Chen – whose name is forever associated with the massacre 24 years ago – was known to be in the final stages of terminal colon cancer. He was released from jail on medical parole in 2006 and died just three months before his jail sentence would have ended.

Chen, who was Beijing mayor at the time of the crackdown, was later promoted to Beijing Party Secretary and made a Politburo member.

He was sentenced to jail in 1998 for corruption, making him one of the three highest-ranking party officials – together with Chen Liangyu and Bo Xilai – to be brought down by such charges.

Chen was widely believed to be one of the masterminds behind the crackdown. Former party secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was put under house arrest for sympathising with the students, in his memoir blamed Chen for the tragedy. [Source]

Chen apologized for his role in the crackdown last year, saying that deaths could have been avoided, but maintained that he personally had been powerless to stop them. Following his death, some others have also played down his importance. These include Wang Fandi, whose son was killed on June 4th and who nevertheless says he views Chen’s death as “retribution”. From Gary Cheung and Minnie Chan at South China Morning Post:

“He was just a small potato and a tool manipulated by others,” Wang said of the mayor who was one of the officials blamed for the military crackdown on the movement. “He just said and did what he was instructed to by people in the top echelon.”

[…] “Chen’s death won’t have any bearing on whether Beijing’s official verdict will be reversed,” Wang said. “Li Peng [premier during the crackdown] and [former president] Jiang Zemin are the people who really make the difference.”

[…] Political commentator Johnny Lau Yui-siu, who was sacked by pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po shortly after the 1989 crackdown, said he did not have any feelings about Chen’s death as he was just a pawn during the incident.

[…] “His death won’t have any impact in the political arena on the mainland,” Lau said. [Source]

Less weighty aspects of Chen’s legacy include the concept of patriotic cabbages and an infusion of mock-traditional flavoring into Beijing’s early-1990s public architecture.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989, Beijing, Bo Xilai, Chen Liangyu, Chen Xitong, corruption, June 4th, Politburo, Tiananmen, Zhao Ziyang
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“He was on hunger strike twice and force fed,” one source told Reuters, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case. It was unclear how long the hunger strike lasted.

“He was not tortured, but fell ill and was taken to a hospital in Beijing for treatment,” the source said, declining to provide details of Bo’s condition and whereabouts which have been kept under wraps since his downfall.

[…] The recent lack of information about the case – Bo has not been seen in public since last March – harms the government’s credibility in the eyes of the people, said Bao Tong, the most senior official jailed over the 1989 Tiananmen protests.

“It’s not normal, too much time has past,” Bao told Reuters, referring to the lack of information from the government about the case.

“This is not good for the party’s image. They have not thought about this clearly. If they are able to properly deal with a big shot like Bo Xilai then they will increase people’s trust in the party,” he added.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989, Bao Tong, Bo Xilai, hunger strike, justice, rumors, Tiananmen, trials, trust
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In partnership with the China Copyright and Media blog, CDT is adding the “Beijing Internet Instructions” series to the Censorship Vault. These directives were originally published on Canyu.org (Participate) and date from 2005 to 2007. According to Canyu, the directives were issued by the Beijing Municipal Network Propaganda Management Office and the State Council Internet management departments and provided to to Canyu by insiders. China Copyright and Media has not verified the source.

The translations are by Rogier Creemers of China Copyright and Media.

15 May 2007, 09:10:12

All websites: Please report as soon as possible the internal third-person control mechanisms of websites, service companies providing information to websites and cooperation methods to our office.

15 May 2007, 17:04:02

All websites: Please immediately delete the text “Premier Not On Time For Train” and corresponding information, forums, blogs, and other interactive columns are not to discuss.

16 May 2007, 09:09:30

All websites: Please immediately delete the China Industry and Commerce Times “China and U.S. Attach Importance to Second Round of Strategic Economic Dialogue and Balancing the U.S.-China Trade Deficit.”

16 May 2007, 14:11:31

All websites: Please delete the article “Forbes Publishes Global Tax Burden Index, China in 3rd Place.”

16 May 2007, 15:13:30

(1st class) All websites: Please immediately delete the China News Agency article “Venue Responsibility System Implemented for Beijing Olympic Games Security Protection–Will Investigate Participants’ Background.”

All search engines: Please immediately ensure that there are no search results for “Venue Responsibility System Implemented for Beijing Olympic Games Security Protection–Will Investigate Participants’ Background,” “Beijing Olympic Games to Investigate Participants’ Background,” and “Olympic Games to Investigate Participants’ Backgrounds.”

16 May 2007, 15:17:30

All websites: Please immediately delete the article “China’s ‘Study Officials’ Perform Excellently in Cambridge.”

Huang Jing, 17:26:18

All websites: In the morning of 16 May, the People’s Daily published “Premier Wen Jiabao’s Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the 2007 Annual African Development Bank Meeting,” please delete the word “including” from the 5th paragraph: “The Chinese Government has announced to include expanding the scale of aid to Africa, relieve heavy debt burdens for the poor countries of Africa and debts of the least developed countries…”

16 May 2007, 17:29:03

First class: Please immediately revise the text “Premier Wen Jiabao’s Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the 2007 Annual African Development Bank Meeting.”

All websites: The People’s Daily published “Premier Wen Jiabao’s Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the 2007 Annual African Development Bank Meeting,” please delete the word “including” from the 5th paragraph: “The Chinese Government has announced to include expanding the scale of aid to Africa, relieve heavy debt burdens for the poor countries of Africa and debts of the least developed countries…”

17 May 2007, 15:09:00

All websites: For reports concerning the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in Linyi, Shandong, websites are only to reprint Xinhua copy, original copy is to be removed to the back stage. Discussions and posts in forums, blogs and other interactive columns that seize the opportunity to incite or fabricate panic must be timely deleted.

16 May 2007, 21:38:43

All websites, please pay attention: Ministry of Railways: transition period for the 6th Great Speed-Up Adjustment Plan extended to 18 June:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2007-05/20/content_6124760.htm.

All portal websites are requested to reprint this information in the middle or top part of the important news section, and maintain it there to 6 in the afternoon tomorrow, other commercial websites may reprint it in a relatively prominent position.

22 May 2007, 18:25:10

All websites: Please manage trackers for articles on the election results for the Beijing Municipal Party Representative Conference well, pay attention that not a single spelling mistake occurs.

22 May 2007, 19:45:11, Huang Jing

All websites, reports and comments on the Ministry of Commerce organizing the “6th Famous Chinese Wine” evaluation are to be deleted, please implement this quickly.

23 May 2007, 17:33:35

The matter of the number of vehicles in Beijing breaking through 3 million may not be reported without authorization, only reprint copy obeying our office’s notices.

23 May 2007, 17:32:24

First level: publish “German Court Decides Online Forum Operators Must Bear Complete Responsibility for Forum Discussions” until 17:00 on Friday afternoon.

First level: http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2007-05/23/content_6141423.htm – German Court Decides Online Forum Operators Must Bear Complete Responsibility for Forum Discussions. Please rapidly publish this text on the lower part of the main page of websites and the lower part of the important news section of the news center, manage trackers well, do not make it into a special subject, but link to some corresponding matters.

23 May 2007, 15:54:39

Third level: Please ensure that there are no search results for the following keywords!

All search engines, please ensure that there are no search results for “1989 order,” “that year’s courage,” “blood-colored dawn,” “witnessing June 4th,” “June 4th Tiananmen Tank Man,” “June 4th hunger strike letter,” “remembering June 4th,” “Tiananmen student strike movement,” “Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang,” “documentary ‘Tiananmen,’” and “‘Tiananmen’ Kama,”

2007年5月北京网管办发出的禁令（一）
2007-05-15 09:10:12

各网:网站内部的第三方监督机制、给本网站提供信息的服务公司及合作方式请尽快报本办.
2007-05-15 17:04:02

各网：关于“总理没赶上火车”一文及相关信息，请立即删除，论坛、博客等互动栏目不讨论
2007-05-16 09:09:30

各网:中华工商时报的”中美重视第二轮战略经济对话 平衡美中贸易逆差”一稿请马上删除。
2007-05-16 14:11:31

各网:请删除”福布斯公布全球税负痛苦指数 中国排名第三”一稿。
2007-05-16 15:13:30

(一级)各网：请马上删除中新社《北京奥运安保实行场馆负责制 将审查参赛者背景》一稿。

各搜索引擎：请马上将“北京奥运安保实行场馆负责制 将审查参赛者背景”、“北京奥运将审查参赛者背景”、“奥运会将严审参赛者背景”设为无结果搜索。
2007-05-16 15:17:30

各网:请马上删除:中国“学官”在剑桥的表演秀 一稿.
huangjing(黄婧) 17:26:18

各网:5月16日上午，人民网刊发《温家宝总理在2007年非行年会开幕式上的致辞》，文章第五自然段“中国政府宣布了包括扩大对非洲援助规模、免除非洲重债穷国和最不发达国家债务……”，请将“包括”两字删除。
2007-05-16 17:29:03

一级：请马上对《温家宝总理在2007年非行年会开幕式上的致辞》一文进行修改

各网:人民网刊发《温家宝总理在2007年非行年会开幕式上的致辞》，文章第五自然段”中国政府宣布了包括扩大对非洲援助规模、免除非洲重债穷国和最不发达国家债务……”，应将”包括”两字删除。
2007-05-17 15:09:00

各网:有关山东临沂市手足口病疫情的报道，网站只转发新华社通稿,原有稿件撤后台。论坛、博客等互动栏目中借机煽动、制造恐慌的言论和帖文要及时删除
2007-05-16 21:38:43

各网站请注意： 铁道部：第六次大提速调图过渡期延长到6月18日http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2007-05/20/content_6124760.htm

