We’ve seen it before with Du Daobin and the Stainless Steel Mouse, Liu Di. Now there’s an online petition to free the SARS whistleblower, a national hero in China, and it reportedly already has 400 signatures.

Hundreds of Chinese on the mainland and abroad have added their names to an online petition to free Dr Jiang Yanyong, the doctor who blew the whistle on China’s initial cover-up of the Sars outbreak last year.
‘Everytime they arrest someone, we launch a petition. When will it end?’

He is widely reported to have been detained for writing a letter in March denouncing the Chinese government’s handling of the Tiananmen incident and calling for a review of the crackdown on student demonstrators in 1989.

By yesterday evening, the website had collected more than 400 signatures.

Those who have signed the online petition at the website include academics such as well-known economist Mao Yushi, relatives of those who died during the Tiananmen Square incident, as well as people working or living abroad.

In a letter addressed to Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, the petitioners pleaded for the release of Dr Jiang.

They said: ‘For more than a month, we’ve waited silently for Dr Jiang’s safe return.

‘But we are disappointed and now we want to speak up loudly: Release Dr Jiang unconditionally now!’

If anyone has the link or a copy of the petition please let me know so I can post it here. Thanks.

UPDATE: Petition in Chinese is here.

Here’s what a furious Andrew Sullivan has to say:

“No understanding of the real Constitutional issues involved – just an hysterical screed against “activist” courts. No mention of the fact that 38 states have already banned equality for gays in marriage. No mention of civil unions. And, again, no actual use of the words “gay”, “lesbian” or “homosexual.” This really is a revealing silence. Think what he could have said: let’s keep marriage for heterosexuals, but let’s find a way to protect the relationships of our gay and lesbian fellow-citizens. That would be a “uniter” not a “divider.” But Bush is a tool of the fundamentalist right – a movement that seeks not simply to keep marriage for straights, but to strip gay people of dignity, rights, protections and equality. If he were to call us by name, he would violate the fundamentalists’ belief: that gay people don’t exist, that we’re sick heterosexuals, that we need to be put in therapy or jail.”

“Yesterday, Bush decided to show he was a moderate by arguing that people should be allowed privacy in their own bedrooms (a policy he opposed when supporting Texas’ disgusting gays-only sodomy law as governor). That’s it. That’s what he thinks the place of gay people is in society. We’re lucky not to be arrested in our own homes.”

Can Sully endorse such a man for president, even if he was once his hero? This post is immediately follwed by a letter from one of Sully’s smarter readers.

“Andrew, like all of us you deserve a national party that represents faithfully at least most of your political philosophy. Right now that may not be either major party, but it could be the GOP after it is forced to engage in a real internal debate about its future and direction. In other words, a Kerry-Edwards win in 2004 might force the GOP to decide what it wants to be–the party of Pat Tillman, Rudy Guiliani, John McCain, and Arnold or the party of Rick Santorum and Ralph Reed. Only faced with a loss in November will the GOP have the opportunity to have this dialogue. Imagine how engaged you will be, and how exhilirating that New Hampshire primary will be in 2008?”

“But if Bush wins there is no chance that anyone will stop to ask the hard questions. The contradictions and the fissures will simply be papered over and the Santorums will continue their triumphal march, smug and unchecked. If nothing else, a Kerry-Edwards win in November does two positive things for this country: first, it gives the GOP a chance to pause and make intelligent choices, a chance to improve itself into something that Sullivan and Kaus and Simon might all feel comfortable in. Second, a Kerry-Edwards win puts a roadblock in front of Hillary Rodham Clinton for good. Win win, I say.”

While I don’t agree with all the points the letter writer makes, his premise is sound: It’s time for the GOP to escape the clutches of far-right Christian Fundamentalism that goes counter to all America is really supposed to stand for. The GOP under Bush has polarized this country to the point of sickness and dysfunctionality

I’d say Sullivan’s on the verge of endorsing the Kerry-Edwards ticket, no doubt with deep reservations. But if you look back at the way Sully was chortling and gloating during the heady days of our march into Baghdad, when he was a certified Bush attack dog, this is a dramatic shift, to say the very least.

