Blogs » Politics » Come to China During Christmas to Enjoy Religious Freedom!

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• Come to China During Christmas to Enjoy Religious Freedom!
• Scholars Cautiously Urge Political Reform
• Testing Time for China’s Migrant Millions
• Corrupt Officials Draw Unusual Publicity
• Sony: China Business “More or Less” Back to Normal
• Photo: Tuanjie Lu, by Mark Hobbs
• Word of the Week: Five Times Better
• Piss-poor Media Coverage of Malicious Trademark Registration Rules
• Scholar and Chinapol Founder Dies at 72

Come to China During Christmas to Enjoy Religious Freedom! Posted: 26 Dec 2012 05:37 PM PST The Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece, Global Times, published an editorial on Christmas Eve inviting international China observers to spend their holiday in China [zh] to witness how Chinese people celebrate Christmas all over the country. This editorial was in response to the mounting criticism that China does not have religious freedom. According to China Aid's report, at least 1289 arrests by Chinese authorities in 2011 were linked to religious prosecution. Despite the bold Global Times editorial, netizens reported that the entrances of a few churches were blocked during Christmas this year. Moreover, China's minority Muslim Uyghur community, appalled by the editorial, dared the Global Times to invite observers to the Xinjiang region for their Muslim festival. In China, Christmas is another holiday for consumption. Photo by Flickr user Marc van der Chijs CC: BY-SA. Consumption freedom is not religious freedom Most netizens immediately pointed out the fallacy of the Global Times' editorial in reducing religious freedom to secular Christmas celebration. Below are some instant reactions from a news threads [zh] on China's microblogging site Sina Weibo: 铭格格-洛桑卓玛：在胡编无知狭隘的眼里，商业炒作等同于宗教信仰自由，容许进教堂寺庙道观等地方参观等同于宗教信仰自由。。。 铭格格-洛桑卓玛：In the shallow view of the Global Time editor Hu Shijun, a commercial festival is equal to religious freedom, touristic visits to churches and temples is equal to religious freedom… 彭勇-AARON：这是消费自由！别扯信仰自由。。。 彭勇-AARON：This is freedom of consumption, don't connect it with religious freedom. Churches blocked Ironically, netizens found out that some churches had been blocked and sealed off during Christmas eve. On December 24, 2012 in Tianjin city Deci celestial reported [zh]: 无事去滨江道和西开教堂转了一圈儿，节日气氛相当浓厚。去参观教堂的所有入口都被封了，最后定向越野似的循着警察贴在电线杆商场柱子和柜台上的A4纸指示才找到一个隐秘的特别入口，中间警察至少有5重把关 The festival mood was strong and I took a ride to the Xikai church near Bingjiang road. All the entrances to the church had been blocked. Eventually I located a secret entrance by following the A4 paper size instruction stuck on some electric poles. On the way, there were at least 5 blockades set up by the police. Photos uploaded by Weibo user Liagyage showing a Church being blocked in Xian on Christmas day. On 25 December a large number of Christians protested in Xian city, Shaanxi Province because their church had been blocked. Liagyage uploaded some photos described the situation: 圣诞节被封了门的基督教堂，被堵了的道路，全球狂欢日，这些人却在寒夜上演着席地痛哭的悲剧?是何缘由? [The photos show] The entrance of the church that has been sealed off; a road that was blocked. While the whole world is celebrating, the people here are siting on the ground, crying on a cold winter night? Why is that so? Darkmumu re-posted Liyiforever's photo and attracted quite a few comments on the reality of religious freedom in China: 天行者68th：凡是有人聚集的地方，凡是不是他们的恶毒谎言能够辖制到的地方，都是禁地。 天行者68th：In places where people gathered, where they could not be governed by their [the authorities'] lies, is now forbidden territory. 染香姐姐：这些二逼，把阳光下的教堂封了，是让人去信邪教吗？？黑暗滋生一切罪恶，如果中国能够公开传教，根本就不会把好好的宗教越信越邪。 染香姐姐：They are so stupid. Blocking the church under the sun is forcing people to believe in evil cults. When activities are happening in the dark, it will generate sin and crime. If China can allow open and public preaching, religious activities will not turn into cults. 西葫芦馅儿：在这个国度信仰是一种奢侈。 西葫芦馅儿：It is a luxury to hold to any belief in this country. 实习奋青：在这个地方，改信钱吧。 实习奋青：Better believe in money in this land. House Churches are "evil cults" In China, all Protestant activities have to be under the coordination of the Three-self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China, which is under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Other Christian sects, in the form of House Church, are considered illegal and vulnerable to crack down. People outside the Christian circle tend to believe that religious activities outside the Three-self Churches are evil cults. Opinions like the following one coming from 詹姆-兰尼斯特 [zh] unfortunately are not uncommon: 这条新闻我真心不是很相信，教堂都是教产，而且国内都是三自爱的教产，政府自己封自己？被封的是家庭教会的可能性极大——如果真的是家庭教会，我预先说一句去你麻痹的臭邪教！ I don't believe in this news [blocking of church in Xian]. All churches are properties of the Church and in China they are owned by the Three-self Patriotic Churches. The government will not block its own branch? It is very likely that the blocked one is a House Church. In this case, I would say "fxxk off, you stinking evil cults!" Invite observers to Muslim festivals The Uyghur community in China also finds Global Times's editorial problematic. Ulghurbiz.net wrote a commentary challenging Global Times and inviting observers to Xinjiang for Muslim celebration: 《环球时报》的这篇评论漏洞百出，它把中国年轻人"过洋节"的消费文化移花接木地理解成了基督教文化在中国的自由发展。如果不是节日效应刺激效应，官方还会这么网开一面吗？另外，基督徒人数增加的首要原因是人们对国家核心价值观的失望之后转投宗教的怀抱以此寻求安慰呢，还是确如文章所说的是中国政府的开明政策呢？