The Internet has brought new hope to reformists in China since the country crushed pro-democracy protests in the capital 20 years ago. But as dissidents have gone high-tech, the government in turn has worked to restrict free speech on the Internet, stifling threats to its rule that could grow online.
China has stepped up monitoring of dissidents and Internet censorship ahead of June 4, when hundreds were killed in 1989 after Beijing sent soldiers to its central Tiananmen Square to disperse protestors. The authoritarian government wants to ensure that date and other sensitive anniversaries this year pass without public disturbances, observers say. In recent months, China has blocked YouTube and closed two blog hosting sites, bullog.cn and fatianxia.com, known for their liberal content.
Those moves added to an existing set of measures China uses to control online activity. China blocks access to countless Web sites as part of a filtering system critics call the “Great Firewall,” including home pages of human rights advocacy groups, parts of Wikipedia and some foreign news sites. Government censors patrol online forums for pornographic or politically subversive content, which Web site managers often delete themselves to avoid punishment by authorities.
But the challenge to censor speech effectively has become greater as China’s Internet population expands. China had almost 300 million Internet users at the end of last year — a thousand-fold increase over just the past 12 years, according to China’s domain registration agency.
The government has appeared recently to be slightly more tolerant of some types of speech. The rise of blogs and online forums, impossible for Beijing to fully control, has given people a direct and far-reaching way to air grievances. The authorities have also seemed to yield on occasion to online public opinion. This month, a blogger who had been detained for writing about corrupt village elections had charges against him dropped after he continued posting about the poll online, pushing himself into the public eye.
But while disgraced local officials are often fair targets for complaints, criticism of the ruling Communist Party itself, or of systemic problems at all, remains largely off-limits both online and offline.
Besides Tiananmen, this year is the 10th anniversary of China banning Falun Gong, a spiritual movement, and the 60th anniversary of China’s founding, which Beijing will mark with a big military parade.
Dissidents, including many under house arrest and constant monitoring, have turned to tools like proxy servers and Skype to communicate with each other and the world outside China. But while Skype encrypts calls and instant messages, the only version available on the Chinese Internet comes from a joint venture between Skype and a Chinese portal. That version uses keyword filtering to block messages with sensitive content, which it then stores along with user data, researchers at the University of Toronto said in a report last year.
China this year also redoubled its efforts against at least one popular program used to circumvent its Internet filtering. Chinese users of the program, called FreeGate, began reporting problems including slower loading of foreign Web sites early this year, said Bill Xia, president of Dynamic Internet Technology, the developer of the software.
Hundreds of thousands of people use FreeGate each day, including many dissidents, said Xia. The program encrypts users’ communication and routes it through IP (Internet Protocol) addresses abroad, granting access to Web sites blocked in China.
Chinese censors have long tried to identify encrypted FreeGate traffic so they can block the foreign IP addresses channeling it, said Xia. Users are given a new IP address when that happens, but this year China’s IP blocking became faster and more aggressive, Xia said.
Beijing is nervous about citizens finding sensitive information online, especially this year, Xia said.
China may have boosted its manpower and improved integration with the country’s international IP routers to expand the blocking against FreeGate, Xia said. Xia’s team has since expanded its network of IPs to make the program’s traffic harder to identify, and its speed has since returned to normal, he said.
That followed years of technological back-and-forth with China’s censors, with developers of FreeGate always upgrading it to counter China’s most recent blocking tactics, Xia said.
Mobile phones have helped information in China flow more freely as well. Videos captured on cell phones of riots last year in Tibet reached a global audience when they were posted online. Tibet is controlled by China, but many residents still revere the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism who has lived in exile from the region for decades.
Mass text messaging on mobile phones drew thousands of Chinese in Xiamen, a coastal city, to demonstrate against the construction of a chemical plant two years ago.
But China also runs a filtering system for text messages that contain political keywords, and authorities often harass or detain individuals who lead demonstrations. Phones used by known dissidents are usually tapped.
Rights groups have long used their Web sites and mailing lists to prolong the memory of the Tiananmen crackdown. But with the anniversary approaching next week, efforts at commemoration in China appear largely absent, both on the Internet and on the ground.
Chinese human rights lawyers scored a win in July last year, after authorities agreed to abolish an annual registration system.
The system allowed authorities to confiscate or delay the licences of lawyers who took on sensitive cases.
But it seems the system is back, only with a different name.
The Beijing Bureau of Justice told lawyers at the start of this year that if they want to renew their license in May, they have to pass an annual examination.
This year authorities are more nervous than ever, with the 20-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. Now the examination has been used to withhold or void the licences of more than 20 human rights lawyers.
Last year, Jiang Tianyong took on the cases of arrested Tibetans after the riots of March 14. The authorities refused to renew his license until June, leaving him unable to practice law for a month. His licence expires on May 31 this year, and he says he doesn’t expect it to be renewed.
[Jiang Tianyong, Human Rights Lawyer]:
“The system is basically a way to exploit and suppress lawyers. On one hand it is a chance to make more money, and on the other hand, the lawyers who don’t pass are mostly human rights lawyers. It’s easy to tell that this is an act of suppression.”
Lawyer Li Heping has taken on the most sensitive human rights cases, including those of persecuted Falun Gong practitioners. During some cases he was kidnapped and beaten up by strangers. He says the annual examination system is not just obstructive, it is illegal.
[Li Heping, Human Rights Lawyer]:
“It is a system that is unique to China. This system does not exist in the international community. It is against the law.”
By LESLIE HOOK, The Wall Street Journal, MAY 28, 2009, Beijing -
‘Without this stamp, I can’t practice law,” Jiang Tianyong says as he pulls a leathery booklet out of his shirt pocket. He points to a dog-eared page near the back of the book: A red imprint there grants him permission to practice law in China until May 31. The following page, where his renewal stamp should be, is blank. In a few days he’ll be disbarred.
Mr. Jiang is one of at least a dozen prominent human-rights lawyers across China on the verge of disbarment in what appears to be a clampdown on their practice. Chinese lawyers must renew their credentials every year in May at their local judicial bureau or lawyers association through a perfunctory process known as the “annual exam.” There is no actual test involved — the association or bureau simply summons lawyers to its offices, confirms they have paid their dues and gives them a stamp.
