Blogs » Politics » Forced Abortion Victim and Family Branded Traitors
Blogs » Politics » Forced Abortion Victim and Family Branded Traitors |
- Forced Abortion Victim and Family Branded Traitors
- Silicon Valley Melting Pot
- Chinese Indigenous Fracking. Tech Licensors Beware.
- Forced abortion victim’s family threatened and called traitors
- China urges restraint between Syria, Turkey over jet shooting
- Losing their only child
- Sheng Shuren: A Journalist in New China – Part 2 – A trip to Shanghai
- This Weibo Is Not Appropriate for the Public
- After Forcible Abortion, Local Government Brands Father “Traitor” For Talking to Reporter
- That Year, These Years: Stories of Tiananmen
- PE in China: Learning Some Old Lessons
- China: An Account of Citizen Disappearance
- China: Bridge Blogger List
- How China’s Artist-Dissident, Ai Weiwei, Works His Twitter Magic
- Expat Assimilation, Tribalism, and the Kaiser Kuo Show
- Apple to release iPhone 5 with China’s 3G network
- Shanghai metro’s sexual discrimination provoked anger
- Six Points on Social Insurance for Foreigners
- Where does soft power begin?
| 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:
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:
The Ministry of Tofu also translated the following Weibo post from Deng Jicai, the victim's sister:
At Tea Leaf Nation, David Wertime reflects on the incident and the netizen sentiment that has erupted in response:
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:
© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| Posted: 25 Jun 2012 09:17 PM PDT I was at a corporate event yesterday, at Coyote Ranch, a bit south of San Jose. Looking at the faces of people there, I was struck by how diverse the Silicon Valley population is. Not to discount the atrocious past, or the discrimination that still exists today, I think America has the will officially to work towards racial harmony. On a global scale, talents tend to migrate into areas where there is demand or opportunity. Silicon Valley has attracted students, engineers, business people from China, India, and other parts of the world. Steve Jobs was a by-product of that trend; his birth parents are ethnic Syrian and adoptive parents Armenian. Following is a collection of pictures I took – and I shall refer to them as "Silicon Valley Melting Pot."  Petting Zoo
 Proud Father  Tug-of-war  Amazing Voice  The guitar player + vocal backup  Saxophone  Paper craft  Waiting for mommy to find age-appropriate activity |
| Chinese Indigenous Fracking. Tech Licensors Beware. Posted: 25 Jun 2012 07:47 PM PDT
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? © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
| Forced abortion victim’s family threatened and called traitors Posted: 25 Jun 2012 12:33 PM PDT Deng Jiyuan, the 29-year-old father of the aborted fetus, was said to have been missing, after the case of his 22-year-old wife being forced to undergo late-term abortion provoked a huge wave of public anger online. Deng's sister, Deng Jicai, has been using her Tecent Weibo to update the constant harassment their family have suffered. "Another sleepless night, and we were frightened up again to the loud knocking sound on the door in the morning. Sorry my sister in law, you have suffered a lot! Now we still haven't heard any news about my brother. God, please bless my brother, and keep him safe and sound," tweeted Deng Jicai. On June 24, a group of thugs were even seen holding up a large banner in their town, calling Deng's family traitors and demanding they leave the town. The reason could be Deng's family accepted the interview from a German weekly magazine. And these thugs were said to be hired by the local government. South China Morning Post, an English-language Hong Kong newspaper, has covered the story too:
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| China urges restraint between Syria, Turkey over jet shooting Posted: 25 Jun 2012 07:56 PM PDT
"China has taken note of relevant reports and is closely following the situation," said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei during Monday's regular news briefing. Noting that the current regional situation is complicated and sensitive, Hong urged the parties concerned to remain calm, exercise restraint and solve the matter through diplomatic channels to avoid escalating tensions. NATO said it would hold a meeting today, following a request from Turkey that invoked Article Four of the alliance's founding treaty, which covers threats to member states' security, AFP reported. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attack as "brazen and unacceptable," saying Washington would cooperate with Ankara to promote a transition in strife-torn Syria, according to Reuters. Damascus claimed Friday that Syrian military spotted an "unidentified aerial target" that was flying at a low altitude and high speed which turned out to be a Turkish military plane entering Syrian airspace, according to the country's State-run news agency SANA. However, AP quoted Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying that the warplane that went missing on Friday was downed by Syrian forces in international airspace and that the two Turkish pilots remain missing. Ankara said the jet was on a training flight to test its radar capabilities and was not targeting Syria, while Damascus insisted it has no hostile intentions toward its neighbor. Source: Global Times By: Liu Linlin Jin Liangxiang, a researcher with the Department for West Asian and African Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told the Global Times that the incident made the regional situation even worse but was not serious enough to draw foreign military intervention at present. "Voices calling for the Syria crisis to be solved through dialogue are still widely supported, and NATO will not act abruptly without a clear and convincing investigation result," Jin said. Chen Shuangqing, a Syrian issues observer at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said that the Syrian government is now overwhelmed by complicated factors such as smuggling and trespassing of borders. Dozens of members of Syria's military defected to Turkey overnight with their families, AP cited a Turkish anonymous official as saying. "Syria would not have brought down the plane if it had known it belonged to Turkey, which would give western countries an excuse to intervene with force," said Chen. Agreeing that it is not a proper time for Western countries to conduct a military intervention as they are fully occupied by elections and an economic crisis, Chen said the foundation for dialogue is shaky as long as violent confrontations between the Syrian government and opposition forces continue. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 91 people had been killed on Sunday in Syria. |
