Unrest In China

[Annie]

There is no end to the suppression and spin:

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/china/articles/20060127.aspx

Unrest On The Rise

January 27, 2006: China's Ministry of Public Security admitted that, last year, there were 87,000 riots, demonstrations and smaller protests, an increase of 6.6 percent over 2004. The most common cause of this unrest is government corruption, particularly among Communist Party members. The government has responded by pledging to come down hard on anyone who disturbs the peace, as well as finding and punishing corrupt officials. More restrictions are being placed on public access to the Internet (which over 110 million Chinese use.) All this was the same response the government had last year, when it was announced that unrest had been up for several years.



January 24, 2006: To counter growing Chinese military power, the U.S. is moving more of its navy to the western Pacific. Over the next few years, half of America's aircraft carriers and 60 percent of its nuclear submarines will be assigned to patrol the Chinese coast and adjacent areas.



January 19, 2006: In Taiwan, the defense minister released twenty satellite photos showing the Chinese military build up along the coast. The photos showed ballistic missiles and modern fighters at bases within range of Taiwan. Another showed a bombing range on an island, with before and after shots of dummy F-16 aircraft that had been apparently hit by air-to-ground missiles. The defense minister is trying to convince the legislature to spend enough money to preserve Taiwan's technology edge over the Chinese armed forces. Many Taiwanese believe that the United States will protect them, so why spend a lot of money on defense.

Oh, you might want to stay with regular google v china google. If you don't understand the difference, you are lost regarding the post.

 

[waltky]

Newspaper Known for Testing Limits in China...

Chinese Paper Has Long History of Challenging Authorities
January 08, 2013 - The influential Chinese newspaper at the center of a rare protest against government censorship has a long history of progressive and controversial reporting that has tested the limits of free speech in China's strictly controlled media environment.

The Southern Weekly is part of the larger Nanfang Media Group, which is known for its in-depth and aggressive reports on sensitive topics, such as the 2003 SARS outbreak or China's massive network of illegal detentions centers. The controversial coverage has often landed the media group in the bad graces of Chinese propaganda officials, who have tried - with limited success - to get it to conform to their standards.

Rachel Lu, editor of Tea Leaf Nation, a website that monitors Chinese media,says the paper has undergone several purges in recent years, where staff have been fired, presumably for their reports. "There have been incidents where editors were replaced, and they would helicopter in new people to run the paper and they helicopter in a new propaganda chief to run Guangdong (province), where the paper is based," says Lu. She says the restrictions have been successful, but only to a certain point. "Some would say it's definitely been reined in a little bit. But it has basically retained that flavor, that sort of liberal bend, even throughout all these years where the government tries to restrain its coverage and angle," she says.

One of the most famous incidents came in 2003, when one of the group's editors published an investigation into the death of a young worker who died in police custody after being beaten. The story led to the discovery of a vast network of underground police detention camps - a revelation that embarrassed Beijing. It also resulted in the detention of Cheng Yizhong, the editor who published the investigation. Chinese propaganda officials have also tried pre-publication censorship to silence the newspaper. The Southern Weekly said in a recent statement that over 1,000 articles were censored to some degree in 2012 alone.

In the most recent case, editors say state censors replaced an editorial calling for greater constitutional rights with one that praised the accomplishments of the Communist Party. The government has so far not responded to the incident, which has prompted two days of small protests outside the Southern Weekly, as well as messages of support from a wide array of Chinese celebrities and public figures.

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See also:

Censorship Fight at Newspaper in China Grows
January 07, 2013 — Journalists and editors at an influential and often outspoken newspaper in China have gone on strike in protest of government censorship. The dispute involves a local propaganda official who allegedly called for changes to the publication's annual New Year’s editorial to its readers. The standoff at the Southern Weekly newspaper is growing from an internal dispute into a national debate about government oversight of the media.

The influential newspaper has long been known for its outspokenness and independent-minded efforts to cover the news in a country where information is a tightly controlled commodity. Employees say that when they returned from an annual New Year’s holiday last Thursday they discovered that a section of the paper that was to discuss the touchy topic of constitutional reform had been dramatically changed. That prompted an uproar. The uproar came first online - on blogs and other Twitter-like Weibo social media sites - with staffers accusing the propaganda chief where the paper is based, in Guangdong province, of making the changes and then, on Monday, in the form of protests outside the company’s offices.