这需要系统的论证。 如果在开斋节或宰牲节等穆斯林传统节日来临之际，西方媒体指责中国政府压制穆斯林的宗教自由时，《环球时报》是否还敢发布一篇题为《怀疑宗教自由请来疆过节》的文章呢？ The Global Times' editorial is full of fallacies. It turns young Chinese people's consumption of a "western festival" into evidence of freedom of Christianity culture in China. Will the government loosen control if Christmas was not a consumption holiday? The increase in the number of Christians in China is mainly a reaction to the loss of core values in this country. People want to seek comfort from religion. Does it have anything to do with the government's open policy? We need systematic debate on this. If western media criticizes the repression of Muslim religious activities in China on the eve of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, will Global Times dare to publish an editorial "Skeptics of Religious Freedom in China, please go to Xinjiang for the Festival"? Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (1) Share: Donate · facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Scholars Cautiously Urge Political Reform Posted: 26 Dec 2012 06:55 PM PST An open letter released on Christmas Day seeks to sway the new Party leadership towards renewed political reform, encouraged by Xi Jinping and others' strong words against corruption and bureaucratic excesses. From Bloomberg News: The letter, signed by 71 people and posted on the blog of Peking University law professor Zhang Qianfan, calls for the party to end its oversight of government personnel decisions, leave court decisions to judges and lawyers, and allow people to speak and assemble freely. […] "I don't think society should simply wait passively for whatever comes up but we should express our ideas and try to build a social consensus," Zhang, who helped draft the letter, said in a phone interview. "Now is a good time to do something new and if we miss such a chance then our social problems will become more serious." […] "None of this is new and it's not something that's really against the Party's will," Zhang said. "They already expressed their will in the constitution or in the charter of the party itself." Zhang's calculation that a gentle approach may be more productive—and less dangerous—is not universally accepted, with critics arguing that the resulting text is too watered down. From Didi Tang and Gillian Wong at the Associated Press: The document echoes some of the requests made in Charter 08, a 2008 manifesto that made an unusually direct call for an end to single-party rule and other democratic reforms. The manifesto landed its lead architect, dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, in prison for inciting subversion — an 11-year term he is still serving. The petition, released on Christmas Day, adopts a milder tone, asking the party leadership to rule within existing laws. […] Hong Kong-based Chinese free-speech activist Wen Yunchao said the requests made in the petition were sound but the style in which it was written was "too subservient." "It's like they are slaves, kneeling there and writing it," Wen said. He said the proposed changes should have been stated more directly. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Charter 08, constitution, freedom of expression, judicial system, Liu Xiaobo, Peking University, political reform, reform, Wen Yunchao, Xi Jinping Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Testing Time for China’s Migrant Millions Posted: 26 Dec 2012 06:25 PM PST Desperate migrant workers packed Beijing's education bureau this month, demanding that their children be allowed to take the national college entrance exam (gaokao) together with their urban peers. Carol Huang at AFP News reports: Around a third of the capital's 20 million population are migrants, but many of their families become split by rules requiring their children to go to their "home" provinces — even if they have never lived there — sometimes for years, to study for and take the test, which varies by location. [...] "Either you let the country share in your education resources or you accept the reality that outsiders are stuck in your education gutter," said Du Guowang, a 12-year Beijing resident from Inner Mongolia. [...] But bigger cities are less willing to share residency or benefits, fearing doing so would burden their already strained resources and spur a new influx. [...] Despite years of lobbying national and city education officials, the migrant parents in Beijing have received noncommittal answers — along with occasional warnings. Their website, where they posted their demands, stopped working recently. Meanwhile, Chongqing has allowed migrant children to take gaokao in the city. Xinhua News Agency reports: Chongqing is the latest metropolis to ease the household restriction on migrants attending gaokao, following Heilongjiang, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shandong and other provinces. Outside the pilot regions, the exam restriction is still in place, although children of migrant workers can take the nine-year compulsory education (from elementary to high schools) without household restrictions. [...] Wang Boqing, president of MyCOS, a Beijing-based higher education consulting and outcome evaluation company, said that the move would definitely boost equity of schooling but was more than that. "It's really about the rights of people. Migrant workers pay taxes and contribute to government revenues. So universities in