Now Yu is using Weibo to expose the censorship of his latest book. The publisher’s notice:

China Radio & Television Publishing House

Letter Concerning the Halted Publication of Yu Jianrong’s Book Father’s Wandering: Panorama on a Public Intellectual

Wuta International Cultural Development (Beijing) Ltd.:

Upon receipt of notice from the State Administration of Press Publication, Radio, Film, and Television, Yu Jianrong’s Father’s Wandering: Panorama on a Public Intellectual may not be published for the time being. The book’s ISBN (978-7-5043-6884-3) and CIP (2013 No. 075663) have been invalidated. We now inform you that upon invalidation of this book’s bar code and CIP, the publication contract is revoked, and all publishing activities are halted.

Please respond.

Office of the Editor-in-Chief, China Radio & Television Publishing House

April 24, 2013

Yu did indeed respond, publicly:

@于建嵘: Who knows the name and contact information for the bureau chief of the General Administration on Press and Publication (GAPP)? I want to treat him (or her) to a cup of coffee and a constitutional study session, where we can also discuss Secretary Xi’s Chinese Dream.

谁知道出版总署图书司司长叫什么，联系方式。我打算约他（她）边喝咖啡边学习宪法，还要讨论习总书记的中国梦。

Some followers attest that Yu’s “sensitivity“–his focus on social justice–undermined his book’s debut:

@余胜海 [Please Don’t Smother Our “Chinese Dream”] When I learned about the ban on Professor Yu Jianrong’s new book Father’s Wandering, I was startled. According to the China Radio & Television Publishing House’s @贺雄飞’s description, the reason is “because Yu Jianrong is a sensitive person.” I can’t help but ask, what is a “sensitive person?” What legal provisions prevent a “sensitive person” from publishing? Micro-comment: The government is not smothering just one book, but smothering our “Chinese Dream.”

【请不要封杀我们的“中国梦”】得知@于建嵘 教授的新书《父亲的江湖》被禁感到吃惊，据中国广电出版社@贺雄飞 介绍，该书被出版总局封杀的理由“是因为于建嵘是敏感人物”。我不禁要问：什么是“敏感人物”？哪部法律规定“敏感人物”不能出书？微评：政府封杀的不是一本书，而是我们的“中国梦”。

Yu asked netizens to explain:

@于建嵘: Who can tell me: what kind of person is a sensitive person?

谁能告诉我：敏感人物是什么人物？

And explain they did:

@孤狼莫三: People who don’t kiss ass and who pick the scabs off diseased scalps. Those are all sensitive people.

凡不舔人家眼子、不捧人家臭脚，并且还揭人家秃疮嘎巴儿的，皆为敏感人物。

@曾勋微博: Community leaders and I regard Teacher Yu and his writings with the utmost respect. It is truly baffling, how a public intellectual who draws strength and wisdom from the lowest rung of society can become a sensitive person. A phone call can bring down the world, and they don’t need any sort of justification. The right of citizens to publish is written in the constitution, but how far is the constitution from us? Remember this aborted book. We’ve still many roads to walk down.

社领导与我都对@于建嵘 老师以及他的著作予以最真诚的尊重。百思不得其解，一个在底层汲取力量与智慧的公共知识分子为何会成为敏感人物。一个电话，坍塌了一个世界，他们不需要任何理由。公民的出版权利写在宪法上，宪法离我们多远？纪念这本流产的书，我们还有很多路要走。

@卫志民1988: Actually, Yu Jianrong has basically no influence, and won’t be able to sell many books anyway. This notice is unnecessary, and in fact is a hard sell at Yu’s convenience. I suggest the notice be repealed, lest the masses think it’s just part of the publisher’s marketing campaign. Don’t let public intellectuals benefit at others’ expense, am I right?

其实，于建嵘根本没有多大影响力，出本书也卖不了多少册，此举没有必要，反而为其做了硬广告，让于建嵘占了便宜。建议撤销此通知，否则群众以为是出版公司营销运作的结果呢。不能让公知占便宜，是吧？

柴_学斌: Quick, look at Yu Jianrong’s Weibo. Teacher Yu is good; if you’re fortunate, you will see. I want to buy your book. If possible, please reply. I am curious what content kept your book from being published. Perhaps you truly are a “sensitive person.”

快来看看@于建嵘 的微博于老师好，如果有幸您能看到，我想买您的书，如果可以请回复，我想学习及很好奇什么内容让您的书不能问世，或许您真是“敏感人物”

海南梁山: [“Chinese Dream”] Publication of Professor Yu’s new book Father’s Wanderers was halted. It has been reported that GAPP’s reason for blocking publication is “because Yu Jianrong is a sensitive person.” Micro-comment: To borrow Professor Kong’s words: “Go run to your mom–damn your mom–fuck your mom!” Do the three characters in Yu Jianrong’s name have the sensitivity of a corrupt official? Do they have the sensitivity of the three public expenditures? Of stability maintenance? Why don’t we kill the corrupt officials, forbid the three expenditures, and stop stability maintenance!

【＂中国梦”】@于建嵘 教授的新书《父亲的江湖》，在要付印时被叫停。据说该书被出版总局封杀的理由“是因为于建嵘老师是敏感人物”。微评：借用孔教授的话，去你妈的，滚你妈的，操你妈的！于建嵘3字有贪官敏感？有三公敏感？有维稳敏感？咋不贪官杀了，三公禁了，维稳停了！

作者张宇龙: Recently I heard that Teacher Yu’s book was censored. Jeez! If there’s a problem, man up and face it. If you don’t admit to flaws, how can you correct them? Believe me, the more the country and the government behave like this, the louder people’s complaints will get. You fail and then don’t let anyone talk about it. What gives!

