With growing attention on the wealth amassed by families of the politically powerful in China, the investments of Mr. Dai's relatives illustrate that the riches extend beyond the families of the political elites to the families of regulators with control of the country's most important business and financial levers. Mr. Dai, an economist, has since left his post with the central bank and now manages the country's $150 billion social security fund, one of the world's biggest investment funds.
How much the relatives made in the deal is not known, but analysts say the activity raises further doubts about whether the capital markets are sufficiently regulated in China.
Nicholas C. Howson, an expert in Chinese securities law at the University of Michigan Law School, said: "While not per se illegal or even evidence of corruption, these transactions feed into a problematic perception that is widespread in the P.R.C.: the relatives of China's highest officials are given privileged access to pre-I.P.O. properties." He was using the abbreviation for China's official name, the People's Republic of China.
The company that bought the Ping An stake was controlled by a group of investment firms, including two set up by Mr. Dai's son-in-law, Che Feng, as well as other firms associated with Mr. Che's relatives and business associates, the regulatory filings show.
The problem with labeling Mo Yan's jumble of registers as "satire" is that much of it is hard to read as satire and at least some of it seems quite inadvertent. Mo Yan's Sandalwood Death, for example, is set during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, well before the advent of socialist jargon, and yet characters in the story spout socialist jargon. A young woman refers to her lingdaozhe, or "leader"—a word no one used in 1900. Is this satire? Of what? I think it is more likely that Mo Yan was writing too quickly (which seems to me often the case), and allowed his own conceptual habits to seep out unnoticed. Anna Sun is right to suggest that Howard Goldblatt's translations are "superior to the original in their aesthetic unity and sureness."
But how much do unnoticed linguistic habits reflect conceptual approaches to the world—or even, as Sun suggests, shape them? Sun quotes George Orwell that "if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." This is from Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," published in 1946, just a few years after the famous "Whorf hypothesis" advanced the notion that different languages lead to different world-views. Among Western cognitive scientists, Whorf has always been controversial. Hence it is interesting that Chinese communists (although there is no evidence that they borrowed anything from Whorf) have always had faith in the same principle. Since the 1950s, the Party's Propaganda Department has disseminated lists of words for the media "to stress" and "to downplay" as political needs come and go,1 and the unchanging assumption has been that this word-engineering helps to "guide thought." There is much evidence that it works, too. I was recently talking with a Chinese-language teacher whom I had not seen since 1989 in Beijing. Trying to recall our first meeting, she asked me, "Was that before or after the dongluan [turmoil]?" Teasing her, I asked, "What do you mean by dongluan? Student dongluan or government dongluan?" She replied reflexively: "Student dongluan, of course." Then she peered at me for a moment, realized what I had meant, and said: "Oh, yes! Government dongluan. The massacre!" Then she went into a long apology to me: she herself had been a student protestor in 1989, had been in Tiananmen Square in the days before the massacre (but not during it); she was on the students' side; she agreed with me. And yet the phrase "student turmoil" now rolled off her tongue as easily as "Wednesday." How much conceptual baggage went along with it? How much does this kind of induced linguistic habit reinforce state power? And how much does this sort of thing affect Chinese writers? Laughlin and Sun raise a crucial issue.
If you are convinced that China is some sort of neo-Orwellian, yellow peril shithole run by the Red Guard and their princeling overlords whose economy is driven by slave labor and black market kidneys, then you're probably susceptible to all kinds of weak-ass propaganda about the Middle Kingdom.
So no surprise when an obvious hoax like this goes unchallenged by an otherwise well-educated and informed liberal blogger in the U.S.:
We tend not to see the connection between our consumption of cheap Chinese crap and human rights abuses, but after reading this story, I guarantee you: It's going to be a lot harder to maintain that state of denial.
Julie Keith was unpacking some of last year's Halloween decorations when she stumbled upon an upsetting letter wedged into the packaging. Tucked in between two novelty headstones that she had purchased at Kmart, she found what appeared to be a letter from the Chinese laborer, who had made the decoration, pleading for help.