But it doesn’t always work this way. Mr. Jiang’s story is a case in point: A former school teacher from Henan province, last year he led a group of lawyers who volunteered to represent Tibetans after the March 14 riots. That April, the Judicial Bureau sent his firm a warning letter; then the head of his firm asked him to stop taking sensitive cases and giving interviews to foreign media. He acceded to neither request and the Judicial Bureau refused to renew his license until the end of June, leaving him unable to practice for a month. This year he has continued to handle high-profile cases involving Tibetan monks, one of whom was released a few weeks ago as a result of work by Mr. Jiang and his partner. He doesn’t expect his license to be renewed before it expires Sunday.
Last year Mr. Jiang was one of at least three rights lawyers known to have temporarily lost their licenses in this way, but this year there may be many more. I spoke by telephone or in person to 16 human-rights lawyers who have yet to renew their licenses. Some may receive their licenses before the May 31 deadline or shortly afterwards. But none of them will miss the official warning signal.
“Other lawyers and law firms have all been approved,” says lawyer Li Fangping, who recently handled a Tibetan case with Mr. Jiang. “It is only firms and lawyers who take human-rights cases who will have to stop [practicing].”
When asked about this trend, an official at the Beijing Judicial Bureau pointed out that the deadline for license renewal is still some days away. “All lawyers are treated equally,” said Dong Chunjiang, a deputy director at the Judicial Bureau. He disputed the premise that some lawyers were “rights lawyers,” saying: “Our 19,000 lawyers are all protecting people’s rights.”
Some lawyers disagree that the government is treating them equally. They believe the license delay is linked to the sensitivity of the anniversaries of the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown and the founding of the People’s Republic, as well as a general tightening of control. “The Ministry of Justice uses the ‘annual exam’ to limit and restrict lawyers’ professional rights,” says Xie Yanyi, who handles cases for people with AIDS and represents farmers in land-rights cases.
The last few months have also seen an uptick in physical violence and detentions of these lawyers. In April, two were badly beaten by thugs in separate incidents. Earlier this month, lawyers Zhang Kai and Li Chunfu were beaten up and detained while investigating a case in Chongqing.
For lawyers who lose their licenses, there is little recourse. Although technically they are allowed to sue the Ministry of Justice for reinstatement, there have been no successful cases of this nature in the past.
The lawyers who face suspension as of Sunday have handled a variety of cases, from representing parents whose children died in flimsy school buildings during the Sichuan earthquake to helping victims of the toxic milk-powder scandal sue for compensation. What these cases have in common is that they show what a powerful ally the law can be for China’s underdogs.
While those cases may have sealed their fates as far as license renewal is concerned, many human-rights lawyers in China say they are working toward the same goals advocated by their political leaders. “People like us want to use our professional knowledge to help society develop a legally based system,” says Mr. Jiang. “Also, I personally want to live in a society that is ruled by the law.”
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai, Telegraph, UK, 28 May 2009-
Beijing has taken steps to prevent dissent in response to a groundswell of pressure for the authorities to atone for what happened.
Students at Beijing and Dalian Universities have been banned from giving any interviews to the foreign media until after the anniversary.
The Public Security Bureau in Dalian warned: “Any indication of an approach from a foreign journalist must be reported immediately.”
University exams have been scheduled across China on June 4, in what appears to be an attempt to keep students inside their classrooms.
Security officers have also been targeting known dissidents including Bao Tong, 76, an aide to Zhao Zhiyang, the late Chinese leader. He has been taken out of Beijing to the mountain region of Huangshan on Monday.
Bao helped to orchestrate the release of Zhao’s secret memoirs, which revealed clashes at the top of the Communist Party over how to respond to the student protests of 1989.
“When the Communist Party thinks it needs to win the praise and trust of the Chinese people, that is when they will apologise,” he said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. “But if they think it is not necessary to win that trust and praise, they will never apologise.”
Qi Zhiyong, who lost a leg after being shot in the suppression of the protests, said he had also been forcibly removed from Beijing but allowed to return in order to have access to medication.
“They are strengthening their surveillance over me and escorting me wherever I go,” he said.
Yu Jie, an outspoken writer, sent an email to his friends on Wednesday saying that four plain clothes policemen had been sent to monitor him. “They said they had received orders and the restraint of my personal freedom would remain after June 4,” he said, referring to the date of the anniversary.
According to Radio Free Asia, Zhang Shijun, a former soldier who took part in the armed response has been under house arrest since he published a critical open letter to Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, in March. His wife and daughter have been separated and are being monitored.
Since the beginning of the month, there have been growing calls for the government to admit a massacre took place. Wang Dun, one of the most-wanted student leaders, suggested that Chinese wore white on June 4 in memory of the dead. On Google China, the phrase “6 + 4, 20″, representing June 4, 20th anniversary, was briefly one of the most searched terms.
Yesterday (Thurs), 128 family members of Tiananmen victims issued a public statement calling for a fair and independent investigation, and the publication of the names and number of those who died. They also called for compensation and for “those responsible” to be prosecuted.
Meanwhile, popular internet forums on Baidu, China’s leading internet portal, have been closed down in Beijing and tightly restricted across the rest of China.
In Guizhou, a seminar planned for June 4 to discuss human rights has been shut down by local police, and the organisers were detained. There are dozens of other reports of house searches, including of Zha Jianguo, a founding member of the China Democratic Party. One retired professor was beaten when he tried to visit Zhao Ziyang’s tomb in Jinan.
In Shanghai, petitioners have been warned by the local police not to visit Beijing in the ten day period over June 4.
MARK COLVIN: Exactly 20 years ago, Beijing’s central space, Tien An Men Square was still full of protesting students.
On the 19th May, the Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang had come to the square to plead with them to end their hunger strike.
The next day, military law was declared. On June the 4th the troops went in and what the West remembers as the Tien An Men massacre began.
By then, Zhao Ziyang, the only member of the ruling elite to talk to the students face to face, was under house arrest and had become a non-person.
This is how he remembers what the Chinese authorities prefer to call the June the 4th incident.
ZHAO ZIYANG (translated): On the night of June the 3rd while sitting in the courtyard with my family I heard intense gunfire. A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted and was happening after all.
