I can see why they don’t all love us. (This is per the request of a commenter in a recent thread.)

Update: Apparently this picture is a fake. And commenters are telling me no such signs ever existed in China. Just another myth?

The Washington Post today offers a massive four-page analysis of the recent peasant uprising in Huaxi — why the farmers revolted, how the government responded (repression, the usual tactic) and how the peasants won their rare victory. Most important is what this episode means for China’s future.

A pitched battle erupted that soggy morning between enraged farmers and badly outnumbered police. By the end of the day, high-ranking officials had fled in their black sedans and hundreds of policemen had scattered in panic while farmers destroyed their vehicles. It was a rare triumph for the peasants, rising up against the all-powerful Communist Party government.

The confrontation was also a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest. Peasants and workers left behind by China’s economic boom increasingly have resorted to the kind of unrest that ignited in Huaxi. Their explosions of anger have become a potential source of instability and a threat to the party’s monopoly on power that has leaders in Beijing worried. By some accounts, there have been thousands of such protests a year, often met with force.

The workers and peasants appear to have nowhere else to turn but the street. Their representatives in parliament do what the government says; independent organizations are banned in China’s communist system; and party officials, focused on economic growth, have become partners of eager entrepreneurs rather than defenders of those abandoned by the boom. Most of the violent grass-roots eruptions have been put down, hard and fast. This report examines the origin and unfolding of one revolt that went the other way. “We won a big victory,” declared a farmer who described the protest on condition that his name be withheld, lest police arrest him as a ringleader. “We protected our land. And anyway, the government should not have sent so many people to suppress us.”

The reporter takes you right there; you can feel the peasants’ anguish as the government destroys their land and poisons their food. Is there a time to take up violence? Yes, unfortunately there is, as a very last resport. This was one of those times.

How China deals with this class division will make or break the country. It’s a problem of staggering complexity, with no easy answers. Only one thing’s for sure: Sending in people with guns to silence and terrify the masses is not the solution and could backfire with catastrophic effects.

UPDATE: This is blocked in China. You can find the entire article here.

I think it would be smart if we have a thread open every night, so readers in China can complain and rant and chat while we here in America are getting into pajamas. Let’s try to move the comments over here from the previous thread so we have the newest comments at the top of the page where everyone can find them. Thanks guys.

(And Lisa, thanks a lot for suggesting this. I was totally blown away to see the response yesterday.)

A reader emailed me this intriguing article, but there’s no link and he didn’t tell me which media it’s in; I’ll update as soon as I find out from the South China Morning Post.

Here’s the whole thing.

Monday, June 13, 2005
CHINA EDITOR’S BRIEFING

A little harmony with Falun Gong will go a long way

WANG XIANGWEI

Overseas media attention has been focused on Beijing’s espionage activities in foreign countries by the allegations of a former Chinese diplomat and former police officer seeking asylum in Australia.

Chen Yonglin , a 37-year-old consul for political affairs at China’s consulate in Sydney, has claimed that more than 1,000 Chinese spies are operating in Australia. His claim was partly corroborated by Hao
Fengjun , a 32-year-old former policeman from a security service in Tianjin known as 610. While their allegations of spying, strenuously denied by mainland officials, have become the subject of intense interest among the overseas press during the past week, their links with Falun Gong have received less attention.

Both Mr Chen and Mr Hao claimed they had been assigned to monitor followers of the Falun Gong movement, which was branded an evil cult by the central government in 1999.

Mr Chen said he was sympathetic to the movement and extended help to the followers. Mr Hao’s first public interview was with The Epoch Times, a pro-Falun Gong online newspaper based in New York.

Both men are believed to have received help with their cases from Australian Falun Gong followers. Dozens of adherents have been chanting slogans and waving banners during protests related to the defections, in front of Chinese diplomatic missions in Australia
during the past week.

While it remains unclear how Falun Gong followers are helping Mr Chen and Mr Hao, one thing is certain: the movement has been mounting increasingly sophisticated public relations campaigns on the mainland and abroad to promote its cause and solicit international sympathy.

And, as the movement becomes more sophisticated, the mainland’s crackdown on it has shown signs of waning.

July 22 will mark the sixth anniversary of former president Jiang Zemin’s decision to outlaw the movement in 1999. It was accused of causing its followers to commit murder and suicide, and of mounting the most serious threat to the central government since the 1989 student protests.

However, more mainland academics and officials have questioned the wisdom of using so many government resources and so much money to target the movement, which mixes meditation with Buddhism, Chinese
mysticism and exercise.

They have urged the government to relax the crackdown and direct attention and resources to more urgent issues, such as law and order, and the fight against terrorism.

