China’s Foxconn faces fresh suicide fears as 14th worker dies

The Telegraph, 06 Aug 2010 -

The 22-year old woman died on Wednesday after falling from a dormitary building at its Kunshan plant in eastern Jiangsu province, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer said on Friday.

Thirteen Chinese employees have committed suicide this year at Foxconn plants and an affiliate by jumping from buildings, including 10 in the southern city of Shenzhen.

It was unclear whether the latest death was a sucide. The company said it was working with local authorities to investigate.

The suicides at Foxconn – which generates revenues of $40bn annually making everything from iPads to desktop computers and televisions – have put the spotlight on working conditions for millions of factory workers in China, the “workshop of the world”.

Protestors in May laid traditional Chinese funeral offerings at Foxconn’s headquarters in Hong Kong. Employment rights campaigers have also criticised the “military-style” regime at Foxconn’s Longhua plant in Shenzhen in particular, where 300,000 people work.

Company founder Terry Gou was earlier this year cleared by Chinese authorities of any wrongdoing in the period leading up to the suicides. He has said none of the suicides was directly work-related.

In June, Foxconn instituted two dramatic pay increases for its workers, designed, it said, attract better-qualified workers at a time when there are labour shortages across China’s manufacturing belts.

Following the latest rise, which will take full effect from October 1, the basic salary for production-line workers at Foxconn’s will have risen from 900 renminbi (£91.30) per month two weeks ago to 2,000 renminbi (£203).

The company employs more than 800,000 workers in China.

- Telegraph

Former Australian defence minister’s Chinese Woman benefactor sued by a large state-owned-enterprise

RICHARD BAKER, PHILIP DORLING AND SANGHEE LIU, The Age, Australia, August 4, 2010 -

A MAJOR Labor Party donor and benefactor of former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon is the subject of a formal complaint by a large Chinese state-owned-enterprise which alleges the businesswoman defrauded it of millions of dollars.

The Age has learned that Chinese-Australian property developer Helen Liu was named by a Beijing company in a complaint submitted to Chinese public security authorities earlier this year.

It is believed that the state-owned Beijing Heng Tong Trust and Investment Company has asked the authorities to investigate Ms Liu for allegedly embezzling $6 million through a 1990s real estate project in the port city of Qingdao that was designed to attract Australian investors.

Ms Liu has had an association with the Fitzgibbon family since the early 1990s and was last year identified by a group of Australian Defence Department officials as a potential national security threat because of her ties to some of China’s military, political and economic elite.

A major donor to New South Wales ALP, Ms Liu helped finance two of Mr Fitzgibbon’s election campaigns and also paid for him to travel to China twice in trips he belatedly disclosed to Federal Parliament.

Mr Fitzgibbon, who recently said publicly he wished to return to a ministerial portfolio if Labor wins the August 21 federal election, rented a Canberra residence from Ms Liu’s family while he served as defence minister from December 2007 until his mid-2009 resignation.

His resignation came because of conflict-of-interest issues involving his brother Mark, the head of health fund NIB.

Chinese authorities have allegedly been asked to investigate whether forged government approval documents and unregistered companies were used by Ms Liu to persuade the state-owned enterprise to invest in the project.

Representatives from Heng Tong declined to speak to The Age.

The Age reported earlier this year that Heng Tong accused Ms Liu of allegedly illegally diverting 24,680,000 Chinese yuan ($6 million) into her Australian property companies in the 1990s.

The companies, which controlled a Sydney property portfolio valued at about $60 million, have since been deregistered.

Two of the companies, Diamond Hill International and Wincopy, provided $40,000 to help finance Mr Fitzgibbon’s 1996 and 1998 federal election campaigns.

Ms Liu’s companies and her sister gave a further $105,000 to the NSW ALP between 1998 and 2007.

Mr Fitzgibbon’s position as defence minister was jeopardised in March 2009 when he repeatedly denied receiving any significant gifts or travel from Ms Liu.