I bet I've got your attention now. But before we turn to the content of the letter, I just wanted to throw out the following question: who the hell buys "novelty headstones"? Apparently the same schmuck who believes that this dreck is authentic:
Sir, if you occassionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicution of the Chinese Communist Party Govermint will thank and remember you forever.
You can read the rest of it here. The agitprop language is fun to read. Someone went to the trouble to write it in poor English, but of course it doesn't sound like standard Chinglish. The author bothered to misspell every other word, but apparently thought that not only do inmates of Chinese labor camps know how to write in English, but they also use words like "occasionally" and "persecution" and know how to use commas properly. Even with the included mistakes, it's still better written than what you'd get out of most Americans with a high school education.
A swing and a miss. I do appreciate the effort, though. Made this a lot of fun to read.
A certain persecuted "religious" organization, whose practices include some sort of mystical heavy breathing meditation techniques (or something like that) was mentioned prominently, which suggests to me where this might have come from. The amusing part, though, is the reaction from the consumer, whose repeated attempts to contact Amnesty International went unanswered for some reason:
"I was so frustrated that this letter had been sitting in storage for over a year, that this person had written this plea for help and nothing had come of it." Julie Keith told Yahoo! Shine. "Then I was shocked. This person had probably risked their life to get this letter in this package."
Not sure what "Yahoo! Shine" is, assuming it's a real thing, but this woman's reaction is classic. "Oh please help me, white person who loves freedom and lives in the exceptional USofA. You're my only hope! You and Obi Wan, and the white crippled guy who helped out all those tall blue people. Oh yeah, and Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai and Kevin Costner in that wolf movie. Other than them, though, I could really use your assistance."
I think Mike Daisey could take this and run with it. Maybe he could go on an odyssey back to China to search for this letter writer and invent a bunch of labor camps that he could lie about visiting. I wonder if NPR would be interested? I'm gonna say probably not, and not just because Rob Schmitz reads this blog.
I'll leave you with my favorite graph:
This is not the first time a letter like this has turned up. Just this week, another plea was found written in Chinese on a toilet seat and posted on Reddit. Commenters on the website have questioned the letters' authenticity.
Ha ha ha. Well, maybe I'm being a bit unfair. I have sat on numerous Chinese toilet seats and have often felt the need to call for help. So maybe that one was real.
Chen Kegui was tried and sentenced to three years and four months in prison on November 30th for "intentional harm." Following the trial, his family received a statement, supposedly by Kegui, that he "abandons appeal." Throughout his detention and trial, Kegui was denied access to his own defense lawyers. As someone who spoke to him shortly after the event that sent him to jail, I simply cannot stop marveling at how blatantly, and also how comfortably, power is abused in China. It's sickening; it's chilling. We translated his lawyers' statement earlier, today we present a rebuttal by his father, translated by three of our volunteer translators. –Yaxue
The Beginning
On April 20, 2012, the blind Chen Guangcheng, risking his life, made an escape from his own heavily guarded home. After that, he passed through many hands that eventually ushered him into the US embassy in China. A week later, the local government in Shandong found him missing. For some in power, it was a bolt from the blue.
Through the grapevine
On the 26th of April at about 9:30 am, Kegui's mother Ren Zongju heard at the village entrance a stranger make a phone call: "Guangcheng's home only has Yuan Weijing and the old lady – Guangcheng's not in sight." She notified me of this information over the phone as I was on my way home.