各门户网站请在要闻区中上部转载此消息 并保持到明天下午6点，其他商业网站可在较显著位置转载
2007-05-22 18:25:10

各网:北京市党代会选举结果的稿件请管好跟帖,注意不要出现任何错别字
2007-05-22 19:45:11 黄婧

各网:关于商务部举行”第六届中国名酒”评定的报道及评论全部删除,请速执行.
2007-05-23 17:33:35

北京市机动车保有量突破300万一事，不要擅自报道，听我办通知再发稿。

2007-05-23 17:32:24

一级：发《德法院判决网上论坛经营者须对论坛言论负全责》放到本周五下午17：00

一级：http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2007-05/23/content_6141423.htm 德法院判决网上论坛经营者须对论坛言论负全责 请速在首页新闻区下部和新闻中心要闻区下部发此文，务必管好跟贴，不做专题，但链接一些相关。
2007-05-23 15:54:39

三级：请将以下关键词设为搜索无结果！

各搜索引擎：请将“1989序”、“当年勇”、“血色黎明”、“见证六四”、“64天安门挡坦克的男人”、“六四绝食书”、“回忆六四”、“天安门学潮运动”、“胡耀帮与赵紫阳”、“记录片《天安门》”、“《天安门》 卡玛”设为搜索无结果。

These translated directives were first posted by Rogier Creemers on China Copyright and Media on December 23, 2012 (here). This post is the 46th 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, hu yaobang, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, strategic economic dialogue, Tiananmen, Zhao Ziyang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In partnership with the China Copyright and Media blog, CDT is adding the “Beijing Internet Instructions” series to the Censorship Vault. These directives were originally published on Canyu.org (Participate) and date from 2005 to 2007. According to Canyu, the directives were issued by the Beijing Municipal Network Propaganda Management Office and the State Council Internet management departments and provided to to Canyu by insiders. China Copyright and Media has not verified the source.

Afternoon Tea, 2004. A directive from October 11, 2006 asked Beijing websites to remove images of Shi Xinning‘s oil paintings of Mao Zedong with actresses and other famous figures.

The translations are by Rogier Creemers of China Copyright and Media.

9 October 2006, 11:45, Chen Hua

Everyone, a short briefing, on the matter of the North Korean nuclear tests, it is strictly prohibited to transmit foreign dispatches, standardize copy sources, do not gather news by yourself (VIP interviews, news lines, etc.).

9 October 2006, 16:06, Huang Jing

Everyone, recently, some websites reprinted the posts “Laid-Off Workers’ Song of Eternal Sorrow,” please notify all websites to thoroughly investigate their website forums, news trackers and other interactive columns, if this sort of information is discovered, it is to be deleted without exception.

9 October 2006, 19:09, Chen Hua

Concerning the North Korean nuclear tests, only use People’s Daily and Xinhua copy, earlier China News copy is to be completely deleted and may not be used again, everyone is requested to rapidly adjust their pages.

10 October 2006, 8:50, Chen Hua

All websites, please immediately delete the text “Experts: the Six Party Talks May Go from Coma to Death.”

9 October 2006, 12:43, Beijing Municipal Information Office

I. For news on North Korea’s nuclear tests, only copy from Xinhua and People’s Daily can be used, it is not permitted to use that of China News Net. Open trackers, but they must be managed well, in managing trackers, some principles shall be persisted in: (1) Our country’s persistent position of “non-nuclearization” on the Korean peninsula; (2) The hope of return to the Six Party Talks; (3) All sides deal with this matter soberly; (4) Do not disseminate rumors, do not engage in pointless guessing concerning nuclear pollution.

II. Concerning reporting the case of the Beijing City Vice-Mayor Liu Zhihua, including the process of the case, work units and individuals involved in the case, as well as targets of investigation, etc., only official copy from Xinhua and People’s Daily is to be transmitted online, it is strictly prohibited to use copy from other sources. Strengthen management over forums, news trackers, blogs and mobile telephone messages, all information not conforming to these requirements must be firmly deleted. Situations of non-earnest implementation of these requirements will be severely dealt with.

III. All websites, the 6th Plenum will be organized from the 8th until the 11th. During this time, negative news from all localities and all departments may not appear in the important news section, do not report on sudden malicious incidents and production security accidents.

IV. Abe’s visit to China has an important significance, propaganda and reporting must coordinate with the large picture of our country’s foreign affairs; all websites must timely delete provoking and inciting discussions, and the source of harmful information must be tracked down. For reports concerning the South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Japanese Prime Minister Abe visiting China soon, please use Xinhua and People’s Daily copy without exception, and it is not permitted to issue this in the heading position of the important news section; if separate articles are issued on the visits to China by these two people, the information on Roh shall be before information on Abe, and they may respectively be placed in the second and third position of the important news section; if the visit to China of the two persons is reported in one article, the name of Roh must appear before the name of Abe, and it may be placed in the second position of the important news section; trackers and forums must be managed well, it is not permitted to have extreme discussions.

11 October 2006, 10:43, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Huang Jing

All websites, recently after the complete inspection and earnest re-examination by the Hunan provincial, municipal and county judicial departments, it has been ascertained that the accusation in the original case of the original defendant Yang Mingyin, a farmer from Cili County, of the crime of plundering has not been established. In this regard, some websites have engaged in excessive reporting, which was not beneficial to safeguarding social stability in that locality. All relevant websites are requested to speedily calm down their existing reporting, and will immediately push articles to the back stage, they may not play this up, and may no longer publish new reports.

11 October 2006, 10:48, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Yang Le

All websites are to clean up and delete images of the oil paintings “Chairman Mao Living Today” and “Chairman Mao and Actresses” in forums, blogs and other interactive segments, search engines are to set up keywords to shield corresponding links.

11 October 2006, 16:42, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Huang Jing

All websites, please reprint the following articles in the domestic news section of the news center.

Title: Li Chang: We Were Deceived by Li Hongzhang! Address: http://www.kaiwind.com/xlzt/flzx/200609/t8783.htm

Title: Wang Zhiwen: How Was “25 April” Arranged. Address: http://www.kaiwind.com/xlzt/flzx/200609/t9064.htm

Please pay attention to transferring this from Kaiwind.

12 October 2006, 18:37, Beijing Municipal Information Office

Everyone, please immediately put the special subject on the 70th anniversary of the Long March on the main page of websites and the second position of the news page, and report the speeches of Central leading comrades at the opening ceremony of the “Magnificent Feat, Glorious Process – Exhibition Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the Victorious Long March of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army” on 16 October.

12 October 2006, 23:11, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Chen Hua

The matter concerning the case of a suicide by jumping off the Tiananmen building today in the afternoon, and the matter of a person burning a gasoline can tonight in Tiananmen Square are not to be reported, interactive segments are not to discuss this.

12 October 2006, 18:37, Beijing Municipal Information Office

Do the propaganda for the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Long March well, the special subject must be put on the main page and on the second position of the news page, timely disseminate focus articles.

13 October 2006, 15;57, Beijing Municipal Information Office

All websites: please set up the title “Central Party School Social Science Department Professor Qin Gang Talks About Building Harmonious Society” in the “Building a Harmonious Society” special subject header, link to http://www.xj71.com/show_video.php?id=31682&type=video. At the same time, the “Building a Harmonious Society” special subject is to be restored to the important news section.

13 October 2006, 20:50, Network Management Office, Duty manager 2

In recent days, there have been relatively many discussions online concerning cancelling Chinese medicine and Chinese drugs, which is not beneficial to protecting the excellent traditional culture of the nation, is not beneficial to the development of our country’s Chinese medicine and Chinese drug undertaking, and is not beneficial to guaranteeing the people’s health. All websites may no longer reprint or post comments concerning cancelling Chinese medicine or Chinese drugs, and may also not set up corresponding topics to guide netizens’ discussions. Where existing content on forums and blogs plays up the cancellation of Chinese medicine and Chinese drugs, measures must be adopted to curb this. All localities’  foreign propaganda offices are requested to notify websites to implement this.

13 October 2006, 20:50, Network Management Office, Duty Manager 2

Please make “Yesterday Reappeared” into keywords and screen searches. Also, the said article may not be reprinted.

13 October 2006, 0:24

Immediately delete articles with the following content on websites (focus on inspecting searches and blog articles), make the following four words into keywords for screening.

A. Born as Renjie B. Li Renjie C. Renjie Reappears D. Renjie and Weihong Reappear

15 October 2006, 22:24, Network Management Office, Duty manager 2

Notice: on the matter of a number of Jilin Agricultural University Visual Arts Faculty teachers having put forward resignations because they are dissatisfied with the school merging faculties and the corresponding incidents triggered by this matter are all to be not reported, where it has been reported, it is to be immediately deleted, forums and blogs are also not to discuss this matter.