| Posted: 25 Jun 2012 07:11 PM PDT
A group of parents having lost their only children are planning to jointly sue the National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC), shortly after about 80 of them petitioned the government body in Beijing for help. They accuse the commission of failing to provide them with essential assistance and are asking for compensation. "Although more than 30 years have passed since the family planning policy was launched, the commission has, aside from a paltry allowance, done almost nothing to guarantee the future financial security for those having lost their only child," said the draft of the indictment. "We have contributed a lot to demographic factors that have driven the country's socioeconomic growth. But when we become lonely and helpless when our only children have died from accidents or illnesses, who will care for us?" said Jiang Li, 57, from Shenyang, Liaoning Province, whose daughter died at 25 in a 2008 traffic accident in the US. "We don't want to blame the family planning policy. What we want is a sound security arrangement under which we can live the rest of our lives in comfort despite the fact we no longer have a child to support us," Jiang, one representative of about 1,200 people who have signed the indictment, told the Global Times. Guangzhou Daily estimated in May that families having lost their only children total at least 1 million. This number is growing fast as around 76,000 only children between 15 and 30 years old die each year, the newspaper said. History of family planning China adopted the family planning policy in 1973 but its enforcement remained lax until it was formalized as a State policy in 1982. Although most couples could originally only have one child, rural couples were allowed a second if the first was a girl or suffered from certain disabilities. At the turn of the 21st century, the country loosened the policy and allowed couples who are both only children to have two children. "Allegations that the government has done nothing are not true. The country is highly concerned about these families and provides necessary help to those whose only children are dead or disabled," Ma Li, a State Council counselor who has been engaged in China's population strategy, told the Global Times. The Population and Family Planning Law dating back to 2002 stipulates that local governments should provide necessary assistance to parents whose only child has died by accident or illness. It stipulates that if the mother is above 49 years old, the couple can each receive a subsidy of no less than 80 yuan ($12.58) each month. "But due to different fiscal conditions in different regions, the subsidies have varied greatly," Ma said. Zhengzhou in Henan Province raised it to 270 yuan this year, while Jiangxi Province raised it to 170 yuan in June. In Bishan county, Chongqing Municipality, a family having lost an only child and whose mother is above 40 years old can receive 1,000 yuan a month, according to a policy launched in May 2011. About 170 families in the county benefit from the policy. Nevertheless, for many others, conditions are becoming dire and these subsidies are not enough to keep their heads above water. Yang Xiangwu, 66, lives in Chongqing other than Bishan county. With a pension of 1,400 yuan per month, Yang and his wife, 59, are racking up massive levels of debt since developing a cerebral infarction and lymphoma respectively after their only daughter died in 2002. "The current policy is too limited to solve the problems. These inadequate measures will also increase public hostility towards the family planning policy," Zhao Chao, a deputy to the National People's Congress and president of Shaanxi-based Buchang Pharma Group, said in March. According to his research in Xianyang, Shaanxi, of 246 households having lost only children, nearly half have dipped below the poverty line after spending their savings on treatments for the children, and 60 percent are not eligible for government aid since the mother is under 49.  Parents having lost their only children sleep at the petition office of the National Population and Family Planning Commission on June 5. About 80 parents appealed the NPFPC for relief measures. Photo: Courtesy of Jiang Li Other options to move on Other parents have chosen to have a second child or adopt orphans. A couple from Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, adopted a baby daughter in 2009, three years after they lost their daughter of 22 in a car accident. "I still feel uneasy when taking my daughter to public sites and I worry she will call me mom. Others will look at me strangely as I look more like her grandmother," the wife, 53, known as Yanzi, told the Global Times on condition of anonymity. But still, the attention and care she gives her adopted daughter have largely eased the pain of the loss of her first child. However, most find this step hard. "For women above 45, artificial insemination is almost unfeasible. Besides, due to old age, bringing up a new baby is not that easy in terms of both energy and money," she said. A man surnamed Wu, 64, a chemical factory retiree from Shanghai whose only child died in 2009, said he and his wife also had difficulties when getting ill and entering a rest home. "When having operations, we have no one to sign the agreement letter. In emergencies, we have no one to take care of us. When checking into rest homes, it's hard to find a guarantee," Wu told the Global Times. "We even worry that when we die and get cremated, no one will claim our caskets." Jiang in Shenyang said they also suffer from discrimination. In January, Jiang and dozens of others reserved several tables at a restaurant for dinner during Chinese New Year. However, the restaurant manager called back and rejected their order. The manager confessed that he was worried that, having no kids, they would bring bad luck to his establishment. Legal