Photos of the protesters that managed to briefly get posted online before they were taken down showed some holding up signs and shouting slogans calling for freedom of speech, democracy and political reform. Li Datong, a former prominent Chinese editor who was fired from a state media organization for his views, says the apparent intervention by the propaganda department appears to be a new tactic for state censors. "The propaganda department has already changed from the previous mode of censorship after publication to what we see now as a move towards censorship before publication," said Li. "It does not matter if it was Tuo Zhen, himself, but it was the propaganda department that did this. They have transformed what was control after publication to control before publication. This is a very nasty beginning."

Dozens of academics and editors have already begun openly calling, on line, for the resignation of the propaganda chief. Students from China’s Nanjing University and others have posted pictures of themselves online as well holding cards that cheered the newspaper on urging it to “Jia You” in Chinese, which means "Go." Some are already beginning to believe the dispute could become a watershed event that promotes much deeper reforms. Since Xi Jinping took over as head of the Communist Party in November, journalists have been taking bolder steps in testing the limits of the country’s new team of leaders both in reporting and on editorial pages.

Xi’s actions have in part helped prompt this wave because he has called for protecting the country’s constitution. He has also won praise for an anti-corruption campaign and efforts to get officials to cut back on pomp. Zhong Xin is a professor of journalism at Renmin University. "There have definitely been changes," said the professor. "We have to say that there are changes at different levels that give a general impression of media being more challenging and [regulations] tolerant. There is a feeling, it seems like people dare to speak a bit more about certain issues." Zhong says that, although it is difficult to guage how much change the events may bring, they could at least promote changes in the way China’s media is managed. "If it is a revolutionary type of change that goes quickly from nothing to everything, from all these rules to no rule and management at all, I think that this type of reform will not happen because in China we prefer gradual reforms, gradual change," she said.

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[waltky]

Southern Weekly protests settled

Management, reporters defuse China censorship spat
Jan 9,`13 -- Communist Party-backed management and rebellious staff at an influential weekly newspaper stepped back Wednesday from a contentious standoff over censorship that spilled over to the wider public and turned into an unexpected test of the new Chinese leadership's tolerance for political reform.

Hopes among supporters of the Southern Weekly that the dispute would strike a blow against censorship appeared to fizzle with a tentative resolution. Under an agreement reached Tuesday, editors and reporters at the newspaper will not be punished for protesting and stopping work in anger over a propaganda official's heavy-handed rewriting of a New Year's editorial last week, according to two members of the editorial staff. One, an editor, said propaganda officials will no longer directly censor content prior to publication, though other longstanding controls remain in place. "If that's the case, we've got a small victory for the media," said David Bandurksi, an expert on Chinese media at Hong Kong University. The compromise, he said, might see censors back off the "really ham-fisted approach" they had taken in recent months.

The staff members who described the deal asked not to be identified because they feared retaliation after they and other employees were told not to speak to foreign media. Executives at the newspaper and its parent company, the state-owned Nanfang Media Group, declined comment on the agreement other than to say that staff were at work Wednesday and the Southern Weekly would publish as normal Thursday. Aside from getting the presses rolling, the agreement appears likely to deflate the confrontation that presented a knotty challenge to Communist Party leader Xi Jinping two months after taking office. Xi has raised hopes of more liberal party rule, urging respect for the often-ignored constitution, and of a wider role for the media in helping Beijing press a renewed campaign against widespread corruption.

While the crisis began over the propaganda official's rewriting of the editorial calling for better constitutional governance to include praise for the party, it soon evolved into calls for free expression and political reform by intellectuals, university students and others. That challenged what the party considers its sacrosanct control over the media, raising the stakes for Xi's leadership. "I don't know if what we do will make a difference, but we must do this," said Xu Lin, one of scores of supporters who gathered in protest for a third day outside the Southern Weekly's offices. "If we don't get our voices heard, we are trampled grass. We are humans, not grass."

Protesters swelled in numbers to nearly 100 by mid-afternoon, flanked by dozens of police, who separated them from about 20 left-wing Communist Party loyalists who waved national flags and portraits of revolutionary patriarch Mao Zedong. A freelance real estate agent, Xiao Yunhui, had newspaper taped to his body and the words "kidnapped" to show that the Southern Weekly "cannot speak in its own voice." Overall, though, the numbers were smaller than the hundreds who showed up earlier this week outside the compound, which also houses parent company offices and lies off a busy street in Guangzhou, a prosperous, commercial city that has often been at the forefront of reforms.

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[gazpatmore]

No surprises there. As exposure to the West grows, the seeds of discontent are sown amongst the populace. The Chinese may be patriotic and nationalistic, but their not stupid and I suspect they are now realising they can have it all if they push for it - money, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of movement.

