Analysis: Wang Yang Bold Push for Reform

Analysis: Wang Yang Bold Push for Reform

Posted: 21 May 2012 02:06 PM PDT

Guangdong's Party Secretary Wang Yang has been drumming up calls for political reform.

Gao Zhisheng's Wife Happy for Chen Guangcheng

Posted: 21 May 2012 09:20 AM PDT

Geng He, the wife of persecuted Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, says she is happy for fellow activist Chen Guangcheng who left China over the weekend. Geng calls for more to be done to free her husband who remains imprisoned in far-western China.

China: North Koreans Free Detained Fishermen

Posted: 20 May 2012 09:00 PM PDT

At least 28 Chinese fishermen who had been detained by North Korean gunmen for 13 days returned home on Monday, according to reports in the Chinese state news media.

Analysis: Wang Yang Bold Push for Reform

Posted: 21 May 2012 02:06 PM PDT

Guangdong's Party Secretary Wang Yang has been drumming up calls for political reform.

Villagers Fight Back Against Local Officials, Killing Two

Posted: 21 May 2012 06:19 PM PDT

The younger sister of Quan Shuilin. Quan hit a Communist Party official in the neck with a scythe, killing him, after his land was seized. His younger sister uploaded a video pleading for understanding over the impossible situation her brother was put in. (Boxun.com)

Local officials in the Chinese countryside are known to run the areas under their control like personal fiefdoms, seizing land and demolishing the houses of peasants for personal profit. Villagers in two areas of China recently resorted to desperate measures, fighting back against and killing at least two cadres and the family members of one.

The first incident took place in the Shuangjiezhen village near Tianjin, a city near Beijing on China's east coast. Peasants had been pushing for elections to bring in a new village chief after the incumbent, Huang Shuanglai, allegedly acquired large tracts of land via illicit means for personal benefit.

On May 11, Huang sent several of his enforcers to the homes of the other candidates for the village chief position. The purpose was to beat and threaten them, so they would withdraw from the election.

The following day he led more men to continue the harassment. A resident, who only wanted to be identified by his last name, Shi, told the Epoch Times in a telephone interview that over 10 hired thugs appeared at the home of an election candidate on May 12. After a heated argument the situation quickly turned violent, and villagers rushed forward to attack Huang and his relatives.

In the melee Huang, his brother-in-law, and his nephew were all killed, while others who came with them were severely injured, according to Boxun, an overseas dissident website.

Following the incident, several villagers were detained, while the village is said to be under close police surveillance. Chinese netizens who saw the news recently were supportive of the villagers, and left encouraging messages on the Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo.

In the same week a villager named Quan Shuilin killed a cadre after the local government seized his family's land and refused to compensate him adequately. Quan's sister told Boxun that the local government in Rongliu village, Guilin City, Guangxi Province, paid 19,000 yuan per mu (the Chinese unit of measurement for land) for the family's land, and then immediately sold it to a developer for 42,000 yuan per mu.

Without signing any contracts regarding the compensation, local officials ordered the land bulldozed on April 1. By May 16 they were ready to start building, when Quan attempted to intervene, getting into a tussle with the local official, whose surname in reports was only given as Qin. During the conflict Quan struck Qin in the neck with his scythe, and Qin subsequently died from blood loss. Quan's fate after the encounter is unclear.

"The issue is that the Party's cadres have become used to behaving this way, harming people, doing these horrible things, including bulldozing people's houses and seizing land," said Wen Zhao, a commentator with the New York-based New Tang Dynasty Television, an overseas Chinese, independent broadcaster. "They force people into a corner where they have to fight back."

Village Protests Thwart Demolition Attempt in Eastern China

Quan Shuilin's younger sister uploaded a video explaining her brother's plight. Her name was not provided. "My brother is a single father raising two young children and looking after two parents over 80-years-old. If it wasn't for the government stealing land and officials acting so brazenly and without scruple, would he have been driven to kill a man?"

With reporting by Ariel Tian.

chinareports@epochtimes.com

The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.

China's Wen in growth push

Posted: 21 May 2012 09:44 PM PDT

Wen Jiabao, China's premier, paved the way for a fresh round of pro-growth policies at the weekend, triggering a surge in Asian and commodity markets anticipating a burst of stimulus measures in the world's second-biggest economy.

Top China Stories from WSJ: Hollywood Deal, Alibaba, More on ‘Foreign Trash’

Posted: 21 May 2012 06:27 PM PDT

A Chinese deal to buy AMC Entertainment confounded many in the film business; a state TV host responds to the controversy surrounding his comments on Beijing's effort to root out foreigners illegally living in the Chinese capital; Alibaba's deal with Yahoo gives the company the control it craves to grapple with mounting domestic competition.

