With his usual diplomatic tact, signature gentility and elegant diction, Conrad sweetly calls Wen Jiabao to task for his claims that Taiwan is “abusing democracy.”

As always, Conrad’s writing is instilled with a tender subtlety, a soft-spoken sense of caring, infinite patience and a scholar’s grasp of the Westerner’s need to look at China today within the context of its glorious 5,000-year history.

Oh, and it’s the funniest fucking thing I ever read.

I don’t necessarily agree with all he says (it is kind of extreme) but he sure makes his point.

This is not just a story about bicycles, but of Shanghai’s dramatic evolution in recent years.

Succumbing at last to the worldwide love affair with the car, China – of all places – is officially turning up its nose at the humble bicycle.
Its biggest city, Shanghai, plans to ban bikes from all major roads next year to ease congestion, state-run newspapers said on Tuesday.

It’s not just the weather Shanghai cyclists now have to contend with. Police will also raise fines tenfold for such cycling infractions as running red lights, Shanghai Daily reported.

Once hailed as the perfect form of proletarian transport, the bicycle used to reign supreme in China as undisputed king of the road.

One of the interviewed cyclists predicts the ban will simply be ignored, and they’ll just ride on the sidewalks if they need to.

Go see Orcinus’ great post about an idiot’s call for violence against anti-war liberals. Orcinus draws a brilliant parallel between this sort of hate rhetoric with that which America heard voiced against the Japanese during World War II.

As usual, his post is rich with examples, as well as a truly scary photograph. (Go there for the photo alone; you won’t forget it.)

These are the Beijing Bloggers themselves, plus a good friend of mine. (God, I look so serious!) To find out who’s who, you’ll have to go here, from whence I stole the photo.

Be sure to check out Adri’s hot new blog design. It’s definitely getting there….

This fascinating book review by the WaPo’s John Pomfret looks at the banned-in-China biography, Zhou Enlai’s Later Years, by Gao Wenqian, a former CCP researcher for more than a decade prior to emigrating to the US.

He depicts Zhou as a tragic backroom schemer, a puppet of his master Mao, and a man who was so imbued with a Confucian sense of duty that he did almost everything Mao asked him — including signing the arrest orders for his own brother and a goddaughter.

The book challenges the view that Zhou tried his best to save hundreds of purged officials during the Cultural Revolution, portraying him instead as an eager participant in the ultra-leftist campaign during which hundreds of thousands of people were dispatched to the Chinese gulag.

“Party documents show that Zhou only protected people after first checking with Mao, his wife Jiang Qing, Mao’s no. 2 Lin Biao and others,” Gao wrote. “If Zhou sensed any opposition to protecting someone, he would drop his protection.”

Even though Zhou died 27 years ago, criticism of him is taboo in China because, officially, he never made a mistake. “In a society troubled with corruption and facing a moral vacuum, Zhou is the last good Communist,” said Gao. “This book takes him off his pedestal. I criticized what should never be criticized.”

I have to admit, for years even I got sucked into the myth of Zhou as the pearl among the swine, and I’m sad to see the destruction of the romanticized image of the kind-hearted friend of the people who subtly tried to influence Mao to be a bit less awful.

But reading about China’s history over the past year, I knew this was sugar coating; Zhou was an enthusiastic supporter of the Great Leap Forward, and while he may have saved the Forbidden City from destruction during the Cultural Revolution (another myth?), he was not divorced from all that was going on around him.

According to Pomfret, who obviously gives the book a good deal of credence, Gao shatters one myth after another:

Gao also challenges a long-held belief that it was Zhou who brought Deng back into the Chinese leadership in 1973. Deng later rose to become China’s paramount leader in the late 1970s, and held onto his position until his death in 1997. Deng’s official biographers have used what they have called his special relationship with Zhou as a way to bolster his prestige.

Gao wrote that Mao actually brought Deng back from official oblivion as part of a plot to ensure that Zhou did not become too powerful. Gao cites as proof Deng’s participation in several sessions organized by Mao to criticize Zhou.

“I wanted to write a book about a personality that had been distorted by the Communist system,” Gao said. “Zhou was such a man.”

I remember watching film clips of all the weeping Chinese people as Zhou Enlai’s funeral cortege passed by. It was as though a part of them had died with Zhou. They believed so deeply in him, that he was saintly, that he loved them and fought for them. Was it just one more of history’s cruel jokes? How sad.

Unfortunately, the book is currently available only in Chinese. I’ll be the first buyer when the English version is out.