But thats probably going to start in the upper echelons of society where people have the means to protect themselves if it all goes awry. It remains to be seen how it affects the people at a grassroots level, especially the minorities in areas like Xinjiang, Tibet and Mongolia. Were hearing increasing stories about the common man sticking up for himself, refusing to let his house be torn down by the ruthless developer...one-off cases but its better than no cases at all like 50 years ago.

 

[Unkotare]

The Chinese may be patriotic and nationalistic, but their [sic] not stupid and I suspect they are now realising they can have it all if they push for it - money, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of movement.

Wow, you get a good internet connection from back there in 1989.

 

[gazpatmore]

The Chinese may be patriotic and nationalistic, but their [sic] not stupid and I suspect they are now realising they can have it all if they push for it - money, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of movement.

Wow, you get a good internet connection from back there in 1989.

Its not bad, I make do

 

[waltky]

Xi Jinping reiterated the importance of fighting corruption...

How serious is China on corruption?
28 January 2013 - Even among China's jaded internet users, this was big news: Li Jianguo, a Communist official operating at the very top of the party, was under investigation for corruption.

Mr Li, who serves as vice chairman of China's parliament, reportedly engineered the promotion of his nephew to a plum government position. In October, Mr Li was promoted to join China's elite 25-member Politburo. Now, the Hong Kong media reports he has checked into a Beijing military hospital, suffering from stress. If Chinese investigators are pursuing a case against Li Jinguo, he has good reason to be worried. China's new Party leader, Xi Jinping, vowed to crack down on corruption in his first speech to the public in October and so far, he appears to be keeping his word. Just last week, Mr Xi promised he would battle both "tigers" and "flies", indicating that officials at all ranks were under scrutiny.

Li Xinde, an influential citizen journalist, was the first person to interview the whistleblower exposing Li Jianguo's high-flying nephew. The fact that this case has been picked up by the authorities, he says, shows that things are changing in China. "When Xi came into power, people were accustomed to ineffective anti-corruption campaigns," Li Xinde explains. "They're usually characterised by lots of words and few actions, or 'big thunder, small rain', but this time, Xi's speeches have produced real results." Li is a common surname in China and the two Lis are unrelated.

The blogger, Li Xinde, also points to a second case, the downfall of China's "Housing Sister", to underline the fact that this time, the Party is serious about tackling corruption. Gong Ai-ai is believed to have illegally purchased more than 20 units of China's so-called affordable housing, building up a portfolio worth $159m (£100m). "These cases were successful not only because Chinese internet users exposed them, but also because the Party acted so swiftly to deal with it," Mr Li says. All evidence, he says, that individual citizens are no longer working alone to expose corruption on a case-by-case basis. Instead, there is new hope that the system as a whole is becoming more transparent.

'Edge of a knife'

 

[waltky]

China clampin' down on gov't. extravagance...

China turns against official extravagance
5 February 2013 - Such was the extent of officials' spending on luxuries that the clampdown is said to have depressed share prices in high-end liquors

Shanghai's Hotel Industry Association is, you would think, naturally a conservative kind of organisation. It represents more than 50 five-star hotels, which cater for the city's rich and powerful elite. The association's president, Huang Tiemin, is himself a top hotelier and a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. He seems a very unlikely person to throw discretion to the wind and turn on some of his highest profile and highest spending clients - but listen to this. "It is astonishing. Unbelievable," he says of the dining habits of Shanghai's government officials. "It is very normal to have a banquet with over 10 courses. Some have 15 to 20. I've seen one where there were so many dishes they had to be stacked three-high."

And he disapproves not just of the large quantity of food consumed but its superior quality too. "Shark fin, abalone, bird's nest and other very expensive foods can very often be found in banquets funded with public money." Warming to the theme, he adds; "Sometimes the cost of the alcohol is even higher than the food." It is a picture of publicly-funded gluttony and extravagance that a few months ago would have been very hard to glean from one so well connected. But something has changed and in China it is suddenly the political fashion to denounce the high-spending habits of the country's public servants.

No whim

It was Xi Jinping, the new Communist Party chief, who started it. When the new leadership took over in November last year, one of the first acts was to issue a list of prohibitions. No more spending public money on banquets. No more official gift-giving. No more using official cars on public holidays. It has not been done on a whim. Such is the level of anger in China about corruption, privilege and abuse of power that the Communist Party openly admits that it threatens its hold on power.