2006年10月北京网管办发出的禁令（一）
2006年10月09日11时45分 陈华

各位，提示一下，朝鲜核试验一事，严禁转外电，规范稿源，不要自采（嘉宾访谈，连线等）
2006年10月09日16时06分 黄婧

各网：近期，一些网站转载了《下岗工人长恨歌》的帖文，请即通知各网站彻底清查网站论坛、新闻跟帖等互动性栏目，发现此类信息，一律删除。
2006年10月09日19时09分 陈华

关于朝鲜核试验，只用人民，新华的，此前中新的全部删除并不得再用，请各位速调整各自页面。
2006年10月10日8时50分 陈华

各网，请马上删除《专家：六方会谈可能从休克走向死亡》一文。
2006年10月09日12时43分 北京市新闻办

一：对于朝鲜核试验的新闻，只能用新华、人民的稿件，不允许用中新网。开放跟贴，但要管好，在管理跟贴中应当坚持几个原则：1、我国坚持朝鲜半岛“无核化”的立场；2、希望重新回到六方会谈中来；3、各方冷静处理此事；4、不传播谣言，不对核污染进行无谓的猜测。

二：关于北京市原副市长刘志华案的网上报道包括案件进展、案件涉及到的单位和个人，以及被调查对象等，网站只转发新华社和《人民日报》的正式稿件， 严禁使用其它来源的稿件。 加强对论坛、新闻跟帖、博客、手机短信息的管理，凡与此要求不符的信息必须坚决删除。对不认真执行要求的情况，将要严肃处理。

三：各网：六中全会于8日到11日举行。在此期间,要闻区不要出现各地方、各部门的负面新闻，不报道突发的恶性事件和安全生产事故。

四：安倍访华具有重要意义,宣传报道要配合我国外交大局;各网要及时删除挑动和煽动性言论,对有害信息要查源头。 关于韩国总统卢武铉、日本首相安倍即将访华报道,请一律用新华、人民网稿件,并不得发在要闻区头条位置;如两人访华消息是分别发稿,卢的消息应在安倍消息 之前,可分别放在要闻区二、三条位置;如两人访华是一条消息发布,则卢的名字须在安倍之前,可放在要闻区二条位置；务必管理好跟帖和论坛,不得有过激言 论。
2006年10月11日10时43分 北京市新闻办 黄婧

各网:近期，经湖南省、市、县政法部门全面审查和认真复核，查明原案指控原审被告人慈利县农民杨明银抢劫罪不成立。对此，有的网站做了过量报道，不利于维护当地社会稳定。请有关网站对已有的报道要迅速淡化处理，将稿件立即压至后台，不得炒作，不再刊发新的报道。
2006年10月11日10时48分 北京市新闻办杨乐

各网站清理删除在论坛、博客等互动环节中的油画图片”毛主席活在今天”，”毛主席和女演员”，搜索引擎设关键词屏蔽相关链接。
2006年10月11日16时42分 北京市新闻办黄婧

各网：请在新闻中心国内新闻位置转发以下文章，

标题：李昌：我们被李洪志蒙蔽了！　网址：http://www.kaiwind.com/xlzt/flzx/200609/t8783.htm

标题：王治文:“4?25”是这样安排下去的　网址：http://www.kaiwind.com/xlzt/flzx/200609/t9064.htm

请注明转自凯风网。
2006年10月12日18时37分 北京市新闻办

各位，请马上将长征70周年专题放在网站首页和闻首二条位置，并报好10月16日中央领导同志在”伟大壮举 光辉历程-纪念中国工农红军长征胜利70周年展览”开幕式上的致辞。
2006年10月12日23时11分 北京市新闻办 陈华：

关于今天下午在天安门城楼坠楼一事及今晚一人在天安门广场燃汽油桶一事，一律不报道、互动环节不讨论。
2006年10月12日18时37分 北京市新闻办

做好长征70周年胜利的宣传，专题要放首页和闻首二条位置，重点稿件及时发布。
2006年10月13日15时57分 北京市新闻办黄婧

各网：请在“构建和谐社会”专题头条位置以“中央党校科社部教授秦刚谈构建和谐社会”为题，链接http://www.xj71.com/show_video.php?id=31682&type=video。同时将“构建和谐社会”专题在要闻区恢复。
2006年10月13日20时50分 网管办值班2

近日，网上有关取消中医中药的言论比较多，不利于保护民族优秀传统文化，不利于我国中医药事业的发展，也不利于保障人民健康。各网站不要再转载、贴 发关于取消中医中药的评论，也不要设置相关话题引导网民讨论。对论坛、博客中现有的取消中医中药炒作，要采取措施予以制止。请各地外宣办通知网站执行。

2006年10月13日20时50分 网管办值班2

请将《昨日重现》设为关键字进行搜索删除。并不要转载该文章
202006年10月13日0：24

立即删除网站内含有以下内容的文章（重点检查搜索博客文章），把以下四个词设置为关键词屏蔽。

A.生当作人杰 B.李人杰 C.人杰重现 D.人杰伟鸿重现
2006年10月15日22时24分 网管办值班2

通知：就吉林农业大学视觉艺术学院部分教师因对学校合并院系不满而提出辞职一事及由此事引起的相关事件均不做报道，已报道的立即删除，论坛和博客也不讨论此事。

These translated directives were first posted by Rogier Creemers on China Copyright and Media on December 8, 2012 (here).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Beijing Internet Instructions, censorship, Censorship Vault, Chen Hua, china news, Chinese medicine, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, harmonious society, Hunan, Internet censorship, jilin, Liu Zhihua, long march, Mao Zedong, Ministry of Truth, North Korea, people's daily, Qin Gang, six party talks, social stability, Tiananmen, Tiananmen Square, Xinhua, Yang Le
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NoVforMe: Call for Proof: This is Too Crazy–Pierre Haski, a reporter formerly based in Beijing for the French newspaper Libération, interviewed Mo Yan in 2004. During the interview, Mo Yan said that he is the child of a farmer. During the Great Leap Forward and Great Famine, he ate charcoal to keep from starving. He thanks the military and is still a Communist Party member–even though he’s lost his faith in the Party. When the reporter asked him when he lost his faith, he replied that from that year onward, he only retained his Party membership to avoid bringing on unnecessary trouble.

本人无V： 【求证：这个太猛了】法国解放报前驻京记者哈斯基04年走访了莫言 ，莫言在访谈中表示，他是一个农民的孩子，大跃进、大饥荒曾因饥饿难忍而吞食炭灰。他感谢军队，他依然是党员，尽管对党已经失去信心，记者询问何时失去信 心，莫言回答从那一年开始，他之所以继续保留党员证，是不想增添不必要的麻烦。

So far, the post has been commented on and reposted over 1550 times and remains untouched by both the author and the censors. Some have replied that @NoVforMe, and the public at large, should leave Mo Yan alone, while others redouble the call for verification of the interview. Still others are struck by the novelist’s courage and humanity, working within the Party system but not supporting it blindly. Indeed, many ordinary Chinese join the Party as a prerequisite to job promotion and for other non-political purposes. Party membership often has very little to do with an individual’s beliefs.

Some readers hang on Mo Yan’s mention of “that year,” a likely reference to 1989, the year of the Tiananmen protests. “That year” was blocked from Sina Weibo search results around the anniversary of the military crackdown this summer.

The following comments were selected by the CDT Chinese editors:

ZEDDD: He sure has the courage to speak.

ZEDDD：真敢说。

charlesxue: I want proof.

薛蛮子: 求证实

Hanjianggouxue: I just heard the same on Radio France Internationale.

寒江钓雪0529：刚也在法广上听到了

esrv: Even if this was proven true, what would you do about it?
esrv：就算证实了，你们又能怎样？

MrKeke: Don’t try to bring out all his dirty laundry just because he won a Nobel Prize. Let him be. Let us enjoy his work.

可可先生：得个诺奖，不要什么都掏出来吧。饶了莫言，让我们欣赏他的作品。

FattyCat: Go ahead and demand proof for this. This comes from a Pierre Haski interview. http://t.cn/zllX3De [link to Rue 89 article, in French]

猫大胖子：来，拿去求证吧。这来源于一个Pierre Haski的采访。http://t.cn/zllX3De

xiniuwangyue: Stop trying to take him down. What is there to prove?

夕牛望月V：别再害人家了，证实什么啊

hasange: You want proof for this thing? Isn’t this just someone speaking honestly?

哈三哥：这东西还要证实吗，这不是大实话吗？

chuguofuxing: Any normal person would say and do the same!

楚国复兴：是个正常的人都会这么说，这么做！

OceanBottomFish110: Even if he did say this, you can’t just bring it up to hurt the guy.

海底的鱼110：即使说过，也不能再提起而害人家了

shluyanling: Which year is that year?

鲁燕玲：那一年是指哪一年？

yogen: It’s definitely 1989.
国际游民林丹–致力室内环境净化：肯定是89年了

IndependentScholar2010: That year, the shadow of a “tractor.”
独立学者2010: 那一年，拖拉机的影子。

kingleiou: That year…
大藏布：那一年……

Wuhezizon: I feel the same way. @Dacangbu: That year…
乌合zizon：同感。//@大藏布: 那一年……

LoneWalker: It started from that year. That year was probably the most hopeless year of them all.
孤独漫步人：从那一年开始。那应该是最让人绝望的一年。

Limingqianye: China’s youngest, most courageous generation was trampled under the wheels of authoritarianism–history written in blood.
-黎明前夜：中国最年轻最勇敢的一代人倒在了专制的车轮下，血写的历史。

OldCowNight: With regards to the tragedy of ’89, I believe, anyone with a bit of a conscience would be like this. It’s nothing to boast about. That day, one of my teachers jotted down these four lines. They shake me to my core: “A night of thunderous turmoil. All were singing and dancing their praises. No one will speak of this again. Even the birds on the eaves make no sound.”
老牛之友: 89之难，我相信，任何稍有点良心良知的，均此，不值得夸耀。我一位老师，当日早上就写下四句，这才叫入骨的厉害：一夕雷霆勘动乱，万家歌舞颂英明。从此莫谈天下事，檐前鸦雀亦无声。

FieldHeart: Now I know why they gave him a Nobel Prize…
FieldHeart：终于明白为什么诺贝尔奖给他了。。。

IamWangFeiFeizhuliu: I never thought Old Mo and I would have the same awareness. But my feelings about this are particularly strong this year.
我是王妃非主流：没想到我跟老莫有着同样的觉悟，不过我这想法今年特别强烈

KneelLong: Chinese-style survival philosophy…
跪久了：中国式生存哲学……

baizhenxia: Authoritarian monarchs love smart elites who don’t cause any trouble!
尊严之子：这样聪明的不添麻烦的精英是每一个专制的君主都喜欢的人！

Xishanqingyu: Does this mean he has a conscience, or that he doesn’t have a conscience?
西山晴雨：他这是有良心呢？还是没良心呢？

PoisonTongue: Oh, so he’s talking about “that year”! Haha! That sensitive year!
毒舌列文 ：哦，原来是“那一年”啊，哈哈！敏感词的“那一年”！