However, shortly after his denials he disclosed he took trips to China in 2002 and 2005 that were funded by Ms Liu.

Mr Fitzgibbon, who denies any interest in Ms Liu’s commercial affairs, last year said through his then spokesman that both trips were for ”cultural” purposes.

His father, former Labor MP Eric Fitzgibbon, earlier this year admitted helping Ms Liu sell the Qingdao apartments that the Heng Tong company claims its money was meant for.

Ms Liu, who could not be contacted by The Age, has taken legal action against The Age to find out the source of documents obtained earlier this year which provide an insight into her commercial affairs.

Mr Fitzgibbon has taken legal action against several Fairfax Media publications, claiming reports about his friendship with Ms Liu had defamed him.

Fairfax has said it will vigorously defend the legal action.

With A.L.R. GAO

- The Age

China’s Besieged Journalists

Wall Street Journal, Aug. 3, 2010 -

Practicing journalism in China is a hazardous business. The Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual report released last December lists 24 Chinese staff writers and free-lancers known to be in prison—more than in any other country. Then there is the daily grind of censorship, harassment and even violence designed to prevent reporters from exposing official or corporate wrongdoing.

So a recent case showing that the public supports the right to report and write freely offers a glimmer of hope. Qiu Ziming, a reporter for the Economic Observer newspaper, produced a series of stories in June accusing Zhejiang Kan Specialty Materials of insider trading and other offenses. The company’s friends in the local police retaliated by putting Mr. Qiu’s name on a national wanted list.

That got Mr. Qiu’s colleagues up in arms. They spread the news on the Internet, sparking a grassroots movement to support the reporter, who went into hiding. Eventually even state-controlled China Central Television was on his side, and the Zhejiang police were forced to withdraw the warrant and apologize to Mr. Qiu.

It’s encouraging that Chinese society affirmed the journalist’s role as a watchdog and the local government backed down. But it’s also an isolated case. The central government’s repression of independent reporting is only growing fiercer. On July 23, for example, a court in Xinjiang sentenced newspaper editor Gheyret Niyaz to 15 years in prison for “endangering state security.” His crime: granting an interview to a Hong Kong-based magazine about the riots in Urumqi last year.

- Wall Street Journal

US in huge federal crackdown on alleged luxury fakes from China

AFP, Aug. 4, 2010 -

SAN FRANCISCO — US authorities announced Tuesday the biggest federal crackdown ever on West coast shopowners who allegedly sell counterfeit luxury handbags and other goods worth some 100 million dollars.

Prosecutors said they have charged operators of eight San Francisco shops with selling suspected designer fakes made in China, the US attorney for northern California and US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.

The 25-count indictment is “part of the largest federal enforcement action ever taken against West Coast retailers suspected of selling counterfeit designer apparel and accessories,” they said in a statement.

“To consumers who think designer knockoffs are a harmless way to beat the system and get a great deal, ‘buyer beware,’” said ICE Director John Morton.

“Trademark infringement and intellectual property crime not only cost this country much needed jobs and business revenues, but the illegal importation of substandard products can also pose a serious threat to consumers’ health and safety,” he said.

Authorities revealed the details of the case in an indictment unsealed Monday. The indictment was filed in federal court July 22.

It charged the defendants, mostly residents of San Francisco, with conspiracy, smuggling goods into the United States, and trafficking in counterfeit goods.

“The investigation has led to the seizure of nearly 100 million dollars worth of counterfeit merchandise [based on the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) had the products been legitimate],” a statement said.

Among the items seized were “clothing, handbags, wallets, jewelry, watches, scarves, sunglasses and shoes that were illegally imported from China,” it said.

The suspected counterfeit items purported to be luxury brands such as Dooney and Bourke, Nike, Coach and Kate Spade, Armani, Burberry, Prada and Louis Vuitton.

“Interdicting and destroying counterfeit and trademark infringing goods has long been a priority of the federal government,” US Attorney Joseph Russoniello said.