NEWSFLASH: I just saw the latest Newsweek poll results on CNN. Unlike the earlier AP poll, this one fully reflects Kerry’s selection of Edwards. 51 percent of Americans now favor Kerry-Edwards, while 45 percent go for Bush-Cheney.

No doubt these numbers will bounce around like ping-pong balls, especially if Bush produces Bin Laden. But only a fool would say Bush isn’t in a precarious position as an incumbent president a mere three and a half months before Election Day.

Where’s the outrage? It borders on criminal conspiracy.

Military records that could help establish President Bush’s whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.

It said the payroll records of “numerous service members,” including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25.

The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush’s claims of service in Alabama are in question….

The loss was announced by the Defense Department’s Office of Freedom of Information and Security Review in letters to The New York Times and other news organizations that for nearly half a year have sought Mr. Bush’s complete service file under the open-records law.

There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the President’s military records last February in an effort to stem Democratic accusations that he was “AWOL” for a time during his commitment to fly at home in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

How come we let him get away with this? Can anyone read this and conclude Bush doesn’t have something to hide?

The publication of this survey on the plight of Chinese peasants was seen just a few months ago as a major breakthrough. It seemed to signal a new willingness on the part of populists Hu and Wen to actually encourage dialogue on a taboo subject. It was, for me at least, unbelievable. They were actually exposing the abuses against the peasantry! So there was little surprise when we heard weeks later that the book had been banned, but there was a lot of disappointment.

Kahn presents the first detailed article I’ve seen on this sad story.

The book describes one farmer, named Ding Zuoming, and his decade-long campaign to enforce central government directives limiting taxes and fees. Although the Beijing authorities reviewed and approved his complaints, the local police found an excuse to arrest him, the book says. They beat him to death in custody.

The authors tell the story of Zhang Keli, described as an idealistic public official devoted to fighting poverty. Over time, he found that fellow village chiefs had found ways to enrich themselves and their relatives, even while they won promotions.

“He felt like he would be an idiot not to take his share,” Mr. Chen and Ms. Wu wrote.

The book became an unexpected best seller earlier this year. Whether that was because it named names in exposés about the underside of China’s boom or because its publication coincided with an effort by Mr. Wen to promote new rural policies is unclear.

Chen Xiwen, the deputy director of the Central Finance and Economics Leading Group, a high-level government policy-making committee, and the man considered China’s foremost rural policy expert, said in a recent interview that he had bought two copies, one for the office and the other to keep at home….

Propaganda authorities evidently felt the book went too far. Even as a media frenzy built in March, the government-owned publisher got a verbal order to cease printing. Media coverage ended instantly. The authors estimate that the book has sold as many as 7 million copies, but they earned royalties on only the 200,000 legal copies sold before the ban.

More disconcerting to the authors, a disgruntled local official named in the book, Zhang Xide, filed a libel suit against them seeking $24,000 in damages. As Chinese officials rarely file court actions without the approval of superiors, Mr. Chen and Ms. Wu say they effectively face prosecution by Anhui Province.

That would be the final irony, if after all the exultation and dismay the authors end up being punished. Sometimes it seems like part of the culture, putting the nation’s heroes and whistleblowers in jail.

Reform in China so often seems to resemble — pardon the expression — a Chinese fire drill. They give us a strong hint of improvement, we get all excited, articles come out, the blogs go nuts, we all wonder, Is this it — the real thing?? And then it just evaporates as though it never happened at all, and we’re back where we were before. It’s exhausting. It’s dizzying. And it’s always exactly the same.

UPDATE: I edited this post, changing an earlier sentence where I said the books authors might face going to prison; if they are punished, they would probably have to pay a high fine, and not face prison time.

You’ve got to see the two pieces over at Andrew Sullivan, one a letter and one a post, on how idiotic our terrorism-inspired travel restrictions are, both for visitors and for good God-fearing Americans. A travesty. An idiocy. Sullivan is appropriately outraged. Me, too.

And Sullivan congratulates him for it! What is this world coming to?

John and Teresa Kerry are on Larry King even as we speak. She is amazing. Can you imagine, having a First Lady with a real personality? It would be unprecedented in my lifetime.