FatLittleSoldier2012: Haha! Let’s all work hard to force Nobel Prize winners get out or go in.
胖胖小兵2012：哈哈，大家努力把大陆诺奖得主不是弄出去，就是弄进去

junjunq: That day during the press conference, whether it was intentional or not, Mo Yan conveyed a sense of his dissatisfaction with and disapproval of the Chinese Communist Party.
JunjunQian–大爱清尘：那天的新闻发布会上莫言其实也有意无意表达这个意思，对gcd的执政不满意，不认同

WuShen: No matter if this news is real or not, anyone who lived through that time period would have lost their faith in everything. And that’s for certain.
Wu申：无论真假，谁经历那样的年代，无论对什么都会失去信心，这是肯定的。

Jingxiguqiao: Mo Yan is probably very conflicted inside. To live within the system, he must compromise his writing.
荆溪孤樵：莫言内心应该很矛盾，要在体制内生活写作必须妥协

TianmahangkongV88: How many other Party members raise their right hands as they take the oath and don’t think it counts?
天马行空V88：还有多少高举右手，捏着拳头宣誓不算数的在党内的人？

JiafeimaoBrother: Now this guy is what I call smart!
加肥猫大哥：他才是聪明人~~

OceanStone1981: Mo Yan wins a prize, and now everything is being dug up. Sigh. It’s tough to become famous in China–even dangerous.
海石1981：莫言获个奖，什么都被挖出来了，唉，在中国出名难，出名还危险

DanGirl61: I believe Mo Yan would say something like this. You can feel the weight of the Chinese people by reading his work.
丹娘61：我相信莫言会说这样的话，从他的作品中能读出中国人的沉重..

USAPrincePerv: Telling it like it is…
USA君子好色：实话实说 、、、

InteriorDesigner: Disaster comes from the mouth, Mo Yan!
装饰装修设计师：祸从口出啊，莫言！

Feichi: If it’s true, it would make people really admire him. On the one hand, he has thoughts like these. On the other, he was able to become the vice chairman of the China Writers’ Association.
廢癡：如果是真的，確實很讓人佩服啊，一方面有這樣的想法，一方面還爬到作協副主席的位置。

FeisiLi: Now I understand that Mo Yan is sick at heart. His name is attributed to all kinds of ideologies and philosophies. That has to be overwhelming. Who knows if one day while he’s asleep he’ll get shot. Show a little caring. Give him some love, and stop tormenting him.
菲斯李：我现在理解莫言的忧心忡忡了，各种思想观点都打着他的名号，让他不堪重负，说不定躺着哪天也被中枪了。保留一点爱心，给他一份关爱，别折腾他了。

GCDCoronationDay: Not wanting to create unnecessary trouble–there are many people who think the same way.
GCD登基纪念日：不想增加不必要的麻烦，也是很多人的想法。

TianmaxingkongV88: So the oath he took under the Party flag doesn’t count?
天马行空V88：在党旗下宣誓不算数？

Huajiuduoduo: You have to swear an oath to enter the Party. But if you wish to leave, it’s not that easy. Especially when your children enter school and look for work, you’re finished.
花酒多多V：入档都是需要赌咒发誓的，要是敢退档，可不是株连九族那么简单的事情，最现实的是在子女入学就业等方面有你好果子吃

EyeOfChild: If this is true, he’s nothing but an opportunist!
童眼稚翁：如果这是真的，那么他就是一个投机分子！

NoHKinHeart: I don’t care about this. The important thing is that he won an award.
心中无股HK：这个别太在意。重在的是他获奖了。

minchaow: It’s not everyday that a Chinese person wins a Nobel Prize. Whatever you do, don’t stop him from going to accept it.
天城云扬：咱中国出个诺奖获奖的不容易，千万别让他去领不了奖。

TianjinLiuTong: It makes sense, not wanting to add unnecessary trouble.
天津刘彤：这个说法靠谱，不想增添不必要的麻烦。

an4001_5lb: When will we be able to remove our masks and speak the truth?
an4001_5lb：什么时候可以摘掉面具公开说实话？

Translation by Little Bluegill.

“Netizen Voices” is an original CDT series. If you would like to reuse this content, please follow the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 agreement.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989, 1989 protests, gao xingjian, great leap forward, literature, Liu Xiaobo, mo yan, Netizen Voices, Nobel Prize, Tiananmen
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The exhibition is about the notion of history—Tiananmen as a drastic exemplification—which is experienced by individuals, later resides in personal memories, and of which the emotional overtones transform across generations. To shed light on the dialogue and dialectic of the cross-generational memories and its representation in films and videos, the exhibition is conceived in a polyphonic manner. Each of the three parts stands for a passage of perceiving or comprehending history as part of our lives, distinct yet contrapuntal to each other. Altogether they form a texture which reflects the complex of the relations between history and the persons who made and are made by it.

Originally scheduled for just two days, the exhibit will now run through September 27. More information about the video installation, film screening and live events that comprise the exhibition is available from My Tiananmen’s Tumblr site.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, film, London, Lou Ye, shu haolun, Tiananmen
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It wasn’t until the morning of June 5 that I discovered I had disappeared.

[…] It really wasn’t a big deal, because the summer has passed already. In this hot, anxious season, everything has finally passed…three years ago maybe I wouldn’t have made any “iffy” posts, but time not only ages us, it also forces us to grow up. Maybe saying you have a “sense of purpose” sounds too high and mighty, or describing a “burning urgency” sounds like building yourself up, but you can’t always be a person who pretends to be “fun.” You have to speak your own mind a little. It doesn’t matter if it’s stupid, or fake, you have to pay the price.

If you only play the part of a fun or funny person all day long, your life is really meaningless, frittered away in idiocy.

Even if people say you’re stupid or fake, that you are just rehashing old tropes, what does it matter? Your life is long. Why would you care about people pointing their fingers at you from the sidelines? On the road to being awesome, the streets are not lined with thorny bushes, but with idiots. It doesn’t matter–keep going ‘til you reach the finish line.

See also “Do Not Hype Gourmet Food or Luxury Clothing!” on CDT, featuring Zuoyeben’s message to representatives at this year’s NPC and CPPCC meetings.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CPPCC, microblogs, NPC, sina weibo, Tiananmen, weibo
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The government has claimed victory in dealing with the massive floods, which killed at least 37 people, but posts expressing citizens’ anger at the failure of the city’s drainage system have been deleted. Reports about the floods have been censored and authorities have ordered news organizations to “emphasize the power of human compassion over the elements.”

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.

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: beijing flood 2012, hexie farm, propaganda, Tiananmen
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Nothing more vividly illustrates this injustice than the restrictions imposed on an accused’s right to effective counsel. These restrictions are not apparent from a reading of China’s ever-improving legislation. The 2007 Lawyers Law eliminated some of the obstacles confronting defence counsel under the 1996 Criminal Procedure Law, but police skirted that reform, saying they are not governed by the Lawyers Law. This year, many of those 2007 changes were incorporated into the Criminal Procedure Law itself, so that, starting on January 1, when the revised law takes effect, police can no longer rely on that feeble excuse.

Unfortunately, as Shakespeare might note today, legislative improvements keep the promise to the ear, but Communist Party- controlled legal institutions break it to the hope. If current events are any guide, the situation is unlikely to change under the revised Criminal Procedure Law. Recent cases remind us of the authorities’ continuing refusal to implement the right to counsel in good faith.

[…] These cases are legion and make a mockery of China’s claims to have established “a socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics”. Until the right to effective counsel is recognised in practice as the cornerstone of criminal justice, China’s “soft power” efforts are destined to fail.

Cohen’s fears that the new Criminal Procedure Law will not be faithfuly implemented are widely shared, as are his concerns at the enshrinement of “a murky, two-tier legal regime” in which political prosecutions are subject to far fewer restrictions than ordinary criminal cases. At The Wall Street Journal, Carl Minzner warns that the overall direction of China’s justice system is not merely ineffectual progress, but active regression. He suggests that despite, or even because of, its frequently professed commitment to rule of law, Beijing’s obsession with stability at all costs threatens to reverse the gains of the 1980s and 90s.

[…] Beijing worries that decades of official rule-of-law rhetoric are fueling surging numbers of petitions, protests and suits by citizens who seek to protect their legal rights. The idea of rule of law is even leading some officials to perceive law as superior to Party policy. Authorities also fear that China’s growing public interest lawyers might emerge as the core of Arab Spring-style protest movements.

This new line from the central government is an integral component of hardline “stability maintenance” political policies that have swept through the Chinese state in recent years. Central signals to local authorities are clear. Contain all disputes at the local level. Hold down the numbers of court cases. And, at all costs, prevent disgruntled petitioners from reaching Beijing.

Following the “reinstatement of his political rights” last month, activist Hu Jia writes that democracy is the only real way to maintain stability in China. From The Washington Post:

For 63 years, China has been engaged in a civil war, between its people and the party, over dignity and rights. In recent decades, the Tiananmen massacre, the suppression of Falun Gong and religious freedom, and violent “family planning” policies all have contributed to a human rights disaster. In a democratic system, this government would have been impeached hundreds of times. Consider just the one-child policy that has produced countless tragedies. Millions of infants have been killed. The daily abuses of power feed more disasters. China has institutionalized abuse of power, through the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, and individuals within the system, such as Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun, also take advantage of their positions.

Amid the global tide of democratization, China’s stagnation is equal to retrogression. The question of who succeeds Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao is not important now. Citizens are the most important force for political reform — and what matters is our courage and wisdom, what actions we take, and how many citizens wake up.

