| China Still Exists; Beijing’s Doomsday Problem Persists Posted: 21 Dec 2012 07:29 PM PST The People's Republic of China, like the rest of the world, still existed as of 19:30 PST on December 21st, 2012. U.F.O.-watchers had gathered in Hunan, anti-cult organisations had issued reassuring text messages, and the United Nations' had denied on its official Sina Weibo account that it sold tickets for an ark. Meanwhile, the number of 'Almighty God' "cultists" detained by authorities reached 1,000 on Thursday. From Reuters: In recent weeks, hundreds of members of the Almighty God group have clashed with police, sometimes outside government buildings, in central Henan, northern Shaanxi and southwestern Gansu provinces, according to photos on popular microblogs. The government says it is a cult calling for a "decisive battle" to slay the "Red Dragon" Communist Party, and which has been spreading doomsday alerts related an old Mayan calendar seen by some as predicting "the end of the world" on December 21. Police have now detained around 1,000 members the Almighty God group across some seven provinces, the People's Daily reported on its website on Thursday, saying about 400 of them had been detained in the remote western province of Qinghai. The group is also accused, according to Global Times, of "encouraging people to donate all of their belongings" to its leaders before the end arrived, a strategy also suggested by sceptical astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. At The New York Review of Books, Ian Johnson argued that the crackdown reflects the Beijing's growing uncertainty in the face of a broader religious resurgence. It would be easy to see this as just a Chinese version of the global Mayan craze. And given the problems facing Xi Jinping, China's new leader—among them a slowing economy and escalating tensions with maritime neighbors—groups like the Almighty God might seem like a sideshow. But this would be a mistake. Following decades of suppression, religious movements have become a potent force in China, attracting hundreds of millions of Chinese. This has made groups like Almighty God a growing challenge for the new government. Above all, Beijing is struggling with the question of social control—how much it can continue to wield over an increasingly wealthy, educated, and assertive population. Religion has become a focus for these tensions because China is undergoing a religious revival driven in part by widespread concern that age-old Chinese values have been eroded by "getting rich is glorious" economic modernization. Organized religion and other spiritual movements, such as Confucianism and efforts to protect traditional culture, are rapidly gaining traction. Many religious groups have decided they can't wait for government approval and are simply organizing and seeing how the chips fall. To a surprising degree, they have succeeded: unregistered churches, lay Buddhist organizations, and clan-based charities have all developed under the government's radar screen. Much of the government's unease arises from fear of foreign agitation, illustrated repeatedly by its insistence that the Dalai Lama is behind Tibetan self-immolations, and again this week by a set of leaked instructions on dealing with foreign missionary activity. From William Wan at The Washington Post: The 16-page notice — obtained this month by a U.S.-based Christian group — uses language from the cold war era to depict a conspiracy by "overseas hostile forces" to infiltrate Chinese campuses under the guise of academic exchanges while their real intent is to use religion in "westernizing and dividing China." […] The document talks about infiltration by religion as a whole, but it singles out Christianity as particularly dangerous and the United States as leading the effort. No other country or religion is mentioned by name. […] In the document, authorities warn that foreigners are using academic research, study abroad, English-language instruction and charitable work as pretexts to spread religion among China's youths. "The intensity of infiltration is increasing," the document reads. "You must not underestimate the current harm and the long-term effect of such phenomenon and you must take forceful measures." Religious groups were also described as a U.S.-backed threat in an essay which provoked fierce criticism after appearing in the overseas edition of People's Daily in July. But discussing the leaked document on his Sinostand blog, the Economic Observer's Eric Fish suggested that the authorities have mistaken the goals of missionary activity in China. As the document suggests, there are indeed thousands of these people in China; many of whom conduct activities that would raise legal issues even in Western democracies. I heard stories of teachers requiring students to attend Bible studies in order to pass their class. Many used Christian teaching materials and held English classes based on Biblical themes. I even heard about a teacher requiring his students to put on a play about the seven deadly sins that featured Jesus lugging a crucifix. But a few things jumped out at me from this document. The first was how the government still fundamentally misunderstands what motivates Christian missionaries. To some degree, this is understandable. Chinese officials tend to be pragmatic worldly people with little exposure to religion. The idea that someone would spend so much time and resources changing others' beliefs for no tangible reason makes no sense. That these missionaries feel duty-bound to a supernatural deity and believe they're literally saving their converts just doesn't register. Clearly, there must be some devious political agenda beneath that pious surface. There are indeed those like Bob Fu who have explicit regime-change goals, but they seem to be a small minority. Most seem to consciously avoid even mentioning politics. They may expend disproportionate effort on students with political ambitions, but this is more in hopes of getting religious policy relaxed, not overthrowing the entire system.
