Report is here. This is beginning to sound like (pardon the expression) a Chinese fire drill.

One of my favorite sites has launched a newsletter that you can download here (.pdf file). Its most wrenching story deals with child labor in China, which seems to be on the rise.

In March of this year we saw the tragic case of five adolescent girls who appeared to have been poisoned by carbon monoxide smoke from a coal brazier lit in the confines of their cramped factory sleeping quarters. Upon discovering them unconscious, the factory manager did not call for medical assistance, but took them to a crematorium to quickly dispose of their remains. An employee of the crematorium noticed that the bodies of the girls were still warm and their limbs soft, and that no medical certificate accompanied their bodies, so he refused to accept the bodies. In an attempt to hide culpability for the girl’s deaths, the panicked factory manager ordered that the bodies be disposed of immediately.

Sources say that when the girls’ families heard of the matter, they insisted on viewing their daughters’ corpses, but were refused. The factory also insisted that the families make no further inquiries into the girls’ deaths as a condition of paying each family 15,000 Yuan (less than US$2000) in compensation. However, the families still insisted on viewing the corpses, and four days later the factory finally acceded to their request. Upon viewing the corpses, the families were horrified to discover that at least two of the girls, 14-year-old Wang Yajuan and 17-year-old Wang Shimian, appeared to have been alive when they were placed in the coffins. Their faces were caked with vomit and tears, their noses had bled and their necks were swollen. Wang Shimian was found to have kicked through the cardboard lining of her coffin, and her body was twisted in apparent struggle.

Well, at least they had jobs.

The positive side to this story is that the Chinese media are covering it in China, which gives me some cause for optimism. Some.

What makes this story special, and the reason I love CSR, is that the writers explore why child labor in China is flourishing (the educational system plays a big role) and why the government, despite stingent regulations, is mostly unable to stem the problem. So if you don’t mind opening a .pdf file, read it all.

Lately we’ve seen encouraging news about China reporting new cases of bird flu in humans, and the government is seemingly stepping up to the plate and taking action. But the sad fact is that China’s openness and transparency in regard to bird flu is intended mainly for foreign eyes. In other words, the truth about bird flu cases is being reported by foreign reporters, not the local Chinese media.

So why are Chinese journalists steering clear of this topic? Jeremy offers some insights.

The answer to that question is sadly very clear: the government fears an open media, and the media in China is meek and timid.

This writer and other foreigners can complain until the birds drop from the sky about the state of media in China and nothing will change. It is only when a greater number of Chinese media workers themselves stand up for the integrity of their profession that there will be any progress.

Of course, we all know what happens when reporters stand up to the government in China.

Skippy hits a new low of immaturity and pettiness as he urges us to Google Bomb journalist-seer Bill O’Reilly. I love Bill O’Reilly and urge none of you to participate in this childish prank. Ignore Skippy’s advice. Pass this post on to everyone you know and tell them to ignore it, too.

here’s an excellent idea…in light of bill o’reilly’s latest comments on how al qaeda should blow up san francisco…why not google bomb him as a terrorist sympathizer?

after all, his words make him a terrorist sympathizer. anyone who encourages a terrorist act is a terrorist sympathizer. and we don’t condone any terrorist sympathizer making statements like that on american airwaves. no terrorist sympathizer for us!

damn that terrorist sympathizer!

Now, just because a scholarly journalist implies he’d be happy to see San Francisco bombed by Al Qaeda that hardly makes him a terrorist sympathizer, does it?

(Oh, and for those of you unfamiliar with the art of the google bomb and the havoc it can wreak, my favorite example is what those godless leftists did to gay-hater Rick Santorum. Just type “Santorum” into google and hit “I Feel Lucky.” It’s even funnier than its predecessor, “miserable failure.”)

But then, you’d have to be pretty gullible to believe that this craftily marketed pen could do the things it promises to.

THE local consumer commission has received 19 complaints over the past week about a pen that is supposed to read English textbooks and translate them into Chinese.

Consumers felt cheated after they bought the pen, only to find that they have to paste bar codes into the textbook in order for the pen to recognize the English words — a procedure they said wasn’t mentioned in TV ads for the device.

Officials from the company that sells the device admit it can only read the bar codes, no English words, but insist the proper procedure is shown in TV commercials for the product.

The device is called yibitong in Chinese, which means a pen that does everything. It is actually a pen-shaped bar code reader and speaker, with a mini scanner on its top and memory chips, a microphone and speaker inside.

Cui Wei, a 45-year-old father, bought one of the pens in early October from Shanghai Hongjianke Commodity Trade Co after seeing the advertisement on TV. He gave it to his son, who is in primary school.

“The only impression I got from the ads is that when you run the pen across the text, it will speak in English or Chinese,” said Cui.

Cui said he didn’t notice any mention of the bar code, or any instructions about bar code usage in the ads.

After paying 999 yuan (US$123) for the device, he looked at the instruction and found it was much more trouble to use than simply looking up words in the dictionary.

The pen came with two large bags of bar codes, which match sentences in English textbooks used in the city. Several bar codes must be attached to each page according to instructions on the company’s Website. When you run the pen over a bar code, the corresponding section of text will be pronounced in English or Chinese.

How do you say “scam” in Chinese?

Despite those petitions from Amanda Liu and her goon squad, I am happy to report that TPD is now available just about everywhere in China, according to emails and comments I’m receiving. The blockage occurred literally moments after I put up a post with “T-a-i-$-h-i in the headline, and ended shortly after that post dropped off my homepage. What a coincidence.

Occasionally we will hear of a legal victory for “the little guy” in China that gives us a lot of hope and encouragement. But the odds are still heavily stacked against a fair trial for the defendant, and such happy endings seem to be few and far between. Horror stories are more common. Take this case, for example.

At his most desperate, when he had no more borrowed money for his son’s legal defense, Xie Yujun went to a hospital. He knew of China’s black market in body parts. He wanted to sell his eyes. He was refused.

Xie Yujun said he is obligated to defend his son to protect the reputation of the entire family. “I will appeal for my son until the day I die.”
Articles in this series will periodically examine the struggle in China over the creation of a modern legal system.

Mr. Xie, 60, is no stranger to desperate acts, if by necessity. His son was charged with a savage knife attack here in rural Anhui Province that left a mother and daughter badly wounded. The police suspected the son because of a property dispute between the families. But Mr. Xie believed the case was deeply flawed: the victims never identified the attacker. The only evidence was a questionable shoeprint. Police misconduct was blatant.

Mr. Xie’s problem was convincing a court. His son’s lawyers had no chance to question witnesses or, initially, to examine evidence. At one point, Mr. Xie himself sneaked into a prison to interview a witness. Even a tantalizing appeals court victory proved hollow. The son was tried again and sentenced to life in prison.

“There must be one person in the Communist Party who is honest and who believes in justice,” Mr. Xie said. “If I can’t even find one, then the party is not going to last long.”

China’s authoritarian government once relied on ideology and brute force to bind and regulate society. Now, it is asking citizens like Mr. Xie to have faith in the country’s legal system to resolve disputes and mete out justice.

But Mr. Xie’s plaintive cry poses a fundamental question about China’s promise of rule of law: Is it possible for a criminal defendant to get a fair trial?

This is one of those epic-length stories that still make the NYT the best newspaper in the world. It follows the investigation in painstaking detail, and also looks at the inherent absurdities of China’s legal system: dfefense attorneys can be arrested for defending their clients “too aggressively”; judges can simply ignore evidence and find the defendant guilty if they feel it is for “the greater societal good – in this case, a conviction to soothe public anxiety about a grisly crime”; confessions are routinely coerced.

It won’t make your weekend any more cheerful, but it’s a great article.

An obviously well-versed and diligent blogger writing a book on the development of Taiwan since the KMT’s arrival there offers an extraordinarily detailed and well-documented post on…well, on a lot of things, from the evolution of Chinese nationalism in Taiwan to the dispute with Japan over the Diaoyutai Islands. I’m not sure who this fellow is, but if you are interested in Taiwan history and politics, you will absolutely not want to miss his post. Just a very small sample.

The contrast between the Taiwanese and Chinese nationalist practices in Taiwan over this period, and into the present, says a great deal about the complicated, contested and often inconsistent ways in which identity politics, and identity itself, have been played out. Chinese imperial culture and nationalism retained a rich and viable language which was reinforced and reworked by the KMT and appropriated by students and intellectuals as part of the contestation of Taiwanese politics. At the same time, Taiwanese nationalism was creating its own discourses and sources of legitimacy, borrowing some from Chinese nationalism, and some from political practices around the world, such as samizdat literature and the Wilsonian ideals of self-determination and democracy. Taiwan’s rich and complex identity is the weave of these contesting discourses, with Chinese nationalism being contested almost immediately upon Retrocession and Taiwanese national identity appropriating, creating and legitimizing new ideologies of identity in new ways up to the present.

Definitely “read the whole thing.” Not just the post, but the entire blog. From the few posts I’ve seen, it’s in a class by itself.

The good news is he is still being actively investigated and Fitz is determined to do his job right. The bad news is that it may take years.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald delayed a decision on whether to seek criminal charges against Karl Rove in large part because he wants to determine whether Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, can provide information on Rove’s role in the CIA leak case, according to attorneys involved in the investigation.

Even if Fitzgerald concludes in the near future that he does not have sufficient evidence to charge Rove, the special prosecutor would not rule out bringing charges at a later date and would not finish his inquiry on Rove until he hears whatever information Libby might provide — either incriminating or exculpatory — on Rove’s role, the sources said.

On the last day of its two-year term, the federal grand jury in the leak case indicted Libby on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice as part of an alleged effort to conceal his own role, and perhaps that of other Bush administration officials, in publicly disclosing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Fitzgerald did not seek an indictment of Rove, opting to present any potential new evidence on the White House deputy chief of staff to a new grand jury. In recent days, Fitzgerald has reinterviewed several witnesses with knowledge of Rove’s role in the Plame leak and talked with attorneys of other potential witnesses.

The ongoing investigation means that Rove’s legal status is likely to remain up in the air until the final disposition of Libby’s case. That could be two years from now, or even longer. Rove’s predicament contradicts recent news accounts indicating that Fitzgerald will conclude his probe of Rove in the near future.

I guess that puts an end to the much-repeated meme that Rove was found innocent of all charges and the investigation has wound to a conclusion.