Taiwan’s Cyber Defense Honed By Frequent Attacks

Posted: 21 May 2012 05:51 PM PDT

Taken at The Chaos Computer Club, Germany. The real concern is about the groups that are lesser known. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Taiwan—China's strategic enemy number one—could play a key role in defending the U.S. against cyber attacks from Mainland China, according to Taiwanese cyber experts.

The democratic island state is the primary target of cyber attacks by China-based hackers, said Chuang Ming-hsiun, section chief at the Taiwan Criminal Investigation Bureau's High-Technology Crime Prevention Center. This means Taiwan has the greatest repertoire of experience in the world defending against China, he added.

Chuang said although China has a plethora of hackers at work, the country's own defense technology and know-how are not that advanced, while Taiwan has advanced cyber defense capabilities.

"Before China releases a virus to the United States, it will test it on Taiwan. That's why Taiwan has a faster response rate than the United States. This is Taiwan's soft power," Chuang said.

However, the high-tech criminal expert warned that increased outsourcing of IT talent to Mainland China in recent years has led to a potentially dangerous situation for Taiwan. Source code for Taiwanese websites is now being developed in China, making it easier for Chinese hackers or spies to obtain proprietary security data.

Professor Wong Ming-hsien, director of the Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University, said the U.S. Department of Defense has said that any war between China and the U.S. would take the form of cyber and information warfare.

"This war can be quite detrimental. Among all the challenges the United States faces from China, cyber warfare will be an important one," Wong said.

Wong added that Taiwan has accumulated a lot of experience and technology through past military tensions and maneuvers across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan has an advanced information sector and many well trained analysts.

According to a recent Voice of America report, Mark Stokes of the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank, said during a recent seminar on Chinese cyber attacks that the one-party-ruled Chinese regime fears the democratic, multiple-party system in Taiwan, and this is why hackers are so focused on interfering with Taiwan. Taiwan could help the United States in strengthening cyber security, Stokes said.

Taiwanese cyber defenders are also assisted by a shared cultural heritage with Mainland China, helping them to better decipher hackers' ways of thinking. In addition to assisting the United States in a cyber war, Stokes suggested Taiwan can also play an important role in helping Southeast Asia, India, and Japan to understand China better.

Wong said that Taiwan is able to develop its cyber expertise because it has a free society and advanced technology. However, the same factors also contribute to its weaknesses. Public debates in the Parliament on Taiwan's defense budget, research and development of new weapons technology, as well as the open media that report on them, are used by Mainland Chinese intelligence gatherers.

Read the original Chinese article.

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The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.

North Korea ‘frees’ captured Chinese fishermen, boats

Posted: 21 May 2012 09:13 AM PDT

Earlier this month 29 Chinese fishermen and three boats were captured in the Yellow Sea and were held in North Korea. Now, North Korean officials have released all 29 sailors and their boats...

Trial of Disgraced Chinese Official, Wife, and Attempted Defector Expected Soon

Posted: 21 May 2012 02:49 PM PDT

Ousted Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai. (New Epoch Weekly Photo Archive)

The purged Chinese Communist Party official Bo Xilai, his wife Gu Kailai and, Wang Lijun, the high ranking police officer whose flight to a U.S. consulate in February revealed a power struggle in the top Chinese leadership, will face trial as early as next month, overseas Chinese online news source Boxun reported, citing insiders.

It is possible that Gu Kailai, who is the suspected killer of British businessman Neil Heywood, will face a death sentence. Although Bo Xilai is also suspected to be behind the murder, he will not face a death sentence, the insider said. Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun will most likely be sentenced between 16 years to life. Wang Lijun will be tried on three charges: treason, serious corruption and torture.

According to another source cited by the South China Morning Post, a special legal team has been established to set up the trial of Wang Lijun, which the source said will take place in Chengdu.

Wang sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, a major city in Southwestern China on Feb. 6, and reportedly stayed overnight before being taken into custody by central authorities. It is understood that Wang passed on sensitive information to U.S. officials.

Wang's attempted defection brought out into the open a power struggle that the CCP leadership had preferred to keep out of public view.

The paper reported that analysts say central authorities are looking to have the scandal dealt with before the 18th Communist Party Congress which is scheduled to be held later this year.

The South China Morning Post also quoted another source who said that Wang had been acknowledged to "have made a major contribution" to the Party's investigations into Bo.