[…] Turning China into a democratic and lawful society in the next 10 years is the only peaceful option. Conciliation will never arrive without truth or confession. The sooner the Communist Party wakes up, the smaller the cost will be.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Arab Spring, Bo Xilai, Chen Guangcheng, criminal procedure law, democracy, Falun Gong, Hu Jia, Hu Jintao, Jerome cohen, leadership transition, legal reform, legal system, one-child policy, political blogs, prisoners' rights, rule of law, stability maintenance, Tiananmen, Wang Lijun, Wen Jiabao
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Original text here.

That Year, I was twelve years old and in the fifth grade. The happiest part of my day: I would come home from school, turn on our battered black-and-white TV and listen to my older brother, who was a student at the local teacher’s college, passionately detail the day’s happenings in Beijing. Scenes of waving flags, young faces and screeching ambulances flashed across the screen, brimming with energy and a feeling of meaning and weight.

That Year, the summer was especially hot.

After school, my friends and I walked through the pockmarked roads of our village. We no longer goofed around like before. By that time, a few of us buddies had started to talk about the big affairs of the country. “Let’s write a letter to Zhao Ziyang,” I suggested.  My friends replied, “You write it. Your essays are very well written.” But I had no idea what I should write. I just had this vague notion that we should do something.

My father came home from our county seat. He said that someone had tried to hand him a flyer as he was riding his bike down the street. He didn’t take it. It was not long before he had peddled away.

Father was the principal of the village elementary school. In the past, he had never been admitted to the Party because of his poor family background. He cried loudly about this in the past. He was afraid.

Later, the youthful energy on TV became a bloody scream.

July was torrid. My older brother, who had graduated by then, hadn’t come home.  Father became worried and went to the school to look for him.

As Father stepped off the bus, the head of my brother’s department was there waiting for him. The department head’s first words when they met were, “Your son was sent to be re-educated.”  When he heard this, Father collapsed on the ground, foaming at the mouth.

Holding my father in his arms, the department said over and over, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

When Father came home, he told the family that my brother was a student leader and had taken students to protest in the streets. Five students from his college were sent to be re-educated, and my brother was one of them. He would probably not receive his diploma and wouldn’t get a work assignment.

I had a vague sense of pride for my brother, but the despair in Father’s voice troubled me.

A month later, my brother came home. He wasn’t the cheerful person he once was. Rather, he was silent. Everyday he would wander around the village fields, brooding with a furrowed brow. No one knew what he was thinking about.

Father forced my brother to go to the County Board of Education every day to inquire about work assignments. My brother was the first person from our village to attend college, and Father had endured many hardships. Father wanted my brother to leave the village and get a job.

My brother often quarreled with Father. Later on, my brother was finally assigned a job and went to town to be a middle school teacher. Eventually he tested into graduate school, got his doctorate and became an assistant professor at a prestigious university.

Some time later, as my brother and I were reminiscing about the past, he told me that during the protests, they were passing a military district. Many of the students wanted to rush in, but as student leader my brother did everything in his power to stop them.

Perhaps it is because of this that he was eventually assigned a job.

By chance, I once ran into the head of my brother’s department. He told me, “Your father is a good person. Your brother and the others are hot-blooded youth.”

That summer, something took root in the heart of a twelve-year-old boy.

The memories of that year influenced the rest of my life.

One day in 1995 when I was at university, I ran into an old classmate and started talking about Tiananmen. He mentioned he had a whole batch of photos from that time, all taken by his brother. I was excited and asked him to bring them for me to see. I saw the Goddess of Democracy standing gloriously aloft the square, and a sea of people wearing white bandanas. “These pictures are treasures. You must take good care of them,” I implored my classmate. He didn’t seem to feel the same way. “If you like them, take them.” I hurriedly stored them away, as if I had discovered rare jewels.

After graduation, I was assigned to be an elementary school teacher back home. Once, as my colleagues and I were chatting about the events of That Year, a female colleague noticed how impassioned I was on the subject. She snorted, “You’re so excited. You know, in ’89 I was a senior in high school. None of us could take the college entrance exams because of the student protests. I went back home to work on the farm. Now I’m just a private tutor.”

I was speechless. It was only then I realized the events of that year had altered her entire life.

It was also at that time I began spending entire nights listening to the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. I heard many more Tiananmen stories. I also began reading books like He Qinglian’s The Trap of Modernization and the Liu Junning’s edited volume Public Forum. I became a liberal.

In 1998 my younger brother opened a bookstore. He sold pirated books from Hong Kong and Taiwan that he bought at a market in Wuhan, including titles like The Real June Fourth, Tiananmen and the memoirs of people like Wang Dan and Feng Congde. Those books sold like crazy. Most of the people buying them were retired workers from state-owned enterprises. They never haggled. My younger brother was quite brazen about it too, strutting about as he put those books on the shelves. Eventually, a teacher reported our store in a letter to the Hubei Daily, saying we were selling vast numbers of reactionary books.

People from the cultural center stormed in holding copies of the Hubei Daily and confiscated all of these books.

Since we couldn’t sell them in the open, we started selling them discreetly. In the winter, my younger brother and I hid copies of the illegal books in our thick cotton coats. Whenever an old worker would come asking about them, we would slide the books out of our coats make a sales pitch. We sold many books this way, and my younger brother was very pleased with the money he was earning.

It wasn’t long before my brother came back from a trip to Wuhan looking very dejected. The book market had been shut down for selling pornography. We had no way to bring in new copies.

Our store never sold those books again.

Around the dinner table one day, we were discussing June Fourth when my brother-in-law, who worked as a local government official, said, “You read those reactionary books every day, crying out for justice, but do you ever think about what it would be like if the crackdown never happened? What about this decade of economic growth and the life our family enjoys today? Stability trumps all!”

I left the table, furious.

On June 4, 1999, I fasted and wrote an essay titled “Thoughts on the Tenth Anniversary of June Fourth.” This marked my passage into spiritual maturity.

In 2000 I moved to Hangzhou. Living in a dormitory at Zhejiang University, I took the graduate school exams. On the school web forum, students were downloading a documentary titled Tiananmen, which had gone viral.

In Hangzhou I met Fu Guoyong. In his simple apartment, I listened to him recall his story. That Year, he joined the student movement. He gave a public speech on Tiananmen Square. He met his wife. Then he was arrested, put on a train, shackled from hand to foot, thrown in jail. His mother went gray overnight. His wife, who was a top student at Beijing Normal University, never gained recognition at school because of her anti-revolutionary family. He showed me pictures of his wife and child visiting him in jail, the three of them with pure, resplendent smiles on their faces.

It was the most beautiful photo I had ever seen.

One day in 2002, a friend arranged for me to visit the student leader Wang Youcai. Wang was sent to jail for organizing the Democratic Party of China. His wife, Hu Jiangxia, was at home. Making wide detours to avoid being followed, my friend and I wound our way to Wang Youcai’s house in Hangzhou’s Emerald Garden neighborhood. At last we met Hu Jiangxia and had a  lively conversation. Not long afterwards, I heard Wang and Hu filed for divorce. Some time after that, Wang was sent to the United States through negotiations between the Chinese and American governments. Eventually, Hu Jiangxia also made her way to the U.S.. I heard that they remarried.

In Hangzhou, there was a boss of a large company who asked to borrow my copy of Wang Dan’s prison memoirs. He kept it for a long time. Only later did I realize that in That Year he had been the chairmen of Zhejiang University’s autonomous student council. The summer of That Year, one of his toes was broken off. He changed course and went on to become a successful businessman.

In 2003 my friend and I began hosting an academic salon at Sanlian Bookstore in Hangzhou. According to Fu Guoyong, this was the first time since the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement that an open, grassroots activity was publically hosted in Hangzhou. We invited Fu Guoyong to give a lecture. That was the first time he spoke at a public gathering since leaving prison.

In 2005, I started graduate school in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. During class one day, the teacher suddenly began speaking to us dozen or so students about June Fourth. He said some of the events of That Year were perfectly pure, others extremely foul. Our teacher was a graduate student in Beijing at the time of the crackdown. He personally experienced all that happened that summer. I was shocked to hear this. He wasn’t merely a professor. He was the principal of the school—a bona fide official. This was the first time I heard someone from inside the system speak openly about June Fourth in a classroom.

After class, I excitedly shared my own June Fourth story with several classmates. A few female students born in the 80s listened to me wide-eyed, as if they were listening to fantastical stories from some strange, far-off land. “Is it true, what he’s saying?” they asked the class monitor, who had been standing nearby listening. He nodded his head. “It’s true. It’s all true. I was there at Tiananmen at the time. I even slept there a few nights.” Our class monitor was born in 1968. He had taken part in June Fourth.

Still, those young classmates couldn’t believe it. “How come we never knew anything about this before?” they asked with a sigh.

My roommate Old Yang was a graduate student in the Fine Arts Department. He was born in the 70s, a party member and a university lecturer. One night, as we lay awake talking, he told me about a student from his village who went to Tsinghua University. During June Fourth he disappeared. Twenty years had passed, and no one knew anything about what had happened to him. If he was alive, no one had seen his face; if he was dead, no one had viewed the body. He was the only student from that village to ever attend a prestigious university. “I hate the Communist Party,” Old Yang spat.

That Year, a professor from my department supported the student protesters in Yunnan. He shared with me what happened when he lead the students. They scaled the university walls and took to the streets, shouting protest slogans. After the June Fourth Massacre, the professor organized Yunnan Province’s first protest march. As autumn came, his actions caught up with him. He was suspended from teaching and put under investigation. With documents piled before him, his investigators demanded he admit his crimes. His students protected him, saying they marched of their own volition, without any encouragement from their teacher. He kept his job, but he began to fall in love with one female student after another. He divorced several times, becoming dissolute. Although he should have been made department head long ago, he was never promoted. Once, at a banquet, he berated the Party in front of all the university leaders. “The Chinese Communist Party should have collapsed back in 1989! They should have died out a long time ago, damn it!”

The room fell silent.

The other professors say he turned into a different person after June Fourth, cursing the Communist Party and womanizing his students.

