…with this superb and epic story of three former friends in Anhui Province who banded together to protest the abuses of their local CCP cadres. (Their story was also highlighted in the now-banned but available book, An Investigation of China’s Peasants.)

In painstaking detail Kahn tells each man’s story and how they met, and where they are today. In so doing, Kahn sheds a good deal of light on the plight of China’s rural poor and the fate that can await those who seek justice.

One thing I immediately noticed when I got back to America from Asia was the difference between Chinese and American physiques. Most of the Chinese I knew and met were relatively slender, while America seems to be a sea of fat people (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

But alas, it seems it’s now China’s turn to pay the price of progress and capitalism as its people steadily put on the pounds.

The number of obese people in China doubled to 60 million people in the 10 years to 2002 with diseases related to an unhealthy diet and lifestyle also on the rise, the government said.

China’s first comprehensive national survey on diet, nutrition and diseases found that 7.1 percent of Chinese adults were obese and 22.8 percent were overweight, Wang Longde, China’s vice minister of health told a news conference.

An estimated 200 million of China’s population of around 1.3 billion were overweight, Wang said.

“Compared with the nutrition survey results of 1992, the prevalence of being overweight has increased 39 percent and the prevalence of obesity increased 97 percent,” Wang said, warning the problem will get worse.

The good news of the survey is that fewer people in China are hungry, and malnutrition rates have dropped. The obesity problem, not surprisingly, is most severe in China’s urban areas where people are eating more fat and fewer vegetables. Thanks, MacDonalds.

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.

Remember all the talk about SARS being a catalyst for cleaning up the markets in Guandong province, where animals and people are crowded together in ways that would give a US health inspector a major coronary? Seems the concern has died down, and conditions are back to normal (i.e., filthy and unsafe).

In southern China, it doesn’t matter if an animal is an endangered species. As long as it walks, wriggles or jumps, it’s good enough for the pot. To prove the point, visit a wild animal market in the thriving city of Guangzhou.

“You want to buy a porcupine?” a worker asked as he looked up from a half-disemboweled civet cat, which some scientists say is the source of the deadly SARS virus that wreaked havoc around the world last year, killing more than 800 people.

Squatting just next to him, a few workers scrub the white carcass of a freshly plucked porcupine, a protected species under the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES.

Nearby, half a dozen other people sit around mounds of water snakes, peeling their skin off and revealing a pink stretch of flesh. Water snake meat is relatively cheap and popular but conservationists have warned the trade is endangering the reptile, once abundant in the wild.

In this dark, foul-smelling market in Guangzhou, traders have just about anything to offer from birds and waterfowl, domestic dogs and cats, to the exotic flying squirrels and leopard cats.

The funny/sad article makes it clear that the sellers are fully aware that they are selling rare species into extinction, and that they’re breaking the law. And it doesn’t matter a bit. No thought to the future and the world others will inherit. And we wonder why there’s an environemntal crisis in China.

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!

A new friend of mine here in Arizona has started a new blog , Hanzi Smatter. In his own words:

It will be dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (hanzi) in Western culture. If you have any photographs of someone’s tattoo, t-shirt, post cards, or any kind of item with Chinese characters on it, please feel free to email them to me, and help my blog to grow.

It’s just getting started, but so far it looks great! Be sure to go there.

Update: I see Sinosplice beat me to this.

[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]

I’ve written about the “Tiananamen tank man” before, but I just came upon this article that details how the famous picture came to be taken. It’s an amazing story in itself and one I had never heard before.

I also like the article’s close:

A decade and a half later, Widener’s photograph retains all of its potency. “It’s an urgently important message about what you can do if you have the guts to do it,” says Mickey Spiegel, a China specialist at Human Rights Watch in New York City, who has hung the photograph in every office she has occupied since 1989.

Richard Baum, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, says there’s “an emotional legacy to that shot. I think that has cost China more in public image than any other single image in modern times.”

Widener, now 47 and a staff photographer for the Honolulu Advertiser in Hawaii, has considered going to China to revisit the story. “The picture’s part of my life now,” says the photographer. “His message was, ‘Enough’s enough. There’s been enough killing. It’s got to stop.’ “

Other posts about Tiananmen Square:
Tiananmen Square revisited
Tiananmen Square re-revisited
Messages on Tiananmen Square

You can see the famous Tiananmen Tank video here.

You can read Pico Iyer’s sublime tribute to Tank Man in Time magazine here.

The best chapter in Jasper Becker’s book The Chinese is titled “The Rule of Law,” in which he raises the rhetorical question of whether the phrase refers to laws that impose limits on government powers, or laws that are used to keep the citizens subservient to leaders who are, needless to say, totally above any laws at all. We all know the answer to the question.

Ever since the end of 1979, when Deng announced with great fanfare that China would live under “the rule of law,” there’s been an awful lot of noise about this catch-phrase, and it’s interesting (if utterly unsurprising) to see how it works when put to the test. A fascinating, funny and scary article looks at The Rule of Law in action as it traces the arbitration case of a US firm trying to chase the China dream in Shanghai.

It’s too long and complex a story for me to distill here, especially as I’m getting ready to pack for the hospital, but this gives you an idea of what the process of arbitration in China can be like:

In April, more than a year after the arbitrators heard the case, Origon’s attorneys in China sent a letter to the arbitration commission alleging that officials from the Shanghai People’s Court had “improperly interfered.” The attorneys urged commission officials to “eradicate interference … to ensure an early impartial arbitration to this case.”

Two months later, Origon got an answer: Go elsewhere to resolve this dispute.

Yuan, Origon’s Beijing attorney, was furious. Not only had the arbitration panel refused to rule, but it also asked Origon to pay 95% of the arbitration fees, which could be tens of thousands of dollars.

“This is ridiculous,” Yuan said. “The reason we applied for arbitration is we want a resolution…. The ruling means nothing.”

Zhang Yue, an official at the arbitration center in Shanghai, said he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the case or the accusation of judicial interference. But he insisted that the panel was impartial and that the “rule of arbitration will protect the rights of both parties.”

It cannot be overemphasized: If you want to do business in China and you are expecting anything even faintly resembling traditional globally accepted business practices and standards you may be in for a serious shock. And don’t think that membership in the WTO has made much of a difference. And don’t think that that the much-touted Rule of Law b.s. will save your skin from unfairness, no matter how brazen or outrageous.

For now, as the article points out, you are at the mercy of mysterious forces (usually the Party or one of its officials), and if you try to control them or seek a fair resolution, you’ll most likely end up frustrated. And poor.

I also love the article’s ending, a rehash of the same old argument: The shell-shocked business owner says he has to be in China, it’s simply too big a market to ignore. And considering the nature of his business, he probably will make a profit eventually. But oh, the surprises and landmines along the way to reaching the China Dream.

When I was working as a reporter in DC I used to call the Heritage Foundation whenever I needed to balance my story with a quote from the conservative side. Extremely well heeled and to the right, the Heritage Foundation may be one of my least favorite think tanks. Yet its new position paper on the various rosy myths that have sprung up about the “new China” is certainly worth looking at. As the best funded and most vocal think tank in the country, you can bet a lot of Republicans in and around the beltway will be reading this.

It’s a long piece, summed up in a single paragraph toward the end:

A dispassionate examination of how China has approached key foreign policy, trade, and national security issues over the past two years suggests that, far more often than not, China has opposed U.S. interests or, at the very least, has remained neutral or aloof. China has provided little support in the war on terrorism, did not simply “stand by” during the Iraq War, has hampered efforts to ease the reconstruction of Iraq, and has not helped to bring North Korea around to dismantling its nuclear weapons programs.

I always take the HF’s reports with a big grain of sea salt, but the arguments here are pretty rational and well backed up. It is especially outspoken on Bush’s recent betrayal of Taiwan and China’s continuing to export WMDs to the DPRK, Iran, Pakistan, etc. It’s definitely worth scanning whether you agree with its conclusions or not.