In March it was reported by various media that Bo had already been placed under house arrest by the Central Guard Bureau, the agency responsible for the security of the Party's top leaders. Bo has been a core member of a hardline faction led by former Party leader Jiang Zemin that has also opposed current Party head Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao since the two took office in 2003.

As part of that, it is believed that Wang passed onto U.S. officials information about a plot to derail Xi Jinping's succession to become the Party's next leader by Bo and the powerful chief of internal security forces Zhou Yongkang. Xi Jinping, an apparatchik with a clutch of posts, including vice president of the People's Republic of China, is supposed to be the next leader of the CCP.

Read original Chinese article.

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Click www.ept.ms/ccp-crisis to read about the most recent developments in the ongoing crisis within the Chinese communist regime. In this special topic, we provide readers with the necessary context to understand the situation. Get the RSS feed. Get the new interactiveÂ Timeline of Events. Who are the Major Players?

Village Protests Thwart Demolition Attempt in Eastern China

Posted: 21 May 2012 01:28 PM PDT

A villager's demolished building after being zoned "illegal" by the local CCP Secretary. (NTD Television Screenshot)

More than a thousand villagers violently fought against and eventually prevented a local government demolition team from destroying what it claimed were "illegal buildings" in Wangli Township, Wenzhou City, on China's east coast.

The county government has been demolishing the buildings since late April, according to the Cangnan-County News. There are approximately 500 to 700 cotton regeneration plants in Wangli, and over 50 cotton mills were identified as "illegal buildings" set for the first wave of demolition.

Wangli villagers circulated online postings criticizing the local Party secretary, Chen Derong, for his order to remove the cotton mills. According to Chinanews.com, Chen Derong planned to increase the supply of land and thus reduce the cost of houses.

A small two-story building located in Wangli Township was identified as an "illegal building" by the local government and torn down on the morning of May 18. This demolition was confirmed by a Wangli civilian police officer who spoke to NTD Television by telephone.

"Due to the demolition, a quarrel broke out," he said.

A few days beforehand the local county government allegedly said that if villagers dared to obstruct the demolition, they would be beaten. A villager told NTD Television that there were hundreds of people in the local government demolition team including civilian police, riot police, urban-management officials, and land office personnel.

"I went home at noon," the villager said. "I was told that a fight broke out and five or six people were arrested."

Pictures uploaded online show injuries to a number of residents, along with a crowd of villagers pelting police cars with a hail of stones and bricks.

Read the original Chinese article.

chinareports@epochtimes.com

The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.

Click www.ept.ms/ccp-crisis to read about the most recent developments in the ongoing crisis within the Chinese communist regime. In this special topic, we provide readers with the necessary context to understand the situation. Get the RSS feed. Get the new interactive Timeline of Events. Who are the Major Players?

Gao Zhisheng's Wife Happy for Chen Guangcheng

Posted: 21 May 2012 09:20 AM PDT

North Korea ‘frees’ captured Chinese fishermen, boats

Posted: 21 May 2012 09:13 AM PDT

Earlier this month 29 Chinese fishermen and three boats were captured in the Yellow Sea and were held in North Korea. Now, North Korean officials have released all 29 sailors and their boats...

Taiwan's Ma Ying-Jeou Begins Second Presidential Term

Posted: 21 May 2012 08:58 AM PDT

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou was sworn into his second presidential term on Sunday. The inauguration ceremony coincided with protests opposing his domestic policies and cross-strait strategies.

Lawrence Wittner: Should NATO Be Handling World Security?

Posted: 21 May 2012 09:08 AM PDT

There are real international security problems, and some entity should certainly be addressing them. But is NATO the proper entity?

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Aparna Pande: India-Nepal: Sins of Omission & Commission

Posted: 21 May 2012 08:17 AM PDT

India's relations with its neighbors in South Asia -- all of whom are smaller in size than India -- have never been amicable and tension-free. India has often acted as the big brother and not taken adequate notice of how its behavior is perceived in these countries.

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With China’s Growth Easing, Premier Calls for Stimulus

Posted: 20 May 2012 09:00 PM PDT

Wen Jiabao called for more growth, though he stopped well short of calling for the vast increase in bank lending and monetary supply that eased the financial crisis three years ago.

Paralympic Games: London needs to learn from Beijing and Sydney

Posted: 21 May 2012 11:04 AM PDT

With 100 days to go until the start of the Paralympic Games, Guardian reporters look at the some of the lessons – and pitfalls – of the previous two events

Beijing 2008

The statistics were impressive: an £86m budget, 4,000 athletes and a haul of 89 medals for the hosts, who topped the table.