最近听说@于建嵘 老师的书被封，真是气愤，有问题要敢于面对，如果不承认有瑕疵之处，何来改正优化？相信我，国家与政府越这样，百姓的怨言就更大。因为你做不到，还不让人说，这是干嘛！！

温州黄朝钦: People already refuse to donate to the Red Cross. Yu Jianrong’s book won’t be published. A court director dies in shuanggui.

红十字会已经没人捐款了，@于建嵘 的书不能出版了，被双规的法院院长死亡了。

李百味五世: Authorities are brimming with “confidence in the path,” “confidence in the theory,” and “confidence in the system,” but they’re scared to publish a few books, scared to print a few thousand booklets. What “confidence” indeed.

当局充满了“道路自信”“理论自信”“制度自信”，但是啊，就是怕出那么几本书，就是怕印那么几千本小册子。好一个“自信”。

@贺雄飞: Before, it was Teacher Yu helping petitioners formulate their statements. Today, Teacher Yu strives for press freedom for himself and the Chinese people. This matter is destined to go down in history alongside the “Southern Weekly Incident.” Teacher Yu, it’s up to you. You have my full support.

以前是于老师帮助那些访民讨说法，现在是于老师为自己也为中国人争出版自由。这件事注定要和“南周事件”一样载入历史。于老师，看您的了，我全力配合。

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Josh Rudolph.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Chinese Dream, GAPP, Netizen Voices, publishing, Yu Jianrong
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散步 (sànbù): take a walk

“Walking” in central Beijing, February 2011. (Jordan Pouille)

Along with “sightseeing,” “taking a walk” is a new form of resistance in China. Striking is difficult, applications for protests are routinely denied, and petitioning the government often brings dire consequences. Workers and citizens have adopted new methods that tread the fine line of legality. In February 2011, an online source attempted to stage a “jasmine revolution” by organizing groups to “walk” in the central Beijing shopping district of Wangfujing.

Yu Jianrong, a researcher at China’s Academy of Social Science, gives a vivid description of this method:

Workers’ methods of resistance include petitioning higher levels of government, sit-ins, strikes, demonstrations, and blocking traffic. Two extremely important recent methods of resistance include “taking a walk” and “going sightseeing.” [PowerPoint slide] Take a look, these are workers from Baoding “taking a walk” to Beijing on April 3, 2009. It is 137 kilometers from Baoding to Beijing. When I learned the news [of the workers’ “walk”] and rushed over, they were almost at the Xushui County toll station. At the time Beijing was very tense; Shijiazhuang was very tense; Baoding was very tense. A lot of people and workers were sent to negotiate; they said, “You can’t go to Beijing like this.” The workers answered by saying, “Is there a problem with us going to Beijing to go sightseeing? There’s nothing wrong with it. What law says we can’t go to Beijing to do some sightseeing?” Those [sent to] persuade them said, “You can’t all of you go to Beijing to go sightseeing.” The workers immediately responded, “And what law exactly says that this many people can’t go to Beijing to do some sightseeing?” Those sent to persuade them against going insisted, “In any event, you can’t all walk to Beijing to go sightseeing like this.” The workers said, “We don’t have any money, why can’t we walk to Beijing?” The situation was extremely tense. Finally, the Baoding City [government] had no choice but to state right there to the workers, “We’ll resolve all your problems.” The workers said, “We don’t have any problems. Our only problem is a sightseeing problem. Look for yourselves, we haven’t brought materials to petition the government, we’re not shouting slogans, we don’t have any problems, we’re not petitioning the government, we’re not lodging complaints. We are going sightseeing.” In the end, their actions at the scene caused their company’s chairman of the board to be taken away [by the police]. Only then did they return.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: jasmine revolution, protests, word of the week, Yu Jianrong
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Abstract: China’s particular form of social stability is one of ‘rigid stability’ that is intimately connected with its authoritarian regime. This form of ‘rigid stability’ is maintained via a mechanism of ‘stability preservation through pressure’. In practice, ‘stability preservation through pressure’ is confronted by many challenges, including intensified conflicts of interest, various policy flaws related stability preservation, the development of information technology and increasing rights consciousness among citizens. A new line of thinking is currently needed in regard to stability preservation, with rights protection as its precursor and foundation. ‘Rigid stability’ must give way to ‘resilient stability’, ‘static stability’ must yield to ‘dynamic stability’, and ‘stability preservation’ must become ‘stability creation’.

In an increasingly open and democratic nation, true stability is unattainable through reliance upon the coercive and heavy-handed measures of the Mao era. Stability preservation during sensitive times of social conflict demands more than wise governance; it also requires that stability be rethought to fit the present stage of social development.

Yu’s vision for reform earned him a place on Foreign Policy magazine’s 2012 list of “Great Global Thinkers”, behind Chen Guangcheng and Ai Weiwei. At the South China Morning Post, The University of Nottingham’s Andreas Fulda described the marked contrast between Yu and Ai, concluding that “establishment intellectuals like Yu are the people the West must learn to work with if it wishes to encourage political reform in China.”