appeals Jiang is among many who are disappointed at the government's reluctance to care for them. Since 2010, some have written to petition the NPFPC and asked for detailed regulations and relief measures. On June 5 this year, about 80 people gathered at the office of the NPFPC and asked to meet with representatives. After some stayed overnight at the office, five officials including deputy director Wang Peian from the commission met with five parents the next day. According to Jiang, the officials agreed to be in more regular communication and launch a field inspection and survey, but didn't directly address their compensation demands. In Jiang's eyes, the officials were just trying to appease them. Jiang said they are now talking to lawyers and will attempt to seek justice and compensation through legal means. They also suggest a standard formula of compensation that would see the age of the dying child subtracted from the national average life-span then multiplied by half of the local annual per capita income. According to the formula, for example, a parent may receive 523,440 yuan if their child dies at the age of 25. Nevertheless, Yuan Yulai, a lawyer from Zhejiang Zhixing Law Firm who has taken several cases against government bodies, said the possibility of the NPFPC seeing its day in court is slim. "The government has made some commitment instead of doing nothing. Still I think we can take other methods like calling for public attention to urge the government to make more relief efforts," Yuan told the Global Times. Providing needed services Yi Fuxian, a US-based author of the book Big Country in An Empty Nest, wrote in a Global Times piece in May that these challenges would become far bigger in the future. Based on calculations from census data and current mortality rates, Yi put the number of families having lost their only child in China at 10 million by 2035. "The traditional concept of raising children in preparation for old age becomes impossible. Furthermore, some housewives suffer not only loneliness but also economic difficulties when their husbands abandon them after their only child died," Yi said. Yanzi confirmed that several couples she knew had broken up after their child died. "Men can have a baby with young women even if they are quite old," she said. Some voluntary organizations have started relief work with these families. Wang Xiaoyuan, a volunteer with Shanghai-based Star Harbor Care Center, a non-governmental organization launched in 2003, said nearly half of the 320 families they have served found a semblance of normal life after receiving psychological help and taking part in group activities. "In my opinion, the key thing that government officials ought to do is to correct attitudes. These people feel neglected. The country should face these problems head on and identify them," Wang said, hoping the government could increase cooperation and fund support to the NGOs. Their volunteers have met with obstacles and misunderstanding when looking for sites to hold activities or provide assistance, she cited. Jiang, the mother in Shenyang, said she felt ashamed of receiving the subsidies. "The workers thought they were doing charity work. In some places, they even asked families receiving their subsidies to attend public ceremonies and take pictures," she said. Ma Li said community service centers and NGOs are urgently needed to take care of these elderly. "These organizations, by being financed in part by the government, can provide door-to-door services to those in need," she said. Source: Global Times |
| Sheng Shuren: A Journalist in New China – Part 2 – A trip to Shanghai Posted: 25 Jun 2012 06:24 PM PDT Erjia, who was only a couple of years older than Sheng 's oldest son, called Sheng "Shuren Dage" (树人大哥) or Big Brother Shuren, and Sheng Shuren called Erjia "Jia Di" ("家弟") or Little Brother Jia. Shuren Dage and Jia Di did not cook and ate in a neighborhood canteen mainly for the neighborhood factory workers. There, Erjia's two favorite items, steamed dumpling and pickled duck egg, sold for 5 cents a piece. Going Dutch, the two men lived on twenty yuan a month. Sheng Shuren's mother was sick, and the two men often went to a general store together to rent oxygen bags for her (she died not too long after Erjia left). When there was nothing better to do, the two roamed Shanghai's streets and down the east bank of the Huangpu River. Sheng Shuren suffered from nerve compression syndrome, walked slowly and had to stop often to rest. The two liked to sit in the People's Square. After so many years, Erjia has forgotten the name of the square but remembered that Shuren Dage told him it used to be the race course of Shanghai. I found out the name following this clue. Shuren Dage told Jia Di that someone offered one thousand yuan to buy his St. John's University diploma, but it could be sold for at least two thousand yuan in Hong Kong. He mentioned that he had been suspected of being a spy. He said there were a lot of errors in Xinhua's English broadcast (apparently he listened to it), he wrote them down, corrected them and sent his corrections to Xinhua. Erjia looked at Shuren Dage in disbelief: Why are you doing that? They wronged you! Besides, they don't care about your corrections!  Shanghai race course After settling down in Shuren Dage's house, Erjia went to visit a friend of his own eldest brother from his army years. The friend violently objected to Erjia's staying with Sheng Shuren. "You can't have contact with someone like him!" He shrieked. Erjia was taken aback: Isn't he the same as my brother Erning? "No!" the friend shouted. "He is not the same as you and your brother!" Erjia found such discrimination arbitrary and unreasonable, and, forty years later, he described his reaction at the time as being "shocked." Rather than staying with his brother's friend as the latter insisted, Erjia returned to Shuren Dage. Sheng Shuren taught English privately. When Erjia was there, he had three students, three young but grown men whose identities were unclear to Erjia and whose classes alternated, each lasting one and half hours. Sheng also taught at students' homes. Sometimes when the two were outside, Shuren Dage would ask Jia Di to wait wherever they were for him for an hour and a half, and they would continue when he returned. Shuren Dage told Jia Di that, if Erjia stayed