But many believe the real significance of Beijing's Paralympics lay in the less easily measurable task of changing attitudes towards China's 83 million disabled citizens.

Four years on, campaigners and scholars say the effect of the games was noticeable, and not only because of new facilities such as the wheelchair lifts at subway stations.

"Thanks to the Paralympics, the Chinese public are now actively learning about disabled people, rather than, as previously, being horrified by and rejecting them," said Qian Zhiliang, professor of special education at Beijing Normal University. "I think the impact will be long term: the public has realised they are able to do things and have rights just as everyone else does."

Zheng Xiaojie, the secretary-general of the Hong Dan Dan centre, an organisation supporting the blind in Beijing, agreed: "People have realised they have abilities. They were shocked to see that people without legs could swim, for example."

But some warn that Chinese coverage highlighted a tendency sometimes evident in previous Paralympics: striving to combat dismissive stereotypes by promoting an equally unrealistic image of disabled people as heroes, rather than equals.

Zheng said the effect of the 2008 event was merely a "seed" that still needed to be nourished by the government and society.

Some discrimination remains, according to Yang Renliang, a 25-year-old from Shenzhen, who is albino and visually impaired.

He planned a career as a civil servant until he realised he would not pass the physical examination. "At job interviews, people always think disabled people are less capable and I was obviously rejected because of my appearance," he said .

"The public still tends to label disabled people as being less educated and of lower morals, and see us as incomplete, unhealthy and even abnormal."

He recently wrote to the ministry of human resources, urging them to tackle civil service discrimination by removing unreasonable requirements from the physical examination and earmarking positions for disabled people.

In theory, all government departments, businesses and institutions must ensure that at least 1.5% of their staff are disabled, or pay a fine. In practice, that is widely ignored.

Campaigners say the problems faced by disabled people reflects a wider lack of understanding of rights and discrimination issues in China. It is common for job adverts to specify the sex, age and even physical attributes of the candidates being sought.

Yang said some of the facilities put in place for the Games had been abandoned; others were not properly installed or were never really suitable for the people supposed to use them.

Stephen Hallett of the UK-based charity China Vision, who is visually impaired and has worked in China for many years, said: "There was an effort to make Beijing more accessible, and that was extended to other cities, but there wasn't a process of consultation.

"There must be millions of kilometres of tactile paving put down at vast expense and, if you ask any Chinese blind person, they will tell you they don't use it because there are obstacles everywhere across it.

"If you consult people, they will say: forget the tactile paving; what we need is mobility training."

In Britain, as in China, the impact of the Paralympics will depend on the priorities of organisers and their willingness to listen to disabled people.

"There were people in the government, particularly in the Disabled Federation, who saw it as a golden opportunity to raise awareness and change attitudes. For the whole government, the priority was to present China in the best possible light," said Hallett.

Additional research by Han Cheng

Sydney 2000

The Paralympics in Sydney 12 years ago are widely regarded as having set the benchmark for the competition. Record crowds gave enthusiastic support to competitors from 123 countries, also a record.

At the opening ceremony, 87,000 fans roared as Australian champion wheelchair athlete, Louise Sauvage, lit the Paralympic flame. For many, Sydney marked the time and place when Paralympians genuinely became part of the Olympic movement.

"When Australia had the Olympic games, it extended that support to the Paralympics and they got a lot more emphasis than they had done previously," said Sydney-based sports historian and author, Richard Cashman,

For 40 years, the Paralymics had been the poor cousin. They had only been held in the same city as the Olympics four times since their inauguration in 1960, and often at a different time.

Atlanta in 1996 was a debacle. A shambolic handover from the Olympics left competitors in the US city deflated and angry. Sydney was determined to be different and the Olympic and Paralympic committees worked together, promoting one big festival of sport.

Garnering public support was key. Schools and community groups were targeted in the years before the Games in an effort to raise awareness.

"They saw that young people's minds could be shaped and wanted them to view the athletes as role models," said Paralympic swimmer Denise Beckwith, who was an ambassador for the Games and won a bronze medal in the pool.

"I spoke to lots of kids as part of their school curriculum and it allowed me to quash many myths about disabled people," said Beckwith, who has cerebral palsy. "The children actually saw me as a person rather than a person with a disability."

More than a million spectators attended (double the figure of Atlanta), including 320,000 schoolchildren, but Michael Bleasdale, the executive director of national advocacy group People With Disability, said opportunities were lost, despite all the success of the competition itself.

