ChinaCast Education Yanked from NASDAQ

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 12:50 AM PDT

This is one of those US-listed Chinese firms using a VIE structure that experienced serious internal problems and was struggling with US statutory filing deadlines. I doubted that management could actually fix this sucker up to keep it afloat (in terms of its listing status), and yeah, it got the big hook.

Share of scandal-hit China Cast Education Corp. were removed from trading on the NASDAQ on Monday as the company was booted of the bourse, causing its share price to plunge 80.66 percent and to $0.82 per share in its first trading day on the OTC market.

Ouch. But I guess that's what happens when your dirty corporate laundry is aired out for the public and regulators to see. As to the internal fighting, some ex-execs, like erstwhile CEO Ron Chan, had allegedly waltzed off with company chops, business licenses, records, etc. after a fight for control of the company. Hey, if you get ousted from the position of CEO, might as well try to take the business with you when you vacate the premises, right? Details on all this have been rather vague, even in ChinaCast's supplementary filings (i.e. 8-Ks). When confronted with the allegations, I believe Chan said something to the effect of "Wuh?" (I think that's an official denial, more or less.)

Apparently they are now pursuing these guys in the Hong Kong courts:

It is also reported that this post-secondary education and e-learning services provider filed an application with the High Court of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on June 19, alleging that the former chairman, CEO, CFO and president had committed tortuous [sic] wrongs against the company and violated their fiduciary duties.

As part of the application, the company also sought an injunctive order to freeze the assets of these executives that are located in Hong Kong, up to a value of 800 million yuan.

I'm going to assume that although this case is complex and multifaceted, the journalist meant to use the word "tortious," as in tortious interference, as opposed to "tortuous." Giggle giggle. To be fair, though, the facts of the case are rather complicated.

Not a bad idea to go after these guys in Hong Kong, assuming that they have assets there. If ChinaCast wins on tortious interference, they might be able to get money damages. However, the total amount of funds or other assets that might be attached in Hong Kong may not be enough to make ChinaCast whole. Well, let's face it, there's absolutely no way in hell that they could be made whole at this point. The reputation of the company is in the shitter, it's been freakin' delisted. Hard to come back from that, and it certainly won't happen as the result of a victorious tort case.

Hong Kong is still probably the best option for recouping at least some of the losses, if not getting back the stolen property (good luck with that). Consider the alternative: the mainland. All the action took place in China and involved property belonging to either the VIE(s), which are domestic companies, and/or one or more wholly foreign-owned enterprises (WFOEs). A Hong Kong judgment isn't much use when it comes to asserting legal control over a foreign-invested enterprise, and when it comes to the VIE, the equity of which is held by a Chinese entity or individual(s), ChinaCast is shit out of luck.

Nasty ugly stuff. Just in case you needed a reminder why VIEs are dangerous, aside from the question of their legality in China.

This story is nowhere near being over. In addition to the above fun and games, ChinaCast has got a big fat target on it, and American plaintiffs' firms have already rolled in the siege engines:

A lawsuit against ChinaCast Education has also been filed by Bernstein Liebhard LLP. Late last month, Bernstein Liebhard said that a securities class action lawsuit has been commenced in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of investors who bought shares of CAST between February 14, 2011 and April 2, 2012.

Bernstein Libehard has also alleged in its lawsuit that ChinaCast violated federal securities laws and its officers and directors issued false and misleading information about CAST's true financial and business condition.

ChinaCast also faces similar lawsuits from Pomerantz Law Firm, Gainey & McKenna, Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman LLC, and Abraham, Fruchter & Twersky LLP.

¡Ay, caramba! If I had that many Jewish plaintiffs' lawyers after me, I'd take out extra insurance and fake my own death.

As Western Media Contract, China Daily Expands

Posted: 25 Jun 2012 11:59 PM PDT

The Globe and Mail's Mark MacKinnon reflects on Jeremy Webb's "terrifying" observation that "China Daily is the only English-language paper available at my hotel in Milan":

Fourteen words that capture the seismic shift underway in the global media scene, one with the potential to change mainstream thinking – and challenge the value system – of the world we live in. As Western newspapers and broadcasters close bureaus, cut staff and erect paywalls, the emerging media companies owned by the Communist Party of China, the Emir of Qatar and Vladimir Putin's Kremlin continue to expand their influence and reach.
[…] There are those who argue this is all fair play, that the Western media played a cheerleading role in the Arab Spring (and before that, the U.S. invasion of Iraq). After all, the China Daily is only giving a different take on world events, something it's clearly entitled to do. The danger is that it and other state mouthpieces are in ascendance at precisely the time the Western media, with its traditions of independence and objectivity, is in deepening crisis.
Even during the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war – the greatest recent failure of the Western media in its role as a check on power – there was always an attempt to be objective. Dissenting views were printed and broadcast, even if they were arguably marginalized. It's a rare day when you can say the same about the pages of the China Daily, or the newscasts on RT [Russia Today] News.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Arab Spring, China Daily, iraq, media, news media, western media
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Photo: When I grow up… by Land of no cheese

Posted: 25 Jun 2012 11:15 PM PDT

When I grow up...