Yu, an establishment intellectual, is an unlikely poster boy for the Chinese democracy movement. He is a patriot first, a democrat second. His position on the East China Sea islands territorial dispute between China and Japan is emphatically nationalistic, much to the frustration of his liberal supporters within China, and in his 10-year plan he does not advocate civilian control of the Chinese military, as most other liberals in China do.

In contrast, outspoken libertarian activists like Liu Xiaobo and artist Ai Weiwei are clear-cut reformers, railing at government control from outside the system. Their cause offers a compelling narrative to the West. But the strong focus on activists outside the system comes at the expense of people like Yu, who are prepared to straddle both sides. Establishment intellectuals need to walk a fine line between their reformist aspirations and the existing political realities in China.

[…] Due to the repression of reformers outside the system, policymakers dealing with China should recognise that more people like Yu will grow in influence in the years to come. This may be challenging. These patriots will first and foremost stand up for China’s interests, yet the reality is that this is fairly representative of popular thinking in modern China.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, defending rights, diaoyu islands, information technology, Liu Xiaobo, reform, social stability, stability maintenance, stability preservation, territorial disputes, Yu Jianrong
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“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.

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Post tags: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, hukou, public security, United Kingdom, urban rural divide, visa, visa laws, Yu Jianrong
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“Intercepting petitioners” refers to local officials using various measures to intercept people attempting to petition at the [provincial] or central offices and forcibly taking them back to their hometowns. In China’s current political climate, the intercepting of petitioners has long been an open secret, an “unwritten rule” of petition office stability management work, an uncivilized but tacitly accepted rule for government work, and an important part of the job of those who “greet petitioners.” Whenever the two congresses or National Day or some other “sensitive” time rolls around, many additional ‘petitioner interception’ workers come to Beijing to intercept petitioners from their local area to prevent petitioners from staying in Beijing and increasing the number of complaints about their locale on the record.

[…] Meeting petitioners’ and ‘intercepting petitioners’ are both important reflections of the variation in today’s national petitioning system. Petition officers and officials, local governments, and the central government all participate, using the system as a platform for a kind of game in which they attempt to maximize their own interests. But because of this they have fallen into problems [like the three Yu just listed and those below], this can be called the ‘petitioning paradox.’

[…] The result is that as local governments use even more severe methods to deal with petitioners, the complaints of petitioners become more extreme, creating a vicious cycle.Because of this, the petitioning system has gone from useless to harmful; from reducing pressure to actively increasing it.

Yu was ranked 54th in Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2012 for his ten-year plan for political reform in China.

Ten interceptors were said to have been jailed by a Beijing court early this month for illegally detaining petitioners. The court dismissed this as “fake news”, however, and demanded an apology from Beijing Youth Daily, which first published the story. Petitioners were a key target of the security operation surrounding the recent 18th Party Congress, with some 10,000 detained. Read more about petitioners via CDT, including John Garnaut and Sanghee Liu’s recent account of a former “stability preservation” official’s experience as a petitioner, and Economic Observer’s sympathetic profile of two Beijing-based interceptors.

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Post tags: Beijing, black jails, Charlie Custer, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, local government, National Day, petitioners, petitions, stability maintenance, stability preservation, Yu Jianrong
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Chen shocked the world in April when he made a daring, next-to-impossible escape, climbing over the wall surrounding his house (breaking his foot in the process) and catching a ride some 350 miles to Beijing, where he took refuge in the U.S. Embassy. After a tense, days-long diplomatic standoff closely involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (No. 3), a deal was struck under which Chen would be allowed to travel to the United States to study. Now at New York University, Chen has embraced his new role as an evangelist for human rights, making the case that incremental change — one village or even one person at a time — can eventually transform a superpower. Against all odds, he remains optimistic, believing that China, taking a cue from Japan and South Korea, must “learn Eastern democracy.” He even thinks it’s inevitable: “Nobody can stop the progress of history,” he says.

An interview with Chen Guangcheng by Isaac Stone Fish accompanies the list. In it, Chen discusses how the central government allows abuses by local authorities—see Guizhou journalist Li Yuanlong’s detention last week for a recent example—and the chances of change or even revolution in China’s near future.

The central government definitely knew I was illegally detained at home. As for how the local authorities invented lies to frame me to put me in prison, as for how they persecuted my entire family, [the central government] didn’t necessarily know about the details. Yet now, six months later, I still haven’t seen the central government follow the country’s laws and keep its promise and investigate and deal with those officials who recklessly and illegally committed crimes.

Throughout Chinese history, has any emperor said they want to hand over power? Every emperor wants his power to last generation after generation. But can they? The Communist Party cannot monopolize all of the power in the country forever. This is a reality they must accept.

The possibility of China facing a revolution in 2013 is pretty big. This is something that the powers that be in China understand more than anyone else. It’s a pity that international society still does not understand this and has still not prepared. America should immediately start moving from dealing with China’s powers that be to dealing with the Chinese people. It definitely won’t be like 1989.

Chen does not appear to view the possibility of revolution with any great relish: when asked what the worst idea of the year is, he answered “violence”.

Controversial artist Ai Weiwei, still unable to leave China over a year after his 81-day detention in 2011, is ranked 26th:

[…] Ai has found ways to occupy his time. When one of his Twitter followers asked in May whether he was working on any new artwork, Ai tweeted back, “I am the artwork.” In April, he set up cameras throughout his house, providing a live feed on his website and to his 170,000 followers. (“Twitter is my city, my favorite city,” he told FP this year.) The authorities soon pressured him into removing the cameras, evidently preferring that they be the only ones to watch the rotund 55-year-old work on his computer and play with his cats.