"Around the time of the Paralympics, there was a much greater understanding around disability that came mostly from the media," he said. "But there's been a serious decline in the reporting of disability issues since. Disabled people are rarely heard because they're not approached and because their view is somehow seen as hopelessly biased and uninformed."

Dr Simon Darcy, the associate professor of sports, events and tourism at Sydney's University of Technology Business School, agrees that the benefits were transitory. "The bubble that the elite sports people live in is a very different environment to what people will go back to dealing with on a daily basis," he said.

"Mainstream disability funding continues to be a story of unmet need, with more demands than resources,. The cutbacks that the disabled community in the UK have had to face won't be front and foremost when politicians are lauding the athletes at this summer's Games."

Bleasdale and Darcy said Sydney missed opportunities to build long-term infrastructure for disabled people. While the venues themselves and the transport at the Olympic site were widely seen to have been exemplary, away from the spotlight, it was a different story.

"Many athletes were able to board trains near their venues but couldn't get off somewhere else at the end of their trip," said Darcy. He said this would also be a big challenge for London.

Twelve years on, fewer than half of Sydney's railway stations have wheelchair access – although RailCorp says 80% of train journeys are to or from those stations with access.

London's Paralympics will no doubt bring many sporting records but, if Sydney's experience is anything to go by, disability rights campaigners say a lasting legacy beyond the sporting stage may be too much to wish for.

Tania Branigan

Alison Rourke

Chinese TV star launches tirade against 'foreign trash'

Posted: 21 May 2012 05:02 PM PDT

Presenter of English language chatshow calls al-Jazeera journalist a 'foreign bitch' on Chinese equivalent of Twitter

A high-profile state television presenter who launched an online tirade against "foreign trash" has sought to temper his words after calls for overseas guests to boycott his show.

In the diatribe by Yang Rui, published on the popular Sina Weibo service, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, he described a recently expelled journalist as a "foreign bitch" and praised police for "clearing out foreign trash".

The attack by the host of the English language programme Dialogue, which says it seeks to promote cross-cultural debate, was initially viewed by some commentators as an attempt at satire. His programme is shown on CCTV-9, the channel regarded as part of China's soft power drive to present a more humane face to the outside world.

Melissa Chan, the al-Jazeera journalist expelled from China earlier this month, was the target of the "foreign bitch" remarks by Yang. They followed an announcement by Beijing police of a 100-day crackdown on foreigners illegally living or working in the city and controversy over the behaviour of foreigners in China, including a man – said to be British – who was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a Chinese woman.

"Cut off the traffickers, unemployed Americans and Europeans who come to China to take money, and engage in human trafficking and illegal immigration. Identify foreign spies, who find a Chinese girl to live with while collecting intelligence, posing as tourists to get mapping and GPS data for Japan, South Korea, the United States and European countries," Yang wrote.

"We kicked out that foreign bitch and closed al-Jazeera's Beijing bureau. We should shut up and kick out those who demonise China."

Speaking to the Guardian, Yang said the remarks were a spontaneous response to the police crackdown: "The wording, I acknowledge, is very strong and incompatible with my image as host of a professional talk show and I can say for sure I am sorry for hurting those who respect my profession.

"I don't mean I am beating a retreat from the principles that may be implied in the initial posting. The crackdown on illegal foreigners is a must. Ninety-five to 98% are honest people, well educated and abide by our laws … I am only talking about the bad guys."

His post was still online on Monday evening and, despite coming under fire on Weibo, he has not tempered his comments. He said he initially accepted the translation of the term he used as "bitch", but claimed it did not truly reflect his meaning. "It somehow carries an overtone of sexual discrimination," he said.

"I never meant to humiliate any woman. I respect women. In general terms, I feel China is not covered responsibly or fairly."

Yang has previously said he has to remind himself he speaks not just for himself, but for his country.

He said his Sina Weibo account was personal, but the comments were also carried on his microblog feed on the official CCTV website. A CCTV spokeswoman said: "His microblog is a personal account. It does not represent CCTV; it was a very personal post."

Yang said he believed any effect on guest bookings would be temporary. "If these guys refuse to appear, it's a reflection of cowardice," he said.

Tania Branigan

Kefei Wu: G(irls)20 Summit: The Voice From Girls and Women

Posted: 21 May 2012 06:08 AM PDT

Before March 2012, I knew nothing about G(irls)20 Summit. It was by chance that I learned about the summit through Shanghai Roots and Shoots, and this...

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