This handy diagram illustrates where the peeper stood and how he got there. Creative!

This is ripped off from Danwei and ranks as one of the grossest Chinese toilet stories ever (and everyone who’s been there seems to have a story).

UNBELIEVABLE in Beijing! Today’s Legal Mirror reports the following news: a man was caught peeping at a woman from the pit beneath a non-flush, ‘long drop’ public toilet!

Here are the facts: yesterday at around 11pm in the Shijingshan district, Ms. Liu went to the loo and saw the shape of a man moving underneath the poop-holes of the public toilet. After rushing out in panic, she immediately returned to the scene accompanied by a female friend and two men. After checking the women’s toilet without seeing the peeping bugger, they moved on to the men’s to find a man quietly squatting over a poop-hole. They asked him if he saw anybody leaving the toilet, and his reply was ‘走了! 走了!’ (he’s gone!). Only problem was, the squatting man had smears of crap on his clothes and filthy plastic bags wrapped around his shoes.

The guy was captured and he’s now under police custody.

You can find the story in Chinese, which is where I got the diagram.

All I want to ask the peeper is, “Was it really worth it?”

Yes, I know I used that one before, but I’m in a recycling kind of mood.

Now let’s use this open thread to solve all of the world’s problems.

The plate tectonics of China’s haves and have nots continue to rub against each other with increasing friction, and the news today is packed with stories of social unrest, almost all the articles leading back to citizen resentment against China’s repressive political-industrial complex.

This massive article takes a detailed look at the recent Chizou riots (the one sparked by a bicycle accident) and the rage of everyday citizens convinced that big business, working in an unholy alliance with the CCP, can step on them at will with no repercussions. Interesting to note is that Chizhou is not one of those impoverished cities where toxins are pouring into the drinking water or farmers are tossed from their homes en masse. It appears to be relatively prosperous. But the hatred against the party and its business chronies is palpable.

The violence in downtown Chizhou startled the leaders of this forward-looking city of 120,000, set in the rich alluvial farmland of Anhui province near the Yangtze River, about 250 miles southwest of Shanghai. Dismayed city officials deplored the impact on their campaign to attract investment and broaden Chizhou’s economic base. “Illicit elements” were to blame, they said.

But the riot here, like a growing number of flare-ups in other Chinese cities, was in fact directed against the flourishing alliance of Communist Party officials and well-connected businessmen that runs Chizhou. Before calm returned to the streets, the disturbance had become a political rebellion against the increasingly intimate connection in modern China between big money and Communist government.

“When anger boils up in your heart so long, it has to burst,” said a Chizhou man who was part of the crowd that night.

As the Communist Party strives to continue the swift economic growth that has become its new ideology, the official partnership with private business has generated resentment among those left behind: farmers whose fields become industrial parks, workers whose socialist-era factories go under, youths with assembly-line jobs at $60 a month.

In their eyes, the party that assumed power in China 56 years ago as a champion of peasants and workers seems to have switched sides, backing capitalist businessmen instead of the poor as part of a new get-rich ethic in which bribery plays a big role.

Recently, the resentment has exploded into violent protests, despite draconian laws against attempts to challenge the party’s rule. Although press censorship prevents an independent count, the government-funded Ta Kung Pao newspaper said Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang estimated that 3.76 million Chinese were involved in 74,000 “mass incidents” during 2004.

This remarkable story puts you right there on the street as the public’s anger metastasizes and takes on an unstoppable life of its own. You have to wonder, if this is how the “everyday people” of a prosperous Chinese community feel toward their government, how can the CCP possibly remain in power? I’m not saying they won’t remain in power (they wil), but there is definitely trouble in paradise.

Proving once again their quaintly mysterious separation from reality, CCP officials today urged their citizens to look under their beds and over their shoulders for menacing overseas spies. (No, I’m not joking.)

In a warning eerily reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, mainlanders are warned that these enemy agents could take any form — tourist, reporter, teacher — but their goal is the same: to disrupt and subvert China’s glorious socialist (with Chinese characteristics) way of life.

Be on lookout for spies, public told

Counter-espionage officials have warned the public and cadres to be on the alert for overseas agents spying in China.

Using their real names, two officials from the Beijing Bureau of State Security joined a discussion on Friday on the Beijing municipal government’s website to promote the National Security Law, introduced in 1993.

The bureau’s legal office director, Guo Wen, said overseas intelligence bodies and hostile forces opposed to the government were targeting mainlanders to expand the scope of their ideological and political penetration of the country and society.

“They take advantage of their legal identities as diplomats, journalists, businesspeople, visiting scholars and tourists to steal information under the guise of media interviews, trade co-operation,
friendly exchange and sightseeing,” Mr Guo said.

He said party members, political and technical research bodies as well as state-owned enterprises were targeted because of their influence and their access to state secrets.