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Forced Abortion Victim and Family Branded Traitors

Posted: 25 Jun 2012 09:33 PM PDT

The recent controversy over forced abortions, which grew after officials in Shaanxi province forced a woman to abort her 7-month old fetus and graphic photos surfaced online two weeks ago, has reportedly grown uglier. The South China Morning Post reports today that the woman's husband went missing Sunday evening after local officials and other residents of Zhenping county had spent days harassing the family:

Deng Jiyuan, the 29-year-old father of the aborted fetus, had been constantly followed by local officials and thugs, his family said. A large banner had been put up in their town calling them traitors and demanding they leave. Deng's family at first thought he had fled but are now worried that might not be the case as they were unable to contact him yesterday, his sister, Deng Jicai, told the South China Morning Post.
She said the harassment started when her brother said he planned to go to Beijing for a television and online video interview about the abortion. He was then watched, followed, stopped and even beaten during several attempts to leave for the capital.
Deng Jicai said the family had been followed everywhere for more than a week, including to the hospital where her brother's wife, Feng Jianmei, is staying. She said four or five men even followed her brother when he went to the toilet. "They followed us and said they would take us by car wherever we want to go," she said. "We feel like prisoners."
The harassment worsened after the family gave an interview to the German weekly magazine Stern on Friday. On Sunday, more than 40 men and women arrived at the hospital holding two banners reading "Beat the traitors soundly and expel them from Zengjia township".

To recap, Feng Jianmei, seven months pregnant with her second child, was arrested on June 2, brought to the hospital and given an injection to induce labor after she failed to pay a 40,000 yuan (US$6,275) fine. She miscarried on June 4. Local authorities claim they acted within their rights to enforce China's family planning policy, often called the "one-child policy." But while the deputy mayor reportedly apologized to the family and pledged to punish the local officials responsible for the incident, comments and images on the web indicate a different response. The above photo made the rounds on both the Chinese and English-language blogs, including ChinaSmack, which translated the following microblog post detailing the online smear campaign also allegedly underway against the victim and her family:

On the 24th, @假装在纽约 once again posted a microblog message: Looked at the Zhenping discussion forum on Baidu, the local government has already organized a large amount of "water army" [individuals or companies that can be paid to post comments on the internet to help shape public opinion], its filled with abuse and rumors against the Deng family——that doctors exposed documents showing it was the Deng family who agreed to abort the baby; that Sister Jicai [a family member of Feng Jianmei] who is depending on selling out her country will soon enter the Japanese AV [adult video] industry as a "dark horse"; that the Deng family agreed to Japanese media interviews, going over to the Japanese, enemies of the country, no different from Chinese traitors; that no one in Zhenping county's history has ever enjoyed better post-birth care than Feng Jianmei… The Shaanxi Forced Abortion case that has caused a sensation is once again creating waves on microblogs.

The Ministry of Tofu also translated the following Weibo post from Deng Jicai, the victim's sister:

"I feel like crying but have no tears. Where is justice? Zengjia Township, where I was born and brought up, how can I still love you?I just don't understand in what way I have committed treason! I don't know what you mean by calling me a 'traitor.' My lord, in what way I have sold the People's Republic of China? I didn't beg you for pity for my miserable sister-in-law. I didn't ask you for even the slightest bit of sympathy. Just get lost! Let us go home!!!"

At Tea Leaf Nation, David Wertime reflects on the incident and the netizen sentiment that has erupted in response:

You read that correctly. A local government is alleged to have staged a protest against its own citizen–only, that is, after robbing the citizen of a child just a month and a half away from entering the world.
If @作家草军书's assertion (retweeted from an earlier but less widely-circulated tweet by @假装在纽约) is true, it certainly proves the local government in Zhenping is truculent, not to mention tone-deaf. Also noteworthy is the scope of netizen reaction. Not only has this tweet been retweeted nearly 50,000 times and garnered over 21,000 comments, it has netizens commenting on government rot at the highest levels.

Despite the ugly scenes from Zhenping county, and perhaps in response to it, Bloomberg reports Tuesday that the Chinese Communist Party is tolerating the debate on the one-child policy. The state-run Global Times published an editorial on Monday asserting that China's family planning policy needs reform:

Policymakers do need to reflect upon and readjust the policy. Over recent decades, the Chinese population has witnessed changes in its structure again. One of the most prominent changes is the growing aging population. It is necessary to prevent a horror scenario as the one-child generation is no longer able to support that of their parents as they grow older.
The government is already aware of this, and has loosened the one-child policy under specific conditions. For instance, if both parents are only children, they can have two children. Families with extraordinary pressure to take care of the elderly can also be exempt from the one-child limitation.
This loosening tendency should continue. Even in rural areas today, people have far different mentalities about giving birth. Younger Chinese couples understand that they should provide a good education and healthy environment for their children, and many have already dropped the idea of giving birth only to have a son.
After all, the essence of the family planning policy is to adjust the timing and scale of population trends, rather than rigidly limit the number of children.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: abortion, forced abortion, microblog, netizens, one-child policy, online public opinion, Shaanxi, social reform, Zhenping County
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chinese Indigenous Fracking. Tech Licensors Beware.

Posted: 25 Jun 2012 07:47 PM PDT

A senior Chinese official on Monday called for the country to speed up mass production of shale gas with its own technologies to ensure adequate energy supply. Efforts must be made to achieve early breakthroughs in the appraisal, exploration and development of shale gas resources, as well as to come up with measures to ensure environmental safety, Liu Tienan, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a meeting.