“The significant impact of trafficking in such merchandise on the American economy should be obvious.”

- AFP

China kindergarten knife attack, again: Four dead, 12 injured

DPA via Earthtimes.org, Aug. 4, 2010 -

Beijing - At least four children died and 12 others were stabbed in an attack at a kindergarten in eastern China’s Shandong province, reports said on Wednesday.

The attacker, who was armed with a knife, burst into the unnamed kindergarten in Shandong’s Zibo city Tuesday afternoon, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy quoted a local police official as saying.

The attacker later surrendered to police, Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported.

Chinese state media did not immediately report the incident, which is the latest in a series of attacks at schools and kindergartens in China this year.

At least five similar attacks have been reported, resulting in the death of dozens of children and several teachers.

Following the earlier attacks, the government ordered a review of security at schools, while state media have discussed possible underlying causes of the attacks.

“Apart from adopting forceful security measures, we also need to focus on addressing some deep-rooted causes behind these problems, including handling some social contradictions, resolving disputes and strengthening the role of grassroot mediation,” Premier Wen Jiabao told Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV in May.

- DPA via Earthtimes.org

China bridge collapse toll rises to 51 dead

AFP, Aug. 3, 2010 -

BEIJING — At least 51 people were killed and 15 were still missing after a bridge collapsed in central China because too many people crowded on it to watch the flood torrents below, state media reported Monday.

Parts of southern, central and northern China have been battered by downpours that have caused the worst flooding in a decade, leaving about 1,000 dead and hundreds more missing since the beginning of the year.

Waters have cut off roads, left villages inaccessible and knocked out communications and water supplies in the hardest-hit areas.

Workers have been battling for more than a week to retrieve bodies since the 200-metre (yard) long bridge spanning the Yihe River in Henan province collapsed on July 24, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

“Five teams of about 40 rescuers are still searching for the missing,” Zhou Hongsen, a county official, was quoted as saying.

“We also have offered cash rewards hoping more residents would join the search and rescue.”

An initial investigation found the 23-year-old bridge collapsed after fallen tree trunks became stuck under it, blocking the raging flood waters. But a witness told Xinhua the bridge was crowded with people when it collapsed…….(more details from The AFP)

Chinese Organ Harvesting Witness Faces Deportation back to China

By Matthew Robertson, Epoch Times Staff, Aug. 3, 2010 -

A former member of the Chinese security forces, with highly sensitive information on the state’s practice of organ harvesting from prisoners, is currently stuck in an immigration limbo in Switzerland and faces deportation to China.

While Swiss authorities seek to apply the European Union’s recondite and stiff laws on asylum seekers, advocates say the witness has valuable information and should be granted asylum and an audience with the United Nations.

From 1993-1998, Nijat Abudureyimu, himself a Uyghur, was stationed in the prison of Liuwandao in the Northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang. His job was to lead prisoners from their cells to their execution.

But often they weren’t normal executions. Police would shoot the prisoner in the head in such a way as not to kill them, so that organs harvested from the body would be in the best condition.

Mr. Abudureyimu’s story of his time in Chinese labor camps has not yet been released in full. Over the last week, however, he has been granting interviews to European media in an effort to secure his stay in Switzerland, and allow him to testify to the U.N. on what he witnessed in China.

“After a while, I told my boss that I wanted to return to the police but he refused because I had seen too much. I stayed five years until 1998,” he said in an interview with Le Matin. “I saw many scenes of torture … an electrical appliance on women’s genitals, deeply thrust into the vagina, the electric shocks, the scream.”

Complicating the matter is the Swiss authorities’ unbending application of the EU’s Dublin Regulation, which says that the EU country of entry bears the legal burden for assessing the asylum seeker’s claim. In Mr. Abudureyimu’s case, that country is Italy. But with hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants, and the suspected presence of Chinese operatives waiting for him, he has refused to go back.