My graduate adviser was an old professor and a member of the Democratic Party. After June Fourth, the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee organized a forum with democracy advocates. “I’ve never understood how June Fourth was handled,” he said in a speech there. “Why did the government have to do what it did?” Twenty years on, he still couldn’t make sense of it.

In 2009, I graduated and stuck around campus to take the university’s employment test. I received the top score. The Yunnan Security Agency opened a political investigation on me because I had previously published a few articles on foreign websites. That was the first time I ever dealt with security officials, and it filled me with dread.

A deputy director from the security agency asked me, “What are your thoughts on June Fourth?” I paused, then said, “June Fourth doesn’t concern my generation. It’s very complicated.” He stared at me for a long time, then retorted, “You mean you don’t think the decisive action taken by the Party in that year was the reason for our prosperity and success today?”

I remembered the argument with my brother-in-law. They had the same logic—the same inhumane logic. I stayed silent. I didn’t dare refute him, afraid of losing my chance at a teaching position.

Regardless, I failed to pass my political investigation. The university Party committee rejected my application on the grounds that I “did not fervently love my country and socialism.”

To this day, I still feel guilty for the cowardice I showed when confronted by the stability maintenance system. June Fourth is not just a matter for the generation that came to age in 1989. It’s a matter that relates to every person on Chinese soil. It is blood spilled by tyranny. It is an open wound on the body of this nation that will never close. Whatever you think of June Fourth, you cannot have a muddled opinion on it, you cannot make haphazard excuses for it. You must say no to atrocity, you must say no to the truth written in blood and the lies written in ink. One’s opinion of June Fourth is the most basic measure of the morality of every Chinese person, the touchstone that torments every Chinese person’s conscience and humanity. Any action or expression that crosses that bottom line is an injustice that violates one’s very conscience.

After my expulsion from the university in 2009, I made my way to Beijing. Since then, I have met many teachers and friends, and I heard even more stories of Tiananmen.

When I first arrived in Beijing, I became a reporter for a Party-affiliated magazine. One day, an older female colleague recounted a story from her university years. It was the early 90s and a soldier had an eye for her, was courting her, but she had no feelings for him. One day, as they were walking together, the soldier asked her, “Do you college students still hate us soldiers?” She didn’t respond. The soldier continued, “I didn’t fire my gun.”

Another female colleague of mine, born in the 80s, held an advanced degree from Wuhan University. Her boyfriend was an army officer. One day she heard some of us chatting about June Fourth and was shocked. When she got home that night she asked her boyfriend about it. He told her that the guns were not loaded that day. She called me late that night and yelled, “Did people really die or not? Who should I believe?” I answered her question with a question of my own. “If there were no bullets in their guns, how did all those students and ordinary citizens die?” After arguing for half an hour she still didn’t know if she should trust her boyfriend or me.

She broke up with her boyfriend. I don’t know the reason why.

In a restaurant in Beijing’s Haidian District, professor Yu Shuo, who had arrived in Beijing from Hong Kong, shared with me her own June Fourth story. At that time she was a young lecturer in Renmin University’s sociology department. She and Liu Xiaobo came from the same hometown and were friends. That whole summer, she carried a camera and tape recorder around Tiananmen Square, interviewing students, intellectuals and city residents. She wanted a record of everything. On the night of June 3, she was preparing to evacuate the square with the last wave of students. Liu Xiaobo had told her his bag was left at a corner of the Monument to the People’s Heros, with his money and his passport that he would need to travel to the U.S. still inside. While the students were retreating, Yu Shuo ran over to the monument to retrieve the bag, but a student patrol grabbed her and threw her to the ground, yelling, “Do you want to die?” After she returned back to campus, she showed her photos to a leader from her department. One of the photos showed the body of a student who had been beaten to death near the gate of China University of Political Science, his brains spilling onto the ground. The department leader began to wail. He grabbed a pile of blank letterhead and stamped them all with his official seal. He gave them to Yu Shuo, saying, “Child, run away, quickly. This is all I can do to help you.” Yu told me she’d always remember that department leader, who risked a great deal to help her. It’s ordinary people like him whose souls shine.

With these letters in hand, she scrambled her way to Guangdong and then Shekou, preparing to look for Yuan Geng. She hid on and island for half a month, then went to Hong Kong as the first person rescued through Operation Yellowbird. She later moved to France, where she married a French citizen. She earned a Ph.D. in anthropology and became a professor. Today, she works to facilitate academic exchange between China and Europe.

While visiting his home in the Beijing suburb of Songzhuang, Yu Jianrong shared his own story with me. During June Fourth, Yu was in his hometown of Hengyang in Hunan Province, where he worked as a secretary for the municipal government. Yu had a classmate, the child of high-ranking cadres, who was a flag bearer on Tiananmen Square. After June Fourth his classmate fled home and Yu found him a place to stay. Finally, security officials found Yu. His classmate was left unscathed, but they investigated Yu. The investigation scared Yu enough for him to quit his job and become a businessman. He went on to earn over two million yuan, after which he moved to Taiwan and became an academic, earning his doctorate. He eventually became a well-known scholar. June Fourth changed his entire life.

Late one night in a Beijing bar, the artist Gao Huijun shared his June Fourth story with me. He was a college student at the time. On the night of June 3, Gao and his classmates were on Changan Avenue, bullets screeching past their ears. Suddenly, a stray bullet bounced off the ground and struck one of his classmates in the chest. He died at the scene. He collapsed to the ground, then crawled for a few hundred meters before falling still. Old Gao spoke breathlessly, as if it were transpiring before him. A crystal teardrop flickered from behind his thick eyeglasses.

Once during a banquet at a restaurant near West Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, my good friend Wen Kejian introduced me to a middle-aged man sitting at the table. “That’s Ma Shaofang,” Wen said. Stunned, I asked, “You’re Ma Shaofang from the June Fourth wanted list?” Ma, nodding his head, replied, “I never thought, after twenty years, there would still be young people like you who remember me.” I immediately took up my glass and toasted him, saying, “There are certain people and certain things that are unforgettable.”

Ma Shaofang was the first student leader I had ever met. After his release from prison, Ma became a businessman. He is staunchly determined never to leave China.

In Tianjin’s TEDA Arts Center, I once conversed with the renowned collector Ma Huidong over drinks. As the wine warmed us up, Mr. Ma told me that after he graduated from China University of Political Science in the late 80s, he entered a re-education center. After he’d been washed clean, he escaped from the center and began doing business. Twenty years after June Fourth, he’s still never been back to Tiananmen Square. Whenever he’s about to pass it in his car, he takes a detour. “After the gunfire of June Fourth, reform died,” Mr. Ma said.

The famous philosopher Li Ming is my good friend, despite our age difference. In the 80s, before his hair had turned gray, he was already known for his work on the editorial board of the Walking Towards the Future series. He told me he was the research director of Youth Political College during June Fourth. After the crackdown, he was fired from his job, then arrested. In all these years, he never received a single penny from the Communist Party. His pay suspended, Li Ming scraped by with translation and writing.

At the artists village in Songzhuang, I once shared drinks and conversation with the renowned poet Mang Ke. He told me how he returned to Beijing from abroad in early 1989 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Today magazine. Along with Bei Dao and others like him, he added his name to an open letter calling for the release of Wei Jingsheng. After June Fourth, Mang Ke was detained at his home. A black bag was placed over his head and he was taken to a place he didn’t know. After two days, he was released. The people who took him said he was detained for his own safety. Afterwards, Mang Ke relied on painting to make a living.

Once at a teahouse, I spoke with a middle-aged businessman who had served twenty years in the army. When the topic of June Fourth came up, he couldn’t stop talking. At that time, he worked in the basement of the Tiananmen Square command center. He was in charge of intelligence collection. Hundreds of informants were sent out from the center every day. Every avenue and alley of Beijing was closely monitored. He said during that time, Mayor Chen Xitong would visit the command center almost daily.

Mr. Yu, a publisher in Beijing, is a friend from my hometown. He also told his June Fourth story to me.  That Year, he was teaching middle school in a remote village in Hubei Province. He was extremely depressed. During his time there, he wrote an essay titled “Where China Is Going?” He made ten mimeographed copies and gave them to his classmates and friends. As a result, he was reported to the authorities and arrested. He spent a year in a detention center before being released without ever having stood trial. “China’s detention centers are the cruelest places on earth,” he told me. “I crawled out of there.” After he left, he learned his grandmother, whom he loved dearly, passed away the very day he was detained. Some time later, his wife divorced him. He began to wander aimlessly.

The author Li Jianmang lives in Europe. I once met him during one of his trips back to Beijing. During June Fourth, a classmate of his, He Zhijing, who also happened to be the cousin of Beijing Film Academy professor He Jian, went missing. Later at the hospital, Li was saw He Zhijing’s body. He had been beaten to death. Li Jianmang said before all this his father wrote him a letter. “Don’t be a hero. When you hear the guns, hit the ground,” his father wrote. “My son, you do not know their ruthlessness.”

After the advent of Weibo I made many new friends online, some famous and some not. One of them is a Beijing girl named Keke who maintains a government website. She told me that during June Fourth she was in second grade. Keke’s birthday happens to fall on June 3. That Year on June 3, her family celebrated her birthday at her grandmother’s house. Afterward she walked from Hujialou to Gongzhufen. On the road, she saw buses on fire, roadblocks, twisted bicycle frames and pedestrians navigating their way through the carnage. It was a terrifying, unforgettable scene. Memories of June Fourth have lingered in her mind ever since. After getting on Weibo, she frequently posted images and documents from June Fourth. Her account was quickly shut down. She is reincarnated all the time.

My friend Hai Tao is a writer from the Beijing suburb of Tongzhou. He recalled to me that after June Fourth, the older men and women of town were sent to downtown Beijing everyday to dance and sing patriotic songs. When they became tired they wanted to buy popsicles, but the streets peddlers wouldn’t let them buy any. “You have no conscience,” the peddlers would say.