I prepared the above-written material three years after the June the fourth tragedy. Many years have now passed since this tragedy. Of the activists involved in this incident, except for the few who escaped abroad, most were arrested, sentenced and repeatedly interrogated.
MARK COLVIN: The world was never meant to hear Zhao Ziyang’s voice again. But now, four years after his death comes the publication of his memoirs.
They were compiled from 30 cassette tapes, smuggled out of the country and now published as ‘Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang’.
Its publisher and co-translator is Bao Pu, son of a senior aide to Zhao.
He told me on the line from Hong Kong that Zhao Ziyang knew when he spoke to the students in the Square that his career was already over.
BAO PU: When he came out to talk to them he was already disposed from his position and knowing that after trying to prevent the final showdown of violence; and he actually failed to prevent that happening and that was you know his final moment appearing in public.
MARK COLVIN: And the reason why that was his final moment was because he had made the mistake of actually leaving the country in a crisis and that left his enemies in charge.
BAO PU: In this particular memoir he mentions many of his regrets and mistakes. Leaving the country at that moment is not one of them. At the moment that he left there was no reason for him, no obvious reason that he shouldn’t.
MARK COLVIN: But if he’d stayed, wouldn’t he have been able to keep the ear of Dung Xiaoping? Wouldn’t he have been able to have controlled things better?
BAO PU: Yes it’s possible but you have to say that it’s only speculation – maybe better – and we can’t be sure because history cannot be undone and repeat itself.
MARK COLVIN: So what were the forces ranged against him?
BAO PU: Tien An Men incidents to the Chinese leaders were merely a continuation of their struggle, their debate over economic reform. The new insight on this Tien An Men incident is that as soon as the student protest began, the Chinese leaders were already lined up on two sides.
On one side the favour harsh treatment, on the other are against the harsher treatment.
MARK COLVIN: In the background of all this was the fact that Zhao Ziyang didn’t just want economic reform he wanted political reform. Let’s just have a listen to what he says in the memoir about that.
ZHAO ZIYANG (translated): Of course it is possible that in the future a more advanced political system than the parliamentary democracy will emerge, but that is a matter for the future. At present, there is no other.
Based on this we can say that if a country wishes to modernise, not only should it implement a market economy, it must also adopt a parliamentary democracy as its political system……. (More details fromABC News)
(New York) - As the European Union (EU) and China prepare for their semi-annual summit in Prague on May 20, Human Rights Watch called on European leaders to press China to respect its international human rights obligations.
The summit, the first since Beijing abruptly called off the planned December 2008 gathering in France as part of an offensive to dissuade European leaders from meeting with the Dalai Lama, will be held under the framework of the Czech presidency of the Council of the European Union. The delegation of the People’s Republic of China will be led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.
“The EU would be mistaken to let business and trade interests trump human rights,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Without the rule of law and respect for fundamental rights China simply cannot become a better partner for the EU.”
Although the EU holds regular human rights dialogues with China, including one in Prague on May 14, those discussions have consistently failed to deliver any concrete result since they began over a decade ago.
“The human rights dialogues increasingly serve as a pretext to segregate human rights concerns away from high level talks such as the present summit,” said Richardson. (For more information on Human Rights Watch’s view of EU-China relations, please click here).
Human Rights Watch pointed out that since the last EU-China summit the human rights situation in China has markedly worsened in several key respects, including:
* In Tibet, where hundreds of detainees are still unaccounted for, and which is still not freely accessible to media and visitors;
* The ongoing detention of one of China’s most prominent dissidents, Liu Xiaobo, for his role in drafting an appeal for human rights and democracy, Charter 08; and
* The harassment of the families of school children who died during the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, many of whom are demanding an official inquiry into the buildings’ deficiencies.
As the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre nears, Human Rights Watch also called on the EU to stand firm on the arms embargo put in place shortly after the bold crackdown on students and demonstrators during the night of June 3 to 4, 1989.
“China still refuses to acknowledge that it did anything wrong by turning the army against its own people in 1989,” said Richardson. “Until this happens, the embargo should stay.”
By MEI FONG, The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2009-
BEIJING — China’s government said it is replacing the head of China Central Television, three months after a fire destroyed part of CCTV’s glitzy new headquarters in Beijing and caused a major embarrassment for the huge state broadcaster.
In a brief report, state-run Xinhua news agency said 61-year-old Zhao Huayong is being replaced because he had reached retirement age. China’s usual retirement age is 60.
The report didn’t mention the February fire. It said Mr. Zhao is being succeeded by top propaganda official Jiao Li, vice minister of the publicity department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
Mr. Jiao was previously propaganda director for the northeastern province of Liaoning, which borders North Korea. He was one of the principals involved in helping launch China’s first publicly traded publishing group, the Shanghai-listed Liaoning Publishing Group, in 2007.
He will take the helm at a difficult time for the state broadcaster. The CCTV fire on Feb. 9 initiated a storm of questioning about the institution’s management. The fire was sparked by a display of illegal, industry-grade fireworks to mark the end of the Lunar New Year holiday near the nearly completed headquarters, which didn’t yet have fire-prevention systems installed.
The fire gutted a boot-shaped tower, designed by Dutch architects Rem Koolhaas and Ole Schereen, right next to the colossal main headquarters building. One firefighter died.
The destroyed building was intended to be a revenue generator for CCTV, with the top floors leased to luxury hotel Mandarin Oriental and the lower floors housing television studios intended both for rental and for CCTV’s own use……. (more details from The Wall Street Journal:China Replaces Chief of CCTV )
Tania Branigan in Miaoquan, Jiangxi , China, The Guardian (UK), Sunday 17 May 2009-
Until a week ago, Liu Xiao was part of the Pearl river delta’s army: one of the thousands of workers streaming along a Shenzhen road, gulping down breakfast, texting, lighting a final cigarette, teasing friends and swapping gossip – rushing rushing rushing to the factory for another shift making bras, computers and plastic toys for the world.
Today she waits patiently at the railway station across town. This region was the motor of China’s economic boom, but plummeting exports have forced it to slow and millions of those who kept it running have given up and gone home. Liu Xiao is one of the latest to return to the countryside: in her case to a village of just 200 people a 10-hour ride – and a world away – from Shenzhen.