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, Dalai Lama, ian johnson, religion, religious freedom, self-immolations, United States, Xi Jinping
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| Writers Honored for Free Expression Commitment Posted: 21 Dec 2012 04:08 PM PST 12 writers from China are among the 41 who received Human Rights Watch's 2012 Hellman/Hammett grants "for their commitment to free expression and their courage in the face of persecution". The organisation suggested that the presence of so many writers from one country reflected "especially severe repression of free expression". The grants are named for the American playwright Lillian Hellman and her longtime companion, the novelist Dashiell Hammett. Both were both questioned by US congressional committees about their political beliefs and affiliations during the aggressive anti-communist investigations inspired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Hellman suffered professionally and had trouble finding work. Hammett spent time in prison. In 1989, the trustees appointed in Hellman's will asked Human Rights Watch to devise a program to help writers who were targeted for expressing views that their governments oppose, for criticizing government officials or actions, or for writing about subjects that their governments did not want reported. […] A concentration of grantees in certain countries points to especially severe repression of free expression by those governments. Twelve of this year's grantees come from the People's Republic of China; four of them are Tibetan and remain anonymous for security reasons. Five grantees are from Vietnam, four from Ethiopia, and three from Iran. In addition to the four anonymous and imprisoned Tibetans, the honorees include one ethnic Mongolian, Huuchinhuu Govruud, and two Uyghur writers, Memetjan Abdulla and Gulmire Imin. Wang Lihong, Qi Chonghuai, Huang Qi, He Depu and Sun Wenguang also received grants. Profiles of all the named writers are available at HRW.org. See also the November edition of Words without Borders magazine, which focused on banned Chinese writers and is still available for free.
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ethiopia, free expression, freedom of expression, huang qi, human rights watch, Iran, mongolians, Qi Chonghuai, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Vietnam, Wang Lihong, writers
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| A Good Year for Chinese-English Translation Posted: 21 Dec 2012 04:37 PM PST At Paper Republic, Nicky Harman celebrates a good year for Chinese-to-English translations, listing twenty books published—mostly—in 2012. OK, I've cheated a bit – three of the publications below are poetry, and two others come out in January 2013. Still, it's a good haul and many times better than the annual total, say, ten years ago. (Please post a comment if I've missed anyone out.) I couldn't begin to add up just how many hours of translation the whole list represents, and that's without the extra work translators have put in, on some of these books, to get them off the ground. So, lets raise a glass to translation and all pat ourselves on the back! […] PS On Twitter, @cfbcuk (that's the China Fiction Book Club) has posted each one with review links, tagged #abook4xmas. Among the twenty is Mo Yan's Sandalwood Death, translated by Howard Goldblatt. Goldblatt has been variously credited with accurately rendering the Nobel-winner's prose by Mo's admirers, and with flattering it by his critics. Two titles were translated by Allan Barr, professor of Chinese at Pomona College. The school's website features an interview on his translations of Han Han's This Generation and Yu Hua's China in Ten Words: "Han Han's style is sarcastic and playful, full of mischievous puns, and channeling his distinctive voice and conveying his wicked sense of humor were the biggest challenges I faced," says Barr, who has been at Pomona since 1981. […] The concept of one book, China in Ten Words, was developed after Yu [Hua] spoke at Pomona in 2009. Barr had invited the writer to speak during his U.S. tour for his novel Brothers. When discussing the topic of Yu's speech, Barr suggested Yu speak about China from a writer's point of view, and Yu built his presentation around two common words in the contemporary Chinese language: 人民 ("people") and 领袖 ("leader"). He realized he had other words he wanted to write about and developed the idea into a book. "When I drove him to LAX at the end of his visit here, we agreed that I would translate the book into English," recalls Barr. "Yu Hua wrote China in Ten Words over the months that followed, sending me each chapter as he completed it. The book's 10 chapters all take a different word as their theme, in a wide-ranging discussion that involves memoir, anecdote, and analysis." The book's Taiwan edition mentions Pomona in the preface, says Barr, but that reference didn't make it into the English edition. The book was not published in mainland China due to its critiques of the country. See Yu Hua's own words on the book, translated by CDT's Don Weinland, and Perry Link's review, via CDT. On Han Han, see recent profiles and reviews by Jeffrey Wasserstrom at Words without Borders, Rebecca Liao at The New Inquiry, Katrina Hamlin at Reuters' Breakingviews, Duncan Hewitt at The Daily Beast and Ian Johnson at The New York Review of Books, as well as an excerpt from This Generation at The Daily Beast.