Liu, also head of the National Energy Administration, underlined the necessity to manufacture key mining equipment with indigenous Chinese technology. Liu stressed that the shale gas industry should be open to all types of investors. The departments involved should offer tax and fiscal incentives to encourage development. (Xinhua)

Okay, let's see if I've got this right. China wants to develop this area and do it with local technology. At the same time, it will encourage investment from "all types."

Conclusion: if you're a foreign company in this sector contemplating an inward technology license into China, I would get all my IP buttoned up as tight as possible, ensure that my contracts are ironclad, get as much as possible upfront/in the first couple of years, and then look in the mirror, take a deep breath, and pray that I don't get screwed over.

Or perhaps I'm being too cynical?

This Weibo Is Not Appropriate for the Public

Posted: 25 Jun 2012 02:17 PM PDT

Posing as China's augur of doom, Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, one Weibo user went too far for Sina's powers that be. Zhang is a talking head who is famous for predicting happy outcomes for Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi. This netizen had him fortune-telling closer to home:

MjrGenZhangZhaozhong: Not long after I wrote "The Chinese Communist Party will definitely not collapse," my words were reposted over 2000 times. The comments were largely quite harmonious, expressing pleasure and approval. I think this reflects the popular will. Yet, inexplicably, my post was deleted. Sina, what is your reasoning? @SinaPartyBranch
张绍忠少将：我发了一条"中国共产党绝不会垮"短时间内被网友疯狂转发两千多次，并且评论内容大多很和谐，以愉悦和赞成为主，我认为，这是反应了真实的民意的，但是却莫名被新浪删帖，请问新浪的觉悟性和立场何在？@新浪党支部
Message from systemadmin: I'm sorry, but a post you published at 00:33:43 on June 11, 2012 beginning "I wrote 'The Chinese Communist Party will definitely not…" has been encrypted. This Weibo post is not appropriate for the public. If you need help, please contact customer service (http://t.cn/z0D6ZaQ).
系统管理员通知：抱歉，您在2012-06-11 00:33:43发表的微博"我发了条"中国共产党绝不会…"已被管理员加密。此微博不适宜对外公开。如需帮助，请联系客服（链接：http://t.cn/z0D6ZaQ）

The imposter's account is also under lock and key. A search for the username MjrGenZhangZhaozhong retrieves this message:

According to the current laws and regulations, results for the previous search cannot be displayed.
根据相关法律法规和政策，当前页搜索结果未予显示

General Zhang does not appear to have a Weibo account.

Via SneezeBloid.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: netizens' voices, sina, sina weibo, weibo, Zhang Zhaozhong
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

That Year, These Years: Stories of Tiananmen

Posted: 25 Jun 2012 09:23 AM PDT

By Li Xuewen
Translated by Little Bluegill

Original text here.