For a year and a half she worked 11-hour days checking hard drive casings with no music or chat permitted, but found satisfaction in spotting hairline cracks and other errors. Home was a dormitory shared with seven other girls, crowded but renao (lively and chaotic).
“There were lots of rules, like no cooking and not being loud, but you get used to it,” she says. “It was harmonious, not like other dormitories where everyone quarrels.”
Production began to slow late last year and workers drifted away. Without overtime Liu Xiao’s wages slipped from 2,500 yuan (£240) a month to 800 yuan, barely covering living costs, and leaving nothing for visits to internet cafes or for the shopping trips she had learned to enjoy.
Millions abandoned the city at Chinese new year in late January and a steady trickle continues. When rumours spread that Liu Xiao’s factory would soon go bankrupt, as thousands across the manufacturing region have done, she handed in her notice.
Now she is killing time with a colleague, waiting for the night train. “I’m not too happy,” she says. “There aren’t many factories near my village. It’s too boring; there’s not much entertainment and it’s difficult to get out.”…… (More Details from The Guardian)
MEDIA ADVISORY, May 16 /Christian Newswire/ — On May 14, the 99th day since Chinese Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng’s kidnapping by government officials, four U.S. Senators issued a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao calling for the Chinese government to release Gao. The four signatories are: Senators Bryon Dorgan (D-ND and Chairman of the Congressional – Executive Commission on China), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Sam Brownback (R-KS).
The following is the full text of the Senators’ letter to President Hu Jintao:
Dear President Hu:
We are writing to express our deep concern over the disappearance of prominent lawyer and human rights advocate, Gao Zhisheng. Tomorrow will mark the 100th day in which Mr. Gao has not been seen or heard from. We fear that Mr. Gao’s life may be in grave danger, given Mr. Gao’s past treatment at the hands of public security officers (and others working under their direction).
Mr. Gao, voted “one of China’s top ten lawyers” in 2001 by a Chinese Ministry of Justice publication, has represented numerous civil society figures, religious leaders and writers. In September 2007, Mr. Gao sent an open letter to the U.S. Congress alleging widespread human rights abuses in China. Afterwards, public security officers abducted him and held him for over 50 days, during which time he was repeatedly tortured. He was told that he would be killed if he told anyone about what happened. Mr. Gao was last seen on February 4, 2009 at a relative’s home, where more than 10 public security officers and others forcibly removed him from bed, and whisked him away to an unknown location. Mr. Gao’s whereabouts are still unknown.
Mr. Gao’s disappearance appears to be a violation of both Chinese and international law. We urge your government to inform the concerned public of his whereabouts, to guarantee Mr. Gao’s right to be free from arbitrary detention, and to secure his release.
Sincerely,
Byron L. Dorgan
Christopher J. Dodd
Sam Brownback
Russell D. Feingold
View a copy of the Senators’ original letter to President Hu Jintao.
Visit www.FreeGao.com to advocate for Gao Zhisheng’s release: sign the petition; view the video; send e-mails to Chinese officials and find out more information about Gao Zhisheng.
By Zhang Liming, Radio Free Asia, Via The Epochtimes, May 16, 2009 -
Thousands of people joined the protest of the Mililtary Hospital in Chongqing
The Liberation Army No. 324 Hospital in Chongqing city, Sichuan, was accused of not treating a local resident because of a payment issue , which resulted in the death of a 23-year-old veteran. The veteran participated in the rescue work after the Wenchuan Earthquake last year. The veteran’s family protested outside of the hospital on May 13 holding his picture and slogans. Thousands of people joined the protest in the afternoon of May 13. The crowds caused traffic chaos around the hospital.
A Chongqing resident named Li said that the protesters were not happy
Thousands of people protest the Mililtary Hospital
with the way the hospital treated the victim. The hospital refused to help the victim because he did not have any cash at the time. The victim died as a result. The crowds did not leave until 8 p.m. after armed riot police arrived. It was claimed that some protesters were injured during the conflict with the police.
Li said that many Liberation Army Hospitals have opened to the public and are not different from other general hospitals. Veterans also need to pay to see a doctor. According to Li, many hospitals charge before they perform emergency service.
The protest, according to the Hong Kong based Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy, attracted over ten thousand people at one point. The crowd attempted to break into the hospital. The riot police confiscated the picture and slogans from the family. During the conflict, at least ten protesters were injured. The police took away the victim’s family members and their whereabouts were unknown at the time of this report……. (More from The Epochtimes)
Jane Macartney in Beijing , The Times, UK, May 15, 2009-
As Chinese students marched to demand democracy and an end to corruption, party elders were summoned to the home of the country’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping.
The wizened veteran listened to moderates, including the general secretary of the Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang, urging dialogue with the students, whose protests were seen as the greatest threat to date for the party.
Then, without even calling a vote of the most powerful body in China, the Politburo Standing Committee gathered there, Deng summarily imposed martial law. The army was called in and the student protests would be brutally crushed by tanks and troops in Tiananmen Square.
Now, on the 20th anniversary of the bloody suppression of the protesters, Zhao’s memoirs — painstakingly reconstructed from hours of tape recordings smuggled out by supporters — provide a unique glimpse of the deep divisions within the Chinese leadership. The first memoirs made public by such a highly placed party official will enrage today’s leaders because of his assertion that Western-style democracy is essential if China is to avoid future bloodbaths.
The record made by Zhao — who resigned, was purged and held under house arrest for almost 16 years — is to be published this month as Prisoner of the State: the Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang. So sensitive is the document that its existence was kept a closely guarded secret until days before publication.
Speculation had been rife during his house arrest and after his death in 2005 as to whether the man with the most intimate knowledge of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 3-4, 1989, had provided his own account of the dramatic days.
In the book, Zhao describes the secret meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee. “At that moment I was extremely upset. I told myself that no matter what, I refused to become the General Secretary who mobilised the military to crack down on the students,” he wrote. “On the night of June 3rd I heard intense gunfire. A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted.”