cities where they work should be open to them, because these schools all receive funding from governments," he said. See also China to "Speed Up" Hukou System Reform, via CDT. © Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: college entrance exam, education, gaokao, hukou, migrant workers, public opinion, social inequality, urban rural divide Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Corrupt Officials Draw Unusual Publicity Posted: 26 Dec 2012 06:11 PM PST In the wake of several recent corruption and sex scandals, a new round of the anti-corruption game has been launched. From Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times: "The anticorruption storm has begun," People's Daily, the party mouthpiece, wrote on its Web site this month. The flurry of revelations suggests that members of China's new leadership may be more serious than their predecessors about trying to tame the cronyism, bribery and debauchery that afflict state-run companies and local governments, right down to the outwardly dowdy neighborhood committees that oversee sanitation. Efforts began just days after Xi Jinping, the newly appointed Communist Party chief and China's incoming president, warned that failing to curb corruption could put the party's grip on power at risk. "Something has shifted," said Zhu Ruifeng, a Beijing journalist who has exposed more than a hundred cases of alleged corruption on his Web site, including the lurid exertions of Mr. Lei [Zhengfu]. "In the past, it might take 10 days for an official involved in a sex scandal to lose his job. This time he was gone in 66 hours." The "astonishingly ranine" Lei took a starring role in Evan Osnos' survey of the recent string of sex scandals at The New Yorker (via CDT). © Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: anti-corruption, corruption, high-level corruption, lei zhengfu, local corruption, sex scandal, sex scandals, Xi Jinping Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Sony: China Business “More or Less” Back to Normal Posted: 26 Dec 2012 05:55 PM PST The head of Sony's China operations claimed on Tuesday that business has "more or less" returned to normal for Japanese companies hit by this year's Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute. From Reuters: The spat plunged relations between Japan and China into a deep freeze and hit sales of Japanese goods in China. Kurita said, however, that Sony's China business would recover strongly in the coming three business years after a dip in the current one. "My general impression is business conditions have more or less returned to the pre-crisis environment," he told a media briefing at a Sony store in eastern Beijing. He saw sales in China falling 10 percent in the business year to next March from the previous year, but rebounding in the year to March 2013 and growing strongly in the two subsequent years. Kurita declined to comment on what impact the election of the hawkish Shinzo Abe as Japan's new prime minister could have on Japan-China relations. See also 'China Irked by "Hawkish" Abe', at CDT. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: anti-Japan demonstrations 2012, anti-Japan protests, business, diaoyu islands, Japan relations, senkaku islands, Shinzo Abe Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Photo: Tuanjie Lu, by Mark Hobbs Posted: 26 Dec 2012 05:13 PM PST Tuanjie Lu © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Word of the Week: Five Times Better Posted: 26 Dec 2012 12:00 PM PST Editor's Note: The Word of the Week comes from China Digital Space's Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China's online "resistance discourse," used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness. "China's human rights are the best." If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net. 好五倍 (hǎo wǔ bèi): a good five times better than This comes from a statement made by Sha Zukang when he was the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations: I have openly remarked that the human rights situation in China today is better than that in the United States. The population of China is five times larger than the population of the United States. If you look at it just in terms of comparing the populations, one would expect China's problems to be at least five times greater than those of the U.S. in order for our human rights situations to be the same. But the reality is that our human rights situation is better than that of the U.S.—this shows that China's human rights situation is a good five times better than that of the U.S.… America has highly politicized the concept of human rights to serve the nation's political aims. They have used human rights issues as a tool; this way of doing things goes against the will of the people. 沙祖康说，"我公开讲过，中国今天的人权状况就比美国的人权状况要好，中国人口比美国多五倍，如果按照人口比例来讲，我们问题至少应该比美国多五倍，那才说明我们人权状况和美国一样。但现实是，我们目前人权状况比美国的好，说明中国人权至少比美国好五倍。