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: books, Han Han, literature, mo yan, reading, translation excerpt, yu hua
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| Photo: Waiting for the End of the World, by Mark Hobbs Posted: 21 Dec 2012 02:46 PM PST |
| Extinction Threatens 40% of China’s Minority Languages Posted: 21 Dec 2012 02:36 PM PST A widespread fear among Tibetans, both at home and in exile, is that their language will die out. Education reforms relegating Tibetan to secondary status in schools are one of the core grievances against Chinese authorities, and concern for the language's future has been voiced in a recent petition from 91 international scholars to Xi Jinping and the last words of some self-immolators. While Tibetan's survival seems relatively likely, a report at ChinaNews.com [zh] shows that other minority languages in China are in critical danger. From Bruce Humes' translated highlights at Ethnic ChinaLit: -
Non-han languages: 55 officially designated "peoples" (民族) speak an estimated 130 languages -
Populations: one-half of non-Han languages are spoken by groups that number under 10,000 members, of which 20+ have 1,000 speakers or less -
Endangered languages: Manchu, Tatar, She, Hezhen can no longer be used for conversation; another 20 percent, such as Nu, Yilao, Pumi and Jinuo are approaching that state; and a total of 40 percent are in danger of extinction in the mid-term. -
Manchu: 11 million ethnic Manchus, but only 100 or so can speak fluently and less than a dozen read and write well. Language decline and extinction is by no means limited to China: up to half of the 7,000 languages currently spoken may disappear by the end of the 21st Century, equivalent on average to three dying out each month. Technology has helped reverse the decline of some North American aboriginal languages, however, and Tibetan has also been bolstered by blogging and online organisation and resources. Monk, font designer and software developer Lobsang Monlam discussed these developments in an interview at Trace Foundation: Compared with developed countries, the impact of digital technology on Tibetans is relatively small and not extensive. However, in comparison to smaller communities, the impact in only a few years has been great and the progress is remarkable. To preserve the Tibetan language, there must be an appropriate forum for its use, and we must use it accordingly. There also must be proper conditions for its use. I see this as particularly important inside Tibet. […] From a dharma practitioner's point of view, I serve the Tibetan people by preserving the Tibetan language. Our cultural heritage is dependent on this language. As I work hard on these projects, my motivation is pure, which is very important here. […] The Tibetan language still lags behind in the digital technology sphere. We are still only utilizing 5% of Tibetan's capacity with regards to digital technologies. The language can still only be used for word processing, on the Internet and a few other applications. We have need a comprehensive character, grammar and spell check software. We also need to develop software that reads Tibetan words properly; a computer operating system that can be used in Tibetan, and software to convert old Tibetan fonts to the Unicode system. I feel these projects are very important for the digitization of the Tibetan language. We also need Optical Character Recognition software for Tibetan, various databases in the Tibetan language, speech-to-text software for Tibetan, translation software between Tibetan and other languages, and translations of important websites to Tibetan; all this is also very vital for Tibetan language. Tibetan Dechen Pemba of High Peaks Pure Earth contributed to this post.