It has been heard before, of course. Previous leader Hu Jintao - and Jiang Zemin before him - warned of the existential threat posed by corruption. But this time the thunder has been matched by the following rainstorm, to borrow a now oft-quoted Chinese saying. The prohibitions are clearly being enforced if you take economic activity as a measure. "It's had a big effect on high-end hotels like mine," Huang Tiemin tells me. "Since the date the new regulations were published, banquet bookings have fallen by at least 30%."

Share price fall

 

[waltky]

Turmoil in Xinjiang...

Uighur ‘terrorists’ trapped police: Chinese media says
Fri, Apr 26, 2013 - LABEL OF CONVENIENCE? China accuses Uighurs of luring police into their house for an ambush, but rights groups dismissed the claim and ‘terrorist’ label

Chinese authorities accused “terrorists” in China’s far west of setting a trap to kill policemen, state media said yesterday, after a US-based rights group dismissed terrorism claims. Twenty-one people were killed in violence in China’s Xinjiang region on Tuesday, local government officials said, adding that six members of the ethnic Uighur minority shot dead in the clashes were suspected of terrorist plotting. “The terrorists may have set a trap,” the state-run Global Times daily quoted local officials as saying, adding that knife-wielding men ambushed police after luring them to a house in Barchuk county, in the region’s west.

Fifteen police and “community workers” were killed in the incident, including 10 from the Uighur minority, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Uighurs are mostly Muslim and see Xinjiang as their homeland. Xinjiang, a region about twice the size of Turkey, is home to about 9 million Uighurs, many of whom complain of religious and cultural repression by Chinese authorities. The region is regularly hit by unrest. The Uyghur American Association, which is run by members of the minority living in the US, urged the international community to “dismiss” China’s claims of terrorism, which it said should be viewed with “extreme caution.”

Chinese government claims have not been independently verified, the group said in a statement, and accused local authorities of abusing terror charges to repress Uighurs. “They always use such labels to justify their use of armed force,” the statement quoted Dilshat Rexit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, another exile group, as saying. Officials and state media blame the unrest on “terrorists,” but some experts say the government has produced little evidence of an organized terrorist threat, adding that the violence stems more from long-standing local resentment.

The US on Wednesday urged China to conduct an independent investigation into the incident, and said that the US ambassador to China visited the region this week as part of a US trade delegation. US Department of State spokesman Patrick Ventrell called on China to “take steps to reduce tensions and promote long-term stability in Xinjiang. “We urge the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation of this incident and to provide all Chinese citizens — including Uighurs — the due-process protections to which they’re entitled,” he said.

Uighur ?terrorists? trapped police: Chinese media says - Taipei Times

See also:

US 'Deeply Concerned' by Violence in China's Xinjiang Province
April 25, 2013 - The United States is calling for a thorough and transparent investigation into a confrontation in China's restive northwest province of Xinjiang that left 21 people dead.

State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell says the U.S. is "deeply concerned" by the Tuesday violence, which Beijing was quick to label as a "terrorist attack." "We regret the unfortunate acts of violence that led to these casualties and we’ll continue to encourage Chinese officials to take steps to reduce tensions and promote long-term stability in Xinjiang," he said. The clashes began when community workers came across what state media describe as "suspicious individuals and knives" at a house in western Kashgar prefecture. Fifteen police and officials were killed in the ensuing violence, while six "gang members" were shot dead. Another eight people were captured. A provincial official told VOA the incident was a "premeditated, violent act of terror." Another official, quoted in Thursday's Communist Party-run Global Times says the group was planning to conduct an "elaborate attack" and was involved in "extreme religious activities," a common accusation against those in Xinjiang's predominantly Muslim Uighur community.

Some exiled Uighur activists dispute Beijing's version of events. The World Uighur Congress says the violence broke out when Chinese forces shot and killed a young Uighur as part of a government crackdown on the ethnic minority group. James Leibold, a Beijing-based scholar on Chinese minority populations, says the truth is difficult to discern in cases like this. He tells VOA that the government explanation must be viewed with "extreme caution." "[The government] tends to want to play the blame game very quickly. Local officials, in this regard, will often use words like terrorism, jihadist, and blame Islamic extremism, when incidents of violence and unrest happen in Xinjiang," he said. Leibold says incidents of ethnic conflict in Xinjiang are often more complex and are rooted in a wide range of local dynamics. "The rapidly changing nature of Xinjiang society, which creates a sense of social, cultural and religious dislocation, Han trans-migration into the area, restrictions on religious worship, and of course, there are outside influences that we can't rule out, [such as] Islamic extremism," he said.