我在大会上讲这话引起会场上哄堂大笑，大家都鼓掌，也可以看出美国不得人心，他们把人权问题高度政治化，为本国政治服务，把人权问题作为工具，做法很不得人心。" Netizens latched onto the phrase "a good five times better than" and used it to parody Sha's fuzzy logic. © Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: good five times better than, grass-mud horse lexicon, Sha Zukang, word of the week Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Piss-poor Media Coverage of Malicious Trademark Registration Rules Posted: 26 Dec 2012 06:08 AM PST Apologies for a long, cranky post during the holidays, but this topic deserves some attention. As you know, I've been writing about trademark squatting and other registration issues for a long time, and the subject has been particularly hot in the past couple of years with disputes involving famous brands and names like iPad, Hermes, and Michael Jordan. However, we cannot simply lump all of these cases together, label them as trademark infringement or trademark squatting, and look for a quick legislative fix. That being said, it appears as though China will be addressing the issue of malicious registration in an amendment to the Trademark Law; Xinhua reported the news earlier this week: The top legislature on Monday began deliberating a draft amendment to the Trademark Law that would prevent the malicious registration of trademarks that are already in use. "Applications should not be accepted if the applicants know beforehand that the trademarks to be registered are already in use by other companies," says the draft, which was submitted to the bimonthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) for review. The draft is intended to curb the malicious registration of trademarks by individuals who have insider knowledge of other companies using said trademarks. OK, a bit of explanation is in order. China's current trademark law says that between multiple applicants, the first party to apply for trademark protection wins. This is the so-called "first-to-file" concept. There are, however, some exceptions to the rule, including special protection for well-known trademarks and "bad faith" registrations. As to the latter, if it can be shown that the registrant had knowledge of the mark prior to the application, then a bad faith argument might be successful. Note that both arguments may be used with respect to both trademark oppositions (during the application process) as well as cancellations (after the mark has been registered). All right, so why am I disgruntled? Two things: one a minor irritant, and the other a substantive criticism. I'll start with the minor issue first and pick on Reuters, which ran a story on this issue with the following lede: China plans to change the law to crackdown on "malicious" trademark registrations, state media said on Monday, after a series of cases in which well-know [sic] international brands and individuals have had their names or copyright misused. Three problems with that sentence alone: 1) the typo; 2) the unforgivable sin of mixing up copyright and trademark (the above was the first of two such references in the article); and 3) the substantive issue (I'll get to this in a minute). I know I tend to go on and on about this, but is it really so hard to grasp that patents, trademarks and copyrights are different things? Are they conceptually that difficult to distinguish? Do editors actually do anything these days aside from coming up with inaccurate, inane but pithy headlines? OK, rant over. On to the real problem. The Reuters coverage, which as usual was aped by some other journamalists, suggests that this proposed amendment is a response to recent high-profile trademark cases, including (they say) Hermes, iPad and Michael Jordan. I find this rather odd. Both the Hermes and Michael Jordan cases involved trademark squatting. Hermes lost (I assume) because of evidentiary problems, not because the law does not set forth a procedure by which the owner of an unregistered mark can mount a cancellation action based on well-known mark status. In the Michael Jordan case, which is ongoing, there is an added wrinkle of name rights, but even so, Jordan should not have too much trouble proving his fame at the time of the application. The iPad case had nothing to do with trademark squatting, and the registration by Proview pre-dated the launch of Apple's iPad tablet. Using the Apple-Proview dispute as an example of trademark squatting clearly reveals the Reuters reporter's ignorance (in addition to the copyright references, that is). CNET also ran an article on this topic, along with a photo of an iPad, with a really inexcusable subtitle/blurb: "China says it will make a greater effort to stamp out companies such as Proview, which sued Apple earlier this year for the use of the iPad name." {sigh} Of the three cases cited by Reuters, one involves name rights, another is a straightforward well-known mark case, and the third was a contract dispute. I'm at a loss to explain how any new set of rules could apply to all of those situations. Judging by the headlines, which include language like "China to crack down on," "China to curtail," and "China to stop" trademark squatters, it sounds like China law has a huge hole in in that needs to be filled. Nonsense. The legal system here has dealt with malicious registrations for years; it's not perfect, but neither is it useless or nonexistent. This begs the question: just what are we likely to see in these amendments? I don't think we're going to have any new causes of action; again, the law already allows brand owners to assert well-known and bad faith arguments during cancellation and opposition proceedings. This hint in the Xinhua article is quite odd: The amendment also offers protection for renowned trademarks, giving their owners the right to ban others from registering the trademarks or using similar ones — even if such trademarks are not registered. In such a case, the trademark in question must be determined to be well-known, with results to be valid only for that specific