in Shanghai for two years, he would have taught him English. To this proposition, Erjia giggled and shook his head: something as foreign as English is not for me. I told Erjia that, Sheng Shuren started teaching English soon after his return from Xushui, and at least one of his students came from as far as Wuxi, more than a hundred miles away. On the web I found one Mr. Qian on a local listing who wrote that, after graduating from high school in 1962, "I studied English from Mr. Sheng Shuren, a graduate of St. John's University, following my father's instructions." Erjia marveled how great Sheng Shuren's English was. Always embarrassed when people who don't know English effuse praise over others' ability of English, I hurried to supply Erjia the evidence: St. John's University was an all-English university, and Mr. Sheng had worked for the two best English publications, and also for the British mission, in Shanghai. Erjia said Sheng Shuren was talkative, but when I asked about their conversations during those two months, he couldn't remember anymore. Was he a "rightist" (victims of the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957)? I asked Erjia. Erjia thought about it and said, No, never heard of him, or Erning, mentioning it. Did he talk about what had happened in Xushui? This time Erjia did not hesitate: No, never. He didn't mention it, and I didn't ask. Besides, Erjia added, it was such a shameful thing, and who would want to talk about it? A trip to Shanghai was a big deal, if not a once-in-a-lifetime event; Erjia had a long list of things to acquire for family and friends, good stuff that only Shanghai had to offer as well as things hard to get hold of in Liaoning. At the time, to buy a bicycle you had to have a government-issued voucher, and the vouchers were hard to come by without back-door connections. In Shanghai, though, where bicycles were made, vouchers were sold 15 yuan a piece on the black market, in the basement of the Municipal First Department Store where deals were made with furtive eye contact and hand gestures. Erjia bought one, and with it, bought a bicycle in Shanghai that was still cheaper than in Anshan, shipping included. The two of them went to buy shoes, Shuren Dage changed on the spot into the new shoes he had just bought for himself, leaving Erjia the bewildered impression that the Shanghainese were a very "different" kind of people. As Erjia's departure approached, the two men went to the grocery store one morning to purchase cutlass fish. Limited to one kilo per unique purchase but not by the number of purchases, they got in line repeatedly to buy enough to salt-preserve them. When Erjia left Shanghai, he carried no less than eleven luggage bags, large and small, the content including a pot of lard, a bag of flour, a Triple-Five wall clock, five kilos of preserved cutlass fish, three bags of clothes and shoes, two bags of Big White Rabbit soft candies, and more. Plus the bicycle. Shuren Dage prepared two gift boxes of Shanghai traditional pastries from the City God Temple market for Erjia to take home; for his friend Erning, he brought two tins of tea leaves. On the day when Erjia left, Shuren Dage saw him off on the dock and told him to come back to visit again. It took a long time to board the ship and for it to leave, and Shuren Dage stood on the dock until the ship set sail before walking away slowly. It was either in 1976 or 1977, Erjia received a letter from Sheng Shuren's wife, telling him that he had died in a car accident. With that letter in his hand, Erjia teared up for days on end.  Shanghai alley Chiefly a paper for commerce and trade and the longest running, the North China Daily News was a British newspaper founded in Shanghai in 1850, and ceased publishing in 1951 due to the new China's restriction on the activities of foreign media. On the other hand, The China Weekly Review, appeared in 1917 in Shanghai, was a political journal supposedly fashioned after the New Republic. A few things about the magazine left impressions on me over the course of my research. First, it is the magazine where Edgar Snow, the author of Red Star over China, began his journalistic career when he came to China in 1928. In November, 1936, the weekly published, in two consecutive issues, "Meeting with Mao Tse-tung, the Communist Leader" and, with it, the iconic photo of Mao in gray cotton jacket and gray red-army cap in front of his cave dwelling in Yen'an. Second, during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the weekly was suspended and John Benjamin Powell, the editor and publisher, was arrested in 1941 and lost both feet to torture. Third, the journal was known for its relentless criticism of the then ruling Nationalist Party, or Kuomingtang, and, following the victory of World War II, it editorialized to support a "free, democratic, prosperous and united China."  China Weekly Review, collection of the library of Congress. In its first issue after the liberation of Shanghai in May 1949, the journal stated that "we therefore welcome the change that has come about and hope that the arrival of the People's Liberation Army will mark the beginning of a new era—an era in which the people of China can now begin to enjoy the benefits of good government" and that the magazine "will endeavor to reflect honestly and fairly the development of the new China, especially the concept of democracy of the Chinese communist party." In 1952, the journal published the diary of Rewi Alley, the New Zealand writer and educator, in which he enthused that Beijing was a "city of hope" and "a paradise for the young men and women growing up in the new era." Finally, when the magazine folded in 1953 and its editor John W. Powell returned to the US, the US government charged him, his wife and another editor for printing false statements about the United States military using germ weapons against Chinese troops in North Korea. The trial was declared a mistrial by the judge and the subsequent attempt by the government to bring charges of treason against them was unsuccessful because it failed to obtain indictments. Later, with the approval of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the remaining sedition charges against the three were dropped. In the communist partyspeak, "progressive" means pro-communist, and one—anyone—is either an enemy or a friend of the party. By