Troops backed by tanks entered Beijing to end weeks of student demonstrations. Zhao’s account confirms the bitter power struggle behind the scenes as the students occupied Tiananmen Square, and the deep rivalries between reformists and hardliners, as well as the crucial role played by Deng in the decision to use force.
The memoirs project was so secret that Zhao’s top aide, Bao Tong, who was jailed for seven years after the protests, told The Times that he learnt of their existence only after Zhao’s death. “I knew he wanted to write something. I knew he would want to leave some record of his work but it was extremely difficult because he was under constant surveillance,” he said. Mr Bao said that there was no doubt about the authenticity of the memoirs. “This is an extremely valuable document for China and for the West,” he said. Zhao left the memoirs on 30 one-hour tapes that he recorded in about 2000. Mr Bao said that it had been impossible for the disgraced party chief to make the recordings before 1999, but after that he had found a way to bypass those watching and listening to him.
The recordings include conversations in which he answers questions as well as sections that are apparently dictated from a now-vanished text. The tapes took Zhao about two years to make and he then found a way to pass them clandestinely to trusted friends. The materials were gathered together after his death, but much of the process remains a secret to protect those involved.
Mr Bao said that to protect Zhao’s family, they had been unaware of the memoirs. “If the authorities want to pursue someone for political or legal responsibility for these memoirs then I will bear everything,” he said.
The memoirs were translated and edited by Mr Bao’s son and daughter-in-law, Bao Pu and Renee Chiang, and the US journalist Adi Ignatius. He told The Times: “Zhao did this all secretly but he knew what he was doing: getting the final word on what really happened 20 years ago.”
China’s communist government has used its relationships with prominent Americans to further a propaganda effort aimed at influencing U.S. policies and softening economic sanctions, according to recent congressional testimony.
Those whose names, words or friendships have been invoked by China to influence the debate over sanctions include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former President George H.W. Bush, said Anne-Marie Brady, an associate professor of political and social sciences at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Ms. Brady testified before the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission April 30 that it is long-standing Chinese policy to exploit foreigners for global propaganda work.
“Historically, foreigners have been extremely useful in producing a wide range of propaganda materials, ranging from books, films and poetry, to public and private lobbying,” she said.
In 1989, Chinese President Jiang Zemin ordered foreign diplomats to step up influence operations after the Tiananmen massacre by gaining support from “prominent foreigners friendly to China,” she said. The goal was to influence Western governments into dropping sanctions imposed on China after the military crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
“Henry Kissinger and George Bush senior are commonly cited as being particularly helpful to blunt the effects of sanctions in this period,” Ms. Brady said.
“The foreign friends the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has come to value most in the post-1989 period are prominent foreign figures that can bring commercial and political advantages to China and the Chinese oligarchy. Public agreement on China’s political positions is not required, though it might help business along a little.”
Ms. Brady did not provide further details on how figures like Mr. Bush or Mr. Kissinger are used in the propaganda efforts. But a U.S. defense official said the Chinese government invests vast resources in seeking out prominent Americans whose views coincide with many aspects of Chinese foreign policy. The Chinese can provide preferential business treatment and access to senior Chinese leaders as a way to enhance the standing of these former officials.
China’s government also limits criticism of China by blocking visits to the country by perceived opponents of China.
Asked about China’s efforts to block or remove U.S. sanctions, Larry Wortzel, co-chairman of the commission, said the Tiananmen-related sanctions remain important for U.S. national security because of growing Chinese military capabilities. “If the U.S. lifted sanctions, it would open the floodgates for European arms sales to China,” Mr. Wortzel said.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Kissinger said the former secretary of state was traveling and could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Bush could not be reached.
Chinese Embassy spokeswoman Wei Xin did not address the points raised at the hearing in an e-mail response.
“China has solemnly stated on many occasions that China never does anything undermining the interest of others and China advocates cooperation between countries on the basis of fairness, justice, equality and mutual benefit,” Ms. Wei said.
Ross Terrill, a historian at the Harvard University Fairbank Center for Asian Studies, testified that China is using money to try to manipulate foreign opinions of China.
“A symbiosis occurs between Americans who benefit from business or other success with China and American institutions,” he said. “Money may appear from a businessman with excellent connections in China and it is hard for a think tank, needing funds for its research on China, to decline it. But the money may bring with it major Chinese ideological input into the program of the U.S. think tank.”
Ms. Brady also said China is working to plant Chinese propaganda in Western news media. “China’s propagandists try to get foreign newspapers to do China’s propaganda work; this is called ‘borrowing foreign newspapers,’ ” she said.
Beijing announced early this year that it will invest $6.6 billion in its media organs to increase news coverage. Xinhua, the official news agency that U.S. officials say is frequently used as cover for Chinese intelligence personnel, is increasing its foreign bureaus from 100 to 186. China also is setting up a new satellite television station to beam Chinese propaganda around the world. “As such this new initiative could well have a significant impact in strengthening China’s soft power internationally,” Ms. Brady said.
Another specialist, Jacqueline Newmyer, president of the Long Term Strategy Group, told the commission hearing that Chinese foreign-directed information operations are part of a broader Chinese strategy involving Beijing’s development. …… (more details from The Washington Times report: Inside the Ring)
Ten years after the Tiananmen Square massacre,10,000 Falun gong practitioners gathered outside China’s central leadership compound in Beijing. They had come to appeal at China’s central appeals office — to appeal for practitioners who had been abused in the city of Tianjin, for thei books, which ahd been banned, and for practitioners all over the country who were being harassed and investigated by the police.
They were met by the Chinese premier, and the arrested practitioners were released. It seemed like the appeal had been successful. But in reality, time was running out, and the brutal crackdown was getting closer and closer…….
Human Rights in China (HRIC) has learned that Beijing rights defense lawyers Zhang Kai (张凯) and Li Chunfu (李春富) were violently beaten at their client’s home in Chongqing by local police on May 13, 2009. They were then brought to the local police station for interrogation and were locked up in an iron cage and slapped in the face. A month earlier, Beijing rights defense lawyer Cheng Hai was also violently beaten by the police in Chengdu, Sichuan for handling a Falun Gong case.