The Swiss government’s obligation to allow him to remain expired on July 27, and given his refusal to return voluntarily, they have reached a standoff.

Advocates say the rigid application of the Dublin Regulation on the case is odd since a large number of Chinese refugee applications are otherwise processed by the Swiss government.

Fleeing from China

Mr. Abudureyimu’s odyssey began in China. After quitting his job as an executioner’s assistant in Xinjiang, he retreated into a world of vodka and nightmares. In late 2006, while drunk, he corrected a doctor on the price of a kidney. “I said too much. Shortly after, a friend of the police told me I was finished, I had to leave the country immediately,” he told Swiss daily newspaper Le Matin.

He spent three months with his brother in Dubai in 2007. Persistent questioning from a Chinese police officer suggested his cover had been blown, so he decided to move to Norway. Passing through Rome for a night in September 2008, he received a visitor visa on the way to Oslo.

His application for refugee status was rejected in Norway and he was threatened by a Chinese man at a Norwegian camp for asylum seekers. Around the same time he received news that his father in Xinjiang had died under mysterious circumstances.

Deported from Norway back to Italy, he submitted another application for asylum. While it was being processed he spent some months in Italian camps for asylum seekers; in Sicily he was photographed by a Chinese man on his cell phone, and again feeling endangered decided to make another break for it.

The Federal Office for Migration in Switzerland is aware of Mr. Abudureyimu’s circumstances, but does not evince much concern for his welfare.

Alard du Bois-Reymond, director of the office, defended the official stance to Swiss media. “Experience shows that Italy doesn’t answer if Switzerland asks for taking back a refugee. If he does not get asylum in Switzerland, he may be sent back to China.”

This is troubling to researchers and human rights advocates, who are puzzled by the Swiss state’s unwillingness to extend themselves in Mr. Abuduremiyu’s case.

Valuable Witness

Ethan Gutmann, an author and researcher who has been following the story of organ harvesting in China for several years, regards Mr. Abuduremiyu as an important witness.

Mr. Gutmann and his research partner Jaya Gibson (who works for The Epoch Times) first got Mr. Abuduremiyu to go on the record about what he had done and seen. Their efforts on his behalf led to a story in Le Temps that has set off a flurry of press attention in Switzerland.

“It is essential that when someone who worked on the inside of special Chinese police forces comes in out of the cold and gives an honest appraisal of what they are involved in that they are rewarded,” Mr. Gutmann said to The Epoch Times. “There are many, many more witnesses out there who want to speak, but they see what is happening to someone like Nijat, and they stay silent. The Swiss government should have Nijat testify before a government organization.”

Mr. Gutmann’s earlier “emotionally raw and extensive” interviews with Mr. Abuduremiyu will be released once an appropriate media partner is found.

“This is the tip of a very large iceberg. In my opinion Uyghurs were used as a testing ground for organ harvesting in the same way they were used as a testing ground for nuclear weapons in the 1960s. The flowering of the organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience did not occur in my opinion until the persecution of Falun Gong, in the years 2001 to the present. What this is suggesting is that in Xinjiang no controls were resident—the inhibitions were very low,” Mr. Gutmann said.

Testimony obtained from Uyghurs, including from Mr. Abuduremiyu, confirms earlier allegations from Falun Gong refugees of a massive prison camp in Xinjiang Province that holds hard-core criminals, and Uyghur and Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. “This could be the locus of major organ harvesting activity,” he said.

In Washington, the Uyghur Human Rights Project is also paying attention. “We kindly request the Swiss authorities to grant Nijat asylum as he will face severe persecution including execution if he is returned to China for any reason,” the group’s director, Alim Seytoff, wrote in an e-mail to The Epoch Times.

“We believe his statement that the Chinese authorities harvested organs from executed Uyghur prisoners is credible. … It is our hope that the international community, especially the U.N., could formally investigate China’s organ harvesting. … We hope Geneva will play a proactive role” he wrote.