Since the ban came into force, authorities have been operating a national network of offices called “610” to monitor and crack down on Falun Gong followers nationwide. But those followers are mostly retired workers, civil servants and poor peasants, and have hardly done anything that could be seen as a clear and present danger to national security in the past six years.

To show the importance attached to the effort, the director of the national 610 office enjoys the full rank of a cabinet minister, while the head of the State Administration for Religious Affairs – which is
responsible for managing mainstream religions – merely has the rank of a deputy minister. This has caused disquiet among government officials, who are very conscious of hierarchy.

A continuing crackdown would also further alienate Falun Gong members and force them to take more serious action, which could cause international embarrassment for mainland leaders.

Overseas Falun Gong members have continuously dogged the entourages of senior mainland officials visiting foreign countries, shouting slogans and waving banners. Some have even turned to courts, filing
lawsuits coinciding with the visits of senior mainland officials, who had to think of ways to avoid the humiliation of being served with a subpoena.

As the mainland leadership under President Hu Jintao is calling for more efforts to create a harmonious society, a little harmony with the Falun Gong could be a step in the right direction.

Highlights were added by me to emphasize a point I’ve been arguing (with little success) with Bingfeng and KLS over at another feisty thread: that for all the hysteria over this group of old men and women and peasants, the lethal threat we so often hear about is mainly in the eyes of the beholder, i.e., the CCP and those who choose to listen to it.

I realize that old people waving banners and chanting is very annoying, and it’s dumb to tell people not to see doctors when they are sick, the way the Jehova’s Witnesses and the FLG do. And it’s creepy to hear them say they walk through walls and chat with aliens.

I certainly understand that when they congregate and multiply it is perceived by the paranoid CCP as a dire threat. We all know that anytime Chinese citizens receive communications from a medium that can’t be controlled, the CCP craps its pants goes bonkers. But hey, can’t we try to look at them from a fresh perspective as the author suggests?

Frankly, I’ve been somewhat amazed at the rage this topic has generated among some readers, the insistence that the FLG is a tumor that must be excised an obliterated. How about trying to come to peace with them, instead? I know it’s a radical concept and I know the hard-core FLG’ers are off their gourd, but wouldn’t it be worth a try? Because I promise, the public relations China gets from its handling of the FLG is atrocious, and incidents like the defection of Chen Yonglin bring this ugly issue into everyone’s living room.

Disclaimer: I can’t stand the FLG. Twice while I was working in Asia they fucked things up for clients of mine trying to do business in China. I hate their propaganda and their lies, and if I could make them go away I would. I would not, however, even think of torturing them or imprisoning them. That’s a tactic from the dark ages and, ironicically, it tends to make matters worse, allowing these loons to be become martyrs and recipients of the world’s sympathy.

One of my favorite bloggers laments the rather ridiculous changes at his Beijing apartment complex, which is about to become an elite gated community – and a bit of a wasteland, too, from what I can tell. At least it was all part of a “democratic process.”

Funny, infuriating, and uniquely Chinese.

This “open thread” idea is still in its experimental stages. Complain, preach, argue and discuss, but play nice. I’m going to bed early tonight.

It’s time for everyone’s favorite topic. This is a guest post from my friend in Taiwan, Dr. Jerome Keating. As always, it’s well worth your careful attention.
———————————————————————–

A Taiwan Dilemma: Honesty with the Past
Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.
jkeating@ms67.hinet.net

On May 17th political prisoners of Taiwan’s White Terror period were being brought back to Green Island. They came back, not as prisoners but as free men to participate in the “2005 Green Island Human Rights Music Festival.” The festival coincided with the 54th anniversary of the opening of the island as a prison for political prisoners.

While this was going on, an exhibit documenting the suffering, pain, and horror of Taiwan’s White Terror period also began touring the island. In the summer months, it will be displayed in the island’s major railroad stations as Taiwan continues to come to terms with its past.

How a nation deals with its past is crucial for its growth and relations with its neighbors. Witness the current controversies stirred by the visits of Japan’s Prime Minister to the Yakusumi Shrine and the historical content of certain seldom used textbooks.

“Those who ignore their past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana’s sobering words highlight the importance of this issue.

“What’s past is prologue. What to come in yours and my discharge.” Antonio’s words in Shakespeare’s Tempest, add the further nuance of what next? How can a nation best make the past serve the future?

Examine Germany. War trials treated guilt. Preserved concentration camps with their taunting words “Arbeit mach frei” (work makes you free) have been kept as grim reminders. Subsequent strict laws protect the citizens’ rights to privacy.

However, where Germany has set the bar in honesty with its past is in the preservation and accessibility of the Stasi (Staatssicherheit or State Security Service) records.