Zhang Kai is a lawyer with Beijing Yijia Law Firm and Li Chunfu is a lawyer at Beijing Globe Law Firm. On the afternoon of May 13, they met with relatives of Jiang Xiqing at their home in Jiangjin District, Chongqing to discuss Jiang’s death while serving a Reeducation-Through-Labor (RTL) sentence.
Jiang Xiqing, 66, was arrested by the police on May 14, 2008, and sentenced to one year of RTL for practicing Falun Gong. On January 28, 2009, the Chongqing Xishanping Reeducation Center informed Jiang’s family that Jiang had died of a heart attack. He was then cremated without consent by his family. The family, suspicious of the cause of death, hired a Chongqing lawyer for legal assistance. But after inquiring formally with the police, the lawyer declined to be retained by the family.
Sources inside China informed HRIC that around 4 p.m. on the afternoon of May 13, four policemen came to the home of Jiang’s relatives and said they were delivering materials from the public security bureau’s judicial administrative office. They started to interrogate the lawyers, asking the lawyers to produce their identity cards. Soon afterwards, about 20 more people from the state security unit of the Jiangjin District Public Security Bureau and Jijiang Police Substation also arrived. Jiangjin State Security squadron leader Mu Chaoheng asked Jiang Xiqing’s relatives, “Who told you to hire lawyers? Your dad died a natural death.”
After Li Chunfu presented his lawyer’s license and Zhang Kai presented his passport, the police announced, “We only accept identity cards.” The police surrounded Zhang Kai and Li Chunfu and began pulling their hair, twisting their arms, tripping them, and beating them while pinning them on the ground. The police then handcuffed them and hauled them into their vehicle. They also took away Jiang Xiqing’s son, Jiang Hongbin.
After arriving at the police station, Zhang Kai was hung up with handcuffs in an iron cage and Li Chunfu was slapped in the face by the police. During the interrogation, the police threatened the lawyer to stop defending Falun Gong cases. When the lawyers argued that everyone had a right to legal counsel, the police said: You absolutely cannot defend Falun Gong; this is the situation in China. Lawyer Zhang Kai expressed, “This is typical hoodlum behavior. They just wanted to intimidate us and force us to withdraw from the case. They are so frightened; they must be hiding something about this case.”
Zhang Kai and Li Chunfu were released at 12:40 a.m. on May 14. Their hands were covered with bruises and scars. Zhang Kai’s hands were numb and swollen, and Li Chunfu had troubling hearing in one ear. At the present, they are both being examined at Jiangjin District People’s Hospital.
Sources inside China also told HRIC that in 2008, when Jiang Xiqing was taken away by the police, his wife, Luo Zehui, was also detained on May 13, 2008. She was sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment and is currently serving her sentence at Yongchuan Female Correctional Facility. In this case, their family members have never received any legal documents or information on when she was convicted and for what crime.
In the last week, Shanghai-based human rights attorney, Zheng Enchong, was called into the police station three times, and had his home ransacked. He has been called to the police station a total of 56 times now.
Zheng kept his calm and sense of humor. He told The Epoch Times, “On May 4, I was called to the police station the 54th time. Maybe on June 4 it will be the 64th time, on July 20 it will be the 72nd time, and on October 1 it will be the 100th time.”
The above are all “politically sensitive” dates under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). June 4 is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre; July 20 is the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong; and October 1 is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Phone calls to Zheng have also become difficult. Police repeatedly take away his cell phones, yet appellants who have admired Zheng for his work, have continued to give him new cell phones. He also receives a large number of harassing calls from the police. On May 9, Zheng told The Epoch Times, “They usually ransack my house on Wednesdays. This week, they called me to the station on Wednesday instead of ransacking my home. They were trying to lower my guard. They came on Thursday instead and brought testing equipment. They even searched the hallways, but they didn’t find anything.”
He said with chagrin, “They wanted to find my communication devices, namely my cell phones, in order to block my communication to the outside world. In April, they came three times and took away more than a dozen cell phones. But this time, they didn’t take away anything.
“They thought I wasn’t receiving any help. A lot of appellants are actually helping me. I have been able to keep contact with the outside world. I think it’s supposed to be this way.”
Despite being closely monitored and harassed by the CCP, Zheng wanted to send his greetings to the founder of Falun Gong, Mr. Li Hongzhi, in honor of May 13, World Falun Dafa Day.
He said, “As a Christian, I would like to send my greetings to Mr. Li Hongzhi for his upcoming birthday on May 13. I would also like to congratulate all Falun Gong practitioners [for International Falun Dafa Day]. Ten years ago, the CCP banned Falun Gong and began the persecution. From what my friends and I can see, Falun Gong’s greatest contribution was to invent software that broke through the Chinese regime’s Internet censorship.
“In Shanghai, such software is quite common now. This has enabled us to see the world outside of the CCP’s control. From my personal perspective, I think Falun Gong practitioners are respected because of their high morality. Both in China and overseas, they have persevered in their faith. The Epoch Times, Sound of Hope Radio, and NTDTV have reported a large number of human rights abuses in China. This was quite encouraging. In addition, the Divine Performing Arts have brought the true Chinese culture to the world. I think this is something that no other group can accomplish. Falun Gong provided moral inspirations and is a role model for society.”
A Canterbury expert on Chinese propaganda has made a rare appearance before a United States security commission.
Canterbury University associate professor Anne-Marie Brady travelled to Washington last month to appear before the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s hearing on China’s propaganda operations. The commission was established by the US Congress in 2000.
Brady was told she was the first person from outside North America to appear before the commission. She believed her invitation was due to her research into propaganda in China, enabled by a $634,000 Marsden Fund grant in 2005.
Brady said China had two propaganda machines, one directed at those in China and another focused on Chinese living overseas. Chinese in New Zealand were affected by this, as Chinese language media in New Zealand relied heavily on free content from Chinese media. “These papers are important, especially to new migrants to New Zealand,” she said. “It’s importing the propaganda line to Chinese-language discourse in New Zealand.”
The Chinese Government was well aware the Chinese diaspora could be a haven for liberal thinkers and therefore a threat to the regime, she said.
Propaganda focused on promoting nationalism and encouraged a perception that China was unfairly treated by Western media, Brady said.
“It’s de-politicising the message; encouraging people to make the connection with China their motherland, not worrying about political affiliations.”