The men who scaled the walls enclosing my property and intruded my house
Despite the event, that day went as usual. Around midnight, as soon as I lay down and turned off the light, after taking care of my grandson who was ill with a fever, I heard a vehicle braking outside my yard. I knew they were here for us, so I got up quickly to get dressed. As I had barely pulled my pants on, a crowd of men who got in by scaling my walls, wrapped my head with the jacket I had not had a chance to put on, and took me away with them with my hands tied behind me. I heard that the court had recognized, during the trial, that these people scaled my walls and the gate was opened from inside. The fact is, they damaged the gate lock from inside, and they kicked the door to the house open. Zhang Jian's testimony reads, "We told Chen Guangfu why we were there: we needed him to assist in the investigation regarding Chen Guangcheng's illegal entry of the US Embassy." This is a complete lie, and he said nothing like that. The fact is, the first group of men who broke into my property were officers of the Economic Investigation Team, of the Public Security Bureau of Yinan County, including their leader Xue Kewei. But none of them wore uniforms, nor did they present any warrant. Instead, they kidnapped me and then tortured me for a long time.
The sword that chops the devils
After abducting me, not long after (approximately 20 minutes later), Zhang Jian brought numerous unknown wooden club wielding individuals to invade my home, and without any legal procedures began to ransack boxes and chests in various rooms, and search my home. They took cash, cell phones, the address book, and other items from the house, and began to savagely beat Kegui's mother. Moreover, they smashed the TV set, sewing machine, furniture, and pried open locked drawers. The thugs who broke into Kegui's room clubbed him as he moved from the backroom to the outer room, from inside the house out to the courtyard. He was knocked down a number of times, and his face, neck, arms, legs, and several areas were all injured. Kegui called out to his mother, and Kegui's mother held Kegui to protect him. Kegui said, "Mother, I've about been beaten to death, yet you're still holding me." At this time, these inhuman thugs grabbed Kegui's mother by the hair and started to beat her violently. In this extremely dangerous situation where if you don't resist you will be beaten to death, Kegui picked up a vegetable knife but did not immediately strike back. At this time, Zhang Jian shouted at the numerous thugs he brought along: "Get him under control!" These roughnecks rushed in like a swarm of hornets, and so Kegui had no alternative but to wave the knife in self-defense. But their beating, smashing, and robbing were all euphermized in court as "looking for a cell phone." The fact is that Zhang Jian twice brought people to invade the residence and carry out illegal searches – which included beating, smashing, and robbing. TV and sewing machine were smashed, Kegui's mother now suffers from traumatic periarthritis in her shoulder, a wooden club was broken when a thug swung it at Kegui's head and missed and hit the TV set instead, and Kegui was injured in many spots. The two cell phones I normally use, Kegui's mother's cellphone, and Kegui's cellphone were all stolen, cash, goods, and materials all disappeared without a trace from the pried-open desk and locked drawers. Is there any question of the robbing, smashing, and stealing? In the face of unlawful infringement, in order to survive, a hot-blooded young man finally brandished a knife of justice. What crime is it to defend oneself legitimately and to protect family? Zhang Jian didn't lose his cellphone until this point, so it is a blatant lie for him to say the purpose of his visit was to look for his cellphone.
Additionally, when I was being tortured, the Secretary of Yinan County Politics and Law Committee and Head of Public Security Ma Chenglian said to me, "Your son knifed someone." I asked him, "Where did it happen?" Ma said, "At your home." I responded at the time, "Just as long as it wasn't out on the street." All of their crimes should have been recorded by HD cameras installed in the southwestern corner of our home's courtyard.
Preposterous evidence
After Kegui left home, a mixed group of uniformed public security and party officials and hired thugs intruded my home for the third time and grabbed Chen Kegui's mother by the hair while she was giving her grandson medicine, pulled her off the bed, and began vengefully beating her. Kegui's mother kept yelling: "Help! Help! They're killing us!" The wild thugs kept hitting while saying: "Scream 'help' all you want! Go ahead, scream!" The neighbors all heard her yells.
As for Kegui mother's testimony (she is illiterate), it was under police intimidation: "If you're told to sign, then sign. If you don't sign then you can die right here. Anyway, you don't have human rights. As a matter of fact, she told me (when hearing "her" testimony): "These are all lies, I never said these kinds of words."