case, the amendment states. What's the problem? Well, that's pretty much just a restatement of the current law as it is today. Hey, maybe the "amendments" will be nothing more than a legislative reminder to everyone out there that these issues have already been addressed in past trademark law reforms. This isn't to say, though, that winning such cases is always easy. Hermes, and many others, have lost because they were not able to prove well-known mark status at the time of registration. I suppose evidentiary standards could be loosened up a bit with some new rules. But that's hardly a game changer. With respect to bad faith, these cases are also often difficult to prove. Just look at the current fight involving Tencent and the "微信" (wei xin) mark. The squatter in that case filed an application just one week prior to Tencent's! This was before the product launch, so any well-known mark argument will be extremely difficult to win. That leaves a bad faith argument, which the suspicious timeline definitely points to; whether Tencent has enough evidence to make its case remains to be seen. This may be one of those "insider knowledge" type cases referenced by Xinhua. On the other hand, Xinhua tells us that the new rules would "prevent the malicious registration of trademarks that are already in use," so it's not even clear that these amendments would apply to the 微信 dispute. They definitely would have had no bearing at all on the iPad case. Let me attempt a summary and exit here. Trademark squatting is a problem, and it looks as though the government wants to tighten up some rules in that area. It isn't at all clear, though, that this is being pushed because of a few high-profile foreign-related {cough cough conceit cough} disputes, one of which is not even remotely applicable. Moreover, as the law already addresses malicious trademark registrations, this is not ground-breaking legal reform here. And it has nothing at all to do with copyright! © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Hermes, ipad, proview, Tencent, trademark infringement, trademark registration, trademark squatting

Scholar and Chinapol Founder Dies at 72 Posted: 26 Dec 2012 12:29 AM PST Richard Baum, longtime China watcher, former director of UCLA's U.S.-China Center and founder of the Chinapol listserv, died on December 14 at age 72. An obituary in the LA Times explains his life's work and the path that led him there: During an academic career spanning four decades, Baum traveled to China more than three dozen times, including for a period leading up to the violent clashes at Tiananmen Square in 1989. In the 1990s, building on a small email network of professional contacts, Baum launched Chinapol, a private, Web-based discussion group that has become required reading for China watchers around the world. With more than 1,300 members in 27 countries, including China, it has fostered debates on hot topics like China's economic recovery, spurred news coverage of human rights cases and provided early information on fast-breaking events like the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. [...]He stumbled into his life's work while a UCLA senior, when he took a class on Chinese government and politics to fulfill a major requirement. He wound up teaching that class years later after joining the faculty in 1968. After earning his bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA in 1962, Baum went to UC Berkeley, where he received a master's in 1963 and a doctorate in 1970, in political science.[...] An article in the New York Times has more on the origins of Chinapol: In the 1990s, Dr. Baum spent parts of several years in Japan. He had a steady e-mail dialogue with several dozen other China experts, but keeping it going while he was overseas became increasingly expensive because of Internet charges, which were steep at the time. To save money, he started Chinapol, a Listserv group whose first members were mostly academics. The group steadily expanded to include ambassadors, business leaders and journalists — all seeking insight and perspective as China rose as an economic and political power. Participants had to be approved by Dr. Baum — a recommendation from another member helped, as did an affiliation with a prominent news organization — and advocacy, attacks and self-promotion were not allowed. Violators could be quickly culled, an intolerance that some joked evoked that of China's leaders. "Rick was lovingly known as 'Chairman Rick,' " said Clayton Dube, a longtime friend and colleague who leads the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California. The forum has been especially useful for journalists working in China. Although posts on Chinapol are confidential within the group, a reporter can contact a member separately to follow up on a post or to request permission to quote from it. An in-depth interview with Baum about the listserv that is his legacy was published in 2010 by the National Bureau of Asian Research's Asia Policy journal, and can be read in full online. Also see prior CDT coverage of Dr. Richard Baum, including his reading list on obstacles to political reform, a review of  his most  recent book, and a glimpse into a Chinapol discussion. © josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: China scholars, Chinapol, obituary, richard baum Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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