this yardstick, The China Weekly Review was clearly progressive and definitely a friend. About its cessation, the sources I read said unanimously that it was due to financial difficulties caused by the American embargo. That might or might not be, but every Chinese, even a child, knew that, the journal—or any publication not directly controlled by the Party—could no longer exist, with or without financial woes. As his case was dropped in the US in 1961, Powell probably did not know that, the Chinese journalists he knew or worked with, including a young man once employed by his magazine by the name Sheng Shuren, had mostly been struck down, during a succession of purges, as "reactionary," "anti-socialist," "rightist," "right-leaning element," "spy," "anti-communist party element," "anti-revolutionary," "class enemy," or "traitor," and none had the right to defend him/herself, let alone to have a fair trial. If a few lucky ones were spared in the 1950s, they would have been rounded up, without exception, a few years later in mid 1960s when the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began. To be continued tomorrow… A Kindle version is available on Amazon Filed under: history, Life in China Tagged: China, History, Hong Kong, journalism, North China Daily News, Shanghai, Sheng Shuren         |
| 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:
The imposter's account is also under lock and key. A search for the username MjrGenZhangZhaozhong retrieves this message:
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  |
| After Forcible Abortion, Local Government Brands Father “Traitor” For Talking to Reporter Posted: 25 Jun 2012 12:16 PM PDT  These banners decry a "traitor" and call for expulsion from Zengjia Somehow, the local government in Zhenping County just made matters worse. After making international news two weeks ago by forcibly aborting a seven and a half month old fetus after a local woman violated China's one-child policy, officials in Zhenping, Shaanxi province appear to have escalated the problem even further. As @作家草军书 tweeted just hours ago on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter: "The Shaanxi Zhenping [County] father of the aborted seven-month-old fetus, Deng Jiyuan, [recently] sat for an interview with a German reporter. Afterwards, the local government angrily created a family scandal but sending people to the door of Deng's house with red banners reading: 'Thrash the traitor, kick [them] out of Zengjia [a smaller town within Zhenping],' forcing Deng to flee his village. Given how profound the international influence of this matter, the government's open efforts to hurt the victims only prove how unbridled officials are! It's a country without laws, without a government." [Chinese] 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. First, those damn locals Netizens often enjoy calling local government officials "thugs," and worse. It's certainly true, but not news on its own; censors often do not bother even to delete such sentiments, and some suspect Beijing may actually want netizens to act as a check on local excesses. But netizen sentiment in this case took a different tone.  Feng Jianmei, shortly after the forcible abortion in Zhenping A number noted that local people aren't just citizens–they're also taxpayers. @天上飘着五个字NBSGS asks, "Is this public servants serving the taxpayers who sustain them? Or did we tax payers use our money to raise a bunch of crazy curs?" @筋肉人 observed that China's system of top-down control perverted incentives for local leaders. "I'd like to ask, how did this local government come about? Is it responsive to the people? No, local government is responsive only to the higher levels! In other words, it doesn't fear offending the taxpayers that sustain it, just its leaders." Others were more strident. @新塘松 felt China had effectively lost control of local cadres: "Beneath the provincial level, China basically is in a state of anarchy. It's the same as having no government." Is help on the way? Some netizens felt it was time for a call to action. @沧海云帆来熙 asked, "Officials in backwards areas are still this domineering, when will the XX [read: Communist] party fix this?" Several wanted names. @崾照顧好洎巳 wrote, "Who are these grassroots leaders' superiors? We have to know! The whole country has to know for this to be fixed! The Party has a big responsibility." Meanwhile, @丁点大和NONO的家 wanted observers to become participants, and fast: "Shameless township government! … Everyone should give the Shaanxi Party Discipline Commission a call and demand they fix it!" Hatred for the higher-ups Many netizens saved their ammunition for leaders at the top. @祖国珊瑚 noted the increased flight of moneyed Chinese officials to foreign lands: "Sending assets abroad, sending family abroad, who are the real traitors [卖国贼]?" @阿苏与莫斯_Kira laughed at the government's depiction of Communist China as "New China," writing, "Since ancient times, Chinese governments have been based off oppressing and exploiting the people. Have people changed in the New China? Bull—-, it's the same thing under a new name." @壳谣 articulated a popular democratic principle: "Government needs supervision by the people." @胡华锋Mark fumed, "The Celestial Dynasty [Internet code for China] is more and more chilling. Why does this piece of beautiful land have to be dominated by these bastards!" @崾照顧好洎巳 tweeted something that should worry high officials: "I still love my country, but I already don't love the Party!" The defenders Not everyone agreed with the prevalent government critiques. @相信未来1040 argued, "This doesn't have anything to do with the Party; the mainstream within the party is still good." @晚上请叫我lisa tweeted, "A few minor officials are wrong, that doesn't negate all of China. We should love our own country and learn to be satisfied. I loathe those people who encounter a small matter and then say China's bad; a little bit of rat poo doesn't ruin the whole soup." [Really? We wouldn't eat that soup.] With netizen sentiment heating up, it's not surprising to find a diversity of views. But @c毛毛同学 wrote perhaps the one thing most netizens could agree with: "The fallout will be amazing!" Footnotes (? returns to text)
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| That Year, These Years: Stories of Tiananmen Posted: 25 Jun 2012 09:23 AM PDT By Li Xuewen Original text here.
© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| 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:
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. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
| China: An Account of Citizen Disappearance Posted: 25 Jun 2012 04:02 AM PDT Cao Yaxue from Seeing Red in China has translated civil rights activist Xu Zhiyong's account of his recent disappearance - a more than 24 hours interrogation and illegal detention. Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (0) |
| Posted: 25 Jun 2012 03:26 AM PDT DANWEI has presented its annual Model Worker Awards 2012, a list of the best specialist websites, blogs and online sources of information about China. Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (0) |
| How China’s Artist-Dissident, Ai Weiwei, Works His Twitter Magic Posted: 25 Jun 2012 12:02 AM PDT Prominent dissident and artist Ai Weiwei, subject of the recently released documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, is known for his imaginative installations and acerbic criticism of the Chinese government, but in the past several years he has also become a well-known user of social media. He first began to blog in 2006, at a time when "blogging" was a relatively new concept in China, and moved to Twitter when the government took down his blog in 2009. In doing so, he "climbed over the wall," a phrase in Chinese which means to bypass the Great Firewall that the Chinese government has developed to censor Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other sites it finds undesirable.  Ai Weiwei participated in the designing of the "Bird's Nest," China's National Stadium in Beijing Once on the other side, Ai hit the ground running. Only a small fraction of Chinese Internet users "climb the wall," but a small fraction of over 500 million people is still a vibrant community. Increasingly, Twitter is becoming an attractive alternative to China's microblogging site Weibo for some Chinese Internet users who, like Ai Weiwei, grapple with censorship. While Ai Weiwei once attempted to establish an account on Weibo, it was deleted less than two hours later by the authorities after gaining over 10,000 followers. On Twitter, however, he has over 150,000 followers and follows over 9,000 users himself. It is no exaggeration to say that he is prolific, tweeting hundreds of times a day, often more than one tweet per minute. Ai maintains that his style of Tweeting is no grand feat: @aiww Preeetty much RT @wangkuaier He pretty much always replies to everyone he follows RT @aiww it's not so bad RT @sadHelplessfish thanks for following, Auntie Ai. You're following more than 9,000 people, how do you read all of those tweets?? @aiww [1]  Ai Weiwei and the police, November 2010, after he spoke out after an apartment fire in Shanghai In truth, however, it is this way of using Twitter that sets Ai Weiwei apart from almost every other celebrity Twerp. He tweets on a grand and sometimes overwhelming scale. Instead of the occasional, sterile 140-character update on showings of his work at globally renowned museums and galleries, Auntie Ai, as he is known to some of his followers, spends hours a day chatting about life, the universe, and everything. A typical interchange goes something like this: @aiww nah not yet RT @GoogolMo: @aiww have you eaten yet? [2] Or this: @aiww morning RT @calvinkevins: @aiww, good morning [3] One of Ai's most common responses to followers on Twitter is the character "嗯," onomatopoeia for the sound made in the back of the throat without opening one's mouth, indicating agreement, acknowledgement, or active listening. John Pasden, who runs Sinosplice and the Chinese language learning site ChinesePod, has called it a "communicative grunt" and "the Chinese version of 'yup.'" Ai also has a habit of switching out characters for others that are pronounced similarly but written differently–similar to the practice of writing "hai" instead of "hi," or "u" instead of "you." His unpretentious and engaging conversational style reflects his belief, voiced in many interviews, that connection is an extremely important part of both life and art.  Ai Weiwei, thumbing his nose at the cops It is no surprise, then, that Ai Weiwei is among the most popular Chinese-language user of Twitter. Some of his tweets are also available in English, translated by a group of volunteers who run @aiwwenglish. Due to his tweeting volume, however, they have elected not to translate everything, instead focusing on tweets that are just from him or that contain significant content. In the tweets that remain untranslated, Ai Weiwei banters with followers about nothing in particular, or arranges to mail them copies of his documentaries and sunflower seeds from his recent installation, which he seems to share freely with anyone who asks. Even when the company that manages much of Ai's work, FAKE Design, had its second hearing for tax-related charges in a Beijing district court, a friend tweeted a photograph of him in costume, smiling as he thumbed his nose at the police who prevented him from leaving his home that day. Followers of @aiww number only a quarter of a million, placing him well below the top 100 most popular Weibo users. The state-run Global Times maintains that while idolized by the West, Ai Weiwei is "rejected" by most people in China and has "failed to make much of a dent" in Chinese society. Still, he remains a famous artist in China and throughout the world, despite pervasive censorship of his name and work. Ai Weiwei's presence on Twitter is a part of Chinese social media that extends beyond the Great Firewall, showing how technology enables netizens to connect and express themselves despite such barriers. Ai Weiwei is a firm believer in such freedom of expression. When I asked on Twitter if he would mind the publication of this article, he simply replied, "Haha, do you need any nude pics～ " [4].  Ai Weiwei asked if we need his nude pic. But we found one with him (almost) naked already!
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| Expat Assimilation, Tribalism, and the Kaiser Kuo Show Posted: 25 Jun 2012 04:34 AM PDT
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. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us |
| Apple to release iPhone 5 with China’s 3G network Posted: 25 Jun 2012 02:28 AM PDT People line up to buy Apple's iPhone 4S in Beijing in January. (Photo/Xinhua)
Apple has remained tight-lipped about its highly anticipated sixth-generation iPhone, but the latest market rumor is that the company's "iPhone 5″ — expected in October — will support China Mobile's proprietary 3G network, making it a "true world phone." The next generation iPhone will hit the shelves one year after the release of the iPhone 4S last October, and will include support for the TD-SCDMA 3G network of China Mobile, the country's largest mobile service provider, as a "key feature," said Shawn Wu, analyst at American investment bank Stern Agee, in a note to the investors based on information from his sources within Apple's suppliers in Taiwan. Thanks to Apple's upcoming iOS 6, its voice assistant Siri will understand and speak Mandarin and Cantonese, have an easier Chinese character input and integrate with popular social websites like Baidu, Sina Weibo, Youku and Tudou, making the new phone an attractive platform for users in China, the analyst said in the note, which was posted on the Appleinsider site. New features for the iPhone will include a slightly larger screen and a 4G LTE wireless modem. "We believe these new features will likely help drive a significant upgrade and new user cycle more powerful than what we saw with the iPhone 4 and 4S," Wu added. Before the debut of iPhone 5, Apple is expected to sell 27 million iPhones in the June quarter and 25 million in the September. A report by Reuters citing many industry analysts said the upcoming iPhone model will feature a Qualcomm chip which can support China Mobile's network, while Xi Guohua, chairman of the state-run telecommunication provider, also confirmed last month that it has been actively talking to Apple on cooperation, but refused to give too many details. Source: Want China Times |