It's not hard to tell that Kegui's so-called recounting of events was pieced together by inducing him to make a confession. If what Kegui said is true, Zhang Jian shouldn't have been cut only 20 times. It's clear Kegui's story doesn't match up with the facts, nor could it be the truth he knew. Given that this completely-flawed narrative was accepted by the court and "confirmed" by Kegui during the trial, you can very well imagine, behind the scenes, how many secrets of extortion and torture there have been. Chen Kegui's statement says, "At the time, Zhang Jian and the people he was leading were empty-handed." This account does not match the facts at all. How could Chen Kegui testify as such when the wooden club that hit him was broken?
The "public trial"
During the court hearing, media called to ask the Yinan Court about the Chen Kegui case. A court spokesperson said, "The trial is open to the public. Observation and interviews are welcome." But here is the reality:
As Chen Kegui's parents, Ren Zongju and I didn't learn that the trial would begin at 2:00 pm until 10:30 am that day from an appointed lawyer. We immediately hurried to the Yinan County court, and arrived at 1:30 pm prepared to observe the proceedings. But lawyer Song Kuiyuan told me "You are a witness according to the case file." I said "I am Kegui's father. I want to observe the proceedings." Song said "You won't be able to get in." I said "I will make a demand and see."
But as soon as we approached the entrance of the county court, we were surrounded by many plainclothes policemen. With understanding, I took out my ID card and said "I am Kegui's father. I have come to demand to observe the proceedings in the Kegui case." Two official-looking people said, "Wait right here." After waiting over half an hour, I didn't see any court representatives, except for more than 10 plainclothesmen watching me.
Afraid that Kegui's mother would worry about me, I followed the arrangement to meet with Kegui's mother on the street across from the court. I found that she was also surrounded by over 10 plainclothesmen. Then we were held inside a government vehicle. If we tried to get out of the vehicle, the plainclothesmen would say "Why would you get out, get in quickly, get in quickly…" While waiting for over three hours surrounded by plainclothesmen like that, we didn't have a single person from the court meet with us. Across the street from the court, there were over a hundred plainclothesmen around.
After the court hearing ended, I heard a siren. Through the vehicle's glass window, I tried to have a peek at my son, but in an instant, the vehicle we were in was surrounded tightly by plainclothesmen. The trial ended just like that, and we were unable to take even one step inside the courtroom. How is that public? How is that just?
It was reported that there were checkpoints set up at all the intersections leading to the Yinan court. Pedestrians and vehicles were inspected before passing through. Even tens of kilometers away, checkpoints were set up at intersections leading to Yinan county to inspect vehicles from outside the county. Locals who had been concerned about the case were being "taken care of" by the government. Even as far as in Beijing, Hu Jia was put under house arrest illegally starting on the evening of November 29 to prevent him from supporting Kegui and witnessing this unlawful trial.
Conclusion
In 2006, they charged Chen Guangcheng fictitiously and tried him with falsified testimonies. They have done it again with Chen Kegui.
Chen Kegui's trial was a mockery and insult to justice and fairness. Chen Kegui's sentence trampled the law and devastated human rights. It proves that the rule of law in China exists in name only. Not only was the sentence passed in this case essentially illegal, but every step of the judicial procedures also fell short of the law. As Chen Kegui's next-of-kin, we demand a public re-hearing of this case.
History is created by the people. Water can support a boat or capsize it. Are those in power not aware of a rule as plain as this?
December 6, 2012
Dongshigu village, Yinan county, Linyi municipality, Shandong Province.
"My sole income depends on coffee now," said Ma Jiaying, a farmer from a dab-sized hamlet in Pu'er called Tea Tree Village.
Few pairings denote upward mobility more than an iPhone in one hand and a white-and-green Starbucks cup in the other. In central Beijing, the company's smallest cappuccino costs about $4.33, making a Chinese Starbucks habit one of the most expensive in the world.
"Starbucks in China for the young generation is almost like religion," said Liu Minghui, head of Pu'er-based Ai Ni Coffee, China's largest coffee production and exporting company. "They want to be seen drinking their coffee. A lot of these Chinese kids have come back from studying overseas where they've been introduced to this new lifestyle."