*                    *                    *

There are still many stories of Tiananmen to tell.

That year, the author Ye Fu worked as a police officer in Hainan. Facing the massacre, he cast away his uniform, submitted his resignation letter and bid farewell to the system forever. Then he was reported to the authorities in Wuhan and imprisoned. Then his mother drowned herself in the Yangtze River. Then he wrote his famous work, My Mother on the Yangtze…

That year, my friend Du Daobin left his hometown for the provincial capital of Wuhan to participate in the protests. Then he published some critical political commentary online. Then he was arrested. Then he became a famous dissident…

That year, many parents couldn’t find their children, many families lost their loved ones. That year, many talented people left the country, many people died away from home, never to return. That year, China became a broken world, a world of life and death, a watershed. That year, China’s twentieth century came to an end.

One afternoon in Spring 2010, I passed through the heart of Beijing on the subway, traveling from the eastern suburbs to the western neighborhood of Muxidi. Sitting on the side of the road in Muxidi, I thought about all the blood and tears shed some twenty years ago right there. I thought about the Tiananmen Mothers. I thought about the countrymen we lost forever. For a very, very long time, with a heavy heart, choking back tears, silently, I sat there until dusk. That afternoon, I quietly wrote this poem:

 

At Muxidi, Thinking of Someone
—for the Mother Ding Zilin

Today, I am at Muxidi
Thinking of someone
I don’t know him
But I will remember him forever
At this moment, I miss him
Like I would miss a long lost brother
That was twenty-one years ago
Right here, at Muxidi
An unforgettable place

That merciless summer
A single bullet
Passed through his body
His sixteen-year-old body
He let out his final scream
And then bid farewell to this world
This evil, gory and lie-filled world

He left
This sixteen-year-old youth
This eternal youth
He’ll never grow up
But we, in this world without him
Grow older by the day
Until the present

All these years
Seem like a century
No, many centuries
We watch ourselves grow old
But are powerless
We tell ourselves, we are alive
We need to live
And we tell ourselves we need to make peace with this world
But we know
We are not fated to make peace with this world

For no other reason
Only because of this young man
He will never grow up
So we must grow old
To grow old, is really to die

Today, at Muxidi
I am thinking of someone

I miss him
Like I would miss a long lost brother
A brother lost twenty-one years ago
I miss him
This eternal youth
I want to cry, but I cannot
I know we have no more tears

Even worse than having no tears
We don’t even have any blood
Our souls were hollowed long ago
In the gunfire, among the bullets
In twisted, hidden history
All we can still do
Is come here

Thinking of this youth
Like missing a long lost brother
A brother lost for 21 years
He never left
But we’ll never have him back

 

Time is like a murderer. Twenty-three years have flashed by. Countless countrymen have forgotten, countless others have remembered. I am from the post-June Fourth generation. On this twenty-third anniversary, I earnestly write this record, like putting my heart on an altar of blood. I do this for nothing more than the justice we are yet to receive. I believe blood was not spilt in vain. Judgment will surely come.

June 4, 2012, on the banks of the Xiang River, Hunan

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Post tags: 1989, 1989 protests, Bei Dao, Chen Xitong, Ding Zilin, Feng Congde, fu guoyong, June 4th, Li Ming, Liu Xiaobo, Ma Huidong, Operation Yellowbird, re-education through labor, Renmin University, stability maintenance, student protests, Tiananmen, Tsinghua University, wang dan, wang youcai, Wei Jingsheng, weibo, Yu Jianrong, Zhao Ziyang
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Weibo user ylovey528 posted this message and image on June 14 in homage to Li:

ylovey528: Wen Jiabao: Sorry, I am too late.
ylovey528：温家宝：对不起，我来晚了。

From Right to Left:

For democracy, an ordinary man will rise and fall with the nation. Even if I am beheaded, I won’t retreat.
為民主，國家興亡匹夫有貴，我就是砍頭，我也不回頭。

Health is dear, life is dearer. Both can be given up for freedom.
溫飽誠可貴 生命價更高 若為自由故 兩者皆可失

Premier Wen has notoriously apologized for arriving late to the scene of many natural and man-made disasters, most recently after last July’s deadly train crash in Wenzhou. Just days before his death, Li told Hong Kong Cable TV “I won’t retreat, even if I am beheaded.” The last two lines are adapted from a poem by Sándor Petőfi, a hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848; even Chinese schoolchildren know these words:

Life is dear, love is dearer. Both can be given up for freedom.
生命诚可贵,爱情价更高;若为自由故,二者皆可抛

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, dissidents, li wangyang, sina weibo, Tiananmen, weibo, Wen Jiabao
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Ya’s son Ya Aiguo was shot in the head by martial-law troops in Beijing, according to an obituary the support group posted on its website. A testimony by Ya Aiguo’s mother on the same site says that at the time, the 22-year-old had been waiting to be assigned a job and had gone out shopping with his girlfriend the evening he was killed.

His father killed himself out of despair and to protest the government’s long-standing refusal to address the grievances of the victims’ relatives, said Zhang Xianling, who knew Ya and his wife from the support group.

“The government’s cold-blooded behavior has caused this tragic ending,” said Zhang, who lost a 19-year-old son in the crackdown.

“I hope this incident will make the government circumspect and that such a thing will not happen again,” Zhang said. “In this, the government has a responsibility. It owes a life now.”

From the South China Morning Post:

Tiananmen Mothers founder Ding Zilin, said it was the first time a member had committed suicide over despondency at the fight against the authorities.

“We didn’t expect that he would end his life like this,” Ding said of Ya.

“Every time he met us, he asked how the campaign was going.

“It was disappointing to him every time.”

Two monks also attempted suicide protests in Lhasa on Sunday, setting fire to themselves outside the city’s Jokhang Temple. One was killed, while the other survived. The self-immolations were the first to take place in the Tibetan capital.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ding Zilin, June 4th, suicides, Tiananmen, tiananmen mothers, Tiananmen Square
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“This was the worst miscarriage of justice involving a high-level leader since the Cultural Revolution, or since 1989 – it was an absurd miscarriage of justice,” Chen says of the corruption and abuse of power charges that brought him a 16-year jail term in 1998. Chen won medical parole in 2004.

Although Chen’s assertions about 1989 and his own downfall appear likely to draw dispute, they suggest how, as with Bo, charges against ousted Chinese leaders are often near impossible to separate from broader political contention.

“In a power struggle, any means possible – any low-handed means – will be used, and the objective is to seize power,” Chen said, while denying accusations of scheming and disloyalty against President Jiang that accompanied his downfall.

“But I didn’t take part in any power struggle, no matter what they think,” he said of his unidentified accusers.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, Chen Xitong, corruption, Hong Kong, Jiang Zemin, scandal, Tiananmen
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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 conditions, 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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From the Associated Press:

“I believe that no matter how difficult the environment nothing is impossible if you put your heart to it,” he told a cheering crowd at NYU shortly after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport on Saturday evening.

“We should link our arms to continue in the fight for the goodness in the world and to fight against injustice. So, I think that all people should apply themselves to this end to work for the common good worldwide ….”

“For the past seven years, I have never had a day’s rest,” Chen said through a translator, “so I have come here for a bit of recuperation for body and in spirit.”

Chen thanked the U.S. and Chinese governments, along with the embassies of Switzerland, Canada and France.

Some Americans welcomed Chen not with cheers but, in comments collected by Offbeat China, with complaints about the burden he would place on the US taxpayer. The combined hourly rate of the several US officials who negotiated on his behalf is likely quite high; however, an NYU spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that, while he could not discuss financial specifics, “I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone that there have been significant offers of philanthropy regarding Mr. Chen.”

With Chen and his family finally out of China, diplomats involved in the wrangling that secured their departure anonymously disclosed their account of the negotiations to The Washington Post.

Over the course of the negotiations, the Chinese never put any proposals on the table. Their role was strictly reactive. At the end of each meeting, Cui would leave to report the latest terms to Chinese leaders. At times, he would enter the next meeting having come directly from the compound reserved for China’s highest leaders.

“We would put something forward, and were getting answers back almost immediately from the highest levels,” one senior administration official said. “I have never seen the Chinese government working this rapidly and efficiently.”

Meanwhile, the 12-hour time difference with Washington meant U.S. negotiators were getting little sleep, spending most of their night hours briefing the White House and State Department via secure lines at the embassy.

Negotiating with Chen could sometimes be as difficult as negotiating with Chinese officials. Conversations with him could be deeply moving. He often seemed fragile — a blind man with few possessions, sleeping in a small unadorned room in the barracks of the embassy. He talked of how much he missed his wife and worried about his children.

But he could pivot in an instant, displaying a steely shrewdness as he detailed the demands he wanted conveyed to Chinese officials.

One Chinese scholar quoted by the South China Morning Post drew a pessimistic conclusion from the episode:

“It was an acceptable solution among the three parties after a series of negotiations between Beijing and Washington,” Professor Shi Yinhong , a Sino-US expert at Renmin University, said. “But I hope Chen’s incident is just an isolated case, not a trend.”

Shi said mainland scholars were more suspicions about US intentions towards China’s internal issues after Chen’s case. It came at a sensitive time, just before the Sino-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

“I think our leadership should remain vigilant … because the Chen case showed Washington doesn’t watch us only on our human rights,” Shi said.

“It also wants to affect our politics at the highest level.”

But Orville Schell was among many who pointed to encouraging signs for the crucial US-China relationship in the two sides’ conduct during the crisis.

… China showed either a new maturity, or a much keener sense of realism, perhaps recognizing that relations with the U.S. are even more important than the fate of a single dissident, even if his flight is represents a sublime loss of face ….