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, cultural preservation, education, languages, Manchu, online organizing, Tibetan language
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| Censorship Vault: Marriage by Death and More Posted: 21 Dec 2012 08:24 AM PST In partnership with the China Copyright and Media blog, CDT is adding the "Beijing Internet Instructions" series to the Censorship Vault. These directives were originally published on Canyu.org (Participate) and date from 2005 to 2007. According to Canyu, the directives were issued by the Beijing Municipal Network Propaganda Management Office and the State Council Internet management departments and provided to to Canyu by insiders. China Copyright and Media has not verified the source. The translations are by Rogier Creemers of China Copyright and Media. 2 April 2007, 20:39:58 All websites are to reprint the newest article of Chongqing Hualong Net concerning the nail house: http://cqtoday.cqnews.net/system/2007/04/02/000777513.shtml. 3 April 2007, 18:12 Concerning the incident where the Chongqing nail house was pulled down, websites must not reprint or release new information, reports or comments anymore, and may not follow trails or look back. Blogs and forums may not recommend this sort of article, where posts are overly concentrated, they must be firmly removed. All posts attacking the handling result of this matter or encouraging trouble-making must be firmly blocked and deleted. 6 April 2007 All websites, concerning the matter of "Peking University Student Forces Liu Dehua to Marry Yang Lijuan by Death," please immediately delete this, forums, also delete this in blogs and other interactive segments. 6 April 2007 All websites are requested not to reprint "Three Large Petroleum Tycoons 'Jump into the Sea' to Pursue Hot Ocean Project Sector" and corresponding reports, where it has been reprinted, please delete it, thank you. 6 April 2007 All websites are requested to close trackers for "Shenyang Natural Gas Leak Accident Causes Large Fire" and corresponding news, thank you. 10 April 2007 All websites: Please immediately push information concerning "railway speed-up" to the back stage, existing information is inaccurate in many places. 13 April 2007, 18:28:40 Do not reprint reports on the issue of the legality of land use for the construction of the Olympic water park in Shunyi, interactive segments are not to disseminate or discuss this. All websites: recently, the farmer Guo Baoshun from Shunyi District, Beijing, published discourse concerning the so-called "issue of the legality of land use for the construction of the Olympic water park in Shunyi" that does not conform to reality. All websites are requested to not reprint reports concerning this matter, interactive segments may not disseminate or discuss this matter, delete corresponding content. 13 April 2007, 18:25:26 Do not reprint reports on the so-called "Last Redress of a Strangled Rural Party Member," interactive segments are not to discuss or disseminate this. All websites: Do not reprint reports related to the so-called Beijing Shunyi District Gaoliying Township Village Six Party member Lü Lianyou applying to withdraw from the Party, interactive segments are not to discuss or disseminate corresponding content. Interactive segments are to earnestly search for and delete the text "The Last Redress of a Strangled Rural Party Member" written by Lü Lianyou. 2007年4月北京网管办发出的禁令（一）
2007-04-02 20:39:58 各网站转载重庆华龙网关于钉子户的最新报道http://cqtoday.cqnews.net/system/2007/04/02/000777513.shtml
2007年4月3日17时12分 关于重庆钉子户拆迁事件，网站不要再转发、编发新的消息、报道、评论，不得进行追踪、回顾。博客、论坛不得推荐此类文章，帖文过于集中的要坚决删除。凡攻击此事处理结果、鼓动闹事的帖文要坚决封堵、删除。
2007年4月6日 各网:关于"北京大学生以死逼迫刘德华娶杨丽娟"一事请马上删除,论坛、博客等互动环节也删除。
2007年4月6日 "三大石油巨头下海将催热海洋工程业"及与此相关报道，请各网站不要转载，已转载的请删除，谢谢
2007年4月6日 "沈阳天然气泄漏事故引发大火"及其相关新闻，请各网站关闭跟贴，谢谢
2007年4月10日 各网:请马上将"火车提速"的消息压到后台,现有消息有多处不实.
2007-04-13 18:28:40 不转载顺义奥林匹克水上公园建设占地合法性问题的报道，互动环节不传播、不讨论。 各网：近日，北京顺义区农民郭宝顺就所谓"顺义奥林匹克水上公园建设占地合法性问题"在网站上发表不符合实际的言论。请各网不要转载对此事的报道，互动环节不传播、不讨论此事，并删除相关内容。
2007-04-13 18:25:26 不转载所谓"农村党员被扼杀之后最后一次申冤"的报道，互动环节不讨论、不传播。 各网：不要转载所谓北京顺义区高丽营镇六村党员吕连友申请退党的相关报道，互动环节不讨论、不传播相关内容。互动环节认真查找、删除吕连友所写的《农村党员被扼杀之后最后一次申冤》一文。
These translated directives were first posted by Rogier Creemers on China Copyright and Media on December 20, 2012 (here). This post is the 44th in the series.
© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing Internet Instructions, censorship, Censorship Vault, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda
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| Ministry of Truth: Neither Negative nor Positive Posted: 21 Dec 2012 07:59 AM PST The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by central government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Central Propaganda Department: In the near future, the media are to produce neither positive nor negative reporting on Chongqing except for Xinhua wire copy. (December 20, 2012) 中宣部：近期除新华社通稿外，各媒体不作关于重庆的正面或负面相关报道。
Central Propaganda Department: Ren Jianyu's court case will soon be heard in Chongqing. Except for low-key coverage using Xinhua wire copy, no media are to produce any other reports or commentary. Do not send reporters to Chongqing. (December 20, 2012) 中宣部：近日，任建宇案将在重庆开庭审理，除采用新华社通稿并低调处理外，各媒体不作其他任何报道评论，不派记者去重庆采访.
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.
© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Chongqing, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, Ren Jianyu
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