At 120,000 tons last year, China's coffee consumption was only 6% that of the U.S., the world's top consumer of hot joe. Meanwhile, about 1 million tons of tea was consumed in China last year.
According to a report published this week by Mintel, a retail consultancy, the number of coffee houses in China has nearly doubled in the last five years to over 31,000.
Over the same period, the number of Chinese tea houses rose by only 4 per cent to 50,000. Yes, there are still more tea houses than coffee shops. But the bad news is that their clientele are often elderly, which may not bode well for the future.
"Tea houses have targeted higher-end consumers with expensive teas, food and service, but lack differentiation, and there are few successful brands to meet the challenge posed by the rise of the café chains," says Mintel, which predicts continuing slow growth of tea houses though also the emergence of tea house chains targeted at younger, lower-income consumers. Nearly a quarter of Chinese consumers chose to buy tea drinks even in coffee shops, Mintel says. And a quick glance at the menu of any Starbucks in China will show that many of the other drinks have not much coffee in them either; they tend to be more like milkshakes than espressos.
"The Starbucks business here is in its infancy in terms of development and growth," John Culver, head of Starbucks in China and Asia Pacific, said in an interview today in the southern Chinese city of Yunnan. Starbucks currently has 12,000 employees in the country.
The Seattle-based coffee chain is boosting headcount as it pushes to more than double local stores to 1,500 by 2015. The Asian nation is set to be its largest market outside the U.S. in two years as it expands to counter slower economic growth in developed markets.
In its China expansion, the cappuccino and latte maker will face pressure from rising costs and wages. The country's consumer price index rose 2 percent from a year earlier in November.
Business in China is "very healthy" and the coffee chain operator will continue to maintain its margins in the world's most populous nation, Culver said.
The company will also focus on growing the number of wholly-owned stores in the China and Asia Pacific region and sees new stores being the growth driver next year, Culver said. They will account for two-thirds of the region's sales growth, an increase from less than a third three to five years ago, he said.
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by central government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.
Central Propaganda Department: All media are to cease reporting and commenting on the confiscation of the Guo Lanying Art School property. (December 27, 2012)
Central Propaganda Department: All media outlets and websites are to report the Ren Jianyu case in strict accord with the wire copy released by Xinhua and the Chongqing high court. Do not put the news on the front page or lure readers to the story. Do not alter headlines. Do not produce any other reports or commentary apart from the wire copy. Do not send reporters to Chongqing. (December 27, 2012)
Central Propaganda Department:Shenzhen will announce the results of its audit of the Universiade today. All media are kindly asked to report according to the Shenzhen Auditing Bureau announcement. Do not play up negative aspects, and do not connect this to recent cases of corruption in Shenzhen. (December 27, 2012)
Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to those instructions as "Directives from the Ministry of Truth." CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.
Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.
Breakneck development and urbanization campaigns often threaten the relics reflecting China's ancient architectural tradition. An article from Caixin takes us to the northern province of Shanxi, a "treasure trove of rare buildings as well as the epitome of cultural neglect", to explain how commercial interests can sometimes aid in preserving imperiled structures of cultural significance, and to survey the differing opinions on how best to protect China's architectural heritage:
Indeed, business is booming for buyers, movers, rehabilitators and sellers of old buildings. No data is available, but anecdotal evidence and business reports suggest increasing numbers of cultural significant structures in underdeveloped parts of the country are being sold and moved to wealthy cities. Other buildings, like the Confucian temple in Zhongyang, are being moved by developers so hungry for land that they're willing to pay for a delicate relocation.
Many buildings cannot be moved legally. Under Chinese regulations, the central government can designate certain cultural structures state-owned and immovable. But ownership of anything not on list is subject to local government control.
Zhongyang's director of cultural tourism, Qiao Jinping, told Caixin the apartment building developer and local officials coordinated a "relocation-protection-style" project that combined support for economic growth with historic preservation.