She said the success of this propaganda campaign was shown in the global demonstrations of Chinese migrants against Western reporting of the Olympic torch relay and last year’s crackdown on the uprising in Tibet.
Protesters in New Zealand were sent T-shirts and promotional materials from Beijing.
More than 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered at the Puding Prairie in Kenting, southern Taiwan, and did the five Falun Dafa exercises together, May 9, 2009 (The Epochtimes)
PINGTUNG, Taiwan— May 13, 2009, is World Falun Dafa Day and the seventeenth anniversary since Falun Dafa‘s founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, began teaching in China. There will be celebrations all around the world.
Six thousand Falun Gong practitioners in Taiwan gathered at the Puding Prairie in Kenting, in southern Taiwan, on the morning of May 9—lining up to form an image of Mr. Li’s book Zhuan Falun. The activity was to celebrate and commemorate the spread and blessing of Falun Dafa as well as to show their respect and gratefulness to Mr. Li.
May 9, 2009, over six thousand Falun Gong practitioners gathered at the Puding Prairie in Kenting, Taiwan, and lined up to form the book Zhuan Falun.
Cheng Chi-Mei, organizer of the activity said, “Lining up to form the book Zhuan Falun is the first time practitioners in Taiwan composed the three Chinese characters ‘Li-Hong-Zhi’ and formed a three-dimensional Zhuan Falun book. Also, we have broken the record with the largest number of people joining in an activity of forming these Chinese characters……. (more details fromThe Epochtimes)
Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The Shanghai Color Art Stationery Company and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are issuing a recall for children’s face paint that may be harmful when used.
The FDA issued a recall after exposure to the product led to “rashes, itchiness, burning sensation, and swelling where the face paints were applied.” The FDA tested the paint and found “significant microbial contamination” in “most of the products.”
The products were sold by Fun Express Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oriental Trading Co. The colors effected by the recall include blue, purple, red, orange, black and green.
Tania Branigan, The Guardian, 13 May 2009 -
A prominent former student leader of the 1989 pro-democracy protests is under arrest on charges of fraud, his family said today, weeks before the 20th anniversary of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
Relatives said Chinese authorities had secretly detained Zhou Yongjun for more than six months. He has permanent residence in the United States but had returned to China to see his parents.
“At first he was accused of spying and political crimes, but now they have switched to this financial fraud accusation,” Zhou’s partner, Zhang Yuewei, told Reuters from the couple’s home in California, adding that the charge was unfounded.
“He’s been under secret detention for a long time, since he tried to enter China last year. He wanted to see his father, who is old and sick, but I didn’t want him to go.”
Zhou, a leader of the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Union, was jailed for two years following the suppression of the movement. He left for the US in 1993 but was sent to a labour camp after returning to see his family in 1998. He returned to the US in 2002.
Relatives say he was seized in September as he tried to enter mainland China from Hong Kong. Released detainees had confirmed seeing him in the detention centre but officials in Shenzhen denied he was in custody, the family said.
This morning they received a written notice of arrest from police in his hometown of Suining in south-west Sichuan province. He appears to have been transferred there this week.
His brother Zhou Lin told Reuters that he did not know details of the accusation, nor when his brother could have committed fraud in China, given his long residence in the US.
Officers at the Suining public security bureau said they did not know of the case. The US embassy in Beijing had no immediate comment.
As a 21-year-old law undergraduate, Zhou helped organise the mass movement that broke out in China two decades ago. He captured world attention as he knelt on the steps of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square petitioning China’s leaders to acknowledge the student demonstrators……. (more details fromThe Guardian)
HONG KONG—One year after a massive earthquake killed thousands in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, bereaved parents say authorities are preventing them from holding memorials for children who died when their school buildings collapsed.
Parents who tried to protest the allegedly shoddy construction of school buildings in Dujiangyan township—one of the region’s worst-hit towns—said police had detained several people, as dozens more were under house arrest or held at hotels outside the area during the May 12 anniversary.
“Our husbands were detained by the Dujiangyan police when we came to the museum in Jianzhou,” a bereaved mother surnamed Li said.
“Now we can’t get through on his phone. The Dujiangyan police detained two of them. It happened when we were waiting for them to go and buy some fruit at the museum. They took them before they even came back,” Li said.
Officials now say last year’s massive Sichuan earthquake left 5,335 schoolchildren dead or missing, releasing their first official tally just days before Tuesday’s anniversary.
Poor construction
Many bereaved parents say school buildings were poorly constructed and collapsed too easily when the quake struck, while structures nearby stood firm.
They said the authorities have prevented them from filing lawsuits or staging public demonstrations of anger or mourning since the 8.0-magnitude quake—which left nearly 87,000 people dead or missing.
State media previously said 14,000 schools—half of which collapsed entirely—suffered damage in the quake, while early estimates of the numbers of students and teachers killed were put as high as 9,000.
A bereaved father surnamed Chen answered his cell phone to say he had been taken by police to a hotel in the suburbs of the city, before the line was cut off abruptly.
And a mother surnamed Wang who joined several hundred parents on a march to the Dujiangyan township government last Thursday said most of the parents of quake victims in the town were now under surveillance.
“Most are under house arrest,” she said from a location outside the province.
“We escaped by disappearing to another province beforehand. They are looking for us everywhere.”
“A lot of parents are under restrictions. We can’t get through on their phones. The government is trying to persuade some of them to go traveling elsewhere in China.”…… (more details from Radio Free Asia)
Posted by Chris Thomas, SOH Network, on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009-
New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) recently obtained a list of politically “sensitive” words monitored or censored by China’s largest Internet search engine, Baidu.com, as well as internal documents governing Baidu’s censorship operations.
Topping the list is the phrase “Chinese Communist Party.” Phrases such as “withdrawing from the Communist Party” and “disintegrating the Communist Party” are also censored. “Nine Commentaries,” “The Epoch Times,” and “Gao Zhisheng,” are high on the censor list.
On May 4, NTDTV reported 13 categories of politically sensitive words, including those related to “counterrevolutionary” activities, human rights and appeals, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Falun Gong, ethnic and race relations, military secrets, and organ harvesting.
