Chinese Netizens Question Donation of School Buses to Macedonia

Chinese Internet users are questioning their country’s donation of school buses to the European country Macedonia, less than two weeks after an overcrowded school minivan crashed in China, killing 19 preschool students.

Last Friday, China presented the European nation with 23 school buses. By Monday, more than half a million online comments about the donation were posted to China’s Weibo micro-blog service.

One common question: How could China donate brand-new school buses to another country when Chinese school children are subjected to shoddy and unsafe transportation conditions at home?

Ex-Chinese spy says Canadian politicians are targets

GATINEAU, Que. — A flirtatious email exchange between a Tory MP and a Chinese journalist has to be taken seriously, because China views foreign politicians as top targets, a former Chinese spy said Wednesday.

Defector Li Fengzhi said agents of China’s Ministry of State Security — where he used to work — often focus on politicians.

Li was commenting on the case of Conservative MP Bob Dechert, who has admitted to sending flirty emails to a female correspondent for the state-controlled Xinhua news agency. Dechert is parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.

Lust is Chinese spies’ favoured weapon

OTTAWA – A former Canadian diplomat has blown the lid off the Chinese government’s use of sex to ensnare business people and others, and then pump them to divulge secrets.

“The big thing that China is after is technology and information and military secrets,” Brian McAdam told a corporate espionage conference in Gatineau, Que.

“They are really targeting foreign scientists and engineers in a major way.”

McAdam said Chinese intelligence officials have perfected the “honey trap” – using agents to seduce visiting business people, scientists, or politicians while secretly videotaping their sexual encounter.

US Politicians Increasingly Voicing Concerns About China

As the United States struggles to revive its lagging economy and looks at security challenges abroad, China is increasingly being named as a key concern.  And with the U.S. presidential elections less than a year away, Beijing is getting plenty of mention – be it in the Republican primary, Congress or from the president himself.

The sharpest attacks have come during the Republican primary race, on the campaign trail and in debates such as one this week that focused on U.S. foreign policy.

Texas Governor Rick Perry named China as the biggest national security issue for the United States during that debate.

Chinese villagers demand return of illegally seized land

Thousands of villagers angry that officials failed to address their grievances after riots two months ago marched to a government office in southern China to demand the return of land they say was illegally seized, witnesses and media said.

The protest came after a series of strikes in factories in Guangdong province, China’s economic powerhouse.

Rural land disputes are increasing and spreading to the undeveloped west of the country, according to a poll published in October in a magazine run by Xinhua news agency.

One witness identifying himself by his surname Yang said by phone that 4,000 villagers and farmers from Wukan surrounded government offices in Lufeng City on Monday. The protesters denounced local officials as greedy and corrupt. They dispersed after an hour without incident.

Video purports to show Tibetan nun self-immolating

BEIJING (AFP) — Dramatic video footage that purportedly captures the moment a Tibetan Buddhist nun burned herself to death in southwest China has emerged after it was smuggled out and given to a campaign group.

The video, which AFP cannot independently verify, was posted online by Students for a Free Tibet and shows a figure being engulfed in flames in the middle of a street before collapsing to the ground.

The group says the figure is Palden Choetso, a 35-year-old Buddhist nun who self-immolated on November 3 in a Tibetan-inhabited town in Sichuan province.

The Tibetans shown in the footage had “risked everything” to smuggle it out of China, said Tenzin Jigdal, programme director of Students for a Free Tibet, which has offices in New York and Dharamshala, the Indian town that is home to the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Foreigners’ Appeal for Justice on China’s Tiananmen Square: 10th Anniversary

Half a world away from home, I look into the mirror to see if the spy camera is visible. I am in Beijing, China, and have sewn a pinhole camera into the shoulder strap of my backpack. After catching my own eyes in the mirror, a bolt of fear stabs through my heart. Being caught as a spy in Mainland China is no small charge. They apply the death penalty for much smaller crimes.

After a brisk but shaky five-mile walk to Tiananmen Square, I stand aghast at the size. It’s really hard to imagine it filled with tanks and students. The day is bright and chilly. The gentle, cold north wind hits my face as I catch sight of the main flagpole. I arrive at the rendezvous point standing alone, wondering if they are going to make it.

