Open to all.

It’s going to be a slow weekend here with the holiday, so this might be it for the next day or two.

Rebecca MacKinnon has been told the following blog hosting services are now blocked in China:

http://egoweblog.com
http://www.blogspirit.com/
http://www.blogeasy.com/
http://www.blogzor.com/
http://www.mazeme.com/
http://www.yesblogger.com/
http://www.tblog.com/

She also has written an absolutely damning post on Cisco and its collusion with the CCP in the architecture of its suppression machinery. If you truly believe Cisco didn’t know exactly what it was selling to China, you had better read this. Unbelievable. (Warning: it’s a long and complex story.)

Finally and most importantly, Rebecca has posted a series of questions, in English and Chinese that she is hoping “Chinese and China-based bloggers” can help her to answer. If you qualify, please head over there and help her out.

A brave and beautifully written op-ed piece by Bush 41’s former personal physician.

It’s precisely because of my devotion to country, respect for our military and commitment to the ethics of the medical profession that I speak out against systematic, government-sanctioned torture and excessive abuse of prisoners during our war on terrorism. I am also deeply disturbed by the reported complicity in these abuses of military medical personnel. This extraordinary shift in policy and values is alien to my concept of modern-day America and of my government and profession….

I urge my fellow health professionals to join me and many others in reaffirming our ethical commitment to prevent torture; to clearly state that systematic torture, sanctioned by the government and aided and abetted by our own profession, is not acceptable. As health professionals, we should support the growing calls for an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, and demand restoration of ethical standards that protect physicians, nurses, medics and psychologists from becoming facilitators of abuse.

America cannot continue down this road. Torture demonstrates weakness, not strength. It does not show understanding, power or magnanimity. It is not leadership. It is a reaction of government officials overwhelmed by fear who succumb to conduct unworthy of them and of the citizens of the United States.

How long before Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter accuse him of treason?

Running Dog, in a post of transcendent beauty, takes the foreign media to task for misleading naive resders into believing the recent rash of rural riots (how alliterative) means the CCP is falling apart at the seams.

The implication, of course, is that there is a single force that fuels China’s rage, fomenting race riots in Henan, mass protests in Zhejiang, and the manifold outbursts of public bile that have been launched against anything from corrupt officialdom to the visiting Japanese national football team.

When it comes to reporting about China, though, everything is usually a symptom of something else, and everything is usually referred directly back to the failures of the ruling elite. It is almost as if the foreign hacks stationed in China have been infected by the opium-dream Utopianism of old-man Maoism, still expecting an ideologically bankrupt government to solve all ills.

These riots might be tearing up local governments, but no need to worry, the CCP’s grip is as iron-fisted as ever. I read the Dog’s conclusions in a state of wonder and admiration.

In what appears to be a direct response to the mayhem that seems to have descended upon China’s shit-poor hinterlands, Hu Jintao is calling for the construction of the ‘harmonious society’, ‘consisting of democracy, the rule of law, equality, justice, sincerity, friendship and vitality.’

Ominously, Hu also draws attention to the fact that a new spate of ‘independent thinking’ is also ‘posing further challenges to China’s policy makers’. ‘Negative and corrupt phenomena and more and more rampant crimes in the society will also jeopardize social stability and harmony,’ he said.

And so, what Hu giveth, Hu taketh away. Democracy works best, of course, without independent thinking, and if ‘negative phenomena’ are banned, the masses will have no choice but to just grin and bear it.

I would be laughing out loud, if I weren’t crying.

UPDATE: Running Dog is, I’m told, now being blocked in China. Can’t understand why.

This is a subject we’ve discussed more than once, and the consensus has been that today’s Chinese accept all the Mao memorabilia and posters and propaganda with a grain of salt – they see it as going through the motions, though they are well aware that the “ideas” of the little red book are defunct, and that Maoism was responsible for a lot of grief. (And based on my own experience with my Beijing colleagues, I subscribed to this consensus as well.)

In an eye-opening article, Howard French offers a different perspective on this touchy subject. He starts by taking us to the revolutionary museum in Yenan commemorating the so-called Great March.

Marxist ideology is said to have little relevance in today’s China. But all over this city, people can be overheard trading admiring stories about the heroism of Mao’s army or celebrating the spirit of Yenan, as much a name for that 12-year period as for the city itself.

Whether they lived through it, or more likely know of it through popular culture, many Chinese still recall the era fondly as a time of great idealism, of selfless volunteers arriving by the tens of thousands to join the movement, and of Mao’s supposedly enlightened leadership before such well-known and monumental tragedies as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which killed tens of millions of people.

“We have always loved Mao,” said Zhao Shiwei, 43, a provincial trade official who had come from far-away Guangdong Province and was posing merrily with a group of work colleagues in gray People’s Liberation Army uniforms from the era.

Mao “led the nation to success and founded the new China, and he will always occupy a great place in our hearts,” Zhao said.

Chinese historians, like their counterparts abroad, have steadily chipped away at Mao’s myth, and the falling chunks have inevitably included many details about Yenan. Far from the idyll celebrated here, the historians say, Mao waged a campaign of political terror against youthful dissenters, perfecting methods of purging real and imagined foes that would be used on a vast scale later on. He sold opium to raise money for his army, and it was here that he created his suffocating cult of personality.

One recent book published by Jung Chang, a Chinese writer who lives in Britain, “Mao: The Unknown Story,” goes so far as to say that the most legendary act of bravery of the entire Long March, the crossing of the Dadu bridge, while enemy gunners took aim from the opposite bank, was a fiction.

