The singer’s remarks even prompted the culture minister, Cai Wu, to demand that only stars with university degrees be allowed to play in China in future, according to two sources. They said that days after the concert, Cai gathered those who deal with visiting foreign artists and announced that only graduates should be given performance licences. One source said officials believed it would be difficult to implement the edict, and both suggested it may have been a spur of the moment comment.

[…] Another source said that since the start of the year, classical musicians had been required to supply proof of degrees and other qualifications when applying for permission to tour China. “There is no doubt at all it has made things harder,” said one of those with knowledge of the meeting, adding that several recent applications for licences had been rejected.

“They are looking closely at videos, making sure that the people on stage are exactly the same as in the visa applications, and so on. It’s not a change in the rules as much as a tightening [of existing procedures].”

Prominent artists touring in China may be stuck between a rock critic and a hard place: between censure from China for making “disrespectful” political gestures, and Western condemnation for failing to. Bob Dylan faced harsh criticism in 2011 for alleged self-censorship at Chinese concerts, which according to Maureen Dowd at The New York Times was “a whole new kind of sellout — even worse than […] Elton John raking in a fortune to serenade gay-bashers at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Bob dylan, foreign music, musicians, self-censorship, visa, visa laws
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“I was deeply humiliated because I was not required to provide any hukou document when I was applying for visas to France and the United States after 9/11,” Yu told the Sunday Morning Post.

[…] The incident comes amid growing calls to reform the system from inside and outside the government. Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun yesterday ordered local police chiefs, who handle routine hukou matters, to co-operate with other agencies in reforming the system, state television reported.

[…] “I demand that the British government stop requiring Chinese applicants to provide a hukou document, which is a discriminatory system created under the planned economic era of the last century and conflicts with today’s common international values,” Yu wrote in an open letter to the British government.

The hukou is not normally required for U.K. visas: Chan implies that the professor’s customarily “tattered” clothing may have prompted the additional demand. Yu also spoke to Global Times about the incident. From Zhang Wen:

“I’ll never provide my hukou, even if it’s at the cost of not being able to attend the conference in the UK. It’s my principle,” said Yu.

[…] “What made me even angrier is that when I said I would never show them the hukou, an agent standing at the next counter immediately told me that he could help me to get the visa without me providing it,” Yu said.

“It’s blackmail. The agent is obviously familiar with the embassy employees,” he said.

[…] Liu Guofu, an expert on immigration law from Beijing Institute of Technology said an embassy can ask for any supporting documentation it likes.

For more on China’s hukou system, see two recent conversations with Tom Miller, author of China’s Urban Billion, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, hukou, public security, United Kingdom, urban rural divide, visa, visa laws, Yu Jianrong
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Ma Ying-jeou’s position regarding the Dalai Lama has shifted over the years. As Taipei Mayor, Ma proclaimed that the Buddhist leader was welcome to visit the capital whenever he wished. Since his inauguration as President, however, the government has denied the Dalai Lama visas on several occasions. In December 2008, his administration refused a visit from the Dalai Lama, stating that the timing was inappropriate. In 2009, the Dalai Lama was allowed to visit Taiwan to comfort and pray for the victims of Typhoon Morakot, which devastated southern Taiwan and caused at least 550 deaths. President Ma nevertheless declined to meet with the religious leader, who insisted that his trip was strictly a non-political, humanitarian mission.

In President Ma’s post-reelection inaugural address last May, he discussed his plan to further cooperation between China and Taiwan. Ma stated at the time: “In the next four years, the two sides of the strait have to open up new areas of cooperation and continue working to consolidate peace, expand prosperity and deepen mutual trust. We also hope that civic groups on both sides of the Taiwan Strait will have more opportunities for exchanges and dialogue focusing on such areas as democracy, human rights, rule of law and civil society, to create an environment more conducive to peaceful cross-strait development.”