| Shanghai metro’s sexual discrimination provoked anger Posted: 24 Jun 2012 07:09 PM PDT Shanghai metro has provoked a wave of criticisms from netizens, by tweeting a post on its official Sina Weibo account, appealing for female passengers to cover up and dress properly to avoid sexual harassment from the subway's countless perverts. It posted a picture of a woman in a see-through dress waiting for the subway train, and wrote, "To board the train, dress like this; how could you not end up getting harassed?" The post soon went uncontrollable, with many angry netizens accusing that Shanghai Metro attempted to shirk its responsibility to protect passengers by placing blame on the victims. "It is women's own choice to wear revealing dress or not. No one can use this as an excuse to harass them." "According to this theory, all man would be going to harass around the women in the swimming pools?" said netizens. Following the online criticisms, two feminists yesterday staged a "performance art" on the metro to protest against Shanghai Metro's irresponsible post. They used veils to cover their faces up as Muslim women, and held placards that read, "We want coolness, not perverts," and "I can be coquettish, but you can't harass me." |
| Six Points on Social Insurance for Foreigners Posted: 25 Jun 2012 01:27 AM PDT Author's note: This post has been modified slightly from the original to correct a couple of misstatements and reflect new information and concerns. These changes are mainly found in the introduction below, points one, four, and five. Starting in July, my coworkers and I will be among the first foreign residents of China asked to contribute to the Chinese social insurance system. Although the law was promulgated last October at the national level, Tianjin, like most major cities, has been slow to implement it locally. In fact, according to people at my company's headquarters in Shanghai, Suzhou is the only other city which has enforced the social insurance law for foreigners working at training centers like mine. For many foreigners working in Shanghai and Beijing the social insurance tax is still something on the horizon. The English language press published a flurry of articles about the law in fall 2011, but since then reporters seem to have tabled the topic, mostly because of the glacial speed of Chinese bureaucracy, but also because, for most foreigners, the tax seemed hypothetical, not something we could comment on directly. Now that I actually have to pay the tax, I went back and reviewed the original news articles for information, and also submitted a list of questions for the government to our HR department. After doing so I decided that there are six major issues for foreigners and their employers to think about: (1) According to Chinese law, workers will be guaranteed retirement benefits after contributing to the system for fifteen years. However, during those fifteen years there is no interest on your contributions, though the government should provide something like a cost of living adjustment once you start receiving benefits. Every city will set its own contribution rates. In the case of Tianjin, I pay 11% of my base salary and my danwei "matches" with 33%. Much like Social Security in the United States, there's an income cap, and any income above that level isn't taxed for social insurance purposes. In Tianjin the income cap is 10,560 while in Beijing the cap is 12,600. Some of these funds go to medical insurance, unemployment insurance, and maternity insurance, but most are earmarked for retirement insurance. Given the rate of the inflation, the Chinese social insurance system represents a net loss for contributors, even more so than China's low-interest savings accounts. Many of us will be wishing we could've spent the money while we had it – or put it into private retirement insurance. (2) Most foreign workers have no intention to stay in China for fifteen years or more, and thus the issue becomes: how can I get my money back? Well, the government has assured us that we can get our own contributions refunded, but contributions from our employers will stay in the system. We have been told that to get the money back a foreign worker must sign a document declaring that he or she will never work in China again. However, this will certainly increase the rate of illegal foreign workers (see point 5 below), as many foreigners "swear off" China, leave, and wander back a few years later. A separate but arguably related issue is that most social insurance in China is being run on a city-by-city basis, and is not easily portable if a worker decides to move, but few foreigners want to stay in a single Chinese city for the rest of their life. What happens if I move from Tianjin to Shanghai? The government hasn't answered this question yet. (3) Like Chinese, foreigners should receive a social insurance card and corresponding social insurance number. There's a fly in the ointment, however: is the Chinese system prepared for foreigners who get a new passport and thus a new passport number? Those of us who have been around long enough know that Chinese bureaucracy operates by analogizing passport numbers as Chinese ID numbers, yet Chinese ID numbers never change. Whenever foreigners renew their passports there's a mad scramble at the bank, the phone company, and the local paichusuo (among other places) to update paperwork to reflect the changes. Most of the time we can't get this done without letters from the embassy which endorse the passport renewal process. Considering the (potentially) large sums of money involved, and China's track record thus far, one is left doubting the ability of the system to handle an essential fact about foreigners. (4) One of the less commented upon yet more onerous aspects of China's social insurance law for foreigners is retroactivity. When the central government said that the law went "into effect" in October of 2011, they really meant it. Even though most Chinese cities have been lax in implementing the law, the requirement of retroactive payments has been sitting there like a time bomb waiting to go off. The first time a foreigner has to pay social insurance it's probably going to be a massive hit – at the time of this writing foreigners and their employers will have to pay up to 9 months of tax in one lump sum. The degree of retroactivity seems to vary from city to city and even district to district, but Tianjin seems fairly consistent. Consider a foreign teacher employed at an international school in Tianjin with a hypothetical base salary of 18,000 RMB/mo. and benefits worth 7,000 RMB/mo. The teacher would have to forgo more than half an entire month's salary in back taxes (10,454 RMB, to be precise), while his/her employer would have to pony up more than 30,000 RMB. Afterwards this teacher will still be paying an extra 1,161 RMB in taxes every month while his/her employer will be paying roughly 3,500 RMB in tax.