That Year, I was twelve years old and in the fifth grade. The happiest part of my day: I would come home from school, turn on our battered black-and-white TV and listen to my older brother, who was a student at the local teacher's college, passionately detail the day's happenings in Beijing. Scenes of waving flags, young faces and screeching ambulances flashed across the screen, brimming with energy and a feeling of meaning and weight.
That Year, the summer was especially hot.
After school, my friends and I walked through the pockmarked roads of our village. We no longer goofed around like before. By that time, a few of us buddies had started to talk about the big affairs of the country. "Let's write a letter to Zhao Ziyang," I suggested. My friends replied, "You write it. Your essays are very well written." But I had no idea what I should write. I just had this vague notion that we should do something.
My father came home from our county seat. He said that someone had tried to hand him a flyer as he was riding his bike down the street. He didn't take it. It was not long before he had peddled away.
Father was the principal of the village elementary school. In the past, he had never been admitted to the Party because of his poor family background. He cried loudly about this in the past. He was afraid.
Later, the youthful energy on TV became a bloody scream.
July was torrid. My older brother, who had graduated by then, hadn't come home. Father became worried and went to the school to look for him.
As Father stepped off the bus, the head of my brother's department was there waiting for him. The department head's first words when they met were, "Your son was sent to be re-educated." When he heard this, Father collapsed on the ground, foaming at the mouth.
Holding my father in his arms, the department said over and over, "It's okay. It's okay."
When Father came home, he told the family that my brother was a student leader and had taken students to protest in the streets. Five students from his college were sent to be re-educated, and my brother was one of them. He would probably not receive his diploma and wouldn't get a work assignment.
I had a vague sense of pride for my brother, but the despair in Father's voice troubled me.
A month later, my brother came home. He wasn't the cheerful person he once was. Rather, he was silent. Everyday he would wander around the village fields, brooding with a furrowed brow. No one knew what he was thinking about.
Father forced my brother to go to the County Board of Education every day to inquire about work assignments. My brother was the first person from our village to attend college, and Father had endured many hardships. Father wanted my brother to leave the village and get a job.
My brother often quarreled with Father. Later on, my brother was finally assigned a job and went to town to be a middle school teacher. Eventually he tested into graduate school, got his doctorate and became an assistant professor at a prestigious university.
Some time later, as my brother and I were reminiscing about the past, he told me that during the protests, they were passing a military district. Many of the students wanted to rush in, but as student leader my brother did everything in his power to stop them.
Perhaps it is because of this that he was eventually assigned a job.
By chance, I once ran into the head of my brother's department. He told me, "Your father is a good person. Your brother and the others are hot-blooded youth."
That summer, something took root in the heart of a twelve-year-old boy.
The memories of that year influenced the rest of my life.
One day in 1995 when I was at university, I ran into an old classmate and started talking about Tiananmen. He mentioned he had a whole batch of photos from that time, all taken by his brother. I was excited and asked him to bring them for me to see. I saw the Goddess of Democracy standing gloriously aloft the square, and a sea of people wearing white bandanas. "These pictures are treasures. You must take good care of them," I implored my classmate. He didn't seem to feel the same way. "If you like them, take them." I hurriedly stored them away, as if I had discovered rare jewels.
After graduation, I was assigned to be an elementary school teacher back home. Once, as my colleagues and I were chatting about the events of That Year, a female colleague noticed how impassioned I was on the subject. She snorted, "You're so excited. You know, in '89 I was a senior in high school. None of us could take the college entrance exams because of the student protests. I went back home to work on the farm. Now I'm just a private tutor."
I was speechless. It was only then I realized the events of that year had altered her entire life.
It was also at that time I began spending entire nights listening to the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. I heard many more Tiananmen stories. I also began reading books like He Qinglian's The Trap of Modernization and the Liu Junning's edited volume Public Forum. I became a liberal.
In 1998 my younger brother opened a bookstore. He sold pirated books from Hong Kong and Taiwan that he bought at a market in Wuhan, including titles like The Real June Fourth, Tiananmen and the memoirs of people like Wang Dan and Feng Congde. Those books sold like crazy. Most of the people buying them were retired workers from state-owned enterprises. They never haggled. My younger brother was quite brazen about it too, strutting about as he put those books on the shelves. Eventually, a teacher reported our store in a letter to the Hubei Daily, saying we were selling vast numbers of reactionary books.
People from the cultural center stormed in holding copies of the Hubei Daily and confiscated all of these books.
Since we couldn't sell them in the open, we started selling them discreetly. In the winter, my younger brother and I hid copies of the illegal books in our thick cotton coats. Whenever an old worker would come asking about them, we would slide the books out of our coats make a sales pitch. We sold many books this way, and my younger brother was very pleased with the money he was earning.
It wasn't long before my brother came back from a trip to Wuhan looking very dejected. The book market had been shut down for selling pornography. We had no way to bring in new copies.
Our store never sold those books again.
Around the dinner table one day, we were discussing June Fourth when my brother-in-law, who worked as a local government official, said, "You read those reactionary books every day, crying out for justice, but do you ever think about what it would be like if the crackdown never happened? What about this decade of economic growth and the life our family enjoys today? Stability trumps all!"
I left the table, furious.
On June 4, 1999, I fasted and wrote an essay titled "Thoughts on the Tenth Anniversary of June Fourth." This marked my passage into spiritual maturity.
In 2000 I moved to Hangzhou. Living in a dormitory at Zhejiang University, I took the graduate school exams. On the school web forum, students were downloading a documentary titled Tiananmen, which had gone viral.
In Hangzhou I met Fu Guoyong. In his simple apartment, I listened to him recall his story. That Year, he joined the student movement. He gave a public speech on Tiananmen Square. He met his wife. Then he was arrested, put on a train, shackled from hand to foot, thrown in jail. His mother went gray overnight. His wife, who was a top student at Beijing Normal University, never gained recognition at school because of her anti-revolutionary family. He showed me pictures of his wife and child visiting him in jail, the three of them with pure, resplendent smiles on their faces.
It was the most beautiful photo I had ever seen.
One day in 2002, a friend arranged for me to visit the student leader Wang Youcai. Wang was sent to jail for organizing the Democratic Party of China. His wife, Hu Jiangxia, was at home. Making wide detours to avoid being followed, my friend and I wound our way to Wang Youcai's house in Hangzhou's Emerald Garden neighborhood. At last we met Hu Jiangxia and had a lively conversation. Not long afterwards, I heard Wang and Hu filed for divorce. Some time after that, Wang was sent to the United States through negotiations between the Chinese and American governments. Eventually, Hu Jiangxia also made her way to the U.S.. I heard that they remarried.
In Hangzhou, there was a boss of a large company who asked to borrow my copy of Wang Dan's prison memoirs. He kept it for a long time. Only later did I realize that in That Year he had been the chairmen of Zhejiang University's autonomous student council. The summer of That Year, one of his toes was broken off. He changed course and went on to become a successful businessman.
In 2003 my friend and I began hosting an academic salon at Sanlian Bookstore in Hangzhou. According to Fu Guoyong, this was the first time since the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement that an open, grassroots activity was publically hosted in Hangzhou. We invited Fu Guoyong to give a lecture. That was the first time he spoke at a public gathering since leaving prison.
In 2005, I started graduate school in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. During class one day, the teacher suddenly began speaking to us dozen or so students about June Fourth. He said some of the events of That Year were perfectly pure, others extremely foul. Our teacher was a graduate student in Beijing at the time of the crackdown. He personally experienced all that happened that summer. I was shocked to hear this. He wasn't merely a professor. He was the principal of the school—a bona fide official. This was the first time I heard someone from inside the system speak openly about June Fourth in a classroom.
After class, I excitedly shared my own June Fourth story with several classmates. A few female students born in the 80s listened to me wide-eyed, as if they were listening to fantastical stories from some strange, far-off land. "Is it true, what he's saying?" they asked the class monitor, who had been standing nearby listening. He nodded his head. "It's true. It's all true. I was there at Tiananmen at the time. I even slept there a few nights." Our class monitor was born in 1968. He had taken part in June Fourth.
Still, those young classmates couldn't believe it. "How come we never knew anything about this before?" they asked with a sigh.
My roommate Old Yang was a graduate student in the Fine Arts Department. He was born in the 70s, a party member and a university lecturer. One night, as we lay awake talking, he told me about a student from his village who went to Tsinghua University. During June Fourth he disappeared. Twenty years had passed, and no one knew anything about what had happened to him. If he was alive, no one had seen his face; if he was dead, no one had viewed the body. He was the only student from that village to ever attend a prestigious university. "I hate the Communist Party," Old Yang spat.
That Year, a professor from my department supported the student protesters in Yunnan. He shared with me what happened when he lead the students. They scaled the university walls and took to the streets, shouting protest slogans. After the June Fourth Massacre, the professor organized Yunnan Province's first protest march. As autumn came, his actions caught up with him. He was suspended from teaching and put under investigation. With documents piled before him, his investigators demanded he admit his crimes. His students protected him, saying they marched of their own volition, without any encouragement from their teacher. He kept his job, but he began to fall in love with one female student after another. He divorced several times, becoming dissolute. Although he should have been made department head long ago, he was never promoted. Once, at a banquet, he berated the Party in front of all the university leaders. "The Chinese Communist Party should have collapsed back in 1989! They should have died out a long time ago, damn it!"
The room fell silent.
The other professors say he turned into a different person after June Fourth, cursing the Communist Party and womanizing his students.
My graduate adviser was an old professor and a member of the Democratic Party. After June Fourth, the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee organized a forum with democracy advocates. "I've never understood how June Fourth was handled," he said in a speech there. "Why did the government have to do what it did?" Twenty years on, he still couldn't make sense of it.
In 2009, I graduated and stuck around campus to take the university's employment test. I received the top score. The Yunnan Security Agency opened a political investigation on me because I had previously published a few articles on foreign websites. That was the first time I ever dealt with security officials, and it filled me with dread.