"The developer bought the land (from the government ) and paid a large sum of money that helped us resolve the funding problem," Qiao said. "Rather than let the Confucian temple collapse, we elected to have it be reborn elsewhere."
[...]Business interests that jumped on the historic preservation bandwagon, meanwhile, have found ways to leap barriers posed by local government financial constraints.
The solution to Zhongyang's Confucian temple conundrum, for example, balanced new property development and preserving the old for future tourism growth.
A new report says North Korea's trade with China accounted for more than 70 percent of its total commerce last year, as the isolated nation deepens its reliance on its only major ally.
South Korea's national statistics office said Thursday that Pyongyang's bilateral trade with Beijing totaled over $5.6 billion in 2011. That is an increase of over 60 percent from the previous year.
Seoul says it is the first time that North Korea's trade with China has topped 70 percent of its global commerce since it began tracking trade figures in 2000.
Meanwhile, the economic gap between South Korea and North Korea continues to be large. The report found South Korea's gross national income per capita ($1239) was nearly 19 times that of the North in 2011.
The dramatic increase reflects a conscious decision by Beijing in 2011 to prop up its failing ally. Shortly before his death a year ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il made three trips to China to secure support for rebuilding his ruling Workers' Party, the equivalent of the Communist Party in China. The Chinese also have been keen to prop up Kim's 29-year-old son and successor, Kim Jong Un.
"This is just the beginning of further big increases in Sino-North Korea trade," explained John Park, an expert in China-Korean relations at MIT University. "The primary goal of the Communist Party of China is to more effective manage what is referred to as the North Korean instability variable."
Park said that North Korean state trading companies are working in China, which enables the regime to generate new sources of revenue for its own ruling elite.
With Chinese help, the North Korean economy grew for the first time in three years, albeit a modest 0.83%. In the last year, Pyongyang has undergone its first significant facelift in decades, adding modern apartment blocks, a new airport terminal, stores and restaurants and a dolphinarium to the North Korean capital.
Rising officials who hail from the northeastern provinces of Liaoning , Jilin and Heilongjiang understand the importance of perseverance to advance China's agenda of North Korean economic reform. These officials, represented by Zhang Dejiang and Li Keqiang , now on the Politburo Standing Committee, and Sun Zhengcai in the larger Politburo, spent their formative years in close proximity to North Korea, and benefited from their time in local governments with long-term cross-border interactions with North Korean counterparts. They appreciate that patience and constant pressure are key to promoting reform in Pyongyang. This new generation of leaders is ostensibly better informed on North Korean issues and this fact may lead to some policy nuance – if not policy changes – from China.
Although the new leadership has made vague statements on North Korea (even after Pyongyang's latest, controversial satellite launch), Chinese academics close to the matter are a useful gauge of the temperature in Beijing policy circles. These academics include Zhang Liangui of the Central Party School, Zhu Feng of Peking University, and Lu Chao of the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, among others. These Chinese experts who are allowed and encouraged to comment about North Korea in mainland news media have not been entirely favourable. Zhang Liangui publicly raised questions about reconsidering China's policy towards Pyongyang just before North Korea's missile launch in April. Even more telling, Zhang, another Kim Il-sung University alumnus, conducted this public debate in English.
Xi Jinping's public comments suggest that the military elements of the alliance will remain strong, but within limits. China will reluctantly tolerate space rockets even though these launches enrage regional rivals, and will likely tolerate small-arms and weapons development within limits; it's in China's interest to keep the Korean People's Army on its feet.
While Pyongyang's economic exchange with Beijing has been on the rise since 2009, its trade with Seoul, North Korea's second-biggest trade partner after China, has declined. About 20 percent of North Korea's overall trade was with the South in 2011.
The national statistics office releases an annual report on North Korea's economy, energy, trade, population and natural resources based on figures from various agencies at home and abroad. It releases the previous year's data at the end of the following year. The figures for 2012 will become available toward the end of 2013.
North Korea's trade data was gathered from official statistics figures in overseas countries through KOTRA, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, the office said.
