Posted on 02/07/2005 1:56:41 PM PST by RWR8189
FOR TWELVE DAYS FOLLOWING THE death of former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang, China's television and radio remained silent about his passing. A handful of newspapers mentioned it, in a government-approved two-sentence statement buried on inside pages. On the day of the cremation, January 29, China Central Television finally reported that Zhao had died.
The Internet and foreign broadcasts are another story. They conveyed the news of Zhao's death within hours. China-based Internet bulletin boards filled with condolences and eulogies--soon removed by vigilant censors. Despite intensified government jamming, some foreign radio broadcasts got through.
Zhao's views were very much out of favor with the current leadership, so his death was accompanied by harassment, detention, and even physical assault upon democracy activists who attempted to mourn in public. Beijing cannot forgive the former general secretary of the Chinese Communist party for his visit to Tiananmen Square on the night of May 19, 1989, to plead with the student demonstrators to vacate the square before it was too late. After the crackdown by the People's Liberation Army on June 4, Zhao was never again seen in public. He was still under house arrest when he died, at the age of 85.
When the fourth generation of Chinese leaders took the helm two years ago, the world had high expectations. Already the Internet and the commercialization of parts of the Chinese press were fostering some increase in political debate. Many hoped that the self-proclaimed "human-centered" policies of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao--the so-called "Hu-Wen new leadership"--would bring political reform in China into line with the country's breakneck economic development. But they proved over-optimistic, and the official disregarding of Zhao's death is only the latest in a string of disturbing incidents.
Consider the recent pattern of imprisonment or harassment of intellectuals. Chinese writer Yu Jie, the 31-year-old cofounder of the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) and one of China's most outspoken social critics, once called for the removal of Mao Zedong's formaldehyde-preserved corpse from the Mao Mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. Yet in December, he declined to participate in a Radio Free Asia year-end panel reviewing human rights developments in China, calling it "inconvenient."
Yu had good reason for his reticence. On December 13-14, he and two other prominent members of the ICPC--Liu Xiaobo and Zhang Zuhua--had been separately detained and questioned by police. Yu's interrogators expressed displeasure over his having called for improvements in human rights while speaking abroad. The interrogators produced dozens of Yu's online essays, and ordered him to sign and fingerprint each copy. Yu was released only after he gave the police access to all his computer files.
Liu Xiaobo, a veteran champion of free speech, was similarly required to turn over his files. Shortly after his release, Liu told Radio Free Asia's Mandarin Service (in a telephone interview that was interrupted, then cut off after two minutes, by unexplained disconnections) that his December 13 interrogation had differed from previous encounters with the police in that "this time they confiscated my computer, my computer CDs, and my contacts book."
A few months earlier, on September 2, 2004, Xiao Weibin, editor in chief of the magazine Tongzhou Gongji ("Showing Solidarity: We're all in the Same Boat") was dismissed for publishing an interview with Ren Zhongyi, former Communist party chief of Guangzhou and a member of the magazine's editorial board. In the interview, Ren criticized the government for censoring the press. Xiao had been a member of the magazine's editorial board since its inception in 1988. On October 18, five members of the board including Ren Zhongyi resigned in protest over Xiao's dismissal.
Throughout the fall of 2004, there were arrests and firings. In early November, the party's Propaganda Department ordered the official media to stop publishing articles by six reform-minded intellectuals. Among them was Jiao Guobiao, a professor of journalism at Beijing University, who, in a scathing article, had advocated abolition of the Propaganda Department. Jiao was subsequently stripped of his teaching position, and now devotes his time exclusively to research.
On November 23, upon returning from a seminar in Connecticut where he spoke of the Internet's role in transforming civil society in China despite official efforts to control it, Wang Guangze of Ershiyi Shiji Jingji Baodao ("The 21st-century Business Herald") learned that he had been fired for being "absent" and doing "poor work." Wang had obtained prior official approval for the trip; and says he had been promised a promotion before leaving for the United States.
On November 24, police arrested poet Shi Tao at his Taiyuan home in Shanxi province and seized his computer and his personal files. The 36-year-old former journalist for Dangdai Shangbao ("Contemporary Trade News") had published a number of articles on the website "Democracy Forum."
On December 21, Chen Min, editor in chief of China Reform magazine, was detained and interrogated briefly. Using the nom de plume Xiaoshu ("The Smiling Sichuanese"), the 43-year-old Sichuan native had published many articles online advocating political reform. Chen has declined to elaborate on why he was detained.
Earlier in the year, a former journalist for the same magazine ran afoul of the authorities. Zhao Yan, who had written about the treatment of peasants by corrupt officials, was detained on September 17 while working as a researcher for the New York Times. Formally arrested on October 20 on charges of "divulging state secrets," a crime punishable by death, Zhao was accused of revealing to the New York Times, before it had been officially announced, that former president Jiang Zemin would resign as chairman of the central military commission. The New York Times has denied the allegation.
China's treatment of its domestic critics has gone beyond firings, confiscations, and short detentions. On September 27, Internet journalist Huang Jinqiu, who had returned to China in 2003 after studying in Malaysia, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of subversion. A particularly worrisome aspect of Huang's case is that the charges against him were based on political essays he had written and posted online while he was in Malaysia--out of reach of Chinese authorities.
Beijing's current campaign to censor and punish those who lobby for political liberalization has not reached the proportions of the anti-rightist campaign of 1957-58, when half a million intellectuals were persecuted for voicing criticism of party policy. Human rights groups estimate that some 25 cyber-dissidents and 62 journalists are currently in detention. Nevertheless, China has the dubious distinction of being the world's number one incarcerator of journalists, with untold numbers of others deterred from speaking out. And the trend is ominous.
Jennifer Chou is director of Radio Free Asia's Mandarin Service.
Red China hasn't changed it's oppressive rule of the Chinese people. The West's hope that trade and our sending work to China would mellow the Chinese Communist Party's grip on the people hasn't panned out.
You won't see a revolution from below as the people can't come together and organize. They don't have access to arms either. The government keeps them separate and atomized when it comes to social policy. A nail that is above the others is hammered down. The PRC army is an organ of state repression and will stamp out revolt. Look at Tibet, the army killed thousands there and is still an occupying power.
You're so right! Did you see this? They want to do the same thing in north Korea.http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337426/post South Korea is building the pilot industrial park for garment and other labor-intensive South Korean businesses which want to capitalize on the North’s cheap labor. North Korea has been suffering acute food and energy shortages since the late 1990s.
I don't know what the French and Russians see in these guys.
Well stated..I agree.
"I don't know what the French and Russians see in these guys."
Hell you dont have to go far in this country to find folks who feel the same way...try on Wall Street.
It'$ obviou$.
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