A deputy director from the security agency asked me, "What are your thoughts on June Fourth?" I paused, then said, "June Fourth doesn't concern my generation. It's very complicated." He stared at me for a long time, then retorted, "You mean you don't think the decisive action taken by the Party in that year was the reason for our prosperity and success today?"
I remembered the argument with my brother-in-law. They had the same logic—the same inhumane logic. I stayed silent. I didn't dare refute him, afraid of losing my chance at a teaching position.
Regardless, I failed to pass my political investigation. The university Party committee rejected my application on the grounds that I "did not fervently love my country and socialism."
To this day, I still feel guilty for the cowardice I showed when confronted by the stability maintenance system. June Fourth is not just a matter for the generation that came to age in 1989. It's a matter that relates to every person on Chinese soil. It is blood spilled by tyranny. It is an open wound on the body of this nation that will never close. Whatever you think of June Fourth, you cannot have a muddled opinion on it, you cannot make haphazard excuses for it. You must say no to atrocity, you must say no to the truth written in blood and the lies written in ink. One's opinion of June Fourth is the most basic measure of the morality of every Chinese person, the touchstone that torments every Chinese person's conscience and humanity. Any action or expression that crosses that bottom line is an injustice that violates one's very conscience.
After my expulsion from the university in 2009, I made my way to Beijing. Since then, I have met many teachers and friends, and I heard even more stories of Tiananmen.
When I first arrived in Beijing, I became a reporter for a Party-affiliated magazine. One day, an older female colleague recounted a story from her university years. It was the early 90s and a soldier had an eye for her, was courting her, but she had no feelings for him. One day, as they were walking together, the soldier asked her, "Do you college students still hate us soldiers?" She didn't respond. The soldier continued, "I didn't fire my gun."
Another female colleague of mine, born in the 80s, held an advanced degree from Wuhan University. Her boyfriend was an army officer. One day she heard some of us chatting about June Fourth and was shocked. When she got home that night she asked her boyfriend about it. He told her that the guns were not loaded that day. She called me late that night and yelled, "Did people really die or not? Who should I believe?" I answered her question with a question of my own. "If there were no bullets in their guns, how did all those students and ordinary citizens die?" After arguing for half an hour she still didn't know if she should trust her boyfriend or me.
She broke up with her boyfriend. I don't know the reason why.
In a restaurant in Beijing's Haidian District, professor Yu Shuo, who had arrived in Beijing from Hong Kong, shared with me her own June Fourth story. At that time she was a young lecturer in Renmin University's sociology department. She and Liu Xiaobo came from the same hometown and were friends. That whole summer, she carried a camera and tape recorder around Tiananmen Square, interviewing students, intellectuals and city residents. She wanted a record of everything. On the night of June 3, she was preparing to evacuate the square with the last wave of students. Liu Xiaobo had told her his bag was left at a corner of the Monument to the People's Heros, with his money and his passport that he would need to travel to the U.S. still inside. While the students were retreating, Yu Shuo ran over to the monument to retrieve the bag, but a student patrol grabbed her and threw her to the ground, yelling, "Do you want to die?" After she returned back to campus, she showed her photos to a leader from her department. One of the photos showed the body of a student who had been beaten to death near the gate of China University of Political Science, his brains spilling onto the ground. The department leader began to wail. He grabbed a pile of blank letterhead and stamped them all with his official seal. He gave them to Yu Shuo, saying, "Child, run away, quickly. This is all I can do to help you." Yu told me she'd always remember that department leader, who risked a great deal to help her. It's ordinary people like him whose souls shine.
With these letters in hand, she scrambled her way to Guangdong and then Shekou, preparing to look for Yuan Geng. She hid on and island for half a month, then went to Hong Kong as the first person rescued through Operation Yellowbird. She later moved to France, where she married a French citizen. She earned a Ph.D. in anthropology and became a professor. Today, she works to facilitate academic exchange between China and Europe.
While visiting his home in the Beijing suburb of Songzhuang, Yu Jianrong shared his own story with me. During June Fourth, Yu was in his hometown of Hengyang in Hunan Province, where he worked as a secretary for the municipal government. Yu had a classmate, the child of high-ranking cadres, who was a flag bearer on Tiananmen Square. After June Fourth his classmate fled home and Yu found him a place to stay. Finally, security officials found Yu. His classmate was left unscathed, but they investigated Yu. The investigation scared Yu enough for him to quit his job and become a businessman. He went on to earn over two million yuan, after which he moved to Taiwan and became an academic, earning his doctorate. He eventually became a well-known scholar. June Fourth changed his entire life.
Late one night in a Beijing bar, the artist Gao Huijun shared his June Fourth story with me. He was a college student at the time. On the night of June 3, Gao and his classmates were on Changan Avenue, bullets screeching past their ears. Suddenly, a stray bullet bounced off the ground and struck one of his classmates in the chest. He died at the scene. He collapsed to the ground, then crawled for a few hundred meters before falling still. Old Gao spoke breathlessly, as if it were transpiring before him. A crystal teardrop flickered from behind his thick eyeglasses.
Once during a banquet at a restaurant near West Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, my good friend Wen Kejian introduced me to a middle-aged man sitting at the table. "That's Ma Shaofang," Wen said. Stunned, I asked, "You're Ma Shaofang from the June Fourth wanted list?" Ma, nodding his head, replied, "I never thought, after twenty years, there would still be young people like you who remember me." I immediately took up my glass and toasted him, saying, "There are certain people and certain things that are unforgettable."
Ma Shaofang was the first student leader I had ever met. After his release from prison, Ma became a businessman. He is staunchly determined never to leave China.
In Tianjin's TEDA Arts Center, I once conversed with the renowned collector Ma Huidong over drinks. As the wine warmed us up, Mr. Ma told me that after he graduated from China University of Political Science in the late 80s, he entered a re-education center. After he'd been washed clean, he escaped from the center and began doing business. Twenty years after June Fourth, he's still never been back to Tiananmen Square. Whenever he's about to pass it in his car, he takes a detour. "After the gunfire of June Fourth, reform died," Mr. Ma said.
The famous philosopher Li Ming is my good friend, despite our age difference. In the 80s, before his hair had turned gray, he was already known for his work on the editorial board of the Walking Towards the Future series. He told me he was the research director of Youth Political College during June Fourth. After the crackdown, he was fired from his job, then arrested. In all these years, he never received a single penny from the Communist Party. His pay suspended, Li Ming scraped by with translation and writing.
At the artists village in Songzhuang, I once shared drinks and conversation with the renowned poet Mang Ke. He told me how he returned to Beijing from abroad in early 1989 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Today magazine. Along with Bei Dao and others like him, he added his name to an open letter calling for the release of Wei Jingsheng. After June Fourth, Mang Ke was detained at his home. A black bag was placed over his head and he was taken to a place he didn't know. After two days, he was released. The people who took him said he was detained for his own safety. Afterwards, Mang Ke relied on painting to make a living.
Once at a teahouse, I spoke with a middle-aged businessman who had served twenty years in the army. When the topic of June Fourth came up, he couldn't stop talking. At that time, he worked in the basement of the Tiananmen Square command center. He was in charge of intelligence collection. Hundreds of informants were sent out from the center every day. Every avenue and alley of Beijing was closely monitored. He said during that time, Mayor Chen Xitong would visit the command center almost daily.
Mr. Yu, a publisher in Beijing, is a friend from my hometown. He also told his June Fourth story to me. That Year, he was teaching middle school in a remote village in Hubei Province. He was extremely depressed. During his time there, he wrote an essay titled "Where China Is Going?" He made ten mimeographed copies and gave them to his classmates and friends. As a result, he was reported to the authorities and arrested. He spent a year in a detention center before being released without ever having stood trial. "China's detention centers are the cruelest places on earth," he told me. "I crawled out of there." After he left, he learned his grandmother, whom he loved dearly, passed away the very day he was detained. Some time later, his wife divorced him. He began to wander aimlessly.
The author Li Jianmang lives in Europe. I once met him during one of his trips back to Beijing. During June Fourth, a classmate of his, He Zhijing, who also happened to be the cousin of Beijing Film Academy professor He Jian, went missing. Later at the hospital, Li was saw He Zhijing's body. He had been beaten to death. Li Jianmang said before all this his father wrote him a letter. "Don't be a hero. When you hear the guns, hit the ground," his father wrote. "My son, you do not know their ruthlessness."
After the advent of Weibo I made many new friends online, some famous and some not. One of them is a Beijing girl named Keke who maintains a government website. She told me that during June Fourth she was in second grade. Keke's birthday happens to fall on June 3. That Year on June 3, her family celebrated her birthday at her grandmother's house. Afterward she walked from Hujialou to Gongzhufen. On the road, she saw buses on fire, roadblocks, twisted bicycle frames and pedestrians navigating their way through the carnage. It was a terrifying, unforgettable scene. Memories of June Fourth have lingered in her mind ever since. After getting on Weibo, she frequently posted images and documents from June Fourth. Her account was quickly shut down. She is reincarnated all the time.
My friend Hai Tao is a writer from the Beijing suburb of Tongzhou. He recalled to me that after June Fourth, the older men and women of town were sent to downtown Beijing everyday to dance and sing patriotic songs. When they became tired they wanted to buy popsicles, but the streets peddlers wouldn't let them buy any. "You have no conscience," the peddlers would say.
* * *
There are still many stories of Tiananmen to tell.
That year, the author Ye Fu worked as a police officer in Hainan. Facing the massacre, he cast away his uniform, submitted his resignation letter and bid farewell to the system forever. Then he was reported to the authorities in Wuhan and imprisoned. Then his mother drowned herself in the Yangtze River. Then he wrote his famous work, My Mother on the Yangtze…
That year, my friend Du Daobin left his hometown for the provincial capital of Wuhan to participate in the protests. Then he published some critical political commentary online. Then he was arrested. Then he became a famous dissident…
That year, many parents couldn't find their children, many families lost their loved ones. That year, many talented people left the country, many people died away from home, never to return. That year, China became a broken world, a world of life and death, a watershed. That year, China's twentieth century came to an end.
One afternoon in Spring 2010, I passed through the heart of Beijing on the subway, traveling from the eastern suburbs to the western neighborhood of Muxidi. Sitting on the side of the road in Muxidi, I thought about all the blood and tears shed some twenty years ago right there. I thought about the Tiananmen Mothers. I thought about the countrymen we lost forever. For a very, very long time, with a heavy heart, choking back tears, silently, I sat there until dusk. That afternoon, I quietly wrote this poem:

At Muxidi, Thinking of Someone
—for the Mother Ding Zilin
Today, I am at Muxidi
Thinking of someone
I don't know him
But I will remember him forever
At this moment, I miss him
Like I would miss a long lost brother
That was twenty-one years ago
Right here, at Muxidi
An unforgettable place
That merciless summer
A single bullet
Passed through his body
His sixteen-year-old body
He let out his final scream
And then bid farewell to this world
This evil, gory and lie-filled world
He left
This sixteen-year-old youth
This eternal youth
He'll never grow up
But we, in this world without him
Grow older by the day
Until the present
All these years
Seem like a century
No, many centuries
We watch ourselves grow old
But are powerless
We tell ourselves, we are alive
We need to live
And we tell ourselves we need to make peace with this world
But we know
We are not fated to make peace with this world
For no other reason
Only because of this young man
He will never grow up
So we must grow old
To grow old, is really to die
Today, at Muxidi
I am thinking of someone
I miss him
Like I would miss a long lost brother
A brother lost twenty-one years ago
I miss him
This eternal youth
I want to cry, but I cannot
I know we have no more tears
Even worse than having no tears
We don't even have any blood
Our souls were hollowed long ago
In the gunfire, among the bullets
In twisted, hidden history
All we can still do
Is come here
Thinking of this youth
Like missing a long lost brother
A brother lost for 21 years
He never left
But we'll never have him back