The office said North Korea's population is estimated at 24.3 million as of 2011, about half of South Korea's 49.8 million. Its economy expanded 0.8 percent in 2011 over a year earlier, while South Korea's economy grew 3.6 percent.
The Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress has issued new rules "to enhance the protection of personal information online and safeguard public interests". The regulations broaden and reinforce requirements for real-name registration by internet users (though pseudonyms will still be permitted), and establish a legal requirement for service providers to immediately remove illegal information and report it to the relevant authorities. The move follows evident recent activity on the technical front, and has widely been read as an omen for the new Party leadership's future rule. From Rob McBride at Al Jazeera English:
The internet is public space, and public order and good customs require the common efforts of web users, demanding that each web users "purify themselves" (自我净化), recognizing from the bottom of their hearts that the internet is not a utopia where they can do as they please, that it is not a "Garden of Peaches of Immortality" [i.e., a paradise] existing outside the law. But on this massive platform comprising 538 million web users and more than a billion mobile users, it is impossible byrelying on self-discipline alone to achieve regulation and order (规范有序) and to eliminate every single person with ulterior motives (别有用心者) or every doer of mischief (恶作剧者).
Without wings, the bird of freedom cannot fly high. Without rule of law, a free internet cannot go far. Today's society reveres rule of law, and just as our actual society needs rule of law, so does our virtual society need rule of law. Cleaning up the online world demands the self-discipline of web users, but even more it demands the interventionist discipline (他律) of rule of law. Only by putting the "binds" of rule of law on the internet, by stipulating the lines of conduct and adding supervision according to the law (厘定行为边界，依法加以监管), only by making violators of the law bear the burden of illegality [as opposed to victims of crimes], only then can we possibly restrain irresponsible rumors, restrain the leakage of personal information, and make the internet clean again.
Online muckraking is not necessarily incompatible with a requirement to provide genuine identification. Many whistleblowers prefer to use their real names, as they feel this will give their claims more weight.
Other reports state that the identity policy will clamp down on the freedom of speech in Chinese cyberspace. But the accusers should know that freedom without limits or responsibility is chaotic and dangerous. No one should enjoy the freedom to spread malicious rumors or libel, even online. The rule should only be feared by slanderers who wish to take advantage of online anonymity.
For law-abiding netizens, the rules passed on Friday will only better safeguard their lawful rights and privacy. The rules, which stress the protection of Internet users' privacy, stipulate that citizens have the rights to demand service providers to delete online information that discloses their identities or infringes upon their own rights.
[…] Instead of depriving netizens' freedom and entitlement, the rules protect the legal rights of every Internet user. The rules will ultimately help to create a better online environment in China.
Overall, the Chinese Internet is free and responsible, but also has moments of chaos and illegal activity. Infringements upon people's rights and privacy can easily be found on the Internet. The new legislation, in this regard, is likely to become a turning point in terms of online regulation. Most of its 12 articles respond to the high expectations of the public for changes to the Chinese Internet.
Of course, there are concerns. Despite its chaotic nature, the Internet has been playing a role as a supervisor of the government from the bottom up. As a truly effective and tough supervision mechanism has yet to be formed within the system, supervision from the Internet is important to make up for it. This is a huge contribution the Internet has made to China's construction of democracy, and no one wants to see it weakened.
In reality, there is no crackdown on the public's supervision via the Internet, because this wouldn't help China's progress.
But meanwhile, we cannot simply cover up all the problems of the Internet just because it dares to criticize. There is urgent need for the Internet to have order, and this cannot be achieved through moral self-discipline only, but requires assistance from the law.
Any entity providing Internet access, including over fixed-line or mobile phones, "should when signing agreements with users or confirming provision of services, demand that users provide true information about their identities," the committee ordered.
[…] The regulations issued Friday build on a series of similar administrative guidelines and municipal rules issued over the past year. China's mostly private Internet service providers have been slow to comply with them, fearing the reactions of their customers. The committee's decision has much greater legal force, and puts far more pressure on Chinese Internet providers to comply more quickly and more comprehensively, Internet specialists said.