Before I know it, over 30 people from over 10 countries, wearing their national flags, gather to appeal for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong. On cue, most sit in meditation while a few unfurl a 12-foot golden banner sporting three giant Chinese characters that read, “truthfulness, compassion, tolerance.” Passersby are shocked. I stand motionless capturing the event with my hidden video camera. In less than 30 seconds police vans scream in from all directions.

Ai Weiwei supporters strip off as artist faces ‘porn’ investigation

When artist Ai Weiwei disappeared, supporters made online appeals for his return. When authorities handed him a £1.5m tax bill, they sent money to help pay it. And now that he faces an investigation for spreading pornography – his admirers have stripped off.

Internet users began tweeting their nude photographs after Ai announced that authorities had questioned his cameraman over pictures which showed the artist and four women naked.

Many Chinese contemporary artists have taken pictures of themselves without clothes, and the pictures of Ai that have emerged so far do not appear sexually charged. Some suspect that it may be an attempt by the authorities to smear the artist, whose 81-day detention this spring caused international outrage.

China ups campaign against artist Ai Weiwei

(CBS News)  Chinese officials are escalating their campaign to silence a world-famous artist with a reputation for speaking his mind.

CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton reports that although Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous artist, even helping design the country’s Olympic Stadium, the government yesterday tried again to pin new charges on him. But these days, he’s better known as the Chinese government’s most outspoken opponent.

After 2008′s Sichuan earthquake, he headed his own investigation asking why schools collapsed while government buildings stayed intact. Since then, he’s railed against injustice, pointing out the unfair advantages of China’s elite.

China records 300 million registered microblog users

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has more than 300 million registered microbloggers, state media said Monday, one of its fastest growing groups of internet users that the government has vowed to control.

The country has the most internet users in the world, at 485 million, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing Zhang Xinsheng, an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

It also has the world’s largest “internet infrastructure,” Zhang said. The statistics were released during an internet conference in China’s central Hubei province.

New book, “Bowing to Beijing”, will change forever the way you think about China- Reviewed by Tony Blankley

A just-released book, “Bowing to Beijing” by Brett M. Decker and William C. Triplett II, will change forever the way you think about China – even if, like me, you already have the deepest worries about the Chinese threat. As I opened the book, I was expecting to find many useful examples of Chinese military and industrial efforts to get the better of the United States and the West.

Indeed, there are 100 pages of examples of the most remorseless Chinese successes at stealing the military and industrial secrets of the West and converting them into a growing menace – soon to be a leviathan – bent on domination and defeat of America. The authors itemize the sheer unprecedented magnitude of this effort. But the opening chapters deal with human rights abuses, and my first thought as I started reading was that I wanted to get right to the military and industrial examples.

But the authors were right to lead with 50 pages itemizing in grisly detail Chinese human rights abuses – for the profound reason that after reading those first 50 pages, the reader will be impassioned to resist Chinese domination not only on behalf of American interests, but for the sake of humanity.

Feds Investigate New York City Comptroller John Liu’s Campaign Funding

NEW YORK— A federal grand jury investigating possible irregularities in the campaign financing for New York City Comptroller John Liu has subpoenaed his campaign and a business whose employees were said to have donated to the campaign.

The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, reported that investigators are seeking records from his campaign as well as records from Maspeth, Queens-based Dynasty Stainless Steel, whose employees were said to have donated thousands to his campaign.

The probe was apparently prompted by a Times article published last month, which reported on journalists visiting close to 100 businesses and homes of the donors listed on Liu’s campaign finance reports. It raised questions about irregularities in the comptroller’s fundraising efforts, including where the money actually came from, if contributors gave their own money, or even if the donors ever existed.

Chinese Fund-raiser for New York City Comptroller John Liu Arrested

A fund-raiser for the New York City comptroller, John C. Liu, whose campaign finances are under federal investigation, was arrested on Wednesday morning on charges that he helped illegally funnel thousands of dollars into Mr. Liu’s campaign account, according to court papers and people briefed on the case.

A criminal complaint unsealed on Wednesday says an undercover agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation posed as a businessman seeking to donate $16,000 to an unidentified candidate for citywide office in New York. That candidate, the people briefed on the case said, was Mr. Liu.