This exhaustive article tracks Time’s 1996 Man of the Year Dr. David Ho as he fights to convince the Chinese government to acknowledge and respond to its festering AIDS crisis.

The article focuses on Ho’s efforts in Yunnan, where he’s initiating trials of an AIDS vaccine for those most likely to become infected, mainly injection drug users and sex workers. Every step of the way, Ho has to struggle with the government and the effects of its stigmatization of AIDS:

“They desperately want help,” he [Ho] says of the doctors he met in Wenlou. “They obviously have the data on AIDS patients but are afraid to show us.”

That fear is well founded. Adding to the stigma surrounding AIDS in these villages is the role that local leaders played in the blood-buying program. “Many government officials made a lot of money,” says the patient advocate who calls himself Ke’Er. To protect themselves, they wrapped their villages in the cloak of state secrecy, effectively sealing off AIDS patients from foreign aid groups as well as health officials from other provinces. AIDS-care centers still won’t put the word AIDS on their doors, opting instead for such intentionally obscure labels as “home garden.”

To their credit, the authors also note how helpful some of the health officials are being to Dr. Ho, as their alarm at the magnitude of the crisis grows.

The article includes the usual horror stories of China’s AIDS victims and their children (200,000 of whom are now parentless in Henan Province), and the maddening attempts to move officials to action. It also gives us reason to hope as it chronicles Dr. Ho’s successes in pushing the boulder up the mountain.

More than anything, the article is a tribute to Dr. Ho, whose patience, perseverance and dedication make him one of the greatest heroes of our time. How ironic, that he is forced to play a David-and-Goliath scenario when he is trying desperately to save Goliath from death and destruction.

Related post: The indescribable tragedy of AIDS in China

I just read one of the strangest and most outspoken posts yet on the current debate about Taiwan and cultural “misunderstandings” and the Falun Gong now floating around our regional blogosphere. I mean, this is really strong stuff.

In regard to “Understanding China”:

What do you think is so special about your so-called culture (5000 years) that makes it impossible for a white-faced, big-nosed, hairy barbarian to understand? Plenty of foreigners understand China, you just mistake their complaints for misunderstandings. I think a lot of Chinese behaviour is stupid, racist, ignorant, and backward. I understand it, but I don’t like it. When I say the concept of face is dumb, and you say, “You just don’t understand Chinese culture,” you’re actually saying that you don’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. I didn’t say, “I don’t understand this interesting, ancient, exotic, inscrutible concept of face, could you please educate me?” The underlying assumption seems to be that if the rest of the world could just understand China, we would all see that they’ve been right all along. Like green tea against cancer, an understanding of China could break down all barriers to world peace.

Can you tell us how you really feel, Brad?

I don’t agree by any means with all that Brad says, especially how it is impossible to change anyone’s mind on anything related to China. (Hell, my own mind got changed, and fairly quickly, after witnessing the CCP’s sins during the SARS debacle.) But he has an excellent point when it comes to those who would argue the onus is always on the Westerner to “understand” the Chinese, and that the Chinese are absolved of any responsibility to meet us half-way, let alone to understand us.

So I repeat, I don’t agree with all that Brad says. But I’m glad I read it. He definitely got me thinking, and from a purely stylistic perspective, I am impressed.

I’m afraid it’ll be a silent night. Flying home from Beijing on the red-eye and arriving home at 7 am is bad enough. When it’s on China Airlines, it’s pure torture (uncomfortable seats, non-stop noise, inedible food, etc.). I had to go straight to work with no sleep and no dinner or breakfast, so I’m in no mood to sit and write this evening. I should be back in top form by the morning.

I had such a great time in China last week. Too bad news like this forces me to remember there is still trouble in paradise:

CHINESE Internet dissident Yan Jun, 32, has been sentenced to two years in prison on a subversion charge for posting essays online calling for change, including a free press and free expression, his family said today.

The Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him this morning on a charge of “inciting subversion”, his mother Dai Yuzhen told AFP.

“The court took no more 20 minutes,” Dai said by telephone from Xi’an in Shaanxi province.

Family members and Yan could not understand the court’s decision, Dai said.

“I can’t accept this verdict. Just because he wrote a few essays, he’s going to jail? I can’t make sense of it,” Dai said.

What a shame. Such a robust country, such an ambitious people, still reigned in by good old-fashioned totalitarian terror.

UPDATE: The families of four cyber-dissidents sentenced to unbelievably harsh sentences have now appealed to Laura Bush for help. This is another must-read for those who think things are getting better in terms of self-expression. These guys range from 28 to 32, and their prison sentences range from 8 to 10 years. Those are very, very long sentences.