Mr Guo said he was concerned about the lack of public and official awareness of the security issue.

“Some people think some formerly hostile countries are friendly to us nowadays, that people from these countries are friends, and there’s no need to ensure the country’s international security. Some cadres lack awareness. They don’t believe there is espionage in our country and they don’t know how to deal with it. Some even deliberately leak our secrets.”

The officials said people jeopardising state security could be punished under the law.

Mr Guo said the bureau had uncovered many cases involving spying and the stealing and leaking of state secrets since it was set up in 1984.

“Some cases were reported in the news media. But most of the cases concern state secrets and the trials are behind closed doors,” he said.

In a high-profile case, newspaper editor Shi Tao was sentenced in April to 10 years in jail for providing state secrets to overseas organisations.

Another journalist, researcher for The New York Times Zhao Yan, has been held incommunicado without trial since September on suspicion of leaking state secrets abroad.

There are enemies among us! We must weed them out and treat them with ruthlessness!

Honestly, I thought this kind of talk went out 30 years ago. And if you look at the two cases cited, Zhao Yan and Shi Tao, we all know they had nothing to do with state secrets and everything to do with the government’s loss of face.

I go to China in just a little while. In case they try to detain me on espionage charges, I want it on the record that I am not now and never have been a spy and have no intention of subverting the government.

This should be great for tourism!

Watch this video clip and then tell me with a straight face that Bolton is the most qualified, best spoken diplomat to represent the United States in the global community. In fact, tell me if he isn’t friggin’ insane. Takes a minute to download but don’t miss it; it’s a shocker.

You’d think so, looking at these shiny new protection visas for Chinese political refugees. Good news.

Update: The more I read about Australia’s immigration department, the more depraved it apears to be.

A damning report, released late on Friday night by the Immigration Department, found that five detainees were denied food, water, medical treatment and toilet stops for six-and-a-half hours on the Melbourne-Mildura leg of the journey.

The independent report found the detainees were humiliated and treated in an “inhumane and undignified manner”…

“I wanted to call a lawyer. He said, ‘No, take your stuff now’,” the asylum seeker said. He said the five detainees were pushed into the van by guards working for detention centre operator Global Solutions Limited. One detainee, who struggled, broke a bone while being forced into the van, the asylum seeker said.

He said the van, which was divided into compartments, was dark. The space he was put in was so small he couldn’t move. “The guards said, ‘If you die inside no one will know’,” the man said. “I can’t see anything. For eight hours there was no toilet, I had to go in the van, same as dog.”

From the unlinkable SCMP, this new propaganda campaign kind of reminds me of the old joke, “The floggings will continue until morale improves.”

The authorities issued a stern warning yesterday after a series of violent protests across the country, emphasising the Communist Party’s leadership and the need to abide by the law.

The People’s Daily vowed in a front-page commentary that no illegal attempts to disrupt social stability would be tolerated as the country went through a critical stage of reform.

“Unity and stability are the overarching themes for the country and the people’s wishes,” it said, noting the source of growing social unrest lay within the contrasting interests of various groups. “However, resolving any such problems must be done in line with the laws and the maintenance of stability. The solution of any problems must rely on the party, the governments, laws, policies and the system.

“Any illegal activities are not to be allowed and will be punished in accordance with laws.”

The commentary, also carried by Xinhua and state television, urged local authorities to actively deal with “instability factors” to prevent widespread public dissatisfaction from spreading or turning into violence.

Analysts said the warning was not unexpected, given that several senior officials had talked openly about increasing concern by the central leadership about the riots and protests.

Beijing-based political scientist Liu Junning said the issuing of such a strongly worded commentary showed President Hu Jintao was intent on taking a strong stance to maintain social stability.

Professor Liu noted that several recent “mass incidents” in southern provinces, mainly over compensation disputes after land requisitions, were yet to be settled.

“The People’s Daily article can serve as a guideline for local authorities on how to deal with similar mass protests in the future,” he said.

The commentary coincided with a report that 2,000 farmers had clashed with hundreds of police last week in a land dispute in Inner Mongolia that left dozens injured.

I mean, instead of focusing on what’s causing the unrest, this makes the unrest itself the villain. You can’t force people to be stable and harmonious, just like you can’t force people’s morale to improve. (That sounds pretty basic, I know. but it’s the CCP we’re talking about here.) You have to look at the root causes, but that’s not a comfortable thing to do, as in virtually all instances the root cause is the party itself and the way it operates.

Update: I see Laowai has a fine post on this topic, more cynical and impassioned than my own.

Update 2: Relatedly, the CCP is so overwhelmed with complaints they are now trying to discourage petitioners in what appears to be a bit of circular reasoning i.e., that the more petitions there are the more “disharmony” is created. But isn’t it disharmony that is generating the petitions more than visa-versa? Here’s the entire article, also from the unlinkable SCMP (word document).