Sometimes things go right in China when it comes to the rights of the oppressed, and I always try to report such stories as they break. The problem, of course, is that these stories are so few and far between, and are soon overshadowed by yet more ghastly examples of repression with no justice. So let’s hope we continue to hear more stories like this one:

THIS WEEK, the China Youth Daily devoted an entire page to a modern tale of rural redemption. Villagers in Yanxi, Jiangxi Province, had been slowly poisoned and impoverished by a ramshackle zinc smelter constructed by a fly-by-night enterprise that happened to have been backed by members of the local government. But now, the newspaper triumphantly reports, years of relentless petitioning have finally paid off, and the smelter was shut down a couple of months ago.

The moral of the tale, one assumes, is that the procedures do exist to allow lowly farm workers to bring unscrupulous bosses to justice. The story offers the faintest of hopes for the many rural communities currently being hemmed in and ruined by overdevelopment, but it also reflects the central government’s faltering influence on the hinterlands.

….With the China Youth Daily, it is always tempting to engage in old-fashioned Kremlinology. The newspaper’s intrepid reporters and editorialists continue to express their frustration towards local authorities and their unwillingness to pay heed to Beijing. ‘Why can’t the orders of the central government get out of Zhongnanhai?’ the paper asked in November, and their anguish is shared by the central government. In this case, good sense eventually prevailed after a three-year struggle. Some, of course, are not quite so lucky.

This is from the great Running Dog, which finally has put up some new posts. About the question, ‘Why can’t the orders of the central government get out of Zhongnanhai?’ – I think it’s not really that mysterious. The central government really does want to crack down on corruption and see their laws enforced. But it has a contrary interest, i.e., retaining its much coveted power. It all boils down to priorities.

So to speak.

A blind activist in China and his family have been placed under house arrest for four months and he was beaten by thugs when he tried to venture out, after exposing forced abortions in his home province on the east coast.

Club-wielding goons believed to be hired by local authorities have been posted outside Chen Guangcheng’s one-storey brick home in Dongshigu, a farming village in Shandong province, since September 6 to prevent him, his wife and 71-year-old mother from leaving, Chen said.

“China is lawless,” the 34-year-old activist told Reuters by telephone. “They’re worried I will expose more of their crimes.”

“Do (President) Hu Jintao and (Premier) Wen Jiabao know? If they know, why have they not done anything?” Chen asked.

Authorities have jammed signals to and from Chen’s mobile phone but they could not block calls on Friday due to a power failure. His home phone has also been cut.

Up to 30 people have been guarding Chen’s house in each shift round the clock. The only visitor allowed is Chen’s older brother.

Chen and his family have survived on food bought by the goons, who have beaten him at least twice when he tried to leave his home. He was denied medical treatment.

The goons once dragged Chen’s 30-year-old wife, who gave birth to a girl last July, back into the house when she tried to go out, he said.

Chen’s whistleblowing prompted the government to sack and detain several officials in Shandong’s Linyi city, state media have said.

Interesting, to see Reuters using words like “goons” and “thugs.” Good for them. Now, if they’d only apply those terms to Delay and Abramoff and the rest of BushCo, I might start believing the media was wising up. A good sign, nonetheless.

Remember, the insugency was invited by our muy, muy macho president to “bring ’em on.” And they’re bringing ’em on.

The U.S. military said Friday that six more American troops died in the recent surge of violence in
Iraq, bringing to 11 the number of U.S. troops slain on the same day.

Thousands of Shiites, meanwhile, rallied in Baghdad to protest the bloodshed and denounce what they said was American coddling of some Sunnis who support the insurgency in order to mollify them and bring them into a broad-based government.

In new violence Friday, a suicide car bomber struck a police patrol in Baghdad, killing one officer, Col. Noori Ashur said.

…A U.S. Marine and soldier died in Thursday’s attack by a suicide bomber who infiltrated a line of police recruits in Ramadi, killing at least 58 and wounding dozens. Two soldiers were also killed in the Baghdad area when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, the military said Friday.

In addition, two U.S. Marines were killed by separate small arms attacks while conducting combat operations in Fallujah, the military said.

The military had previously announced the deaths of five soldiers hit by a roadside bomb south of Karbala. The attack came minutes before a second suicide bomber struck Shiite pilgrims in that city, killing 63.

Peace in our time. Freedom. Stability. Democracy. Who could ask for more? As Bush’s backdrop haughtily declared as he donned his orange codpiece, “Mission Accomplished.”

If that’s your thing, don’t miss some of the extraordinary creations that pop up toward the end of this thread.

This is actually one of Friedman’s better columns (from the unlinkable NYT Select). Concern for the environment isn’t a sign of weakness; just the opposite.

The New Red, White and Blue
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 6, 2006

As we enter 2006, we find ourselves in trouble, at home and abroad. We are in trouble because we are led by defeatists – wimps, actually.

What’s so disturbing about President Bush and Dick Cheney is that they talk tough about the necessity of invading Iraq, torturing terror suspects and engaging in domestic spying – all to defend our way of life and promote democracy around the globe.

But when it comes to what is actually the most important issue in U.S. foreign and domestic policy today – making ourselves energy efficient and independent, and environmentally green – they ridicule it as something only liberals, tree-huggers and sissies believe is

(more…)

A place to go after the confetti’s been swept away and the party hats thrown in the trash.

Image lifted from this blog.

Rebecca MacKinnon has an update that cites a wonderful post from Imagethief. He really captures my own feelings about this, better than I ever could.

As for the “obeying local laws defense”, I have criticized that in this space previously. Certainly China is going to impose unique constraints on foreign companies operating within its borders, and I don’t think the solution is necessarily for those companies to quit China (not least because my job depends on them being here). But the question that situations –and excuses– like this raise for American tech-media companies is this: where is your ethical horizon? Every country has its own laws and regulations. Some are more egregious than others. Some are indefensible. When do a company’s values supercede its desire to make money and generate shareholder return? Does that point exist in the absence of public scrutiny? Perhaps some American tech-media companies would like to articulate what kind of “local laws and regulations” would push them too far?

I’ve had this debate countless times with several people. I guess the bottom-line question is, when is it time to say No? Is profit the only factor to consider? If so, is IBM (and the Bush family) beyond criticism for doing business with the Nazis long after it was clear that their intentions were undisguisedly evil? If so, we have no right to criticize China for cuddling up with Mugabe and Saddam Hussein and other mass murderers. After all, it’s strictly business, even if the consequences of this business could lead to human suffering and death.

That’s no exaggeration. Let’s see what Microsoft’s most famous blogger has to say:

I have been talking to lots of people today, though, inside and outside of Microsoft. In every instance they asked me to keep those conversations confidential. Why? Cause we’re talking about international relations here and the lives of employees. I wish I could go into it more than that, but I can’t. Not yet. See, it’s real easy as Americans to rattle the door and ask for change, but we don’t live there. Saying “give them the finger” isn’t that easy when there are real human lives at stake. And I don’t need to spell out what I’m talking about here, do I?

No Robert, you don’t need to spell it out, but maybe you should, because your readers in America really might not know just how risky things can be in China for those who go against the machine. People can be arrested and even tortured and, as you strongly imply (“there are real human lives at stake”), their lives put at risk. Yet we are bending over backwards to accommodate the perpetrators of the repression. As Imagethief so eloquently says, is there no place where we draw a line? Do we obey every law and regulation of the local government even if it goes contrary to basic human rights and ethics?

There are all sorts of sub-issues here, most of them leading back to the rights of a company to do business as it pleases. And I don’t question the company’s rights to do it. They have that right. But I also have a right to say they are doing something that I believe is blatantly wrong. I have the right to say that just because they can do it doesn’t mean they should.

In the earlier thread on this topic, a commenter writes:

So what you’re saying is that once you’ve posted something, the provider (owner) of the forum and property being used to disseminate what you’ve posted has no right to remove that posting, even if he has reserved that right in your initial agreement? Ultimately this means that the right to self-expression (or non-expression) of one party trumps that of another.

No, I’ve never said that. But if you are running a blog service and you take it on yourself to delete entire blogs because you’re nervous about or displeased with their content (presuming it is not criminal, like child porn or selling drugs), then you are definitely in the wrong business and you’d better be damned well-prepared to take the heat from your action.

These issues are being heatedly discussed in the comments to both MacKinnon’s and Scoble’s posts. Frankly, I am amazed at just how much slack we are willing to give corporations when it comes to making profits. I know, profits are good, free enterprise is essential. But if jewelry companies are buying products made at the needless expense of Chinese miners’ lives, or if Microsoft is expanding its empire by complying (and over-complying) with repressive laws, I think it deserves to be exposed and discussed. As Rebecca says at the end of her great post:

If these American technology companies have so few moral qualms about giving in to Chinese government demands to hand over Chinese user data or censor Chinese people’s content, can we be sure they won’t do the same thing in response to potentially illegal demands by an over-zealous government agency in our own country? Can we trust that they’re not already doing so?

When it comes down to interests of government vs. interests of the individual it seems pretty clear where their default position lies.

Will users and investors push for an attitude change? Can we convince them that disrespecting the universal human rights of users anywhere and everywhere will be bad for their business in the long run? Or will we all sit there like frogs in water being brought very slowly to a boil?

Not all of us. But again, I’m amazed at how many are willing to not only sit there like frogs, but who actually seem to be delighting in the water’s rising temperature.

While rallying US troops heading off to lend a hand (or a leg, or a head) to Boy George’s excellent adventure in Iraq, General Sanchez’s tongue worked a bit faster than his brain.

“A daunting task lies ahead, but I have no doubt you are well-trained,” said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, V Corps commander since 2003, who spent a tumultuous year in Iraq. He told the soldiers that conditions there have changed, and although ultimately Iraq has a “prosperous future,” its current condition is problematic.

“The country’s on the verge of a civil war,” he said, and told the soldiers the mission now is to transfer responsibility for Iraq stability to Iraqi troops, including what he said had been “neglected police capacity.”

Oh dear. I though the “civil war meme” was something uttered only by deranged liberals and lunatic Bush haters on crack. The truth slips out in the funniest ways sometimes.

Via LGF Watch, one of my favorites.

It felt like deja vu. I had read ESWN’s post earlier today on corrupt officials being held to account for pilfering donations to the “AIDS village” in Henan province. Then, hours later, I found myself reading the exact same text in a China Daily article.

This seemed especially remarkable because the article is not totally CCP-friendly. For instance, I was surprised (shocked) to see China Daily printing a story that said:

The Chinese Communist Party county committee propaganda department said that it would give no interviews and provide no information. Furthermore, the reporter is not allowed to contact villagers at will. One propaganda department official actually said: “It is impossible for us to provide any information on what you want to know about. You are too naïve to dare to cover such a sensitive topic.”

Since when do they refer to their own “propaganda department”?W as this a mistake? Did they lift ESWN’s translation and rush it to press without proofing it carefully? I suspect so, because when I went back to review the article again, the above text had been changed:

The Chinese Communist Party county committee information department said that it would give no interviews and provide no information.

Furthermore, the reporter is not allowed to contact villagers at will. One information department official actually said: “It is impossible for us to provide any information on what you want to know about. You are too naive to dare to cover such a sensitive topic.”

Even so, I’m surprised to see China Daily air so much dirty linen on the party. But then, who knows – maybe the next time i click the refresh button it’ll be changed and softened again, if not deleted altogether.

Who’d ever think I’d be quoting from an article put out by the neo-con American Enterprise Institute? Usually I’d avoid it, but this one actually has some grounding in reality. It deals with the question of whether China now poses a long-term threat to the US economy. It’s one of the new neo-con pieces I’ve seen about China that doesn’t get hysterical.

[A] dangerous myth is stalking international financial capitals. It is the idea that China has finally awoken and that the 21st century is going to belong to Asia.

This myth overlooks China’s fundamental political weaknesses. It also turns a blind eye to China’s economic clay feet and its many economic vulnerabilities. As such, it unnecessarily stokes American fears about the rising Chinese dragon and runs the danger of spawning protectionist pressures, which could undermine the global trading system.

There can be little gainsaying China’s remarkable economic performance since Deng Xiaoping launched China’s economic reform program in 1979. Over the past 25years, as it increasingly opened its economy, China has grown at an annual average rate of 9per cent, or at an appreciably faster pace than Japan and South Korea during their earlier economic miracles. This has allowed China to increase its gross domestic product tenfold and to lift 400 million of its citizens out of poverty.

The piece then goes on about the stuff we all know already: the staggering division between the haves and have-nots; the problems an increasingly middle class society will have with the antiquated Communist Party; the out-of-whack property prices, which will almost certainly crash with serious nation-wide consequences….

Here’s the interesting point, which made reading the whole thing worthwhile:

China’s recent rapid growth has not been the product of technological innovation or productivity increases of the sort that is now taken for granted in the US. Rather, it has been the product of investing an inordinate proportion of its income and of bringing part of its rural labor surplus into the market economy.

For China to pose a real long-term economic threat to the US, China would need to match the US’s sustained productivity performance, which has long been the envy of the world. Unless China truly embraces free-market economics, there is little chance of that occurring anytime soon.

And until China does so, the US should treat China as yet another, albeit large, emerging market economy that is trying to close the income gap between itself and the more prosperous industrialized

This is via Tapped, which offers its own interesting observation:

The claim I agree with here is that for China to overtake the U.S. economy in the long-run, it would need to match the U.S.’s sustained productivity growth. But there’s no “threat” here. German workers are more productive on a per-hour basis than are American workers. Americans would be better off if we achieved German levels of per-hour productivity, but closing the gap by reducing German productivity wouldn’t help Americans. Similarly, Chinese people becoming as rich and DVD-laden as Americans wouldn’t threaten anything. Indeed, it would be good, since if Chinese people were richer, they would presumably buy more American stuff.

I think the bottom line, for me, is that China could become a huge economic threat to the US if it ever got its act together and escaped from its own CCP-controlled tentacles. But for now, everyone needs to relax. Yes, China is a superpower when it comes to manufacturing cheap shoes and T-shirts. But to see them as being anywhere even close to attaining superpower status along the lines of the US is, at least for now, a fantasy.