Time is like a murderer. Twenty-three years have flashed by. Countless countrymen have forgotten, countless others have remembered. I am from the post-June Fourth generation. On this twenty-third anniversary, I earnestly write this record, like putting my heart on an altar of blood. I do this for nothing more than the justice we are yet to receive. I believe blood was not spilt in vain. Judgment will surely come.
June 4, 2012, on the banks of the Xiang River, Hunan

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989, 1989 protests, Bei Dao, Chen Xitong, Ding Zilin, Feng Congde, fu guoyong, June 4th, Li Ming, Liu Xiaobo, Ma Huidong, Operation Yellowbird, re-education, Renmin University, stability maintenance, student protests, Tiananmen, Tsinghua University, wang dan, wang youcai, Wei Jingsheng, weibo, Yu Jianrong, Zhao Ziyang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

PE in China: Learning Some Old Lessons

Posted: 25 Jun 2012 08:48 AM PDT

If you're looking for a good snapshot of where the private equity market is right now in China, check out the latest McKinsey China podcast here. Here's the show summary:

China's private equity sector is the largest in Asia, and is increasingly seen as a source of growth in an otherwise challenging global market. But as China's cooling economy makes it harder to find attractive deals, and as the IPO market dries up, private equity players are shifting their attention from sourcing deals to managing their portfolios more actively.

What I found somewhat amusing about the discussion is that with the economic slowdown and the crappy IPO market, these guys are being forced to pay attention to what is happening with these target companies in China. And what they are finding of course is that restructuring is tough with a minority position. Partners aren't as good at running businesses here during a downturn as some might have thought when biz was booming, and they are not always receptive to advice from Mr. PE Operations Guru (assuming you have anyone on staff who knows anything about running a business in China).

In other words, these PE folks are learning, for the first time, all the old lessons us foreign direct investment guys have learned over the past couple of decades. Ha ha. Welcome to the fun, boys. You may wish to dust off an old book or two about how Sino-foreign Joint Ventures work. I think you'll find that stuff to be very instructive.