After the Berlin wall fell in 1989, citizens of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) immediately occupied the Stasi offices. They did not want the files of their past with its secret police, informants, spies and victims to be destroyed or lost. By 1991, the German Bundestag had passed the Stasi Records Law and citizens could for the first time have free access to their files and the truth of the past. German citizenry would not let the past be hidden or distorted.

Dictators distort the past; that goes without saying. Any one-party state or nation where minority and opposition voices are muffled and silenced never honestly deals with its past. Taiwan recognizes the need for such honesty; China is nowhere near it.

Taiwan began to approach this honesty with its past in the early nineties when it broke free of its one party state domination and moved towards democracy.

As landmarks in this process, in 1995, President Lee Teng-hui made formal apology for the 2/28 Incident and a memorial park was established in Taipei.

On December 10th 1999, the Green Island Human Rights Monument was dedicated coinciding with Human Rights Day. While not as well known as Robben Island Prison where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, Green Island was the main Kuomintang (KMT) prison for political dissidents of the White Terror period.

The island had been called Fire Island under the Japanese and it served as a prison for both hard core prisoners and political prisoners. The KMT renamed it Green Island on August 1st 1949 and expanded its use as a well-isolated prison camp.

If one did not know of the many that suffered there, the island would have a romantic charm. Surrounded by Blue Ocean, its rugged volcanic rock and sandy beaches provide stark contrasts in beauty. Lush green foliage bears witness to its name. It could easily be an isolated retreat for honeymooners.

“In that era, how many mothers spent long nights crying for their children locked up on Green Island? These words on the Green Island Human Rights Monument cry out against the injustices of that past. Over 20,000 political prisoners spent time there; many were tortured and over 1,000 executed.

The author Bo Yang lost twelve years of his life there because the KMT government took offense to one of his cartoons. For him and for many others who spent even longer time there, the island brings back tears. So too with the families and relatives of the 20,000 plus prisoners who suffered there.

In the past decade Taiwan has begun to recognize its many victims of the White Terror period, but ironically there still has been little acknowledgment of specific perpetrators of these crimes. With so many crimes and so many victims for so many years, where are the criminals? Where are the records? Why is access often denied? Taiwan has not yet crossed the bridge of “Stasi Honesty.”

This is why it is so surprising to recently see members of the opposition party trooping blithely across the Taiwan Strait to talk of unification with one of the largest human rights violators in the world.

There is a strange irony in the pan-blue position. Now that they are out of power in Taiwan, they say it is time to let bygones be bygones both with those that defeated them in China and with those that they imprisoned in Taiwan.

This irony deepens when one realizes that the two pan-blue leaders have been noticeably absent in any ceremonies where Taiwan admits to guilt in its past.

The pan-blue media instead have touted photos and images of Lien and Soong’s trips to China as if they were the ones who could lead to the wealth of the future. Amidst talk of pandas and prosperity, we have seen politicians of this party that abused human rights in Taiwan’s past being feted by those whose prisons abound with political prisoners.

Seemingly ashamed to mention or dwell on democracy, the name of Taiwan and/or Taiwan sovereignty issues while they were in China, the Blues seemed bent on relegating the past to the dustbin,

Is it no wonder then that despite their media hype and fanning of “China Fever,” the pan-blue parties did poorly in the recent National Assembly elections? The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) replaced the People First Party (PFP) as Taiwan’s number three party. With the low voter turnout, the public that cared enough to vote had obvious questions, suspicions and doubts. “Are the pan-blues bargaining for a place in history? Are they wanting to or willing to turn Taiwan into a new Green Island? Is the past, prologue?”
——————————————-

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D. has lived in Taiwan for over 16 years and is co-author of “Island in the Stream, a Quick Case Study of Taiwan’s Complex History and other books. Other writings can be found at http://zen.sandiego.edu:8080/Jerome

This is from yesterday’s unlinkable South China Morning Post, and if you don’t mind I’m pasting the entire article. It’s that important.

Mainland authorities are tightening control of the media to close loopholes that until now have allowed some fresh air into the stifling official propaganda.

In recent months, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party has issued a series of directives to re-emphasise that trade publications and metropolitan newspapers must keep their news coverage to their
mandated area.

The ban on “extra-territorial” reporting deals a serious blow to investigative reporting and weakens the so-called “oversight by media”, editors and media analysts said.

Until recently, some of the high-profile exposés that shocked the nation or brought changes in government policies were made by reporters from outside the area in question, to circumvent local censorship.

For example, the Nanfang Weekly – which is published by the Southern Newspaper Group in Guangzhou – made a name for itself exposing official corruption in other provinces.