Yves Brutsch, spokesman for asylum seekers at the Protestant Social Centre in Geneva, echoed many of the same sentiments. “He has important things to inform the international community; this is a special case.”

In an interview with the German language media “20 Minuten,” Mr. Brutsch noted that the Dublin Regulation allows Switzerland to treat the request themselves. “It is a question of political will.”

- The Epochtimes

Chinese Users Report Google’s “question and answer” Page Blocked

By OWEN FLETCHER, The Wall Sreet Journal, Aug. 2, 2010 -

BEIJING— A new Google Inc. question-and-answer page for Chinese users was inaccessible in China on Monday less than two weeks after Google announced the service.

Users in China reported problems viewing the site, www.google.com.hk/wenda, but a Google spokeswoman said the company was having no technical problems.

“Google.com.hk has generally been available to users since we moved our search services there,” she said.

She declined to comment on whether Chinese authorities had blocked the question-and-answer service.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which oversees the Internet industry, didn’t immediately reply to a fax requesting comment.

The access issues highlight concerns that Google could lose Chinese users and advertisers if some of its services are seen as not reliable. Uncertainty has clouded Google’s future in China since the company in March moved its China search service to Hong Kong over concerns about Chinese government censorship requirements.

Google launched the new service, labeled “beta,” on its Hong Kong site after saying last month it would end technical support for a similar service from mainland Chinese Internet company Tianya. Google at the time emphasized its intent to keep serving Chinese users…….(More details from The Wall Sreet Journal)

Warren Buffett’s likely successor: Chinese Tiananmen protestor, hedge fund manager

By Frank Ahrens, The Washington Post, USA|  July 30, 2010 -

Who will succeed billionaire super-investor Warren Buffett when the 79-year-old Oracle of Omaha finally retires as chairman of his Berkshire Hathaway holding company?

Perhaps no question in global finance has preoccupied investors like this one in recent years.

The answer, at least according to Friday’s Wall Street Journal, appears to be a 44-year-old Chinese hedge fund manager who participated in the deadly Tiananmen Square protests 20 years ago named Li Lu.

Li was taken from his parents in China when they were sent through Mao’s brutal Cultural Revolution re-education process, which set China back decades and was responsible for more than 1 million deaths.

He became a student activist and took part in the Tianamen Square resistance, in which as many as 7,000 Chinese were killed by their own government, according to NATO intelligence.

Afterward, Li left for France and later came to the United States, where he was hailed as a human rights hero. He gained admission to Columbia University, despite speaking little English, and earned degrees in economics, law and business.

He saw Buffett speak at Columbia in 1993 and became inspired to start trading stocks, which led to a Wall Street job. By 1997, he had set up his first hedge fund.

Li got to know Buffett via one of his human-rights contacts — Jane Olsen, wife of a Berkshire director. In 2003, Li met Charlie Munger, Buffett’s right hand man and, according to the Journal, “made an immediate impression.” Li began investing for Munger and, in 2002, discovered BYD, a Chinese maker of lithium batteries, which power everything from iPhones to the new Volt electric car.

Li, Buffett and Berkshire bought into BYD, and Berkshire’s $230 million investment is now worth $1.5 billion.

That said, the Journal points out, BYD is Li’s one big home run, which sort of makes him the Alan Dershowitz/Bucky Dent of investing. The rest of Li’s ideas have been singles and doubles.

But Li thinks like Buffett: Buy stocks in companies you believe in and understand, and hold onto them. Berkshire Hathaway/Buffett own or own stakes in Geico, Coca-Cola, Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, Dairy Queen, Mars candy, and others.

Picking a Chinese investor makes perfect sense for Buffett, who knows where the future is and who is, for all his pro-America proselytizing, intensely pragmatic. Even though Li does not have unlimited travel in communist China, he knows China; Buffett knows China is key to the world’s economic future; and the Chinese government may change.

Disclosure: Buffett is a director of The Washington Post Co.

- The Washington Post