Expat Assimilation, Tribalism, and the Kaiser Kuo Show

Posted: 25 Jun 2012 04:34 AM PDT

As I correctly guessed in last night's links post, there is absolutely nothing going on today that could even remotely be called news. I'm therefore going to venture forth into an area that is wholly unrelated to any current events. It also calls for a bit of navel gazing, which I usually try to avoid. (You'll understand why after reading this questionable collection of hacktacular generalizations.)

The topic: expat life. The reason I'm thinking about it today: I just listened to the first part of a really excellent This American Life podcast entitled "Americans in China," which is a long set piece by New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos. If you don't know much about China, you will enjoy this glimpse into what it's like living over here. If you are an expat, you will no doubt have fun hearing from, and about, the usual cast of characters, including Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn, with a special guest appearance by Gady Epstein.

Don't worry, I don't want to talk about what it's like to eat chicken feet or how to deal with people spitting in elevators.

What really stood out in the podcast was the discussion about how expats: 1) succeed/fail in "fitting in" in China; and 2) how expats deal with troubling socio-political issues that they are forced to face in China. I'll take a look at that first topic in this post.

The concept of "fitting in" came up over and over in the extended interview with Kaiser Kuo, who many of you probably know, or know of. He describes the "chasm" between the U.S. and China, which frames the discussion of the challenges of his personal integration into the country, which was dealt a serious blow in '99 with the Belgrade Embassy bombing (a very emotional and moving portion of the interview). You'll hear similar things from other expats, particularly those with Chinese ethnic backgrounds, Chinese spouses, and kids that are being brought up in a bilingual/bicultural environment. Kaiser falls into all three of those categories, and while the anecdotes he related are not exactly assimilation problems, his comments did make me look at this in a broader context.

Over the years, I've known expats who do their best to remain separate from Chinese society. They eat Western food, never learn Chinese, don't have Chinese friends. They live in gated communities with other foreigners and travel abroad frequently. I used to judge these folks harshly, which is a popular expat hobby, but I think that is misguided. These people may be foregoing a great opportunity to learn about another culture, but if so, that's their business, not mine.

Their polar opposite are the ones who try to "go native" and attempt to integrate as much as possible. You've seen the China fanboys out there, the ones who refuse to speak English to a Chinese person, live in down-market housing, and pride themselves on their knowledge of customs and culture. Many of these folks, often young students or English teachers, push just a bit too hard, which can be both annoying and amusing.

The vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle, although it must be said that in cosmopolitan cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the concept of living like "a local" is rather difficult to establish, if not impossible.

At the end of the day, as expats eventually discover, it's impossible to fully "integrate" as an expat, which might disappoint some fanboys out there. But this makes me wonder: what drives this desire in the first place? Why try so hard to do something that is impossible?

In a word, tribalism. Perhaps wherever we go, we unconsciously believe that we must make a choice about our tribal affiliation. We can either bring along our foreign-ness, maybe even wear it like a badge, or we can attempt to join the local tribe. Doing so makes us feel less foreign and more comfortable in our strange surroundings.

This of course an illusory choice. Sure, the way that people treat you is based, in part, on their perception of your tribal affiliation. I certainly didn't imagine getting screamed at in '99 by folks who were outraged by the Belgrade Embassy bombing. Scared the crap out of me, truth be told.

But the things is, for the most part, the way that others perceive us is out of our control. No matter how good your Chinese is and what food you eat, you will still be treated as a foreigner, a very hard lesson in particular that foreign-born Chinese learn when they come over here.

We desire to fit in because we are hard-wired to be part of a tribe, thanks to evolution. In modern society, such tribalism is unnecessary and irrational, yet our monkey brains cling to this psychology. We feel better about ourselves when we support the local football team. None of it means anything, but when you and your neighbor both cheer on the same team, you feel closer to one another. Why did I become a New England Patriots fan when I moved to Boston? To this day, I can't explain it logically, but it did make me feel good.

Most expats can't accept that, for the most part, they cannot overcome others' prejudices. Instead of accepting this lack of control, some expats will go to great lengths to fit in, adapting their lifestyles above and beyond what can be explained by "personal preference."

Unfortunately, when the expat is not treated like a local, he is crestfallen. For expats in mixed marriages, and for those who have kids, there can be a great deal of angst over this issue. Just when you thought you were being treated the same as everyone else, something happens to remind you that you remain "the other" in the eyes of your friends and your co-workers. This can be a very harsh reality.

But it doesn't have to be this way. People will judge us as they will, and we need to accept that we can't control others. What we can take ownership of is ourselves and our choices. If you're an expat going out to eat with locals in East Pastureland Inner Mongolia, be polite and try some of the dishes, but don't polish off that whole plate of jellied horse testicles in a futile attempt to assimilate.

Life is short. Do what you want. If you love McDonald's, go eat it and don't be embarrassed that you look like a tourist. Alternatively, if your natural lifestyle is "more Chinese than the Chinese" and yet folks still treat you like you just got off the boat, (at least try to) learn to let go of your angst, stop worrying about what others think about you, and just continue doing what makes you happy.

Search This Website

China :: Updates

Links » Cream » ChinaCast Education Yanked from NASDAQ

Links » Cream » ChinaCast Education Yanked from NASDAQ

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blogs » Politics » In Defense of China’s Golden Week

Blogs » Politics » Xu Zhiyong: An Account of My Recent Disappearance

Blogs » Politics » Chen Guangcheng’s Former Prison Evaporates

Archives