That is not all. Far from committed Communists, Chang writes, many of the marchers were press-ganged captives, and Mao is said to have been carried throughout much of the Long March on a litter by porters, as he read at his leisure. And although Mao’s troops were decimated, not a single senior party member was killed or even seriously wounded.

“You can’t say the Long March was a military victory,” said Yang Kuisong, a historian at Beijing University. “It was not about fighting battles. It was a process of running away.”

Ordinary Chinese have been carefully shielded from views like this of their late leader, however. Mao’s importance to the party he founded remains paramount, even as Marxism fades.

I’d love to plaster this article, in Chinese, on every newspaper kiosk in China. I found French’s discussions of Mao with young students to be particularly moving.

Told of the dark side of Mao’s record known to historians, but not to most Chinese, some of the students grew defensive. “What do you expect us to do, drag him from his grave and flog him,” one asked. “The emperors of the past are regarded as great if they moved the country forward, no matter how much the people suffered. With Mao it is the same.”

Others grew pensive. “You might say that China is a very different country in the way it deals with history,” said one young woman, who had remained silent throughout most of what had become a long, animated discussion. “But you must understand, foreigners have much more information than we do. There’s no real freedom to discuss these kinds of things here.”

Can they be happy about that phenomenon? I can’t imagine living in forced ignorance. Granted, many in America believe in propagating ignorance, with fairy tales about the deaths of soldiers like Pat Tillman, nonsensical campaigns about condoms being dangerous and lobbying for “intelligent design.” But at least if we’re curious, we can sort through the BS for ourselves.

But back to Mao…. Bottom line, he was a murderous piece of shit and one of the greatest blights on the history of civilization and this article only confirms it. It’s too bad to see that even in the Information Age the Chinese haven’t been able to get the real story, but I know one day they will.

Via CDT.

UPDATE: For more on how Chinese students are taught to view Mao and Communism, this blog post is a great read.

One piece of potentially good news coming out of China is the media phenomenon sparked by the incredibly courageous Nanfang Daily, famous for unearthing stories of corruption and scandal within the Party. This encouraging/upsetting article tells how this little David has inspired journalists across the country to change their approach to the Goliath CCP.

It could have been the scoop of the year: the deputy governor of Henan province had reportedly conspired with a local mayor to have his wife killed and chopped up. If proven, the murder would rank as one of the worst crimes by a senior official for decades.

But the story was a minefield. Knowing how many papers have been closed down, and how many journalists arrested, for covering such sensitive topics, most editors gave Henan a wide berth,

The exception was the Nanfang (Southern) Daily Press Group, whose papers are increasingly earning national respect, and official condemnation, for their coverage of China’s social ills. When reports of the killing emerged this month, reporters from two of the group’s flagship titles, The Southern Metropolitan Daily and Southern Weekend, flew to the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, and talked to the victim’s family, colleagues, and detectives. Off the record sources confirmed the murder and arrest, but a request for an official comment effectively killed the story. Henan’s propaganda department ordered a news blackout.

It was nothing new. That week, three other Southern Weekend stories were spiked by the authorities. Nothing was published on police negligence in floods that killed 100 school children, nor on six villagers murdered in battles with gangs recruited by power companies to kick them off their land, nor poor safety planning that led to a fire in which 31 died.

Even after their stories were buried, the journalists used other means to get the news out, via private diaries and field notes posted on the internet or circulated by email. Some revealed they had to travel in near secrecy to avoid local authorities. Others said they used public phones to avoid being traced, and filed from net cafes and through friends.

“As a journalist, my job should be focused on writing a good report. But half of my effort is spent on considering how to get a story past the censors and the likelihood of punishment,” said Liu Jianqiang, whose Henan story was spiked.

This is an inspiring story and one that gives hope to the belief that the more people in China learn what’s actually going on the more willing they will be to fight for justice. The article details how this has morphed from a local nuisance for the Party into a nationwide movement that is creating major headaches.

“Nanfang group has started a nationwide movement,” said a former employee. “I think most journalists don’t stand on the side of the party, they stand on the side of society. There has been a big change in the attitude of the media.”

The authorities appear rattled. Propaganda officials now convey orders by phone. A more direct control is to replace editors with propaganda officials, such as Xiang Xi, latest chief of Southern Weekend. There are more sinister means: in the past two years, at least five Chinese and two foreign journalists (recently, Ching Cheong of the Straits Times) have been arrested. According to the rights group, Reporters Without Borders, China has jailed 30 reporters and 62 cyber dissidents – more than any other country.

But the media’s assertiveness was apparent in an open petition this week by more than 2,000 journalists against the detention of former Nanfang editors Yu and Li. Their colleague, Cheng Yizhong, former editor-in-chief of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, has been released after an outcry. In April, he was awarded the World Press Freedom prize by Unesco. Stripped of his post, kicked out of the party, and refused permission to attend the prize-giving, Mr Cheng wrote an uncompromising acceptance speech. “Terror is everywhere. Lies are everywhere,” he said. “I believe that in the near future, we will look back and find this insane and absurd episode to be absolutely unthinkable.”

What was that about Chinese people not caring about free speech and basic rights?

Thanks for the link, DF.

Update: Take a look that this, because we need to remember that each of those journalists languishing in prison in the land of reform actually has a human face. You can click through all the names on the list. An important reminder.