Civic groups can indeed play a crucial role in promoting human rights and democracy, particularly when China engages in retaliatory measures against governments whose leaders meet with the Dalai Lama. By denying a visa to the Tibetan spiritual leader, President Ma missed a valuable opportunity: organizations such as BPW International provide an excellent mechanism for Taiwan to demonstrate its commitment to human rights, democracy, and religious freedom. Nevertheless, it is equally important for world leaders to signal to Beijing that they refuse to submit to political or economic bullying. Just as China has its “core interests,” democratic countries must also stand by their own core values and interests as well.

The Taiwanese government may have refused to issue the Dalai Lama a visa last month, but the Taiwanese legislature on Thursday passed an opposition resolution to invite the Tibetan spiritual leader for a visit in the future:

“The Dalai Lama is a very respected religious leader. It harms Taiwan’s reputation as a democracy when we refuse to issue him a visa,” said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), who proposed the resolution. “I therefore suggest that the committee should adopt a resolution sincerely welcoming him.”

Asked for her opinion, Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission Minister Lo Ying-hsueh (羅瑩雪) said she would “be happy to see [the invitation] come true.”

“The Dalai Lama is a respectable religious leader and a learned monk,” Lo said. “The commission would look forward to a visit, but the national security agencies may have another opinion.”

However, some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, such as Chiu Wen-yen (邱文彥), disagreed with the wording of the proposal, which condemns the Chinese government’s repression of the Tibetan independence movement and says the Dalai Lama is welcome to visit Taiwan “at any time, under any status, through any means.”

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: civic groups, Dalai Lama, Ma Ying-jeou, Tibet, visa laws
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In effect Beijing sets individuals’ career incentives against their commitment to principle, and trusts that the former will win out. Who doesn’t think of his livelihood and family first? Researchers who fear being denied visas may self-censor their words in order not to offend. Or they may abjure sensitive topics—Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen being the unholy trinity—altogether. Abstract principle just isn’t worth the risk to one’s tenure, promotion, or other career milestones. Better to keep to safer, apolitical ground.

In Pentagon-speak, withholding visas for any reason, or for no reason at all, represents an easy, cost-free way for Beijing to “shape” the intellectual climate in a more “permissive” direction.

Holmes references an article on China studies from National Review, by Jay Nordlinger, which has more on the visa headwinds faced by China scholars:

Possibly the most maddening, and effective, aspect of China’s approach to visas is its randomness, or seeming randomness: You never know when the boom will be lowered — on whom and why. The Chinese will allow a foreign scholar to criticize as he pleases, and come and go as he pleases, and then, one day: boom. “You know the reason. We don’t have to tell you.” In 2002, Perry Link wrote a well-known essay called “The Anaconda in the Chandelier.” The Chinese state is not like a snarling tiger or fire-breathing dragon in your living room (although it certainly can be that, for Chen Guangcheng and other dissidents). It’s more like “a giant anaconda coiled in an overhead chandelier. Normally the great snake doesn’t move. It doesn’t have to. It feels no need to be clear about its prohibitions. Its constant silent message is ‘You yourself decide,’ after which, more often than not, everyone in its shadow makes his or her large and small adjustments — all quite ‘naturally.’”

Journalists face the same challenges, as Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan experienced earlier this year. For Washington City Paper, Will Sommer reports that the Washington Post’s visa-less China bureau chief will be headed elsewhere after reporting on China from the outside for three years:

So much for the Washington Post’s three-year long attempt to actually get its China bureau chief into China. Ever since the Post hired Andrew Higgins in 2009, the paper has been trying to convince the Chinese government to grant him a visa, even enlisting the services of Henry Kissinger at one point.

The Chinese, you see, haven’t forgiven Higgins for reporting on dissidents that earned him a boot from the country in 1991. That hasn’t stopped Higgins from covering China—he follows the Chinese impact on the Asian countries he can travel to, and judging from his datelines, he can still go to Hong Kong.

But Higgins won’t need those workarounds any more. According to an internal newsroom memo sent out this afternoon by Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl, a still visaless Higgins is leaving the paper to cover Europe for the New York Times.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Academia, foreign reporters, immigration, self-censorship, visa laws
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall