Phillip Pan has proven himself once more to be a worthy successor of the great John Pomfret over at the Washington Post. He’s written a scary and detailed account of Internet essayist and “cyberdissident” Liu Di’s story, and the many bizarreries she encountered within China’s unique “justice system.” (I’ve previously referred to her as the Stainless Steel Mouse, but I’m sure Pan’s “Rat” more accurate.) Absolutely not to be missed by anyone following the repression of online politics.

I’m still marking time until the New Year, when I plan to get back to putting up interesting posts. For now, I’m continuing my holding pattern, giving some links and a bit of commentary. But things are too high-stress right now for long posts. Hopefully right after the new Year I’ll be able to share why that is, and what’s going on in my life.

Update: A good related article. It seems China’s newly energized crackdown on dissidents is receiving lots of press. Should I still hold out for hope for Hu emerging as a true reformer? Remember how optimistic we were, not so long ago…?

Still too burned out to post, but I wanted to share a most interesting article from The Economist on how China seeks to stifle its intellectual voices. I usually don’t snip entire articles, but you need to register for this, so here it is.

[Sidenote: I really, really, really don’t want this blog simply to be a chronology of malfeasances perpetrated by the CCP against its subjects. I had shifted away from that mode ever since I came home, focusing more on American politics and a broader view of things. I’ll try to limit my criticisms, which I am fully aware can be redundant and polemical. Now that my big work project is over, I’m going to try to get re-energized blogging about the sins of the Bush administration. Meanwhile, when I see interesting articles like this, I’ll keep sharing them.]

IN AN Orwellian obfuscation of its role, the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department prefers to translate its name these days as the Publicity Department. But one of its main tasks remains that of issuing secret directives to the state-controlled media telling them what not to report. And among its latest prohibitions is any encouragement for “public intellectuals” in China.

In recent years, the party had become more relaxed about intellectuals. Outspoken academics helped fuel the campus fervour that eventually erupted into mass protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But the crackdown, followed a couple of years later by an economic boom, dampened demands for political change. The party began to worry more about unemployed workers and disgruntled peasants, and less about intellectuals—many of whom, anyway, were turning their attention to making money.

More recently, however, the rapid spread of the internet and the increasing commercialisation of the Chinese media have given intellectuals new avenues of expression. A few, including economists, social scientists and lawyers, have become well-known among the chattering classes for their critiques of social ills (though prudently, in most cases, not of the party itself). The term “public intellectuals” has crept into the media, encouraged not least by a Chinese translation last year of “Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline”, a book by an American judge, Richard Posner, examining the role of such commentators in America.

The Propaganda Department lost its patience after a magazine in Guangdong Province, Southern People Weekly, published a list of 50 Chinese public intellectuals in September. The market economy, said an accompanying commentary, had caused the rapid marginalisation of intellectuals. “But this is the time when China is facing the most problems in its unprecedented transformation, and when it most needs public intellectuals to be on the scene and to speak out.”

If the 50 had been loyal party stooges, all might have been forgiven. But among them were several who are decidedly not, including Zhang Sizhi, a defence lawyer who has argued in the trials of some of China’s best known dissidents; Cui Jian, a rock singer whose irreverence has irritated the authorities since his heyday in the Tiananmen era; Bei Dao, a poet who has been forced to live in exile since the 1989 unrest; and Wang Ruoshui (who died in 2002), a senior journalist and member of the party’s inner circle who turned dissident. A scathing commentary on the list, published last month by a Shanghai newspaper and republished by the party’s main mouthpiece, People’s Daily, said that promoting the idea of “public intellectuals” was really aimed at “driving a wedge between intellectuals and the party.” The window for free debate that opened a crack over the past couple of years, as China’s leadership shifted to the “fourth generation” of leaders, is closing again.

Oddly, perhaps, given the supposed indifference of urbanites to politics, two of the bestselling books in China this year have been about the “anti-rightist” campaign of 1957, during which half a million of the party’s intellectual critics were persecuted. One of the books, “Past Events Have Not Vanished Like Smoke”, was banned by the Propaganda Department. The other, “Inside Secrets of 1957: The Sacrificial Altar of Suffering”, is still for sale. Though probably not for long.

I was lucky to see John Pomfret, former bureau chief of the Washington Post’s Beijing office, address a group in Scottsdale last week. I was scribbling notes the whole time and now I’m finally going to decipher them. I was also lucky to spend some time with John afterwards at a local bar with my first cousin, who was John’s friend at Stanford. (Sorry, but I promised not to blog about our conversation at the bar.)

I always thought John was the best of the Beijing correspondents, followed by Joseph Kahn. John is now moving to Los Angeles, where he’ll be the new WaPo bureau chief. (His replacement in Beijing, Phillip Pan, is also doing an awesome job.) What I liked most about John was his honesty and courage. More than any other foreign correspondent in China, he wrote about the really controversial issues — Ma Shiwen, evictions of peasants who were thrown on the street, the SARS ambulance story (which he broke) — he wasn’t afraid to say what the government was doing and how bad some of those things really were.

That same honesty permeated his talk in front of an ultra-conservative group of lizardy gazillionaire businessmen.

“The longer I lived in China,” he began, “the less I came to believe China is really a great nation in the making.”

Now, I have to make it clear that he was not in any way slamming China. He was setting the stage for explaining just how tough China’s problems are, and that Westerners, immersed in romantic depictions from starry-eyed visitors, have no idea what kind of challenges China is facing.

This was at the heart of Pomfret’s talk: the West badly misunderstands China’s economic, medical, political, social and environmental hurdles. He was particularly emphatic that there is no need for the West to fear China becoming a global superpower along the lines of the USA. “Not all of China�s dreams are going to be achieved because hard-wired into their DNA are serious constraints that will keep China from becoming what it aspires to. Most of China is a third-, fourth- and fifth-world country” under constant threat from unimaginable poverty, so many people to employ, AIDS, a devastated environment, etc.

Last year the number of people living below the poverty line in China grew by some 800,000 people, he said, at the time of the nation’s great economic miracle. The wealth gap is simply too staggering for most Westerners to envision. He said one way China is trying to offset the people’s anger is by inciting nationalism (an old trick in China, used to masterful effect by Deng after Tiananmen Square).

“But the nationalism we are seeing is only skin-deep,” Pomfret said. “Michael Jordan retired is more popular among Chinese citizens than Yaoming. All the Chinese young people want to work for US companies and own US goods.” They know their futures and their salaries will be far more limited at a state-owned business, he said.

He later repeated his metaphor when he said “serious constraints are hard-wired into the Chinese DNA and the Chinese political, economic and social system that could stop China’s meteoric rise.” The major constraint, he made it clear, is corruption, which seems to make things work in the short term, but which could help unravel China’s great success over the long term. He praised this success again and again, but said the CCP is caught in a conundrum of failing to address how a single party can control absolutely everything when absolutely everything is changing right underneath its feet.

I was surprised at just how hopeless Pomfret views so many issues in China. For example, when someone asked about Chinese-Japanese relations, he described it as a “Gordian knot with no solution in sight. Relations between them won’t get better anytime soon, but there won’t be any war.” He added that the CCP uses this issue to unify the country, appealing to the masses’ raw emotions.

He also echoed a point that several bloggers have made, namely that the war on terror has been “a windfall” for China in every way. “From the Chinese perspective, it diverted the attention of those Republicans who saw the PRC as a competitor and a threat, and it focused them instead on the Middle East. Now China can crack down on radical Islam in Xinjiang and Americans don’t say anything. There will be many more executions — the Chinese will just crush these people.”

Contrary to the article in the Atlantic I linked to Friday, Pomfret say relations between Taiwan and China won’t degenerate into war. “The US won’t let Chen Sui Bian go too far off the rail. China understands that the key to Taiwan’s not declaring independence is Washington. And China uses the issue to win hearts and minds at home. In a way, it benefits from the continual bad relations.”

He was critical, too, of the CCP’s treatment of HK, but most of you know the story so I won’t write down all he said. Money quote: “They’ve given a lot of benefits to Hong Kong on the economic side, playing to the people’s love of money. But in the long-term, the conflict is an ominous development. Now, China is a potential enemy to Hong Kong, when before [HK protested] they were considered a friend.”

China’s military is another example of Westerners seeing more than is really there, John said. “It has pockets of excellence, including great missile technology, but all in all it is still a middling power.” He added that any invasion of Taiwan would be all but impossible, if only because of Taiwan’s lack of beaches. “It would end up being a million-man swim…Many military people say that China is nowhere near ready to threaten Taiwan. There’s huge military spending, but in terms of bang for the buck, what they’ve got just isn’t that significant.”

This was in many ways a sad talk. What China dreams of being simply isn’t coming anytime soon and probably not ever. “They want to be seen as a great country, as a good country….but I am a cautious pessimist.” He didn’t say China was going to fail or crash — just that it’s ultimate dreams would elude it, made impossible by a harsh reality that in many ways the one-party system only exacerbates.

John made it clear how outraged he is over Joseph Kahn’s assistant in Beijing being thrown in jail for 6 to 10 years for his alleged involvement in the NY Times’ story on Jiang’s imminent resignation (which came out days before the official announcement). “He wasn’t even involved in Kahn’s story, but they don’t care about things like that. They just wanted to teach the Times a lesson.”

While critical of the CCP, John also says that under the circumstances he doesn’t know how they could do things any better than they’re doing now — but only because they created the situation in which there’s no alternative. That’s an important point: “They completely smashed the opposition so there’s no one in the wings who could replace them. If any new voice were to arise, it could be an even uglier one that what they’ve got now.” He was a war correspondent in Bosnia, and he compared China’s political situation to Yugoslavia under Tito, where one strong man crushed all the opposition and held the country together through brute force. Once he was gone, it all disintegrated.

Last of all, when asked what the Chinese now believe in, John said, “Chinese students have told me they simply have no beliefs. They have less respect for the family than earlier generations. Will there be a renaissance during which the youth of China rediscover their traditional values? I don’t see it. So many people in China live to rip other people off — this takes place on such a huge level, it’s scary. One has to worry that China is a society devoid of values.”

Yes, it was a sad talk, and there was little to celebrate. Maybe I’ll take hope in that he didn’t say China is doomed to defeat or that it will all come crashing down — only that its vision of itself doesn’t jibe with reality, and that its opportunities are more limited than they’ve led themselves to believe. And with that, I have to sadly agree.

Update: By the way, this all ties in with a good article in yesterday’s Guardian on why China’s roaring markets still don’t in and of themselves make it a great superpower. It’s really quite amazing — the author makes so many of the points Pomfret did. Thanks to the reader who alerted me. I can’t recommend it enough.

Update 2: With this post, a new commenter joined this blog named Mark Anthony Jones, and he comments at great length below. It was frustrating to later learn that literally all of his comments were cut and pasted from articles he found using Google searches. My apologies for all of those who were made fools of.

It’s all in the name of cracking down on “pornography,” but I would guess it also has to do with increasing control over people’s minds in general.

uthorities in China have ordered more than 1,600 Internet cafes closed since February 2004, imposing more than 100 million yuan, or $12 million, in fines against their operators for allowing children to play violent or adult-only games among other violations.

Deputy director of the Culture Ministry’s Market Department, Zhang Xinjian, said more than 1.8 million Internet cafes throughout the country had been inspected and more than 18,000 had been ordered to cease their operations until reported violations have been corrected.

The latest clean-up comes at a time when the government is attempting to control violence and pornography on the Internet.

The government has also recently shut down hundreds of web sites and continues to block access to thousands of offending web sites outside China.

Last night I had a heated argument with a good friend of mine, who is Chinese. He thinks I am much too hard on the CCP, and he says almost all the things they do are good. I want to believe that, and I keep waiting for the evidence. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe they are monolithically evil or bad, and there are a lot of noble people in the party. But their never-ending battle for mind control doesn’t score them any points on my tally card.

Via Little Devi.

Although this one from the South China Morning Post offers some interesting information on the specific words the infamous Chinese Net fiulters are poised to capture. And some of the ruses savvy Chinese surfers have adopted to outsmart the Cybernanny are downright hilarious.

Last month, a group of hackers uncovered a file buried within the operating instructions of QQ 2003. The file contains a list of words likely to rile government officials.

About 20 per cent deal with sexual jargon too rude to print in a family newspaper. For Chinese-language students looking to expand their vocabulary of naughty words, this .dll file is a good place to start. (Users of QQ 2003 should search for a document called COMtoolkit.dll. Newer versions of QQ’s program lack the file).

The remainder of the list deals with politically touchy subjects. In the file, not surprisingly, are topics such as Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square massacre and the independence movements in Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet.

But the file also hints at concerns about the Web being used to spread ultra-nationalism, with references to the Sino-Russian border and territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands.

Many of the words are general, such as “truth” and “idea”, suggesting philosophical discussion is off-limits. Other words include references to official corruption and the cases of political prisoners.

Why some phrases appear on the list – “in October”, “spring in Beijing”, “toad” and “North Korea” – are a complete mystery.

What is also not clear is how the .dll file works. It does not appear to block words from instant messages, suggesting its purpose is to alert officials to the discussion of sensitive topics.

Mainland internet users are aware of what critics have dubbed The Great Firewall of China, leading to the creation of new spellings for names and terms to bypass the censors.

The artfully insulting homonyms include spelling former premier Zhu Rongji’s name so that it reads deaf and deformed pig. Chairman Jiang becomes soy sauce marinated pig daughter-in-law, while Mao Zedong’s moniker is transformed into a vivid description of a toilet.

No one ever accused the Chinese of lack of creativity. I salute their efforts to confound the censors and suspect that no matter how hard the CCP tries to silence the spread of ideas, the Internet will ultimately prove to be key to their steady erosion of power — and ultimately, to their extinction.

And I have to say, it rings mighty hollow to me. (I know this is a couple days old but I just got around to it.)

This was a difficult decision for Google, and we would like to share the factors we considered before taking this course of action.

Google is committed to providing easy access to as much information as possible. For Internet users in China, Google remains the only major search engine that does not censor any web pages. However, it’s clear that search results deemed to be sensitive for political or other reasons are inaccessible within China. There is nothing Google can do about this.

For last week’s launch of the Chinese-language edition of Google News, we had to decide whether sources that cannot be viewed in China should be included for Google News users inside the PRC. Naturally, we want to present as broad a range of news sources as possible. For every edition of Google News, in every language, we attempt to select news sources without regard to political viewpoint or ideology. For Internet users in China, we had to consider the fact that some sources are entirely blocked. Leaving aside the politics, that presents us with a serious user experience problem. Google News does not show news stories, but rather links to news stories. So links to stories published by blocked news sources would not work for users inside the PRC — if they clicked on a headline from a blocked source, they would get an error page. It is possible that there would be some small user value to just seeing the headlines. However, simply showing these headlines would likely result in Google News being blocked altogether in China.

We also considered the amount of information that would be omitted. In this case it is less than two percent of Chinese news sources. On balance we believe that having a service with links that work and omits a fractional number is better than having a service that is not available at all. It was a difficult tradeoff for us to make, but the one we felt ultimately serves the best interests of our users located in China. We appreciate your feedback on this issue.

Having worked closely with Google on their public relations in China (are you there, Debbie?), I’m not surprised at this rather slick and vacuous excuse. Other search engines you can access in China give the links, and if those links cannot be accessed, it’s the user’s headache. But at least the user then has the link, so they can look it up using a proxy server or whatever tool they use to get under the Great CyberNanny’s skirt. To refuse to offer the link is, in effect, kissing the CyberNanny’s ass.

This is pure bullshit. Now, I can’t say exactly who you can write to at Google to express your opinion, but you may want to try dfrost@google.com.

UPDATE: Be sure to see Adam’s letter to google — and then write your own!

[Note: I meant this to be a brief post about my plans for blogging in the future, and how China would fit into that plan. Then it took on a life of its own. If it is a bit polemical and/or boring, I apologize in advance.]

I’m going through a major change of heart regarding what I want this blog to be. I don’t want to chronicle the malfeasances of the CCP as I used to (though I’ll do so when I think it’s important enough). I don’t want to spend the day proving and re-proving that the Communist leadership in China is evil. This will probably disappoint some readers who come here for the daily litany of CCP sins. But I decided during my last few visits to China that my former approach can be misleading, or at least incomplete.

I saw (and see) what can be safely described as evil in the current system in China. The stories of corruption and brutality against the disenfranchised underclasses are true and they are important. The government’s approach to SARS will always be fresh in my mind, as I was so in the thick of it and saw first-hand just how dreadful this government can be. This topic is usually greeted with a chorus from those who see the CCP as an instrument of positive change: The CCP learned from SARS and they are getting better. I’m still open-minded to this argument. I just haven’t seen enough evidence of it yet.

But I believe now that the CCP is not monolithically evil. I know there’s a number of CCP members who truly hold a vision of a free and democratic China. Such reform-minded individuals have always been a part of the CCP. Unfortunately, they are up against a formidable entourage of party dinosaurs who cannot simply be swept under the carpet. Nice guys in the CCP always seem to finish last.

Scanning The Tiananmen Papers, I understand even more just how divided the party has been, and how actively some of its members have fought for real reform. Those who fight against such reformers are not necessarily evil. I think many of them really believe they are doing what is best for the country. But their first concern is their own political survival and preservation of their power base. If, in ensuring their ongoing power, they have to trample on the innocent, it’s a shame, but it simply has to be done. Like an elephant brushing up against a sapling and crushing it. Not malevolent, but destructive nonetheless.

I also have understood for a long time that the current CCP is amazingly similar to the ancient emperors’ regimes, in which government was to be used not for the benefits and protection of its subjects, but for ensuring the survival of its leaders. So the CCP is not so unique in China’s history and it did not materialize in a vacuum. And it’s not going to change drastically overnight.

So while I’m trying to consider all sides of the picture, I’m trying to cut the leaders a little more slack. A little. I remain adamant when it comes to the issue of political reform (though I’d love to be convinced otherwise). So far, the reforms have really been about guaranteeing the CCP’s power, not about diminishing it. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, Deng had the wisdom to realize that the ongoing descent into radical leftist insanity would ultimately turn China into a nation of isolated, fanatacized cretins. His reforms did as they were intended to: they ushered China into the modern world, gave the people new hope and often new wealth, and set the stage for China to become a true superpower.

But at the heart of it, these reforms were true to the CCP’s traditional ideal of maintaining total power and control, of self-preservation. They totally failed to end the awful caste system, in which the party members are entitled to all sorts of luxuries and privileges, and the subjects are powerless to complain about their leaders’ excess and cruelties. (A bit of credit here: more and more lawsuits are being filed against the government in China, and some plaintiffs have actually won. A teensy-tiny drop in the bucket, but still a positive sign)

The economic reforms have been dazzling, the envy of the world, and social reforms, especially recently, have been impressive. But when it comes to political reforms, we’re still in the dark ages. Yes, there have been some important improvements. Obviously, people are far more free to speak their minds, and some clever journalists are subtly getting out their messages about the government’s failings. And the Internet has become a key instrument in sharing ideas and information, despite the frenzied attempts of the CCP to control it.

But the fact is that censorship is worsening, corruption still reigns supreme and many of the antique laws of the old days contniue to cause the Chinese people terrible and unnecessary grief. I look at one example, the hukou system (a grotesquely unfair entitlement system that determines where a person can and cannot live and work) and I have no choice: I have to conclude some of the most revolting aspects of Maoist rule are alive and well. The word of the day is Reform; it’s all we hear about. And yet, aside from racier magazines on the racks and more sex on TV, we still see no signs of true political reform.

I have some good friends and lots of acquaintances in China who believe in what the CCP is doing. Basically, this faith is generated by the improving quality of life for so many Chinese — more people have more money. This is important. Money can be the determining factor between comfort and misery. Where I disagree with them strongly is that this is the result of any grand scheme of the CCP’s, that they designed it all to be this way. What happened after Deng took power was that he gave the people an inch and they grabbed a mile — once there was room for capitalism, the Chinese — the world’s most capitalistic people — made their own wealth, just as they have done in every country they’ve gone to. (This has nothing to do with race or genetics, but about culture. The Chinese have always been taught to save money, and to use it to make more.)

As far as trade and commerce goes, I think the CCP has been a bungler, hardly the geniuses some would have it. The people made their money because the government got out of their way, not because the CCP offered great financial wisdom. With foreign trade, the party deserves even less credit. Ask any foreign company doing business in China what kind of hoops they had to jump through and how many palms they had to grease along the way. It’s as though the CCP has put up every conceivable obstacle to real free trade for outsiders. This is a key component of the corruption system that keeps party members rich and that created the “princeling” phenomenon.

My friends who are more positive about the CCP always tell me that the sheer size of China’s population makes it impossible for the government to control what its local cadres are doing. These cadres, they tell me, are the source of many of the evils and the CCP cannot be blamed for their crimes. The CCP is more concerned about the massive general population, not about a group of AIDS patients who are beaten up by local police, or of a group of coal miners jailed and tortured for protesting the outrageous taxes collected by their local leaders.

There’s a lot of truth to this. When we’re talking about a population so vast and distributed over so much space, controlling what happens in each village is a dizzying challenge. And yet, and yet….

Let’s look at how well China has done in controlling this vast population from Mao to now. Every single person is registered in the aforementioned hukou system. Meticulous records are kept on most of them. Government checkers go door to door of every home and make sure the women are not producing too many babies. About 30,000 government bureaucrats spend their entire day watching the Internet for signs of subversion. Under Mao, the type of corruption that runs rampant today was trifling. It was controlled. (Of course, this was more than compensated for by mass murder, famines and unspeakable tyrannies.) So is it really so impossible to keep the behavior of local cadres in check? Or is this corruption the main reason cadres remain loyal to the CCP? Is it insurance against disloyalty? I can’t say for sure, but it’s something to think about.

So those are some of my personal feelings about the CCP. But as I said at the start, I’ve tempered some of my animosity because I believe there are forces at work for real change and increased freedom. I know it takes time, and there really are risks of moving too quickly. But Deng seized power more than a quarter of a century ago. I’m not convinced that constantly allowing them more time, showing patience and understanding, giving them “space” and always forgiving their excesses as “teething pains” — I’m not convinced that such coddling is the way to go. Look at SARS: It wasn’t coddling and patience that brought about the extraordinary press conference in which the party actually admitted its crimes. No, it was the international outcry, precipitated by a Beijing whistleblower and brought to a crescendo on the world’s editorial pages, that blew the CCP’s cover and literally forced them to account for themselves. The soft and gentle approach might at times be appropriate, but the evidence tells me they are more likely to respond to international pressure. Pressure that threatens investment and damages the reputation the CCP has worked so painstakingly to build over the past ten years.

But even after saying all that, I have more hope than I did before, if only because the dinosaurs are dying out and the new generation appears more open to democracy and real freedom. My attitude is, keep up the pressure, call them on their misdeeds, but don’t approach them as a force of pure evil. Our best hope is to continue to lead by example, so the new generation of leaders continues to see liberty and democracy as goals to strive for.

So back to my blog. I am finding it really difficult to maintain Peking Duck’s persona as a China-focused blog. I am going to try, but as I said, I’m not inclined simply to list all the CCP’s outrages or to scold them ad infinitum. So please don’t be surprised if this blog focuses a little more on US politics and my personal situation, and a bit less on China. I think it will always be a China blog; I feel too attached to the community to simply give it all up. But it can’t be quite the same as when I was living and working in Asia.

Thanks for your patience if you made it to the end of this over-long and all-over-the-place post.

[Updated at 4:50 pm Mountain Time]

Continuing its crackdown on illegal religious activity, China has arrested Zhang Shengqi for posting Internet articles that support an unapproved Christian church.

Telephones rang unanswered at Hangzhou’s city government offices. A woman at the city’s police bureau who would only give her family name, Liu, said she had “never heard of this case,” while a man at the provincial jail said he was “unclear” about the matter. He refused to give his name.

Zhang’s arrest appeared to be related to police suspicions that he helped church historian Liu Fenggang post information on the Internet about the Hangzhou crackdown. Liu, a veteran pro-democracy campaigner, has also been detained in Hangzhou on state secrets charges.

Churches demolished, preachers detained

City authorities earlier this year demolished a number of unregistered churches and detained preachers in what activists said was a trial run for techniques to be used against unregistered religious groups elsewhere in China

I want to give the government every benefit of the doubt and acknowledge what they are doing right. But when they make a lot of noise about reforms yet continue and actually increase their anti-reform activities, I’m going to write about it.

Link via Radio Free China.

I had such a great time in China last week. Too bad news like this forces me to remember there is still trouble in paradise:

CHINESE Internet dissident Yan Jun, 32, has been sentenced to two years in prison on a subversion charge for posting essays online calling for change, including a free press and free expression, his family said today.

The Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him this morning on a charge of “inciting subversion”, his mother Dai Yuzhen told AFP.

“The court took no more 20 minutes,” Dai said by telephone from Xi’an in Shaanxi province.

Family members and Yan could not understand the court’s decision, Dai said.

“I can’t accept this verdict. Just because he wrote a few essays, he’s going to jail? I can’t make sense of it,” Dai said.

What a shame. Such a robust country, such an ambitious people, still reigned in by good old-fashioned totalitarian terror.

UPDATE: The families of four cyber-dissidents sentenced to unbelievably harsh sentences have now appealed to Laura Bush for help. This is another must-read for those who think things are getting better in terms of self-expression. These guys range from 28 to 32, and their prison sentences range from 8 to 10 years. Those are very, very long sentences.

Rushed post: Reporters without Borders (RSF) is taking a much more pro-active stance against the Western firms behind the Great Firewall of China. Especially Cisco.

The RSF sent letters to the CEOs of Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, Thomson, Nortel, HP, Logitech, Oracle, NEC, Samsung, Sun, IBM, Yahoo!, and Alcatel. The letters expressed the fact that the government of China has continued to crack down on Internet users it considers to be political dissidents, and that these companies have aided the Chinese Communist Party in that endeavor. Specifically, the group mentioned that Cisco Systems supplies the government with special online spying systems, and Yahoo!, in 2002, agreed to assist in the filtering and censoring of Internet content via its search and portal services in exchange for more access to Chinese markets

It’s great that they are doing this, though how much difference it makes remains to be seen.