Leibold warns that, just as government explanations must be viewed with caution, so should those by exiled Uighur groups. "Both sides have an agenda and are trying to control the narrative and are trying to control how this incident is broadcast to the larger world," he said. Many in the Turkic-speaking Uighur community say they are economically and culturally disadvantaged and face widespread discrimination resulting from a massive influx of ethnic Han Chinese into the region. Ethnic tensions in Xinjiang have been simmering since a series of riots in 2009 killed more than 200 people in the regional capital of Urumqi. Subsequent clashes also broke out, prompting what activists say is a heavy-handed crackdown on the Uighur community.

Ventrell, the State Department spokesperson, addressed those grievances during his regular briefing on Wednesday. He says Washington is "deeply concerned by ongoing reports of discrimination against and restrictions on Uighurs and other Muslims in China" and urges Beijing to "cease policies that seek to restrict the practice of religious beliefs across China." China angrily dismissed the criticism on Thursday. Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said the U.S. should stop making "wild accusations about Chinese policy toward ethnic minorities." She also blasted Washington for failing to condemn the violence. She told reporters that U.S. leaders should be more sympathetic toward Chinese policies since both countries are dealing with violent terrorist attacks.

Source

 

[Unkotare]

When the PLA periodically gets jumpy and feels the need to assert their oppressive occupation of Xinjiang, they tend to be vicious about it. This is partly because they are so scared of the Uighurs.

 

[waltky]

Muslim terrorists arrested in China...

China says more arrested after deadly clash
Apr. 29,`13 — Police have arrested more suspects in connection with a clash between authorities and assailants that left 21 dead in the western region of Xinjiang, Chinese state media reported Monday.

Eight suspects already were in custody following last Tuesday's clash, which killed 15 police officers and local government officials, and six assailants. Authorities described the gang as terrorists. The death toll was the highest for a single incident in months in Xinjiang, which sees recurrent outbreaks of violence pitting members of the Turkic Muslim Uighur (pronounced WEE'-gur) group against the authorities and majority ethnic Han Chinese migrants.

China Central Television said Monday that another group of suspects had been captured and interrogated, though it didn't say how many. It also said explosives were seized. The report quoted the state anti-terrorist office and Meng Hongwei, the vice public security minister. Also Monday, CCTV broadcast images of a memorial service for the 12 men and three women police officers and officials killed in the clash. It said Meng attended, along with more than 1,000 people from local party and government departments.

A leading Uighur activist has questioned the official account of the incident. Local sources said that police sparked it by shooting a Uighur youth during an illegal search of homes, according to Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the German-based World Uyghur Congress. Authorities previously said 10 of those killed on the government side were Uighurs, three were Han, and two were from the Mongolian ethnic group. It said two other Uighurs were hurt. The ethnicity of the assailants wasn't given.

Xinjiang, a sprawling region that borders Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is home to millions of Uighurs, many of whom complain of tight restrictions on religious and cultural life by Beijing and say they have been marginalized by policies favoring Han migrants. Beijing says it treats its minorities fairly and spends billions of dollars on improving living standard in minority areas.

China says more arrested after deadly clash

See also:

Dhaka building collapse: Hopes for rescue fade
29 April 2013 - Rescue work on a collapsed building in Bangladesh has entered a sixth day, but officials say they no longer expect to find any survivors.

Heavy lifting gear is now being used to raise slabs of concrete at the Rana Plaza garment factory, where at least 380 died after Wednesday's collapse. A fire disrupted rescue work on Sunday. The owner of the building is facing charges of negligence, along with two government engineers who were involved in approving its design. Owner Mohammed Sohel Rana was arrested on Sunday near the Indian border and returned to Dhaka. Mr Rana went on the run after the eight-storey building collapsed on Wednesday with several thousand workers inside. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to visit the site later on Monday.

Checkpoint arrest

According to the head of the team which tracked down Mr Rana, he had hidden in several places since disappearing. "He went into hiding in different areas and changed locations regularly. Besides Dhaka, he stayed in two or three districts outside of the city," said Mokhlesur Rahman of the Rapid Action Battalion. "He reached the border with India. There was a possibility that he could have managed to escape into India within a very short space of time. "Based on a tip-off, we hurriedly flew to Jessore in a helicopter. He was arrested at the checkpoint at Benapole in Jessore."

On Sunday afternoon, a fire halted rescue work at the building. The presence of clothing in the garment factory may have worsened the blaze, correspondents say. Four firefighters were taken to hospital, The BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan says rescuers had been trying to free a trapped woman for a number of hours when the fire began, but they later reported she had not survived. The co-ordinator of rescue efforts said that work with heavy-lifting gear would be done carefully to avoid mutilating bodies trapped under the debris.

Six arrested