You should see the New Republic article on Bush’s obsession with coming up with a summer surprise, i.e., the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden.

We all want to see Bin Laden liquidated; the ugly thing here is Bush putting enormous pressure on Pakistan to deliver the goods prior to Election Day.

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. “Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn’t change because of an election,” says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack.

But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), “The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections.”

Due to shenanigans like this, the cynicism over anything the Bush administration says or does right now has reached new levels. Today, Tom Ridge warned us yet again of new indications of terrorist chatter. A CNN poll showed that more than 90 percent of viewers believed it was a political stunt. That’s alarming. After all, GWB constantly stresses, “You know who I am, you know what I stand for.” If what he stands for is grandstanding and deceiving the populace for political points, some of that trust he’s counting on to win in November may be seriously diluted.

Dr. Jiang Yanyong, under detention and subjected to brainwashing, is now “the most dangeous man in China” because he is so beloved and trusted by the Chinese people that his treatment could create a serious backlash. So says a Washington Post editorial that sees in this misdeed the grimmest implications.

Dr. Jiang’s detention clearly demonstrates that China’s leaders are in no mood to progress toward political liberalization, as many hoped when a new generation of leaders under President Hu Jintao took power last year. Mr. Hu allowed a time — however brief — of openness that was critical to confront and contain SARS. But his leadership has been complicated by former president Jiang Zemin’s refusal to let go of his enormous influence. The power struggle has created a policymaking dynamic favoring hard-line extremism as the politically “safe” direction. But it is the wrong one. Just ask the relatives of the hundreds of people who died of SARS in 11 countries because China did not face up to the crisis when it first broke out. As Dr. Jiang wrote to the Chinese leadership, “The claim that stability is of overriding importance can in fact cause even greater instability.” China — and the world — should listen.

All true. I still want to believe that Hu wants to be a reformer. I give him no credit, however, for that brief window of openness brought on last spring by the SARS crisis. He simply had no choice; China had been caught red-handed and 10 years of diplomacy and economic reforms were threatened. He did the smart and expedient thing, and as quickly as the openness was announced so was it rescinded. It was okay for a little while to criticize the government. The good doctor went away adored by the public and unpunished by the government — or so it seemed. And now we’ve come full circle.

Thanks to the Washiongton Post for taking the lead with this story and following up on its editorial page. I only hope the other media follow suit. If anything can snap the media out of their typical bored silence in regard to China, it’s this horror story.

One of my old posts on the lunacy of a China Daily opinion piece seems to have been brought back to life over at a China Daily forum.

This was where I blasted a writer, Blackie Lau, for saying the US (“the running dogs of war”) caused all of China’s problems. Lau made lots of other weird assertions, and commenters had a field day fisking away.

Here’s a portion from one of the more outspoken posts to the forum:

If I may be so uncouth as to distil the ‘essence’ of the participants of the referred Website as one odoriferous murky brew fit only as sustenance for the buffoons and baboons of the Internet.

Hilarity is one where we all share the foibles and flaws in our actions as to laugh at our own quirks or idiosyncrasies.

Not, as I look at the on-goings of the proceedings, it was meant to ridicule with humiliation as its prime motive. Do we not detect a superior air, and some imperial dismissive in the jibes of these political yokels?

Where is the defence of free thought if they are orchestrating a hilarity that is more a suppression in disguise?

Indeed, hilarity is the ability to laugh at ourselves. But when one party laughs and the other party ridiculed and humiliated, would you conscientiously still maintain that is hilarity?

The desired behaviour from them, as these self-proclaimed political pundits and gurus would have us believed their dour and morbid humour, was to come into China Daily and take up cudgels against Blackie Lau in open debates.

But instead, they went about in a sneaky way to ridicule unreasonably Blackie Lau without giving him the same avenue of free thought as they were wont to carp on such misdemeanour on China’s part as infringement of human rights or the archaic views of one who is exercising his franchise to free thoughts.

I’ve replied to the somewhat bizarre charges over at the bulletin board. It’s an interesting thread, and I’m certainly flattered.

Danwei once again brings us up to date on the latest media and advertising trends in China, including photos that will appeal to every taste. (Two separate links, one for each taste.)