But make no mistake — this performance art is deeply political. Throughout his career Ai has insisted that artists have a duty to humanity that outweighs the obligations of nationalism. Even declaring one’s opposition to “trafficking children, selling HIV-infected blood, [and] operating slave labor coal pits” is enough to get branded as “anti-China” in today’s political climate, Ai once noted on his blog, asking, “If we aren’t anti-China, are we still human?”

Foreign Policy also published a slideshow from Ai’s first North American retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., noting that “the artist was not in attendance.”

British singer Elton John added a concert dedication to Ai’s list of recent accolades on Sunday. While dismissing this “disrespectful” gesture, Global Times took the opportunity to critique Chen and Ai’s inclusion in the Foreign Policy list:

Western society is seriously biased against China. When US magazine Foreign Policy compiled a list of 100 global thinkers from around the world, the first Chinese on that list was blind activist Chen Guangcheng, and the second was Ai Weiwei. Even to Chinese people who have sympathy for these two people, this list may seem ridiculous.

In a diverse era, we don’t hold that the existence of people like Chen and Ai is unexpected in China. Also, we don’t believe that the impact they have brought should be denied completely.

The selection of Chen and Ai makes people wonder whether the word “thinker” in Chinese and English have different meanings. We can just say that some Westerners are increasingly unable to contain themselves over China’s rise. They cannot control China through normal means and they are more likely to rush their fences.

A more nuanced piece of Aiconoclasm came last week from Paul Gladston at Randian:

There are […] significant dangers in the upholding of Ai as our sole representative/mediator of artistic resistance to authority within China. While Ai’s bluntly confrontational and often bombastic stance can be readily digested within Western liberal-democratic contexts where romantic notions of heroic dissent in the face of overwhelming power still persist, it is by no means representative of the critical positioning of most other Chinese artists. Ai may have situated himself admirably behind enlightened westernized ideals of freedom and openness, but the sheer bluntness and reductive simplicity of his critical approach to authority have effectively foreclosed a more searching discussion of contemporary art within China as well as the complex, web of localized cultural, social, political and economic forces that surround its production and reception.

[…] Ai Weiwei is right in drawing our repeated attention to the debilitating injustices of totalitarian power within China. He is also right to upbraid western viewers for their inability to see past what are for them the pleasurable ambiguities of contemporary Chinese art. Less convincing, however, is Ai’s wholly reductive view of the critical possibilities of contemporary art in China. By insisting on his own stridently oppositional approach towards power as the only legitimate game in town, and because we are already highly familiar with that approach, [he] has misrepresented the contemporary Chinese artworld. One might add that Ai is also romanticizing the conditions of criticality in the West.

At 54 in the Foreign Policy list is Yu Jianrong, for his concise but detailed roadmap for reform.

In April, he released a succinct, two-phase plan he called a “10-Year Outline of China’s Social and Political Development.” Despite its bland title, Yu’s blueprint offers a timetable for Chinese reform that for once is as credible as it is ambitious. The plan puts dates and specifics to the task, advocating, for example, a stronger law on private property, the revealing of “information pertaining to government affairs” and “officials’ property,” and the abolition of “speech crimes,” after which China should “open up” the media and political parties. Yu’s short manifesto immediately caused a splash when he released it to his nearly 1.5 million followers on the popular microblogging site Sina Weibo (though the government has maintained a deafening silence). “We’ve already decided to change,” Yu explained in an interview. “The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?” Sweeping reform in this authoritarian land of 1.3 billion won’t be easy, but Yu’s plan is as good a place to begin as any. The era, he said, of crossing the river “by feeling the stones” is over.

China Media Project’s David Bandurski translated Yu’s plan in March. Soon afterwards, Didi Kirsten Tatlow described it at The International Herald Tribune, together with some criticism from Tsinghua University political scientist Liu Yu:

Master plans like Mr. Kang [Youwei]’s, or Mr. Yu’s are “unrealistic,” she said.

“All Chinese intellectuals, especially the men, they tend to blur the line with being an official and then they’re thinking, ‘How should I design a system for the country?’ and ‘How to make progress?’

“In the West there are intellectuals who make proposals on specific things, but in general they don’t make plans for the whole country,” she said.

What is needed instead, she believes, is a broad debate, among ordinary people.

“A good plan should involve the whole society,” she said. “There should be a big debate on where the country should be going.”

Yu’s nomination for best idea of 2012 is Mo Yan’s controversial selection for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mo’s chief rival for the award, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, took 49th place on the Foreign Policy list as a consolation prize.

At 69 is environmentalist Ma Jun:

[…] A journalist turned environmentalist who founded the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, Ma applies scientific rigor to exposing such corporate violations (more than 90,000 to date), flagging everything from a small coal-tar factory improperly storing its dangerous waste to Apple suppliers poisoning workers with a toxic chemical used on touch screens — as well as local governments that flout environmental regulations across China. Dozens of major multinationals now consult Ma’s pollution readings when working with suppliers in China. And by documenting environmental violations that had long been obvious but were never compiled in a way the public could easily understand, Ma has given statistical ammunition to Chinese citizens trying to nudge the Communist Party into cleaning up its act.