Another paper in the group, Southern Metropolis News, has often run into trouble with local authorities in areas outside Guangzhou city.

The Beijing Youth Daily also made frequent forays to expose corruptions in other cities.

The government has promoted “oversight by media” – subjecting the performance of local officials to scrutiny by the public through the media – as a way of checking rampant corruption.

If reporters were barred from undertaking investigations outside their local areas, the exercise would lose much of its edge, a media-studies professor said.

“This [non-local] reporting has been the best hope for liberalising the news media.” said the professor.

National media, such as the China Youth Daily and CCTV, have often asserted their independence. But under the new rules, national press must “communicate” with officials in the area being investigated and inform them of the content of the critical reporting before ublishing the article or airing the programme.

Television news programme producers were also instructed to highlight the positive. Even in exposés on corruption, they must emphasise that the sleaze was an exception while the overwhelming majority of
officials had high moral standards.

“Our work is getting more difficult,” said a producer with a newsmagazine programme in Beijing. “We can only sing praises.”

The news media had been subjected to increasingly tighter controls since the summer of 2003, to rein in the open expression of opinion that spread during the Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic.

Under Li Changchun , a member of the Politburo Standing Committee with the portfolio of ideological matters, the media has taken a turn to the ideological left, and the squeeze on news outlets has been
unrelenting.

The use of intimidation and detention is still very much in evidence. Most recently, Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong reporter working for Singapore’s The Straits Times, was detained on espionage charges.

I want to urge you to read every word carefully. We are witnessing a true backlash against the brief window of openness we saw after the famous SARS press conference in March 2003. Now it’s time to slam the window shut and take care of those pesky, free-thinking reporters.

As one of them says above, if anything was going to liberalize China it would be a more independent media. Remember, it was only due to the Nanfang Dushi Bao that the Sun Zhigang story spread across China, leading to reform of the CCP’s noxious vagrancy laws. Eliminate this, and what hopes for true reform are there?

Some of my friends are still on the fence about Hu, saying he’s still under Jiang’s control and still beholden to the Shanghai gang. I’m frankly not convinced, and if he’s so beholden to them, Jiang might as well still be in power. He’s held the reins for more than two years now, and restictions have only tightened. Where’s the cause for optimism?

Thanks to the reader who emailed this to me.

Only this time, it’s not against Japan. It’s quite interesting, seeing the knee-jerk reaction certain topics arouse in like-minded Chinese. Topics like the FLG, Taiwan, Japan, and now Chen Yonglin.

Australian Chinese Students Patriotic Association urges the Australian Immigration to refuse his application for political asylum and send him back to China. Simply because Chen is now a traitor of his home country,a criminal (Treason is a crime in most countries) and he doesn’t do any good to Australia and its people.He also lied to the Australians about what he claimed because only by doing so,he can convince the Australian Government his life is in jeoperdy so that he can get asylum.Most importantly his allegations of some 1000 Chinese spies(ridiculous) and possible revealing of classified informations may cause serious problems to the ongoing relations between China and Australia and the free trade talks that worth many billion dollars(FTA).

Today on behalf of Australian Chinese Students Patriotic Association and many other Chinese students in Australian universities I called the immigration and expressed my concern about how this matter may hurt sino-Australia relations and requested the immigration to handle this case in term of interests of both Australia and China.I told them why and how MR Chen lied and what consequences can be caused if a traitor is granted asylum.An immigration officer answered my call and promised me that Australian Immigration will look at his case and make a decision under the law.

Look at this ugly face!! A traitor,a lame-ass dickheadness,if it were up to me,I’d kill this punk.

Gee, a bit harsh, don’t you think? Here are some samples of the scholarly, deeply analytical and well-researched comments:

fuck him,if australia allows him to stay,i’ll tell all my friends not to buy australian products
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now the question is-Will Mr Chen be actually sentenced to death if sent back?if not,he must not be granted asylum.Treason is a crime in any country,he deserves punishment for what he’s done.Australia is a country of freedom,not a paradise for betrayers.
———–

I’m a Chinese student in Sydney,Chen Yonglin is a betrayer,it’s treason.He commited a crime against Chinese law no matter where he is,he deserves punishment by law.Australia shouldn’t allow such a betrayer to seek asylum,he is now an enemy of all Chinese.I and many other Chinese students will notify our embassy if we spot him in the street.You got no where to hide,punk!!!!
———–

I hope he is sent back so China can harvest his organs to save lives of true patriots.

I’m glad to see the level of discourse is rising to a level of maturity and responsibility. How come the comments on my own blog can’t be so sagacious and gentlemanly?

Yikes.

We haven’t had one of these since the days when Conrad and I were at each others’ throats. (And even then, it never got personal or nasty.)