* Those expensive kindergartens with foreign teachers in Beijing just got even more expensive, which leads me to… (5) The law only applies to foreigners with a "Foreign Experts Certificate," aka the "work visa" aka the Z Visa aka the Zed Visa. Here's where the perverse incentives come into play. If a foreigner has a tourist visa, business visa, or marriage visa and is thus working illegally (Yang Rui knows who you are!), he/she won't have to pay into the system. In fact, the requirement that employers must make contributions on our behalf means that, all other things being equal, an illegal employee is going to be considerably cheaper than a legal one, even if the foreigner in question has exactly the same contract salary as his/her legal counterpart. Moreover, employers during the next round of contract renewals may decide to pressure employees into changing their visas and working illegally so as to cut costs, and foreigners themselves may agree, figuring that the risks of being one of the san fei is worth the benefit of paying fewer taxes. At the same time, an employer wishing to stay aboveboard may decide to keep employees legal but refuse to offer raises during the next contract on the grounds that we are now receiving the "benefit" of social insurance. We haven't even factored freelance workers into the equation – those working legally should fall under the aegis of the social insurance law, which begs the question of whether they or their employers are prepared to pay the tax. (6) Many of the above complaints and concerns could be addressed or alleviated if China reformed its green card process. For those of us who have worked here for an extended period of time or are married to a Chinese national, it's frankly ridiculous that we have to renew our visa every year or have a work visa that ties us to a single employer's tender mercies. Yet, despite periodic talk about making green cards easier to obtain (which recalls similar talk about ending the hukou system for Chinese migrants), the Chinese green card quota remains out of step with China's aspirations to be a global leader. That foreigners are now being asked to contribute to a social insurance system that they are not actually guaranteed access to only adds insult to injury. Matthew Stinson is a Floridian stalking the urban wilds of Tianjin since 2004. An educator, writer, and photographer, he pens 140 character rants as @stinson —————————– * Before anyone shouts "Wait a minute!" the above calculations may not reflect final tax burdens, insomuch as a foreign employee's base salary may shrink and bonuses and benefits may grow in response to the law. Related Posts |
| Posted: 25 Jun 2012 12:15 AM PDT As we edge closer to the 18th National Congress of the CCP, we can expect hard news to enter a new cycle of tightening at every level in China. No local leader wants "negative news" to erupt on their turf, especially now. So the soldiers of "news and propaganda work" will be working overtime to ensure the most "harmonious" environment possible for this crucial leadership transition. On the policy side, we can see hints of this anticipated tightening in a "movement" unveiled earlier this month to combat various forms of media corruption, including "news extortion" and "paid-for news." The campaign, coordinated by the Central Propaganda Department, cites specifically the need to "create a favorable climate for the successful opening of the Party's 18th National Congress." This campaign almost certainly signals the generalized tightening on hard news and investigative reporting, not just a renewed determination to grapple with poor ethics in the news profession. But while keeping bad news under wraps is an obvious priority for Party and government leaders, something we've seen play out for decades in China, there have been slight changes to the tone of media control as well, particularly over the past three to five years. Leaders, particularly at the national level, seem far more sensitive now to the international impact of domestic stories than they have been in the past. And many seem to understand that in this age of rapid, decentralized sharing of information, it is difficult to separate domestic public opinion (and the project of information control) from the issues of foreign news coverage, China's international image and — yes, here comes that magic word now so cherished by Chinese leaders — soft power.
Last week, the Party's official People's Daily ran an interesting piece exhorting Party cadres at the "grassroots level" — those officials at the bottom rungs of the power bureaucracy — to be mindful of the international implications of their handling of local incidents. The bottom line was that local leaders must recognize that their decisions about how to handle a "sudden-breaking incident" on their turf could impact China's international image and the country's ability to engage on global issues. What I find most interesting about the People's Daily piece is how it exhibits a more open and proactive attitude toward news stories — the idea, for example, that facts and transparency, and not just cover-up, are crucial — while it argues that "China's voice" must be uniform and harmonious, which of course implies centralized control of the message (the "main theme," as the Party calls it). The most critical question facing China's "soft power" is the question of whether "China's voice" is diverse and multifaceted, or whether it is the product of government-engineered uniformity. Are we talking about "China's voices" or about "China's voice"? The People's Daily piece obviously answers for the latter. China has a single voice, one that is "full and accurate" in the sense that it is in line with the Party's priorities — but is not messy or strident. The concluding paragraph of the People's Daily piece refers to a speech given in Hong Kong by the Chinese writer Lu Xun in the early 20th century. In that speech, "Silent China" (无声的中国), Lu Xun bemoans the silence not of "China" per se, but of the Chinese people, who have not had the means to articulate their own views partly because of the dominance of an official discourse in classical Chinese. Lu Xun never talks about "China's voice", or zhongguo shengyin (中国声音). He talks about "the voice of the Chinese people themselves", or zhongguoren ziji de shengyin (中国人自己的声音). A vast gulf opens between "China's voice" as conceived by China's leadership today and the "popular Chinese voices" that Lu Xun called for. And that gulf explains, I would argue further, the most elementary of all problems facing China's real "soft power". "China's voice" as modulated by the Chinese Communist Party can only be a limited voice, subjected to an unspoken political violence, and that invites a mistrust that ultimately undermines China's soft power efforts. To put it more simply, official soft power is soft power in which the individual "person", or ren (人), is eliminated. It is "China's voice", or zhongguo shengyin (中国声音), as opposed to "Chinese voices", or zhongguoren de shengyin (中国人的声音).
Before we move on to the People's Daily article, let's consider the following portion from Lu Xun's "Silent China":
Those words, it seems to me, speak to the heart of China's soft power. For Lu Xun, the voice of a nation is the sum of that country's voices, spoken not from the heart of political power, but from the heart of the individual. But let's leave it there and move on to the People's Daily piece, which is translated in full below.
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