Under the category of counterrevolutionary activities, censored phrases include “end the rule of the Communist Party,” “dictatorship,” “one-party system,” “human rights in China,” “tyranny,” “ruling government,” and “brainwashing.”
In the Falun Gong category, all words directly related to the practice are on the list. Words related to the Chinese regime’s persecution of the practice, such as “kidney harvesting from live people” are included.
There is a special category for words related to the sale of harvested organs. This category shows the Communist Party’s fear of the consequences of harvesting Falun Gong practitioners’ organs while they are still alive.
Mr. Bill Xia, a U.S.-based computer expert who invented the software Dynamic Web to break through the Chinese regime’s Internet censorship, believes that despite the regime’s effort, it has not been able to achieve its goals. Due to the large quantity of software like Dynamic Web on the Internet it is possible to circumvent the blockades.
Falun Gong practitioners living outside of China have also written software, such as the Golden Shield program, that can penetrate the regime’s Internet firewall. This allows Internet users in mainland China to break through the Communist Party’s Internet monitoring and see a free flow of information from the rest of the world.
Chinese communist authorities have suddenly released last years Sichuan earthquake death toll numbers just days before the one-year anniversary on Tuesday. The announcement also denies that shoddy or tofu construction is to blame for school buildings that collapsed, killing thousands of students and teachers inside.
Ahead of the one year anniversary of last years devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, communist officials announce that the number of students missing totals 5,335.
But Hong Kong Open Magazine executive editor Cai Yongmei doubts the figure, and she is not alone.
A Reuters news polls suggests it could be closer to 9,000. Other experts say it may actually be closer to 10,000.
[Cai Yongmei, Executive Editor, Open Magazine]:
They manipulate the statistics. When faced with disaster they reduce the figure. They have this tradition.
Ms. Cai says that the Chinese communist regime usually reports the good but not the bad.
[Cai Yongmei, Executive Editor, Open Magazine]:
If the truth was revealed, many officials would lose their jobs, so they will try to protect themselves. How do they protect themselves? They have to completely cover up the whole truth about the tofu construction.
Cai believes that the Chinese Communist Partys denial of poorly built schools will lead to public anger.
[Cai Yongmei, Executive Editor, Open Magazine]:
The Chinese communists blocked it. As the result of the blockage, social conflicts and crises have no way to be vented or resolved. The more it accumulates, the greater the explosion will be in the end.
Hu Liyun works for the International Federation of Journalists and is in charge of Hong Kong and China projects. He says that some foreigner reporters who received clearance to report were blocked from doing so by local authorities.
[Hu Liyun, International Federation of Journalists]:
The problem is some officials and unknown people have been trying to obstruct them. It is necessary to register as a procedure, but they kicked them out before they could even register.
By DAVID W. CHEN, New York Times, May 9, 2009 -
Gao Zhisheng, one of China’s most irrepressible dissidents, began the day of Jan. 9 the same way as most days since security officials had begun watching him around the clock. He and his wife, Geng He, ate a breakfast of soy milk, fried eggs and peanuts. Mr. Gao left the apartment to run some errands.
By the time he returned, his wife and two children were gone. With only the clothes they were wearing, roughly $60 in cash and, out of habit, their keys, the three embarked upon a harrowing odyssey orchestrated by human rights activists that began in the bitter cold of northern Beijing and ended, seven days and some 2,000 miles later, in the humid safety of Thailand.
“I had no time to think,” Ms. Geng, whose children are 16 and 5, said. “I didn’t have a watch. I had no concept of time. All I knew was that we had to move forward. We couldn’t go back.” She spoke during an interview late last month in New York, where she and her children settled after arriving in the United States in March.
Ms. Geng’s tale stands out not just because it involves a cinematic escape, with elements like stalled motorcycles and nonstop travel with little food or sleep. It is remarkable, human rights activists say, because it reveals how China uses family members of dissidents as leverage against them. And it shows the extreme measures a small number of political opponents will take to deny the authorities that leverage. Ms. Geng insists, though, that her husband knew nothing of her plans.
Mr. Gao said in earlier interviews that security officials used threats against his children to extract a humiliating public confession from him in 2006. So the departure of his family gave him greater leeway to challenge the leadership, though at a high cost: he has not been seen or heard from since Feb. 4, when the security forces hauled him away.
His family’s escape upended the way security officials managed the provocative Mr. Gao, a human rights lawyer who has embraced causes including the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong, displaced urban residents and the Christian underground church. He issued angry manifestos calling for the end of Communist Party rule.
Since his release from prison in 2006, Mr. Gao had been allowed to live a superficially normal life in Beijing. But he was shadowed by plainclothes guards, and he said he felt constrained by the threat of retribution against his family if he violated the terms of his parole.
Though he has not been charged with a new crime, he has vanished altogether since three months ago.
Mr. Gao’s disappearance has become a delicate diplomatic issue ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement on June 4. Laura Tischler, a State Department spokeswoman, said that American diplomats had not yet met with Ms. Geng. But she said that a senior American official discussed the case on March 31 with high-ranking Chinese officials in Beijing, and that State Department officials had raised the case, most recently on April 15, with the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
“The United States is deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of well-known human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng,” Ms. Tischler said. “We have raised our concerns about Mr. Gao’s whereabouts and well-being repeatedly, both in Washington and in Beijing.”
Congress is watching, too. With Ms. Geng in the gallery, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, saluted her courage during a Senate floor speech on April 23 and warned that Mr. Gao, a “devout Christian,” had been thrust into an “extremely grave” situation.
“There are many today that languish in dark cells, dark cells of Chinese prisons, just because they spoke out to defend the rights of others,” said Mr. Dorgan, who is the chairman of a Congressional commission responsible for monitoring China’s human rights record. “None have done so more than Mr. Gao.”…… (more detals from New York Times)
2. Large wave of resignation from the Chinese Communist Party is happening
More than 100 million Chinese have quit the CCP till Oct. 2011, people are continue quitting at a rate of 50,000 to 70,000 per day.
- The Tuidang Movement Milestone: 100 Million Chinese Hearts Changed
10.Videos: Tiananmen Square Massacre - June. 4, 1989
Thousands of students shot to death by tanks and soldiers on Tiananmen square in capital city Beijing in 1989
Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
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