The complaint details how the fund-raiser, Xing Wu Pan, in a series of meetings secretly recorded by the F.B.I., helped the purported businessman circumvent the city-imposed limit of $4,950 for individual donors by recruiting 20 fictitious, or straw, donors.

Putin Wins China’s Confucius ‘Peace’ Prize for Opposing UN on Libya

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister and the man referred to by some as the “iron hand,” is the unlikely winner of this year’s so-called “Confucius Peace Prize.”

The prize was set up last year supposedly with the official backing of the Chinese regime’s Ministry of Culture. The prize was apparently a reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, which enraged the Chinese regime.

Princeton University professor Yu Yingshi says the prize is a joke.

[Yu Yingshi, Princeton University Professor]:
“The so-called Confucius Peace Prize itself is fundamentally a joke, it ultimately has no value. I also feel that Russia’s prime minister won’t be interested in it, I’m not clear if he will accept it or not. I feel, in brief, this is a really laughable thing, it demonstrates how the Communist Party’s propaganda is completely out of touch with the times.”

Chinese medias quiet on Ai Weiwei

While the twists and turns in the case of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and his tax demand are being closely followed by Western media, they are making no headlines in China.

Some 30,000 supporters have made small donations to Ai to help him pay a huge fine imposed by the authorities, which is seen by activists as part of a government effort to silence the outspoken artist.

But the official media have made almost no mention of the case in recent days.

A notable exception is the Global Times, a nationalist tabloid owned by the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, which has published commentaries in both Chinese and English questioning the level of domestic support for him.

Ai Weiwei turns tables on China’s Communist regime

By Pascale Trouillaud (AFP) , BEIJING — Artist and fierce government critic Ai Weiwei has turned the tables on China’s Communist regime by transforming a crippling tax fine he says is designed to silence him into a huge wave of solidarity.

The painter, sculptor, architect and activist was a thorn in the side of the government even before he managed to pay a 8.5 million yuan ($1.3 million) bond thanks to money raised by some 30,000 Chinese people in record speed.

The burly artist disappeared into police custody for 81 days earlier this year. He was released in June, but on November 1 was ordered to pay 15 million yuan in back taxes levied against a company he set up.

Days later, a spontaneous online movement to help Ai began. Supporters sent him money orders, cheques, Internet transfers, and even rolled bank notes into balls and threw them over the walls of his Beijing studio.

A Chinese Soldier’s Divided Duty: Defending Home From Being Demolished

Soldiers fight to defend home and country, but what happens when those two motives contradict one another? The slaughter last week of four deserters from the People’s Liberation Army, apparently on their way to their squad leader’s home, may have been ordered to prevent the Chinese people from asking that question.

On Nov. 9, the local police station at Shulan City in Jilin Province issued an alert. Four soldiers, all from a military base at Shulan, had escaped from the base between 4:30 and 6:00 a.m. They carried with them one model 95 automatic rifle (QBZ-95) and 795 bullets.

That afternoon, rumors started circulating on the Internet that four soldiers had been caught in Liaoning Province, which lies just southwest of Jilin Province. Some said that three of them had been killed on site and one seriously injured.

Beijing Tiananmen Square self-immolation: where truth is swept away into a dustman’s cart

Even after nearly three years reporting in China, there is still something amazing about the fact that a man can set himself on fire in Tiananmen Square, in broad daylight, and then no one hears or says a word about it.

As it happens, the incident we report today that occurred on October 21st was witnessed by a Telegraph reader who photographed the aftermath and – after hearing nothing more about it – decided it was right to alert the wider world.

The picture shows several hundred people who must have also witnessed what happened after Mr Wang, a 42-year-old man from Huanggang in Hubei, set himself on fire in protest at a court judgment that, we must presume, he felt was so unfair his only recourse was to self-immolate.

Such incidents, which are not completely uncommon in China, reflect the frustration faced by ordinary people as they seek justice from a system of courts and government that offers little recourse to the weak.

Ai Weiwei vows to clear tax charges amid fresh obstacles from China authorities

Ai Weiwei has said his life is turning into a “Hollywood movie” as Chinese officials throw up fresh obstacles to his efforts to clear tax charges against his company.