In many ways, it is tempting to look back at the whole transaction as something of a hopeful breakthrough. With a minimum of posturing, the two countries did manage to work their way through a very difficult problem. Evidently, each saw sufficient common interest to find a mutually agreeable solution. That is a very hopeful sign.

At The New Yorker, Evan Osnos saw similar grounds for cautious optimism in Chen’s expression of gratitude to the Chinese government for their “restraint and calm”:

… It might not have been the first thanks on everyone’s lips. One could read that as a diplomatic comment, intended to protect those still in China, including his mother (whose house is reportedly being fenced off by local officials) and the fellow dissidents who helped him escape.

But it must also be read as the measure of a man with extraordinary presence of mind. He is, after all, correct: by the standards of official Chinese conduct in many other areas, its handling of Chen’s departure was restrained and calm. And that is one of the modestly encouraging facts to emerge from the final accounting of this whole complicated business: presented with diplomatic dynamite, neither China nor the United States succumbed to its worst instincts. The American handling of the affair was far better than the fevered early indictments suggested, and the Chinese have, so far, kept their promises to Chen and the United States. Those involved should take confidence from that ….

And from Bloomberg:

… With Chen now in New York, the two sides can return to nurturing a relationship that has progressed to a point that a case like his can be handled without a serious rupture, said Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“It reinforces the trend since late 2010 for the two leaderships to find a way to steer around sensitive subjects and promote pragmatic near-term relations,” Paal said ….

“I think this brings the matter to a close,” Bonnie Glaser, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an e-mail. “Both countries will focus on their domestic politics, upcoming elections in the U.S. and the 18th Party Congress in China later this year.”

While many headlines hailed Chen’s arrival in the US as an ending, Perry Link told NPR that although “the tangle is finished for this particular case, it seems … the problems of human rights in China are not problems of one or two people whose cases have to ‘be resolved,’ quote-unquote. It’s a very deep, underlying long-term problem and we should view it that way.” As others stressed, the news brings no resolution for family and supporters still in China. From Jonathan Watts at The Guardian:

Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch said Chen’s departure was no cause for celebration as his family remained under pressure and there may be less incentive for the central government to investigate wrongdoing by the local authorities.

More importantly, Bequelin said, it raised questions about the wider environment for activists. “This is a reflection that there is no room for human rights defenders in China. We don’t know if this will turn into a temporary stay or exile, but in either case it begs the questions why someone like Chen Guangcheng cannot freely operate in China. What is it that stops the authorities from tolerating or even embracing someone like Chen?”

Bequelin’s comments were echoed, perhaps surprisingly, in a weibo post by Global Times editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, quoted by Didi Kirsten Tatlow at The New York Times: “Today, Chen and his family have already taken an American airplane to New York. It makes people feel regret and sigh that in China today this is the only way to solve his problem.” His wistfulness was not matched by an editorial in his paper, which took a dismissive tone: “The drama around Chen is a colorful bubble. Nothing is left when it bursts.” Otherwise, as Tatlow wrote, Chinese media were largely silent about his departure, focusing instead on athletic victories, the South China Sea, or the ongoing clean-up of ‘foreign trash’. The famously independent Caixin did publish a report on Chen’s arrival in New York, but William Farris noted on Google+ that this was quickly taken down.

While some expressed reservations or disappointment, there was broad approval of Chen’s decision to leave from activists remaining in China. The Guardian’s Jonathan Watts spoke to several:

He Peirong – who played a key role in the escape by driving Chen from Shandong to Beijing – said she sympathised, even though the reverberations of Chen’s flight remain unclear. “I support any decision made by Chen, but it’s too early to say whether his departure is a good thing for China’s rights movement. Things are not settled. Problems are not solved. His family is still in China. The people who helped him escape are still in China.”

He – who was detained for several days after Chen’s escape and remains under surveillance – spoke of her admiration for Chen.

“He has done more than you could expect from any individual … Although he has experienced so much injustice and so many threats, he sticks to his beliefs. He is like a piece of jade: always smooth and warm.”

Chen’s lawyer Liu Weiguo said similarly that, despite his reservations about the outcome, “for the Chinese rights movement he has done more than enough. We can’t ask him to do any more. Now he needs time to rest.” Teng Biao, who precipitated the second phase of the diplomatic crisis by persuading Chen to abandon the idea of remaining in China, stood by his earlier position, telling Watts that “[Chen's] safety and freedom are the priority. Whether this is a good thing for the rights movement is secondary now.”

None seemed to entertain any hope that the concessions granted to Chen and his family were signs of a wider easing. From Reuters:

“There won’t be any big changes for us now that Chen Guangcheng has left. There are still many reasons to keep up control and stability preservation,” Jiang Tianyong, a Beijing human rights lawyer, said in a telephone interview, referring to the Communist Party’s terms for controlling dissidents.

Jiang, a long-time campaigner for Chen’s freedom, said he remained under house arrest, despite police officers’ earlier promises that he would be released after Chen left.

“I still don’t know when they’re going to let up,” Jiang said of the police restrictions. “This is no way forward, but especially with the 18th party congress, the high pressure will probably only grow, not decrease.”

As in recent days, the most urgent concern was for Chen Kegui, Chen’s nephew, who faces charges of intentional homicide for attacking intruders into his father’s home when Chen Guangcheng’s escape was first discovered. From The Wall Street Journal:

Lawyers who have taken up the case of Mr. Chen’s nephew said it wasn’t clear how Mr. Chen’s departure would affect the outcome.

“It’s hard to say, since China never plays its cards in the proper order,” said Chen Wuquan, a Guangzhou-based lawyer whose license was revoked by local authorities just as he was preparing to travel to meet with Chen Kegui this month.

“I think [the authorities] will be more strict in dealing with Chen Kegui,” said Liang Xiaojun, another of the lawyers involved in the case. “They won’t care about the international viewpoint.”

While a number of lawyers volunteered to defend Chen Kegui, his family’s eventual choice of Ding Qikui and Si Weijiang was rejected by local officials, supposedly at his own request. Chen Guangcheng told The Financial Times that similar obstruction had occurred before his own sentencing to four years in prison in 2006. “That this naked, shameless abuse can still happen again six years later …,” he said, adding that he suspected Chen Kegui had been tortured to make him accept a public defender in place of the lawyers appointed by his family.

The longer term fear arising from Chen Guangcheng’s departure is that he may, like others before him, be barred from re-entering China and find himself trapped and increasingly powerless abroad. Wang Dan argued in a recent New York Times op-ed, and Human Rights Watch’s Phelim Kine told The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, that the Internet had changed the nature of political exile. Nevertheless, worry about Beijing’s enthusiasm for exporting dissent muted Orville Schell’s optimism about the state of Sino-US relations. From Asia Society:

The tactic of facilitating the most prominent critics of the Party to go into exile was something like the outsourcing of the manufacture process of a very polluting and unwelcomed home-based industry. There might initially be some complaints from dispossessed workers, but ultimately all, or almost all, would be forgotten, and the ongoing problem, if there were one, would be someone else’s.

With dissidents like Fang Lizhi and Wei Jingsheng, Chinese officials learned that interest in the opinions of such activists and concern for their well-being quickly waned once they were abroad. The political oblivion usually followed rather rapidly. Moreover, a short while after they left China, these once-celebrated voices seemed to lose the requisite standing necessary to being taken seriously as authorities on Chinese affairs. The process of being exiled effectively turned them into political eunuchs. Far better, so the Chinese leadership seemed to have concluded, to endure a few days of high intensity bad press as a prelude to watching a dissident parked harmlessly and unheard in Queens, sink out of site. The alternative was to have someone like Liu Xiaobo stuck in a Chinese jail writing damning essays and winning Nobel Prizes. (At least so far, neither Liu nor the Chinese Government has shown any inclination to engage in such export tactics in his case.)

In his interview with NPR, Perry Link also described the history of this trend:

The record of dissidents leaving China has changed pretty dramatically over the last 23 years, since the Tiananmen Massacre. At the time, the Chinese government was angry to see people like Liu Binyan and Fang Lizhi and Fu Xiao Jun and many, many others who fled and congregated at the time at Princeton University, where I was teaching. There were about 25 of them. And the government didn’t like that because they wanted them to come back. They were wanted and so on.

By now, I think we should say that the Chinese government’s policy has changed about 180 degrees. Now, they’re quite happy to see what they view as troublemakers like Chen Guangcheng be exiled, because the record over the last two decades of people who’ve come out has been that their influence inside China dramatically declines, and they feel frustrated. And their followers back in China feel frustrated.

So this exit of Chen Guangcheng is in one sense a win-win situation, because he and his family are now safe. And back in China they weren’t and didn’t feel that they were safe. And the Chinese government wins because it gets rid of a thorn in its side.

Link continued to describe Chen’s rural background, a potent contrast with that of the sterotypical Chinese urban-intellectual dissident. Sui-Lee Wee and Terril Yue Jones explore similar ground in a profile at Reuters:

“It was his own feelings of discrimination from the time he was a kid that really got him interested in law,” said Jerome Cohen, a China law expert and professor at New York University’s law school. Cohen has become a supporter and confidante of Chen.

“He felt the community leaders, instead of making blind people an object of sympathy, treated them as an unneeded burden on the community, people who didn’t pull their weight, people who claimed they shouldn’t pay tax like able-bodied farmers.

“That was what started him off ….”

“My first impression was I could be talking to a Chinese equivalent of Gandhi,” Cohen recalled. “This is a man with a quiet charisma, considerable intelligence, very articulate and a steely determination.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, diplomacy, Evan Osnos, exiles, Fang Lizhi, Global Times, homicide, human rights watch, Jerome cohen, Jiang Tianyong, jonathan watts, liu binyan, Liu Xiaobo, new york city, Nobel Prize, Orville Schell, perry link, South China Sea, Teng Biao, Tiananmen, U.S. relations, wang dan
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