Sex and corruption in China’s Dream City

By Kent Ewing, Asia Times Online, June 2, 2009 -

HONG KONG – Until recently, Deng Yujiao seemed an unlikely hero. The 21-year-old pedicurist worked in obscurity at the Xiongfeng Hotel in central Hubei province’s Badong county. The hotel’s Dream City leisure center is probably a euphemism for a brothel, but she was known only as a toenail cutter there until May 10.

On that night, she says she was assaulted by two government officials, one of whom slapped her repeatedly with wads of cash while insisting that she have sex with him. When the two men pushed her onto a sofa a second time, she recalls, she reached into her bag for a knife, an instrument she used in her trade, and began slashing away.

One of the officials, Deng Guida, the 44-year-old head of business promotion for the town of Yesanguan and the apparent would-be sex client, died from his wounds; his unnamed colleague, also 44, survived.

While there was little public sympathy for the dead man or his injured cohort, suddenly a previously unknown pedicurist working in a seedy hotel was being hailed by Chinese netizens as a champion of women’s rights and hero of the underclass. Women’s groups, including the semi-governmental All-China Women’s Federation, took up her cause, and even state media picked up her story, which has become a national sensation.

Until last week, that is, when the country’s censor tsar, jittery about public ire manifested in any form as the 20th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown approaches, decided to pull the plug.

“Hubei’s case concerning Deng Yujiao,” a gag order from the Central Publicity Department stated, “has been under judicial investigation in accordance with the law, and news organizations should halt following up the case temporarily and call back journalists working in Hubei immediately.”

Since the department issued this edict, two journalists – Kong Pu of the Beijing Times and Wei Yi of the Nangfang People Weekly – have reportedly been beaten and detained as they attempted to interview Deng Yujiao’s grandmother, and Yesanguan has been sealed off by local authorities……. ( More details from Asia Times Online)

Boeing engineer provided shuttle secrets to China, prosecution says

By RACHANEE SRISAVASDI, The Orange County Register, USA, Tuesday, June 2, 2009 -

SANTA ANA- A former Boeing engineer betrayed the United States by providing confidential information about the Space Shuttle program to the People’s Republic of China, a federal prosecutor said in opening statements Tuesday.

“Information, security and betrayal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples said in the trial of Dongfan “Greg” Chung. “These are the three pillars of the government’s case.”

The defense attorney for Chung,  a 73-year-old grandfather who resides in Orange � countered that his client refused Chinese officials’ overtures to reveal classified information on military and space technology secrets.

“So much of this evidence is (about) what my client didn’t do,” Thomas Bienert Jr. said. “It makes him a non-spy. People were trying to get him to give him things.”

Chung was arrested in February 2008, after an unsealed indictment accused Chung of giving secrets to China since the late 1970s. He is charged with 10 counts, including six of economic espionage, as well as acting as an agent for the People’s Republic of China.

The case comes two years after the conviction of another former Orange County engineer, Chi Mak, on charges of exporting sensitive defense technology to China.

Mak, who was sentenced to 24 years in prison, knew Chung.

In fact, federal agents interviewed Chung during the Mak investigation. During a September 2006 interview, Chung said he met Mak around 1980 at a meeting in Los Angeles organized by a Chinese organization, FBI Agent Kevin Moberly said during his testimony Tuesday.

“He told me he suspected Chi Mak was providing sensitive information to China,” said Moberly, the trial’s second witness.

Agents also found information in Mak’s home about Chung, prosecutors said.

During a search of Mak’s home in June 2006, a letter was found from a senior aviation official in China. That missive, dated May 2, 1987, was addressed to Chung and asked him to provide information on airplanes and the space shuttle, according to prosecutors.

Chung, who has been out on bond since his arrest, listened intently to the first day of testimony. His wife sat in the courtroom gallery’s back row and took notes. The couple’s two sons did not attend the proceedings.

Chung, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was born in China in 1936 and moved to Taiwan in 1948, according to the government’s trial brief. He came to the United States in 1962, and got a master’s degree at the University of Minnesota, and was later hired by Boeing, prosecutors said………

- The Orange County Register

Taiwan urged to export democracy to China

REMEMBERING TIANANMEN:  A conference in Taipei yesterday heard calls for Taiwan’s government to initiate discussions on human rights issues during cross-strait talks

By Loa Iok-sin， STAFF REPORTER，The Taipei Times，Taiwan, Monday, Jun 01, 2009-

It’s about time for Taiwan to become an “exporter of democracy,” speakers at a conference on the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre said in Taipei yesterday, urging the government to discuss human rights issues during cross-strait negotiations.

“China has become an ‘exporter of authoritarianism — not because of any ideological reasons, but for its own national interests,” said Yiong Cong-ziin (楊長鎮), director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of Social Movement.

“China has become strikingly similar to what it once criticized as ‘American imperialists,’” Yiong said.

He said that because of its need for oil and other raw materials, as well as for the access to the Indian Ocean, “China is providing support and weapons to authoritarian rulers in Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe.”

CRACKDOWNS

“As the Chinese government cracks down on Tibetan demonstrators in Lhasa, arrests Chinese human rights activists and even allows live organ harvest of Falun Gong practitioners, we cannot pretend that all these do not happen and we only focus on economic exchanges,” Yiong said.

“If we do, we would become a member of China’s ‘axis of evil,’” he said.

Taiwan should seek to become an “exporter of democracy” and bring up human rights issues — such as urging Beijing to give justice to victims of the Tiananmen Massacre — during cross-strait talks, he told the conference.

“Taiwan received much help from the international community — especially from international human rights groups—during our struggle for democracy,” former DDP legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) said.

Several Chinese democracy activists also attended the conference, which was organized by a Chinese democracy movement support group.

JUSTICE DELAYED

“We’re talking about commemorating the Tiananmen Massacre here, but it’s not just about remembering a historic event, because Tiananmen Square is not yet history,” Chinese democracy activist Xue Wei (薛偉) said.

“Justice is yet to be rendered even judged by the lowest standards, many Tiananmen Square demonstrators are still in jail or in exile,” Xue said.

“Remembering Tiananmen Square itself is a resistance to the Chinese Communist Party regime,” he said.

All the speakers expressed their concerns that less people seem to care about democracy in China today as the country evolves into a strong economic power.

“I’ve heard some people attributing China’s economic development to the iron-handed crackdown of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square,” former New Party legislator Yao Li-ming (姚立明) said. “That’s highly inappropriate.”

Yao said he was sorry that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) seems to have become more ambivalent about the the massacre since he became president.

“I understand that he may have other considerations as a president who represents the entire Republic of China,” Yao said.

“But I do expect him to make a gesture on June 4,” Yao said.

- The Taipei Times