[…] The requirement for real names appeared to be aimed particularly at cellphone companies and other providers of mobile Internet access. At the news conference, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Zhao Zhiguo, said that nearly all fixed-line services now had real-name registration, but that only about 70 percent of mobile phones were registered under real names.
LANGFITT: […] Luo Changping is deputy editor of Caijing, one of China's more aggressive and independent magazines. Earlier this month, he posted on his Chinese Twitter account allegations about a high-ranking official in Beijing. Luo said the official had fabricated his masters' degree and helped defraud Chinese banks. So far, Luo says, the charges have gone nowhere. […] Many domestic media are not allowed to report on this case, he said, and frankly, Luo was hesitant to discuss it.
CHANGPING: (Through translator) My phones certainly have been monitored, including my office phone, home phone and cell phone. I can feel that. Sometimes phones will be cut off, and you can hear echoes.
LANGFITT: Luo says without the rule of law and a truly open press, piecemeal exposes can only do so much. He's not optimistic. […] If there are no systematic changes, he says, I think fighting corruption on a case-by-case basis doesn't have much effect. It's really just a power struggle between officials.
Throughout China's media system, there are direct or indirect opinions against certain censorship policies.
But V for Vendetta seemed to attract particular attention due to its calling for the masses to vehemently overthrow their rulers.
Media freedom is a goal that is worth working relentlessly to reach, but how much an unchecked media can positively contribute to a country's development is a debatable question.
[...]V for Vendetta being broadcast on CCTV created a brief cyber sensation among Chinese netizens, but soon gave way to new eye-catching stories such as scandals involving officials and the latest leadership appointments in several provinces.
In fact in China's robust Weibo sphere, where the most active ideas are often exchanged, quotes as V for Vendetta contains are often seen and hardly cause a fuss.
The film being aired on CCTV can be seen as a diversified offering of entertainment programs in today's China. Hailing it as a barometer of China's media censorship is amusing but ludicrous.
An American business consultant and author with high-level Chinese contacts said there is no less commitment to one-party rule in China, so any media reforms will only go so far.
"You can't have a totally free media as we would have in the West and still maintain the integrity of a one-party system," said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who wrote the book "How China's Leaders Think." He said he thinks restrictions are being eased, "but it has to be limited."
The new leadership has to tread carefully, Kuhn said, because in the age of the Internet, talk about reforms won't be forgotten.
"High expectations, if they are not fulfilled, will create a worse situation," he said.
China, which has more journalists, bloggers and cyber-dissidents in prison than any other country, stepped up its censorship and propaganda in 2011 and tightened its control of the Internet, particularly the blogosphere. The first protest movements in Arab countries and the ensuing calls for democracy in China's main cities set off a wave of arrests with no end yet in sight.
In the autonomous regions of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, protests by minorities regularly gave rise to a harsh crackdown by the authorities. In Beijing and Shanghai, international correspondents were particular targets of the security forces and had to work under the continual threat of expulsion or having their visas withdrawn. Journalists were prevented from covering most of the events that threatened China's stability or might have given it a negative image.
At least 10 people, including five children, died when their overloaded minibus plunged into a mountain valley in southern China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a string of such accidents which have sparked public anger.
The nine-seat vehicle was carrying 20 people when it ran off the road in Guangxi region, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Ten survived, including a three-month-old infant who was in critical condition, it added.
The deaths of 18 nursery school children in a bus crash in November last year caused a wave of fury and prompted Premier Wen Jiabao to pledge more money for rural bus services, especially for those carrying children.
The 10 injured are receiving treatment, including a three-month-old infant who is in critical condition, the spokesman said.
The infant's mother, 24-year-old Wei Yuefang, said she and her family were in the minibus heading for the home village of Bahaotun in Qibainong township to attend a wedding.
She said she was carrying her sleeping daughter when the accident happened, adding that they were thrown out of the vehicle while it was falling into the valley.
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