Hours before the deadline for paying the 15m yuan (£1.47m) fine, tax officials told the artist and human rights campaigner he could not use his mother’s house as collateral and that there were problems with the funds he had raised in a public appeal.

“I only heard this morning about this money problem,” Ai told the Guardian on Monday. “They put us in a very difficult situation. They are not following the law. There is nothing I can do.”

His lawyers plan to put up a 8.4m yuan bond, allowing them to lodge an appeal against a tax evasion charge they claim is a politically motivated attempt to pressure him into silence.

Obama Says ‘Enough’s Enough’ on China’s Undervalued Yuan

President Barack Obama kept up his pressure on China’s foreign-exhange policy and trade practices, saying “enough’s enough” on what the U.S. views as a too-slow appreciation of the yuan.

While there’s been a “slight improvement,” China’s exporters “like the system the way it is” and are resistant to any moves to loosen the reins on the yuan, Obama said.

“Changes are difficult for them politically, I get it,” Obama said at a news conference concluding a summit with Asia- Pacific leaders in Hawaii yesterday. “But the United States and other countries, I think understandably, feel that enough’s enough.”

As he seeks to reassert U.S. interests in Asia, Obama is using increasingly strong language on China’s trade, currency and intellectual property policies. The U.S. contends China’s currency is kept artificially low, putting American businesses at a disadvantage and driving up Chinese trade surpluses.

Obama, who met Nov. 12 with China’s President Hu Jintao in Honolulu, said that as China’s influence rises, leaders of the world’s second-largest economy must take more responsibility for making sure trade is fair and that intellectual property rights are respected. Hu and Obama were in the Hawaiian capital to attend the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit…….. (more from Bloomberg.com)

Chinese censors block use of information from internet in news media

BEIJING: Chinese censors have struck again to check the rising trend in the news media to source what is seen as ‘negative news’ from the internet. A new government order has banned the use of unverified information from Internet sites and blogs in news pages and in the electronic media.

The Chinese media has of late been citing Twitter-like microblogs and internet sites as the source of information. This is how the State-controlled media has been able to expose a range of misdeeds and government negligence including a case of child labor being used in mines. They can no more do so.

The General Administration of Press and Publications has required reporters to produce at least two sources for any “critical” news reports and to personally conduct interviews when gathering information.

Sad Day in Vietnam as Falun Gong Radio Broadcasters Jailed in Show Trial

NEW YORK--A Vietnamese court sentenced two Falun Gong practitioners to jail Thursday for broadcasting uncensored news programs via radio into China, according to their lawyer and media reports. Meanwhile, police reportedly beat and detained other Falun Gong practitioners who had quietly gathered outside the courtroom for a sit-in to protest the trial.

Mr. Vu Duc Trung, a 31-year-old CEO of a high-tech company, and his 36-year-old brother-in-law Mr. Le Van Thanh were sentenced in Hanoi to 3 and 2 years in prison, respectively. The pair have been in custody for 17 months, which will be subtracted from their sentence. The trial lasted half a day and sources close to the case say the verdict appeared to have been predetermined in advance.

“I said Vietnam does not have any law that bans Falungong, so we cannot put them on trial,” their lawyer Tran Dinh Trien told Agence France Press.

China: Government’s Enforced Disappearances a Growing Threat

(Hong Kong) – Enforced disappearances by the Chinese government’s security agencies have soared as a means to silence perceived dissent, Human Rights Watch said today at a news conference in Hong Kong. The government has failed to address the growing problem and is instead attempting to effectively legalize that unlawful practice through a revision to the country’s Criminal Procedure Law, Human Rights Watch said.

Under international law, a state commits an enforced disappearance when its agents take a person into custody and then deny holding the person or fail to disclose the person’s whereabouts. Family members and legal representatives are not informed of the person’s whereabouts, well-being, or legal status. “Disappeared” people are often at high risk of torture, a risk even greater when they are detained outside of formal detention facilities such as prisons and police stations.

“Despite a few weak gestures of disapproval, the Chinese government has largely ignored or tacitly approved the security agencies’ proclivity for enforced disappearance and ‘black jails,’” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “That inaction has encouraged China’s security agencies to increasingly make enforced disappearances their tactic of choice. The proposed legal revisions are a clear indication of the government’s intentions.”