A friend of mine told me he went to three separate duck restaurants on Sunday and all three had run out of duck. Now we know why. A sad day here at TPD.

Open thread, if you’d like.

Philip Pan, for years my favorite correspondent in Beijing (he left a few months ago), has written a devastating article about a letter written by a doctor who saw with his own eyes the victims of the massacre on the streets of Beijing n June 4, 1989 and described in detail the carnage he witnessed in the emergency room that night. [Correction – this is not actually an article but an excerpt of Pan’s new book Out of Mao’s Shadow that I’ve been trying to buy.]

On page after page, over a period of months, Jiang poured his heart into the letter. Every spring, as the anniversary of the massacre approached, the party became nervous and mobilized to prevent any attempt to memorialize the victims. But people had not forgotten, Jiang wrote. They had been bullied into silence, but, with each passing year, their anger and frustration grew. Jiang urged the new leaders to take a new approach. They should admit the party was wrong to send troops into the square and order them to fire on unarmed civilians. They should address the pain of those who lost their loved ones in the massacre and acknowledge, at long last, that the protesters were not “thugs” or “counter-revolutionaries” but patriots calling for a better and more honest government..

As Pan explains, this is no ordinary whistleblower, but one with unique credibility – none other than Jiang Yanyong, the very same doctor who wrote the letter to Time magazine in 2003 blowing the lid off the SARS cover-up. Needless to say, for his efforts to save lives he was “eased into retirement,” and later harassed and detained.

“Haunting” was the word that kept coming to mind as I read the final paragraphs of this beautiful story.

The government never charged Jiang with a crime, and he was finally released from house arrest in March 2005. Afterward, though, he disappeared from public view. When I last visited him, he turned up the volume on his television set because he believed his apartment might be bugged, and he whispered that he was trying to avoid provoking the government. He said he still wanted to visit his daughter and grandson in California, and he believed that, if he behaved, the authorities would give him permission to go. As I listened to him speak, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment. The state had been unable to break Jiang, but it had succeeded in silencing him.

After I left his apartment, though, I decided it was unfair to expect the elderly doctor to continue standing up to the party. He had already achieved more than most and paid a price for it. I doubted the government would ever let him visit his daughter and grandson, but how could anyone expect him to give up that hope? There was only so much one man could do, and only so much a nation could ask of him.

There’s much more to this story; I never realized how difficult a life the SARS whistleblower had endured, and how he retained his integrity even through the horrors of the Mao years, and remained dedicated to his country (not the party) to the point of endangering his own safety. It is inspiring, and ultimately very sad. Please read the article, bookmark it and pass it to your friends.

When I read articles like this, I realize how important it is that traditional media don’t die out. There is nothing like great reporting, something Pan has consistently delivered, shocking us with the truths he uncovers and telling them in a dispassionate tone that nevertheless haunts us even years after reading them. The way this story haunts me even today.

John Pomfret set the bar high for Pan, his replacement, and I can’t imagine how the Post will ever find anyone who can fill Pan’s shoes. As good as they come.

Amazing.  I mean, totally amazing. I knew they were evil, but I didn’t realize they were Joseph Goebbels evil.

It’s a familiar argument and one I’ve made myself – not quite calling the CCP “good,” but looking at horror stories around China and concluding that the main fault lies with the local authorities, not with the central party, which is trying as best they can to control their local thugs counterparts. Pomfret takes a closer look at this argument and how it has become iconic.

It’s important to note that among the people remonstrating with the Communist authorities, no one criticized the central government or, more broadly, China’s system of government. Yes, they attacked all of the Communist Party organs in the county – the cops, the government and the secret police. But throughout, in their letters to the party-state, they drew a clear distinction between the local thugs and Beijing. The implication from the demonstrators was clear: the center – Beijing – is good, but it’s just been led astray by local apparatchiks.

I’ve seen this attitude expressed throughout China’s countryside, where the bulk of China’s protests occur. It is, I think, one of the perverse reasons why the Communist Party can maintain power in China. The Party has generally succeeded in creating this distinction between local and central authorities – even though none really exists.

The tendency of Chinese to buy into this distinction is known to Chinese as the “blue sky” syndrome. The term comes from Judge Bao Qingtian, or “Blue Sky” Bao, a famed incorruptible judge in the Song Dynasty. Bao is revered in Chinese history as an idealized “pure official.”

Some have suggested the “Blue Sky” syndrome is a tactic used by Chinese protesters, who figure that if they damn the whole system, they’ll be crushed by its weight. I disagree. And time has shown that the local Party bosses are as tough with “Blue Skiers” as they are with any other protesters. I think their support of the central government, while perhaps misguided, is genuine. They really believe in a “Blue Sky” Bao who will fly down from heaven (or Beijing) and sweep away the local trolls. Dream on, my nongmin friends.

If what Pomfret says is true, then I would have to give the CCP very high marks for successfully embedding this Blue Sky notion in the minds of nearly all of us. I admit, I have at times accepted it as a given, that the party in Beijing simply has no control over local party criminals. Here’s what I wrote about it back when I was in Taiwan after attending a talk with the country’s former defense minister Lin Chong Pin:

There are two Chinas and they exist in separate universes. Now, this is not any great revelation. We’ve discussed it here many times, especially in regard to local officials who are free to act at whim with no fear of reprisal or justice, existing literally in a universe apart from The central Party. Lin said the great paradox here is that despite Hu’s awesome power, he is literally helpless to make any changes in China’s domestic situation, only in its foreign policy (which, granted, can then in turn affect China’s domestic situation).

So I’ve been thinking about this paradox all week. Should we admire Hu Jintao as the Bismarck or Metternich of his time, using political skill to achieve enviable results? Or should we laugh at him for being utterly impotent to effect any meaningful change in the country over which he allegedly rules? If he is so utterly incapable of halting corruption, of freeing the innocent, of enforcing the law, of imprisoning unabashed scoundrel and murderers, why does he even live in China? Couldn’t he set up a condo in Bermuda and run China’s foreign policy from there? What difference does it make? According to Lin, he’s literally irrelevant to China’s domestic situation.

What an odd paradox, a leader with so much power, and at the same time a leader with no power at all.

But Pomfret says this is all an illusion, that the local/central party separation is a myth, and that Hu does indeed have power over his “local apparatchiks.”

Michael Anti writes to Pomfret and says he is quite right. Time to question another myth.

This is a must-read article that underscores the problem with the whole “AntiCNN” craze.

There is bias in all media, and the Western media have a mediocre track record at best when it comes to giving a fair and balanced view of Tibet and some other hot-button China-related issues. However, the rush to judgement and the frenzied attempts to jump onto the AntiCNN bandwagon have resulted in a lot of sloppy and indignant accusations of bias that simply do not, under further scrutiny, hold water. This excellent article tells you how they do it.

Please read the whole thing. Thanks to ESWN for the link.

Like Obama, Goggle is another entity that has enjoyed quasi-religious coverage in the media, branded with a halo and ingrained in the global psyche as the place to work, hands down, full stop. There is no place left to go after arriving at Google, right?

Since this is a universally accepted truth, this rather devastating article from the front page of today’s NY Times really took me by surprise. I admit, I, too, had been mesmerized by the image of Google as Paradise Regained. Reading the article, however, we learn there is perhaps less to Google than meets the eye.

I never thought I would find an story about day care so fascinating. But then, it’s about a lot more than day care. I suggest you go take a look.

Raj

Little needs to be said about the horrible situation in Zimbabwe – the stolen election, the attacks on opposition supporters, holding food back from people unless they voted for the Zanu-PF. The question is, will China continue to protect Mugabe?

UN Security Council permanent members Russia and China that are friendly to Mugabe are expected to block sanctions against the Zimbabwean leader

There is an alternative view that Russia doesn’t care that much so will not use its veto – that just leaves China.

Why would China back Mugabe? The country is not energy rich, nor is it a strategic base for Chinese military forces. So might China try to protect him because it sympathises with his suppression of opposition, or because it may want to use him as a way of deflecting international attention away from its own problems? I don’t know, but it would be foolish to help him out.

With all the criticism of China in just the last year, let alone the years before that, this would be a good time to show the world that it does care about atrocities outside its own borders, that China could be a positive world leader rather than a “I’m alright, Jack” country who could never be relied upon when the chips are down.

China would have a lot to gain and nothing to lose, save the belief that one can do whatever one pleases within one’s borders. Sadly that selfish attitude might be what motivates the CCP to oppose sanctions. If China decides to block sanctions, given all that has happened/is stil happening in Zimbabwe, it would cause even more trouble for the Beijing Olympics. I would like to be pleasantly surprised, but that would only be if China votes positively for sanctions – insisting they be watered down (though the proposals are hardly punitive as they are), not voting or not vetoing would be a case of trying to have one’s cake and eat it.

For those who may be unconvinced by recent media reports of “Uncle Bob”‘s betrayal of his own people, take a look at this video.

Shepherd Yuda, 36, fled the country this week with his wife and children. He said that he hoped the film, which was made for the Guardian, would help draw further attention to the violence and corruption in Zimbabwe. Much of the footage was shot inside the country’s notorious jail system. Yuda, who has worked in the prison service for 13 years, was motivated by the intensifying violence directed towards the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the murder, two months ago, of his uncle, a MDC activist…..

“I had never seen that kind of violence before,” said Yuda, of the run-up to the election. “How can a government that claimed to be democratically elected kill its people, murder its people, torture its people?”

The film, made for Guardian Films, shows how Yuda and his colleagues at Harare central jail had to fill in their ballots in front of Zanu-PF activists. Yuda also obtained footage of Zanu-PF rallies where voters were told they should pretend to be illiterate so that an official could fill in their ballot for them on behalf of Mugabe.

You should have been here tonight. Hell on earth. Torrential thunderstorms, floods, chaos and countless would-be Friday-night partyers frantically waving for available taxis that never came. I stood there for about 45 minutes, then ducked into a restaurant to eat, came back out and finally just gave up and walked home in the downpour. My shoes will probably disintegrate from the effluent I had to walk through.

I have to say, I hadn’t seen Beijing look that crazed and anarchic since the SARS days. What will happen if there’s a similarly cataclysmic thunderstorm during next month’s Games, with those millions of visitors in town? Not something I want to think about.

I’ll vote for him – I’d vote for practically any Democrat over “the Maverick” (who I once kind of respected until he showed sings of being Bush III). But all progressives with even a minimal portion of grey matter have to realize that something is really, really wrong. This is not the Obama who mesmerized us on those jubilant nights early on in the primary as he sailed from victory to victory, the one who was going to stand by principles above all else, never abandoning his moral compass. There is real cause for alarm here. Maybe, as some are saying, this is something he “has to do” to win over the center and independents. But how do we know which is the real Obama? That’s a scary question. Just how progressive is he?

And yes, I am still voting for him. And yes, I’m worried as hell as our last great hope transmogrifies into something quite different from what drew us to him a year ago.

Alarming tendencies. I’m deeply missing John Edwards and Al Gore.

July first – the anniversary of the CCP; Canada Day; birthday of Princes Diana, and of me, too. I will celebrate by working all day in a cubicle in Haidian (which I love). Thanks for staying with me during a busy year of erratic blogging.