Wang Jisi, “China’s most respected expert on the United States”, came in at 73:

[…] What does Wang want us to know? That the feel-good stories U.S. officials tell themselves about China’s global ascent are an elaborate form of denial. In an influential monograph co-authored by Brookings Institution senior fellow Kenneth Lieberthal, Wang this year described China’s actions on the world stage as rooted in the conclusion that “America will seek to constrain or even upset China’s rise.” Beijing’s view, he says, is that the United States is “heading for decline” and that China’s development model provides an “alternative to Western democracy and market economies.” The result? “[T]hese views make many Chinese political elites suspect that it is the United States,” Wang says, “that is ‘on the wrong side of history.’”

And at 83 is the Taiwanese-American former head of Google China, venture capitalist Kai-fu Lee:

In an article he published on his LinkedIn page in October, Lee named China’s narrowly focused school curriculum and the risk-averse nature of Chinese students, as well as the country’s chaotic Internet environment, among the reasons China hasn’t yet produced its own Mark Zuckerberg. That may be why he has also started a popular education website encouraging Chinese students to think more creatively. Although none of his companies has exploded yet, Lee’s ultimate contribution may be more fundamental: laying both the intellectual and financial groundwork for a revolution in the world’s largest online community.

Perhaps more significant to China for now than any of the above are Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein, who top the list having begun to pilot the formerly reliable Chinese satellite of Myanmar (also known as Burma) into a more open and international orbit:

Aung San Suu Kyi, the soft-spoken, iconic political activist whom devotees call simply “the Lady,” may not seem like an obvious partner for Thein Sein, but she has become one by doing what few legends of her stature can: embracing the messy pragmatism of politics. Although Burma’s struggles are far from over — she has warned that international investment has been too rapid, and ethnic violence is escalating — the willingness of both the Lady and the general to embrace short-term compromise and foster long-term reconciliation in what was only recently one of the world’s most isolated countries is something to celebrate.

Fittingly, Aung San Suu Kyi finally was able to accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in June. She used the occasion to remind the world of those like her, who struggle in the most forlorn places: “To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.” It is a sentiment still felt from Aleppo to Havana, Pyongyang to Tehran, but also, as Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein have shown, one that doesn’t need to be permanent.

See more on Chen Guangcheng, Ai Weiwei, Yu Jianrong, Ma Jun, Wang Jisi, Kai-fu Lee and Myanmar/Burma at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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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

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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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Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), one of China’s most outspoken intellectuals, yesterday posted a ten-year plan for social and political development in China on his Tencent microblog account. The plan called for a three-year initial phase of concerted social and judicial reforms, including the abolishment of the petitioning and household registration systems, followed by a second phase of political reforms moving China toward constitutional democracy.

Yu’s plan gives readers a general idea of many of the concrete changes proposed in China by pro-reformers under the auspices of “political reform”.

Read also a translation of a lengthy speech by Yu Jianrong titled, “Maintaining a Baseline of Social Stability,” via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: political reform, social reform, Yu Jianrong
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I have long advocated that the ruling party reflect on the concept of “stability suppresses all else” (稳定压倒一切) [or "stability is the overriding priority"]. This concept was raised by Deng Xiaoping at a very particular moment for our country. At the same time, Deng Xiaoping also said that, “Reform is the overriding priority,” and that, “Development is the overriding priority.” But now we have overlooked every other problem because “stability is the overriding priority.” For the sake of stability, we sacrifice the livelihood of the people; for the sake of stability, some local areas even pull the Cultural Revolution-style method of parading offenders through the streets out [of an earlier chapter in our history]; for the sake of stability, we do not shrink from the abuse of police powers.

So what has “stability suppresses all else” actually suppressed in this time of ours? It has suppressed the livelihood of the people, suppressed human rights, suppressed rule of law, suppressed reform. But stability preservation has not suppressed corruption, nor has it suppressed mining tragedies, nor has it suppressed illegal property demolitions and seizures.

See also ‘The Machinery of Stability Preservation‘, ‘Saving Face in Beijing: Regional Policemen Sent to Intercept Petitioners‘ and ‘For Light, For Time: Visiting Chen Guangcheng‘, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, rule of law, stability, Yu Jianrong
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Zhang Haixia with an institute under the Ministry of Justice explained how all female students from China change into “Super Pan Jinlian” after returning home in a short undated video published online on Tuesday by Sina Weibo user Paris Observation.

Pan is a famously loose character from the Water Margin, one of the four great classical Chinese novels, and the poser believed that Zhang, as a counselor on judicial examinations, should be criticized ….

After finding his video on Wednesday, Zhang responded on his microblog that it was “extremely shameless and despicable public opinion persecution” of him. People had defied his copyright over his own sayings, he wrote ….

“That’s total bullshit,” Wu Shan, a student of international communication and management at the University Stendhal of Grenoble, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

France can also be harmful to Japanese women, who may suffer from “Paris Syndrome“: a form of intense culture shock induced by language and culture barriers, exhaustion, and the gulf between idealised visions of Paris and the reality. The condition can bring hallucinations, sweating or tachycardia, and may require treatment by emergency repatriation.

Sources:

Female Chinese students return from France floozies: judicial scholar – Global Times
Paris syndrome – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
‘Paris Syndrome’ strikes Japanese – BBC News

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: France, Paris, sexuality, sina weibo, study abroad, Yu Jianrong
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Over the past six months, more than 30 schools for the children of migrant workers have been closed down in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, Daxing District and other areas. Thousands of migrant worker children face a situation in which they have no schools to go to. Whose interests did these migrant worker schools come up against? Why were these schools for the children of migrant workers abandoned? On August 16 at 7:30pm, Tencent’s “Sharing Ideas” (思享时间) program invited Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Rural Development Research Center to explore this question: Who did schools for migrant workers come up against?

Zhang Anping (张安平): Hello, Professor Yu. Concerning the multitude of forced demolitions and cases of resistance against forced demolition, I have four questions. 1. Is the issue that local governments pursue only GDP growth and disregard the central government’s 305 order (中央三令五申) [against forced demolition]? 2. Or is it that the central government is giving tacit permission, and 305 is just to appease the public, doing something on the surface. 3. Is it illegal for the people to oppose forced demolition? 4. If one meets with forced demolition, what is the best thing to do?

Yu Jianrong: With demolition there’s the issue of political point-making by local governments, and then there’s the issue of the interests of local leaders, and these actually concern the politics of the central government. Right now many local [governments] are [supported by] land financing (土地财政), and the nation emphasize stability before all else. Without land financing, local governments would have no way of operating, and that’s the most outstanding stability issue. But forced demolition is just about the stability of a few. If it came to a choice between the two, of course they would choose the former. [NOTE: Yu is saying that between being insolvent by not playing the land financing politics that lead to violence and the stability issues that emerge from demolition, leaders choose the former path, opting for demolition and removal of residents.]

Jiang Xiaohua (蒋小华): I wonder why Professor Yu does not recruit the best people possible and jointly create a national chain of schools for migrant workers’ children. The whole country is avoiding this question, but the issue of education for the children of migrant workers is really important. There are many people in China who prioritize education and it would certainly gain everyone’s support. What do you think?

Yu Jianrong: I don’t know how to do it. If you have a good plan, of course I would support you.

Read more by and about Yu Jianrong via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: education, migrant education, migrant workers, Yu Jianrong
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Yu Jianrong has been a chronicler of rural conditions for over a dozen years. But he was not widely known out of the ivory tower until early this year when he used his micro blog to advocate a way to track down missing children. He encouraged netizens, traveling home for the Chinese New Year holiday, to take photos of suspicious targets and post them on their micro blogs. The campaign received widespread media coverage. It was also criticized for invading the privacy of those photographed.

There are about 30,000 files of people like Wang and Peng in Yu’s home, waiting to be catalogued into a computer database. Most of them are petitioners who have exhausted all channels of complaint and were mistreated. But if you think Yu wants to improve the petition system, you are dead wrong.

From the very beginning, Yu has blamed the petition system, rather than those in charge of it, for the conflicts that have flared up. The system is rooted in China’s feudal society, in which ordinary people, seeking to redress grievances, would file petitions all the way to the very top.

“It is this system that has made a mess of our country,” Yu insists. “Every time I express my opinion about it, I touch the heartstrings of officials who work in this field.”

Read a profile of Yu in Southern Metropolis Daily, translated by CDT, and more by and about Yu Jianrong here.

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Post tags: CASS, petitioners, Yu Jianrong
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This movement was galvanized when popular author and blogger Li Chengpeng announced his candidacy for elections in Chengdu. Li Chengpeng, born in 1968, is a former soccer commentator and an author who has become a popular blogger with over three million followers on Sina Weibo. In 2008, he traveled to the Sichuan earthquake region as a volunteer and wrote an essay titled, The True Story of the Miracle Survival of the Students and Teachers of Longhan Elementary School in Beichuan. He recently published a novel that took a critical look at forced demolitions in China. A number of prominent cultural figures, writers, and academics have endorsed his candidacy including blogger Han Han, film director Feng Xiaogang, and legal scholars Yu Jianrong and He Weifang.

Li Chengpeng wrote the following blog post in response to an editorial in Global Times about the independent candidate movement. Translated by CDT:

I have been asked why I am running for the local people’s congress election. And here I reply:

I know there has been a sky-high “Wall” in this village, but no one knows how it was on the other side of the “Wall”. Some tried to walk around for three days but still could not find where it ended, so they gave up. Some walked for a whole week and ended up starving to death. Some walked for three months and never came back again. Since then everyone agreed that the “Wall” is unbreakable. They believed it would be foolish to attempt to do so, and whoever mentioned it would be punished. But I am wondering if we have kept trying, we could have found the secret of the “Wall”–the reason why we have never gotten out is probably because this “Wall” is built as a big circle to keep everyone in. Of course, I cannot prove my point, although I am willing to walk through the “Wall”. Even if I may end up learning that our homeland is merely a big circle of “Wall”, I will at least know that it’s not that the “Wall” is unbreakable but that no one tried to look at it from a different direction. The next thing we may need to consider is opening a window on the “Wall”–no matter whether there will be grassland or landfill on the other side.

I just cannot help but wonder how it looks on the other side. That’s it.

But I have also heard that after years of oppression, our village people are no longer interested in what is happening on the other side of the “Wall”. The unreasonable is then accepted and the evil is tolerated. Silence became a part of the unreasonable. However, I think it is unfair to call us “the silent majority”–you do not hear us because you do not come down and listen.

I visited some families in my neighborhood a few days ago. The 80-year-old teacher Lai was very alert at the beginning and kept saying things like “thanks to the Chinese Communist Party and the country,” “we need to understand the difficulties that our government is going through,” and “our life quality has been very good.” It made me ashamed of myself because I felt like I was trying to turn him into a rebel. But as the conversation went on, he suddenly mentioned that unlike Guangzhou, where anyone can call for paramedics right away when needed, the medical facilities in his neighborhood are too out-of-date and unprepared for emergencies particularly for the elderly at home alone. I later learned that there is a emergency-response system called “Safe Bell” in some cities–what one needs to do in case of emergency is just to press the “bell” so hospitals and paramedics will be immediately notified. This system seems to be a good model for our neighborhood, although we can only rely on ourselves instead of the local government, since they are too busy to care–they still have so much fine wine to drink and so much land to sell out

Liu, whose family financial situation is above average in the neighborhood, told me a story about household registration. His daughter married a German guy, and the couple wanted their newborn baby to be a Chinese citizen as a way to remember their roots. However, the relevant department officials told us that the couple did not report it in advance, so there would be no newborn household quota for this baby–which means the kid needs to obtain German citizenship instead. Liu replied: “We went there because we wanted to be patriotic. Why do we have to report to be patriotic? Family planning can even extend its reach all the way to Germany?”

Some said that special admission fees for better schools are so high that only kids from privileged families can afford them; some others said grocery markets were replaced by real estate projects, so the elderly have to walk a couple of miles to get groceries; some said that stability of the country depends on the stability of the elderly because every elderly person affects several voters… So as you can see, they are quite knowledgeable.

Some claim that Chinese do not deserve a democratic election. It reminds me of the fact that I used to consider myself an elite and liked to say things like they have been kneeling down for so long that they don’t remember the benefits of standing up. I thought what I said made me look cool and profound. But now I start to realize that they kneel down because the ceiling is too low; they have no choice. On the other hand, we kneel down as well–we just do that and pretend to be high-end. The reality is that if one has never tasted an apple, how can he/she have the knowledge of how good an apple can be? Once a person experiences the good taste of an apple, he/she will look forward to the sweet taste of all apples.

The day before yesterday, Aunt Shen from downstairs said to me sincerely: “For the past 11 years of living here, I had never seen a ballot before. I’m gonna support you and I’ll tell all of my Mahjong-mates to support you.” Thanks to all the elderly and our great Mahjong-mates. What a democratic game Mahjong is–although there must be people who cheat, it is nevertheless fair play by the majority instead of a planned resource-redistribution by the few. Some of my close friends have been skeptical of what we can achieve by participating in this election considering the current situation in China. My response to that is as least we can let many people see what a real ballot looks like for the first time. I’ve often heard people claiming they are Chinese citizens–but how can you prove it? A national identity card can only prove that the cooking knife belongs to you so it’ll be easier for the police to track you down for murder. A real estate title can only prove that you’ve rented the world’s most expensive but fragile housing. A birth certificate can only prove that you’ve been abandoned by the world’s largest human resource organization and need to pay high educational expenses, medical bills, and gas prices till the day you die. What? A death certificate? Sorry, but you can only rest (peacefully) underground for 20 years. You cannot prove you belong to this country for the 70 years you live above the ground, and you cannot even be a ghost of this country for 20 years of resting underground*.

So the only thing that proves you really are a Chinese citizen is the ballots that you fill out–it is the first time in your life that you can actually write down you are a “citizen of People’s Republic of China.” Otherwise, you’re a “Fart People” when Li Gang is coming, a trouble maker when the Urban Management Bureau is coming, a migrant when Three Gorges Dam is coming, a sufferers instead of fisherman when Poyang Lake Grassland is coming**. Luckily, our country is not quite like Somalia yet so you are not yet a refugee. I know there must be people being sophisticated and telling me not to be naive because the ballots in this country serve as mere decorations. Pretending to be naive may be immature, but pretending to be mature is even more naive. An anonymous Internet user has a very good point here: If you really perceive ballots as decorations, then they will be.

There has been some common doubts such as whether I would become muted out fear, whether I would be complicit in corruption, or whether I was just hyping this up for my own good. But I am very confused by those doubts: Why do you accuse me as being depraved when I watch porn at home, showing off when I buy a nice car using my hard-earned money, hyping up when I make donations, and hyping up in a more sophisticated way when I donate anonymously. You said it was useless for our country when I did nothing but write. But now when I finally decide to run for the election, you are saying that I am hyping things up. Why is that? It’ll be hype no matter what I do–even if I have no sex scandal nor lovechild nor am on the red carpet; all I did was to uncover the wrongdoing and a book on fighting against forced-home-demolition. And for some reason they both seem like hype for you as if I have no organs but only hype in my body. So why don’t you teach me, if you are so sure, a way of living without hyping things up so I don’t have to waste the rest of my life.

For many intellectuals, being detached seems to be an easy way out–as it does not bring danger caused by rebellion nor skepticism of being assimilated by the corrupted. In short, they prefer to straddle the fence and to swing around as they write, which makes them easily surpass both sides. Recently, reading history of the (pre-1949) Republic of China and the Xinhai Revolution has been quite popular, and many people have been praising Liang Qichao*** and criticizing the Boxer Rebellion. What is interesting here is that the past is reminiscent and being pro-Liang (meaning pro-moderate-reform) is the new retro, but when one is about to take action on reform in ways similar to what Liang did–which is to walk around the “Wall,” the person will have to face all the aforementioned criticism and accusations. Or maybe we should just have admitted what you said about us–that we would be muted, be complicit, or merely create hypes.

Of course, the aforementioned accusation or comments are mostly reasonable or even goodwill-based reminders. And I understand that under the current situation in China, it may be necessary to learn the rules to play. But the Global Times had an editorial yesterday warning that some may use their independent candidate identity to increase tension among people and confront the government. I was so shocked by the accusation that I wish I could use the most possibly exaggerated version of “shocking” to describe it. I briefly looked up the proposals from other independent candidates and found them all mild and harmless–if proposals on grocery stores, school bus safety issues, and increasing parking spots are considered as confrontation to the government, I have nothing else to say but to call you a running dog – I know you are eager to please your master, but don’t go overboard.

Ordinary residents really probably care less about global politics but more about things that are related to their daily lives. I have to tell the Ball Times [a play on Global Times] that there are not that many people trying to be confrontational–some of the seem-to-be rebels are merely seeking a better life. A party propaganda paper like you may do your work to guard the state, but please do not pretend to be heartbroken. You should not see so many of your imaginary enemies when you get out of bed in the morning, nor should you dream about being left on the grasslands with all your predators at night. Your genes are full of confrontation, which must be proven able to survive by smashing others. For this, you should not be named as Ball Times but Metal Ball Times.

Because our goal may only be reached gradually, I’d like to say a word to the other thirty independent candidates: “No matter whether we can achieve the election, we are always passionate but naive citizens who have tried to walk around the “Wall” for our beloved motherland. This is our contribution.” Some may argue that the kind of contribution we offer is worthless–but whose contribution has not been worthless for the past few decades?… Yu Jianrong has recently announced that he would officially be an election consultant of Tong Zongjin, Cheng Ping, and me. He called me a “celebrity,” but I didn’t like it. I replied to him through micro-blogging, “Don’t call me a celebrity; don’t call me an author.” It reminds me of many journalists’ headache-inducing question: Which identity does Li Chengpeng have? I don’t think I know the answer either, for I feel that I have lost myself behind the “Wall.” My Motherland–my mother: who am I, exactly?

My mom walked in and told me calmly: “You are my son, a shareholder of this country; you own one-1.3 billionth of this country.” My mom is awesome. Despite the criticism that many people have for me as merely being an individual investor who always gets stuck but never gained any dividend, I have finally come to realize and am eager to tell everyone that we are all shareholders of our country.

I’m on a flight to Beijing now. And no matter whether it’ll be rainy, windy, or sunny today, I want to say “Good morning” to all of the 1.3 billion shareholders of our country.

* Many cemeteries in various regions reportedly charge unreasonable maintenance fees after the first 20 years of use.

** Poyang Lake suffered severe drought earlier this year and was referred as Poyang Lake Grassland.

*** Liang is a moderate reformist and an advocate of constitutional monarchy during late Qing Dynasty.

Read profiles of LI Chengpeng on The Diplomat and Christian Science Monitor. See also an article from the Economist on the independent candidates’ movement, “Vote as I say.“

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, elections, Feng Xiaogang, Han Han, He Weifang, independent candidacies, Li Chengpeng, Yu Jianrong
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Yu started his campaign shortly before the Chinese New Year holiday, a time for family reunions—and it struck a chord. Within days, thousands of images and other clues were posted, and an audience numbering in the tens of thousands developed. The Chinese news media even reported several success stories of rescued children.

In an interview with the influential Chinese magazine Southern Metropolis Weekly, Yu described his new sense of empowerment. “With a microblog, I finally have the same opportunities for expression as you,” he said to the reporter. “Current technology has changed the social environment. Every person has a microphone; every person is a news center. Now it’s easy to find friends; just publish a piece, and you’ll find your comrades right away.”

That’s true, of course. But microphones can also be turned off. The media hubbub surrounding Yu’s campaign soon led to official unease at the prospect of netizens (an old term that has been revived in China) tackling a social problem directly. In a leaked memo, China’s Central Propaganda Department ordered news organizations to “lower excitement” by ceasing to report on Yu’s project and giving microblogs in general a “reduced presence” on news sites. State media published editorials critical of the child-rescue effort, and Yu stopped giving interviews.

Yu’s story is a classic example of a netizen reveling in the personal expression that China’s new social networking sites offer—and quickly coming up against the limits of expression under an authoritarian regime. The country’s Internet users are genuinely confused about what’s permitted, because the Chinese government’s response to their online activities has been inconsistent. The state seems torn between allowing homegrown social networking sites to flourish as part of China’s transition to a high-tech information society and viewing them as a dangerous destabilizing force. Recent signals seem to suggest that China’s social media sites are here to stay—but that the government is learning how to shape them to its advantage.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: freedom of expression, Internet censorship, microblogs, social media, Yu Jianrong
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“Doing this type of work, we can never be afraid of being jailed,” said Mr Teng. “But if you are in prison, you cannot do things.”

The joke is not looking so funny now. On Saturday, Mr Teng was called in to talk to the local police and as of Wednesday evening, he had still not reappeared, swallowed up somewhere in the city’s labyrinthine security bureaucracy. The police came later to his flat and took the two laptops that he spent his days crouched in front of.

“Why don’t you come in for a cup of tea?” is the euphemism that often accompanies such a police summons. Some young wits have even invented a new character that combines the symbol for tea with the similar character for interrogation. The normal routine is a few hours of questioning over, yes, some tea, followed by a rap on the knuckles.

© alicebirney for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, Chinese lawyers, Teng Biao, Yu Jianrong
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