Chen Guangcheng, Chengdu, Chongqing, Cross-Talk Comics, drug safety, environmental protests, food safety, Guangdong, lhasa, local elections, Mountain City, politcal humor, political cartoons, protests, rights lawyers, self-immolations, Shifang, Sichuan, Tibet, Wang Lijun, Wang Yang, Wukan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall