Author: David Bandurski

Now Executive Director of the China Media Project, leading the project’s research and partnerships, David originally joined the project in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).

Why Pu Zhiqiang is not guilty

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

Pu Zhiqiang, a well-known rights lawyer and former CMP fellow, was detained by authorities in Beijing in early May after he participated in a private event to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the June 4th Incident. Pu remains in custody and authorities announced last week that they would move ahead to prosecute Pu on charges of “creating a public disturbance” (even though the event was private) and “illegally obtaining the personal information of citizens.”

Pu_Zhiqiang_crop
Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent Chinese lawyer and public intellectual, was detained by authorities in Beijing in early May 2014. Source: Wikipedia.
 
The following is our translation of a recent post by Pu Zhiqiang’s lawyer, Zhang Xuezhong (张雪忠), that has been actively deleted from China’s internet and social media. In it, Zhang argues the reasons why Pu Zhiqiang is not guilty.
We have included the original Chinese post after the English.

Lawyer Pu Zhiqiang has not committed any crime
— a preliminary analysis of the Pu Zhiqiang case
Zhang Xuezhong
June 13, 2014
Pu Zhiqiang is one of the most noted human rights lawyers in China. Today, the Beijing police announced via its official Weibo that “with approval from the prosecution authorities, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has arrested Pu Zhiqiang on June 13, 2014 on charges of picking quarrels and provoking troubles, and illegally obtaining citizens’ personal information.” Considering the facts of the case that are circulating on the Internet, (I) believe that the actions of Mr Pu do not constitute criminal offences. Below is an analysis of the two charges against him:
1. Illegally obtaining citizens’ personal information
It is said that the police charged Mr. Pu on the ground that he has requested information on business registration on behalf of some media organizations. If that is the case, Pu’s action does not constitute the crime of illegally obtaining citizens’ personal information under Article 253(a) of the Criminal Law.
First, shareholders of companies invest money and share the risk of the failure of the company. Under the limited liability system of shareholders, every company must disclose important information through the registration bodies of industry and commerce in order to protect the interest of potential business clients. The goal of company registration is to provide disclosure of information. This is the reason why Article 6, Clause 3 of the PRC Company Law clearly provides that “the public can request information on company registration at company registration authorities, (while) company registration authorities should provide such services.” Therefore, it is impossible to make it a crime for lawyers to seek information on any company on behalf of anybody.
Secondly, according to the provisions of Article 253 Section 1 Clause 2 (of the Criminal Law), illegally securing information refers to obtaining information by stealing or by methods in violation of the law. When a lawyer makes inquiries of a company’s registration information at the Administration for Industry and Commerce, they inquire according to the regulations and procedures stipulated by the Administration, or the lawyer will not be able to get the information. Under such circumstances, if the lawyer’s inquiry was illegal, the Administration would also have acted illegally by allowing the inquiry. It is therefore totally ridiculous for the Beijing police to consider a lawyer’s inquiry of business information an illegal act.
2. The crime of picking quarrels and provoking troubles
It is believed that police made these charges because Mr. Pu conducted a closed-door meeting at a friend’s home with Xu Youyu, Hao Jian, Hu Shigen, Liu Di, and others, to discuss an incident that happened 25 yeas ago. The police charge could possibly include two aspects. First, it is the action of attending the meeting. Second, it could be the act of distributing a group photograph on the Internet after the meeting. But both actions could not be construed as committing the crime of picking quarrels and provoking troubles.
First, Article 293 Clause 1 of the Criminal Law provides that “Whoever disrupts the social order by committing any of the following provocative and disturbing acts shall be sentenced to imprisonment of not more than 5 years, criminal detention or control: (1) Assaulting any other person at will, with execrable circumstances; (2) Chasing, intercepting, reviling or intimidating any other person, with execrable circumstances; (3) Taking or demanding forcibly or vandalizing or occupying at will public or private property, with serious circumstances; or (4) Making trouble in a public place, which causes a serious disorder of the public place. ”
Let us not discuss here the question if it is reasonable to legislate such a “pocket crime” (Translator’s note: “pocket crime” refers to the vague definition of the charges that anything can be stuffed into it.). The actions of the defendant in a private venue do not come under any clause of the above provision and should not be construed as committing the crime of picking quarrels and provoking troubles.
Second, “The Interpretation of Issues about Applicable Laws Dealing with Criminal Cases of Using Information Networks to Slander,” issued jointly by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate provides that “the dissemination of false information on information networks, which one has either invented or clearly knows to be fabricated information, or the organizing or inciting of others to disseminate it on information networks, creating an uproar and causing serious public disorder, is to be convicted and punished as the crime of ‘provocation and causing disturbances’ in accordance with article 293(4) of the Criminal Law.”
It defies common sense as well as the principles of criminal law for the above Interpretation to define Internet space as public space for the purpose of criminal law. But let us set aside the question of whether the Interpretation makes sense. The fact is that the defendant has published a group photo of the gathering on the Internet, and did not fabricate or distribute false information. Hence, it is inappropriate to apply the provisions of the above Interpretation to him.
What happened 25 years ago is a true historical event. We now have a citizen of a country discussing historical facts that took place in his own country. This is a tragic and fearful situation, one that is often referred to as the state of “daoluyimu”, (Translator’s note: that friends would only acknowledge each other by eye contacts in public, since they are too afraid to talk to each other for fear of retaliation by oppressive authorities.)
The discussion above shows that Mr. Pu’s actions do not constitute crimes in a fundamental sense. ( I ) hope that the Beijing police authorities will withdraw immediately the erroneous charges against the defendant, and cease from oppressing the innocent and sparking public furor.

Zhang Xuezhong’s original Chinese-language post, which has now mostly disappeared from social media and blog sites in China, follows:

浦志强律师何罪之有？
————关于浦志强案的初步法律分析
张雪忠
浦志强是中国最著名的人权律师之一。今日，北京警方官方微博发布的消息称，“经检察机关批准，2014年6月13日，北京市公安局以涉嫌寻衅滋事罪、非法获取公民个人信息罪对浦志强依法执行逮捕。”但据目前网传的案情而言，浦志强律师的行为根本不构成犯罪，现对本案所涉的两个罪名依次分析如下：
一、非法获取公民个人信息罪
据称，警方对浦律师的这一指控，是因为他曾受一些媒体之托，查询过一些公司企业的工商登记资料。若是如此，浦的行为根本不构成刑法第253条之一第2款规定的非法获取公民个人信息罪。
首先，公司股东仅以出资为限，承担公司经营失败的风险；基于这种股东有限责任制度，任何公司于设立时，都必须通过工商登记向公众公示各种重要信息，以保障潜在交易者的交易安全。公司企业工商登记的目的和宗旨，即在于信息之公开。正是因为如此，《公司法》第6条第3款特明确规定：“公众可以向公司登记机关申请查询公司登记事项，公司登记机关应当提供查询服务。”可见，律师为任何人查询任何公司的工商登记资料，都不可能构成犯罪。
其次，依刑法第253条之一第2款的规定，非法获取是指以窃取或者违法的方式获取。律师到工商局查询公司的工商登记信息，都是按照工商局要求的程序和手续进行的，否则就不可能获得工商局的查询许可。在这种情况下，如果是律师的查询是非法的，那等于说工商局准许查询的许可也是非法的。可见，北京警方把律师依法查询工商资料的行为视为犯罪，简直是荒谬绝伦。
二、寻衅滋事罪
据信，警方的这一指控，是因为浦志强律师与徐友渔、郝建、胡石根、刘荻等人，在朋友家召开闭门会议，研讨二十五年前发生的一次事件。警方指控的事可能包括两个方面：一是开会的行为；二是会后在网上发布合照的行为。但这两种行为都不可能构成寻衅滋事罪。
第一，刑法第293条第1款规定：“有下列寻衅滋事行为之一，破坏社会秩序的，处五年以下有期徒刑、拘役或者管制：（一）随意殴打他人，情节恶劣的；（二）追逐、拦截、辱骂、恐吓他人，情节恶劣的；（三）强拿硬要或者任意损毁、占用公私财物，情节严重的；（四）在公共场所起哄闹事，造成公共场所秩序严重混乱的。”
这里，我们姑且不讨论这一“口袋罪”立法是否合理的问题。本案当事人在私人场所开会的行为，不可能归入上述条款中的任何一项规定，因此不可能构成寻衅滋事罪。
第二，两高《关于办理利用信息网络实施诽谤等刑事案件适用法律若干问题的解释》第5条第2款规定：“编造虚假信息，或者明知是编造的虚假信息，在信息网络上散布，或者组织、指使人员在信息网络上散步，起哄闹事，造成公共秩序严重混乱的，依照刑法第二百九十三条第一款第（四）项的规定，以寻衅滋事罪定罪处罚。”
上述解释把网络空间界定为刑法上的公共场所，本来就既违背社会常识，也违反罪刑法定原则。但这里，仍姑且不谈论这一解释是否合理的问题。本案当事人开会的合照，在网上公布，也绝非编造或散布虚假信息，因此不可能适用上述解释的规定。
二十五年前发生的事件，是一起真实的历史事件。一个国家的公民，在自己朋友的家中，研讨自己国家发生过的史实，这种行为如果也能构成犯罪的话，那甚至比人们常说的“道路以目”还要可怕和可悲。
综上所述，浦志强律师的行为根本就不构成犯罪，希望北京警方立即撤销对当事人的错误指控，不要再一意孤行地迫害无辜、触犯众怒。
2014年6月13日

An Early End to the Masquerade

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

In a “White Paper” released on June 10 [full text in Chinese HERE], China’s State Council sought to clarify the terms of the “one country, two systems” principle that has governed the special administrative region since it was returned to China in 1997, an apparent response to plans by Hong Kong’s Occupy Central movement for an unofficial referendum this month on universal elections. “The high degree of autonomy enjoyed by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is not complete autonomy,” the paper said, “nor is it a separation of powers – rather it is a right to administration of regional affairs granted by the central authorities.”
By Chang Ping (长平)
It was in the run-up to Hong Kong’s “return” to China that President Jiang Zemin started trumpeting the idea of “ruling the country according to the law.” Of course, everyone knew that when it came right down to it, the Chinese Communist Party called the shots, that power superseded the law. But all of us — legal scholars, rights defenders and the media — started enthusiastically joining in this game we called “constructing rule of law” (法治建设).
We all entertained the happy fiction that this government which in fact was fundamentally opposed to constitutionalism and rule of law, was actually committed to making systemic improvements.
We regarded Hong Kong’s independent system of laws as a model for China’s “construction of rule of law.” We all thought “one country, two systems” was a clever strategy, because we trusted in this foundational fiction, that the Chinese Communist Party was committed to the kind of progress we hoped for. Many of us thought Hong Kong pointed the way to China’s future. Deng Xiaoping’s promise, “fifty years without change” (五十年不变), was enough — we were certain, after all, that the mainland’s political system would by then be a thing of the past.
In our fondness for these fictions, we overlooked the fundamentally aggressive nature of authoritarian power. Under authoritarianism, power is built on plunder, and there is no way it can be checked effectively. If there have been authoritarian regimes in the past that have maintained peace with other political systems, this was not because they were by their nature peace-loving but because they didn’t yet possess the means of dominating the other through aggression. If it is within their power to deny it, there is no way they will allow independence or autonomy.
At the same time, a democratic society governed by rule of law can’t possibly tolerate being positioned within an authoritarian motherland.
Just like the project of “constructing rule of law,” the idea of implementing “One Country, Two Systems” in Hong Kong was from the very beginning a masquerade, nothing more. All of the players are wearing masks. They can’t see the true nature of their dancing partners — nor do they really care to see. They can’t see through the mask, but they prefer the process of wishful thinking as they dance across the floor. From time to time, the hosts of the masquerade plan an unmasking for when the music stops, but many dancers scream with fear once they’ve seen the true identity of their partners. So the most intelligent thing to do is to keep the music going and avoid the inevitable, hoping beyond hopes that somehow the dancing itself will soften your partner’s steps, making them more graceful and amenable.
The Chinese Communist Party, its power swelling, has grown impatient with the masquerade. But a lot of people in Hong Kong and in China still hope the game can continue. They can’t bear to see the identity of their partner unmasked.
It wasn’t very long after Xi Jinping came to power that the mask of rule of law came off. He moved aggressively to restrain freedom of expression and lock up political dissidents. Even though the mask is off, there are still those who can’t face the truth. Xi only took his mask, they imagine, as a ploy to frighten those who dance to a different tune. Once his position is secure he will return to the masquerade.
This game of denial forms the backdrop of the State Council’s recent release of the “White Paper” on Hong Kong and the “one country, two systems” policy. I don’t agree with those who think the “White Paper” is directed at Occupy Central and the political reform referendum it has planned for later this month. In any case, Occupy Central is not the chief reason for the release of this “White Paper.” Without Occupy Central or this referendum, the mask would still have to come off. The masquerade would have to end. It’s possible that Occupy Central was the last straw — but it was not the decisive factor.
Those who think that somehow the calls issued by Occupy Central crossed the line and infuriated the central government, upsetting the apple cart of the “one country, two systems” policy, I just want to say, take a good hard look at how long intellectuals, journalists and rights lawyers inside China have danced the masquerade — and what do they have to show for it?
The brutishness of the “White Paper” caught many people by surprise, but a few still managed to keep the game going, seizing on that baffling phrase in the “White Paper” that says, “Devotion to the nation is a basic political ethic those in leadership positions must uphold.” This political ethic of “devotion” is outmoded. But even so, looking at the history of the Chinese Communist Party, this hasn’t meant obedience to the country’s rulers, but rather opposition to authoritarianism and the building of a “new China.”
Can we really continue playing this game? Isn’t it time to end the masquerade?
[This essay was originally published in Chinese on the website of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily.]


A lawyer who can't see his lawyer

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

The following post by Guo Yuhua (清华郭-于华), a professor at Tsinghua University with more than 13,000 followers on Sina Weibo, was deleted from Weibo yesterday, June 8, 2014, at 8:24 pm. [See more deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
The post shows a picture of human rights lawyer and former CMP fellow Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) holding a baby and smiling. Pu, one of China’s most high-profile lawyers, was arrested in May 2014 and charged with “causing a disturbance” after he attended a forum in Beijing on the commemoration of the 25rh anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. The post reads:

They won’t let him go, and they won’t even let him see his own lawyer. Where is the reason in that? [“furious” emoticon]

Journalist and New Citizens Movement member Xiao Shu (笑蜀) reported on WeChat on June 8 that Si Weijiang (斯伟江), appointed by Pu Zhiqiang’s wife as his legal counsel, would attempt to visit Pu in prison on the afternoon of June 9 after another designated counsel for Pu had been turned away by police who said he was “being arraigned.”

pu zhiqiang

The original Chinese is below:
不放人，又不让律师会见，是何道理？[怒]

What the Chinese people are thinking (3)

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Earlier this month, noted political scientist and historian Xu Youyu (徐友渔) was “criminally detained” by authorities in Beijing after taking part in a forum to commemorate this year’s 25th anniversary of the June Fourth crackdown on democracy demonstrations. As the anniversary that tragedy nears, CMP honors the intellectual tradition represented by Xu and others present at the May 3 forum — including CMP fellow Pu Zhiqiang — by publishing Xu’s 2012 Louis Green Lecture, delivered at Australia’s Monash University. We have divided the talk, originally titled “Intellectual Discourses in post-Mao China and Today,” into three parts.
Professor Warren Sun of Monash University, who extended the invitation to Xu Youyu in 2012, noted that Xu’s arrest this month was “sadly ironic” given that it coincided with President Xi Jinping’s commemoration of the 95th anniversary of China’s 1919 May Fourth Movement, whose spirit Xu Youyu and other reform-minded intellectuals embody.

xu

Nationalism rose abruptly in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century and became a remarkable social trend of thought. However, the emergence of nationalism can be traced to as early as the beginning of the 1990s when some scholars who were politically sensitive and willing to serve the party and the government suggested that patriotism and nationalism should be the main courses for the education of university students and government officials. Indeed a lesson had been drawn from the June Fourth event that political education in universities had been unsuccessful and that it was not enough just to instil Marxism into students.
The book China Can Say No published in 1996 manifested the fanaticism and irrationality of nationalist emotion. The book defines contemporary Chinese nationalism in such a way as to equate patriotism with opposition to America. The book and chapter titles reveal that the authors were expressing their anti- American feelings, for example “We don’t want most-favoured-nation treatment, and will never give it to you” and “We will never take a Boeing 777”. One of the basic points of view of the book is that American people are not only evil, but stupid. The authors assert that most Chinese high-school pupils have much more knowledge of American history and culture than American university students. That the American younger generation is on the road to degeneration and has been abandoned by human civilization is proved by their preoccupation with drugs, sex and electronic games.
The book The Chinese Road in the Shadow of Globalization, published in 1999, presented itself as an updated version of China Can Say No in response to the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia by NATO. After praising the demonstration against the USA held on 8 May, the book says: “At last, on May 8, 1999, we saw the life impulse of our nation and heard the shout from the soul of our nation.” Readers may find sentences like this one: “China has tried to be a good boy for many years in international affairs, so the USA and other countries which only understand and recognize power have forgotten China’s actual strength.” The authors of the book suggested that China should become a naughty boy paying no attention to its international image.
The most dangerous topic covered by the fanatical nationalists is that of Taiwan. The authors of China Can Say No advocated attacking Taiwan with military force immediately, saying that “an ordinary attack is not as good as a general offensive, and a late attack is not as good as an early offensive”. Talking about the “liberation” of Taiwan, Professor Chen Ming（陈明）, a representative of contemporary Confucianism in mainland China, said: “What is important is not military ability, but will and determination. If we fail the first time we can launch offensives for the second and third times. We call this fighting to the last drop of our blood.”
I call the nationalism held by some Chinese scholars and intellectuals cultural nationalism. Its basic idea is that Western civilization has been in crisis and that only Chinese culture can free the West from this crisis, so the twenty-first century will belong to Chinese culture. The most important advocate of this idea was Ji Xianlin（季羡林）, an old and famous scholar. According to Ji, every civilization is doomed to undergo a process of rise and decline. The time when Chinese culture will take a dominant position is coming now, since Western culture has been the guiding ideology in the world for several centuries. His argument for the above thesis is as follows. The essence of Chinese philosophy is the idea that heaven and men are one. The Chinese believe that men and nature are one entity. In contrast, the core of Western thought is contained in the maxim of Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power”, meaning that mankind should conquer nature by means of knowledge. The environmental and ecological crises in modern times come from the failure to balance the relationship between men and nature. Ji Xianlin concluded that mankind could be saved only by Chinese ethics and Chinese philosophy.
I do not agree with Professor Ji, but it is unnecessary at this moment to say what is wrong with his thesis in detail. I would like to point out only that Ji distorted the meaning of the doctrine of “heaven and earth are one”, which was a political philosophy serving imperial power and autocracy in ancient times, not a modern ecological philosophy at all. China has very serious environmental and ecological problems. China has set a bad, not a good, example for the world in this regard.
Cultural conservatism is a doctrine similar to cultural nationalism, whose concentrated expression is the so-called “Chinese national culture fever” advocating that reading and studying the classics of Confucius and Mencius should be put in the first place in education and ordinary life. This assertion was so influential in 2004 that the year was called the Chinese Cultural Conservative Year. The following important events took place at that time.
First, Jiang Qing（蒋庆）, a non-governmental scholar, put forward a slogan for “reading classics” about which a heated argument broke out. The book Basic Readings of the Chinese Cultural Classics in twelve volumes edited by Jiang Qing was published in this year. It was reported that children in five million families and over sixty cities had joined the ranks of reading Confucian classics. Second, some well-known cultural conservatives held a conference entitled “The Contemporary Destiny of Confucianism” in Guiyang in the summer of 2004. The meeting was also called the “Summit of Cultural Conservatives”. The participants wanted to apply the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius to the present Chinese political system and to political life. They hoped that the Chinese government would accept their suggestion.
Third, “The Cultural Summit Forum of 2004” was held in Beijing, and “A Cultural Manifesto of 2004” was published. This was sponsored by distinguished scholars such as Xu Jialu（许嘉璐）, Deputy President of the National Congress, Yang Zhengning（杨振宁）, winner of a Nobel physics prize, and Wang Meng（王蒙）, ex-Minister of Culture. The manifesto made the appeals that cultural tradition should be reevaluated and re-constructed and that the kernel of value of Chinese traditional culture should be carried forward.
I support the attempt and effort to rejuvenate Chinese traditional culture. In my opinion, traditional culture should play a more important role in education, ethics and other fields in today’s China. My disagreement with the cultural conservatives, however, is as follows. First, they think that the decline of traditional culture in modern times is due to the attack from the May Fourth New Culture Movement, but I maintain that criticism from scholars is unlikely to destroy Chinese culture. Only policies from government can trample upon culture. It is not the fault of liberal intellectuals that traditional culture has been regarded as a feudal prison and eliminated completely since 1949. Second, I believe that traditional culture can play a positive role only in cultural and personal ethical aspects, not in the political system. But some conservatives maintain that the political system should be arranged in accordance with the old doctrine and that the modern democratic political principle, such as equal political and legal rights for everyone, is not acceptable. Jiang Qing asked: “Why should an unemployed young man have the same right to vote as a professor?”
There has been a problem for Chinese intellectuals in how to deal with the relationship between rulers and themselves. In Chinese tradition, it is right and proper for intellectuals to think about and judge everything from the point of view of the state, but not from their own point of view or that of the people. For all Confucian scholars, being patriotic is the same as being loyal to the sovereign. This tradition was questioned and criticized in the 1980s when an author, Bai Hua (白桦) asked in his play: “What should be done if you love your country but it doesn’t love you?” The author and his work were criticized fiercely. Many intellectuals have changed their attitudes since the beginning of the twenty-first century. They think that the train of history is going in the direction guided by the party along with the economic rise of China. They are afraid of missing this train and losing their future. Some influential intellectuals make statist discourses. They think that the so-called “Chinese model” which violates human rights and pays no attention to social justice is the hope of mankind, for the secret of its success is that the government controls all political and economic power and can do whatever it wants. In their opinion the best example is the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. Others think that China will make contributions to human civilization with a new political system whose core is a new type of democracy, according to which the agreement and the authorization of the people are not necessary for the legitimacy of government. The key point is that the government should take care of the people just as a kindly father does for his children. Others again hold that the party may place itself above the constitution, this being thought reasonable because of China’s special condition. In this view the best institutional arrangement is to make the state and the party an integral whole. It can be predicted that the statist trend will be developed further among Chinese intellectuals, and I am very worried about that.
Fortunately, that is not the whole story for Chinese intellectuals. In my opinion, the most important progress made from the 1980s to the present day is that we have affirmed constitutional democracy as the objective. Perhaps some of you will be surprised at this, since constitutional democracy is a self-evident principle of state foundation and governance in many countries. Indeed it was put forward by some intellectuals and politicians as their political programme about a hundred years ago in China. I should like to point out that the civil wars, invasions by foreign countries and the communist revolution disrupted these early efforts to realize constitutional democracy in my country.
I believe that China can be a decent country, a qualified member in the big family of human civilization, only after the accomplishment of constitutional democracy. I also believe that the Chinese people will enjoy the sympathy and support of peoples all over the world, including in Australia, in the process of striving for this goal.

What the Chinese people are thinking (2)

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Earlier this month, noted political scientist and historian Xu Youyu (徐友渔) was “criminally detained” by authorities in Beijing after taking part in a forum to commemorate this year’s 25th anniversary of the June Fourth crackdown on democracy demonstrations. As the anniversary that tragedy nears, CMP honors the intellectual tradition represented by Xu and others present at the May 3 forum — including CMP fellow Pu Zhiqiang — by publishing Xu’s 2012 Louis Green Lecture, delivered at Australia’s Monash University. We have divided the talk, originally titled “Intellectual Discourses in post-Mao China and Today,” into three parts.
Professor Warren Sun of Monash University, who extended the invitation to Xu Youyu in 2012, noted that Xu’s arrest this month was “sadly ironic” given that it coincided with President Xi Jinping’s commemoration of the 95th anniversary of China’s 1919 May Fourth Movement, whose spirit Xu Youyu and other reform-minded intellectuals embody.

xu

By XU YOUYU
In the 1980s the basic political conflict in China was between those who favoured reform and an open-door policy and those who opposed them. The situation was not the same in the 1990s. The conservative bureaucrats who had resisted reform at first soon discovered that reforms did not threaten their positions or reduce their benefits. On the contrary, reform increased their opportunities, and these bureaucrats found they could pursue policies beneficial to themselves by flaunting the banner of reform.
There is a Chinese saying, “a waterside pavilion is the first to get the moonlight”. It means that a person in a favourable position gains special advantages, and Chinese bureaucrats have been in such a position. So whereas the basic dividing line in the 1980s was “reform or no reform”, in the 1990s it changed to “Which reform do you prefer?”
There was a change in values among Chinese intellectuals at the beginning of the 1990s. In the 1980s they had generally been in favour of science, freedom, democracy, rule of law, enlightenment, rationality and so on. In the 1990s, however, some young scholars began to advocate postmodernism. They argued that the ideas mentioned above belonged to the ideology of modernity and embodied Western cultural hegemony and Eurocentrism, and that their acceptance by Chinese intellectuals was a consequence of colonization by the West.
To be frank, I do not know what role postmodernism plays in its place of origin, Western society, but I am sure that it does not apply to China at present. In my debates with Chinese postmodernists I have pointed out that modernity or modernization does not need to be suppressed in China; on the contrary, it is a movement still to be accomplished.
The argument in my favour in the debate was that Western postmodernist masters, when they knew that their works had been translated into Chinese, wrote special prefaces for them, warning Chinese readers that postmodernism could not be imitated and that it belonged to a very complicated and special tradition.
Douwe Fokkema, the co-editor of Approaching Postmodernism, wrote that postmodernist discourses had definite geographical and social limitations. Further, that the postmodernist experiment was based on the luxurious lives led by distinguished Western cultural personages, and postmodernism had nothing to do with people who were living in hungry and poor conditions. He added that there was no living condition related to postmodernism, hence it was beyond imagination to accept postmodernism in the People’s Republic of China.
Chinese postmodernists often found fault with the modernists for their lack of critical spirit and for yielding to the Western hegemony of the discourse of modernity. I despised them for noisily criticizing American imperialism and for not talking about human rights in Beijing.
I often tell the following story in my lectures and papers. An American delegation of congressmen visited the Soviet Union and criticized the country for its lack of freedom of speech. They asked their hosts: “We can shout out the slogan ‘Down with Reagan!’ Do you dare to do the same?” A Russian replied without any hesitation, “Why not? Of course we dare to shout out ‘Down with Reagan!'” I tell my audience that the Chinese postmodernists displayed their courage and critical spirit by shouting out the slogan “Down with Reagan!” in Beijing.
The debates between liberalism and the New Left, which broke out in the middle of the 1990s, are phenomena that had rarely been seen among mainland Chinese intellectuals since 1949. They are large-scale, spontaneous debates without official manipulation or ideological constraint.
First of all, I should point out that the meanings of “liberalism” and “New Left” in China are not the same as they are in the West, just as “liberalism” and “conservatism” have different meanings in the United Kingdom and the United States. On almost every important political, social and cultural question in contemporary China, liberals and new Leftists hold opposite positions. Their disputes, however, can be seen to focus on the following issues.
The first issue concerns the market economy as the cause of social injustice. China is now in a period of social transition in which startling problems of consumption and social injustice have greatly concerned intellectuals. Both sides agree that the social malady is serious, but make different diagnoses of the cause.
The New Leftists hold that the problems come from the market economy itself and that it should therefore be criticized and boycotted. The liberals maintain that the injustice arises because the market in China has not broken free from the control of the old power system and is not mature and appropriately regulated. For them the way out is to regulate and consummate the market economy.
The second issue concerns globalization and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. New Leftists oppose China’s positive attitude towards globalization and the WTO and maintain that these developments will bring China into an unjust capitalist world system. They hold that the Western capitalist countries developed their economy by exploiting and enslaving other countries from the very beginning and that they now dominate the whole world just as they did in colonial times.
One New Leftist has said that the development of the Third World in present historical conditions can only be an unjust, even suicidal development, for development means only the transference of environmental pollution from Western industrial countries to developing ones. This author concluded that the only task for developing countries was to launch a worldwide battle against capitalism. In refutation, I said: “This claim is ridiculous and dangerous. Underdeveloped countries, if they believe this, will indulge in the illusion and fantasy of ‘world revolution’ and be backward forever. As a result, the gap between rich and poor countries will grow wider and wider.”
The third issue concerns the analysis of the internal condition of China. Some representatives of the New Left have attempted to prove that Chinese society in the 1990s was a capitalist or market society and a part of the capitalist world system. Therefore, “China’s problems should be seen at the same time as problems of the capitalist world market. Our diagnosis of issues regarding China should be part of a critical diagnosis of the issues of an increasingly globalized capitalism.”
Liberals responded to this thesis by holding that it originated not from the reality of China, but from misplaced theory: “Chinese New Leftists distort and excise the conditions of China in order to apply the fashionable theories of the West to China.”
The fourth issue concerns the evaluation of the Great Leap Forward, the People’s Communes and the Cultural Revolution. These political campaigns brought about tremendous disasters and pain for the Chinese; for example, the People’s Communes resulted in over 30 million people dying of hunger. These campaigns were criticized to a certain extent in the 1980s. The New Leftists were unhappy with the criticism, however, saying that the campaigns were a bold vision for an ideal society, and that the Chinese should not rashly abandon such a valuable socialist heritage.
One of them appealed for China to have a Cultural Revolution every seven or eight years just as Mao Zedong had advocated. This point of view was totally rejected by liberals, who argued that praise and advocacy of the Great Leap Forward, the People’s Communes and the Cultural Revolution were based on ignorance of China’s past and its real history, confusing disasters with socialist innovations.
The fifth issue concerns the evaluation of the Mind Liberation Movement in the 1980s and the May Fourth New Culture Movement. Some New Leftists attempted to negate and belittle these two enlightenment movements, which, in their opinion, demonstrated the unconditional subordination of Chinese intellectuals to Western discourses. One of them stated: “The May Fourth culture movement only copied European enlightenment discourse. The scholars of the May Fourth generation accepted colonial discourse while accepting enlightenment discourse; their minds and outlook were semi-colonized.”
Liberals defended the enlightenment, the Mind Liberation Movement in the 1980s and the May Fourth New Culture Movement. They argued that in the two movements Chinese progressive intellectuals did not mechanically follow Western discourse, but pushed forward mental liberation based on Chinese reality in order to solve China’s practical problems.
The sixth issue concerns international relations and radical nationalism. The Chinese New Left often supported the Chinese government in condemning hegemony when issues arose between China and Western countries, especially the United States. In this area, the typical opposition between liberals and the New Left concerned the relationship between human rights and state sovereignty.
The New Left shared the view of the official media in charging NATO with hegemony masked by the excuse of human rights when it intervened in Kosovo. After the September 11 terrorist attack, the New Left argued that the origin of the emergence and spread of terrorism was American hegemony and its diplomatic policy in the Middle East. In contrast, liberals emphasized the importance of human rights and the need to be on guard against radical nationalism. They held that the violation of human rights by a despotic government could not be defended by excuses of state sovereignty.
After the terrorist attack of September 11, many students, graduate students, lecturers and professors in Chinese universities and colleges were exhilarated by the incident. They bought alcohol and drank madly, let off firecrackers, wrote and put up posters, even organized demonstrations on campuses, rejoicing in the extreme suffering of hundreds of people in America.
Why were they so happy? The main reason was that they thought America had bombed China’s embassy in Yugoslavia and that an American warplane had shot down a Chinese fighter plane. China had been threatened and humiliated by the USA, but China was not powerful enough to confront America. For them the terrorist attack meant that braver fighters had avenged China, so they were pleased and excited.
Liberal intellectuals had a totally different position and attitude. They published a letter in the middle of September entitled “An open letter to President George W. Bush and the American people” over the names of Bao Zhunxin（包遵信） and Liu Xiaobo（刘晓波）, both of whom had been jailed for supporting the student prodemocratic movement in 1989. In this letter they condemned the terrorist attack and supported the American government and people. They said that the attack on America was a price the American people paid when they set up a global order of freedom. The letter ended with the sentence: “This evening we are American.” The number of signatories of the letter reached over 1000 within two weeks.
The letter was attacked indignantly by many people. Their attack focused on the last sentence “This evening we are American.” For them, to want to be American meant to not want to be Chinese. The liberals were accused of being traitors or “running dogs” of America.
What their attackers did not realize was that the sentence was an allusion to what American President John F. Kennedy said in the period of the Cold War when he visited West Berlin and faced the Berlin Wall. Kennedy said, in German: “Heute ich bin ein Berliner”, that is, “Today I am a Berliner.”
Obviously, President Kennedy did not mean that he wanted to be a German. The angry Chinese did not understand that it did not mean any change or choice of nationality, but that it was an expression of moral support.
Part three of Xu Youyu’s talk will be posted Friday, May 30. Click here to read part one.

What the Chinese people are thinking (1)

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Earlier this month, noted political scientist and historian Xu Youyu (徐友渔) was “criminally detained” by authorities in Beijing after taking part in a forum to commemorate this year’s 25th anniversary of the June Fourth crackdown on democracy demonstrations. As the anniversary that tragedy nears, CMP honors the intellectual tradition represented by Xu and others present at the May 3 forum — including CMP fellow Pu Zhiqiang — by publishing Xu’s 2012 Louis Green Lecture, delivered at Australia’s Monash University. We have divided the talk, originally titled “Intellectual Discourses in post-Mao China and Today,” into three parts.
Professor Warren Sun of Monash University, who extended the invitation to Xu Youyu in 2012, noted that Xu’s arrest this month was “sadly ironic” given that it coincided with President Xi Jinping’s commemoration of the 95th anniversary of China’s 1919 May Fourth Movement, whose spirit Xu Youyu and other reform-minded intellectuals embody.

xu

By XU YOUYU
I AM a philosopher, but I am not going to talk about philosophy this evening. As a Chinese public intellectual, I should like to say something about my country.
China has attracted worldwide attention in recent years because of the rapid growth of its economy. This growth has given rise to much discussion, and many wonder whether China’s tremendous economic and military capabilities spell good or bad fortune for its neighbouring countries, for the Pacific region and for the world. I do not want to dwell on this problem.
In my opinion it is more important to know what the Chinese people themselves are thinking. The economy and its material goods belong to the people, and it is essential to understand what this new prosperity means to its consumers. I shall focus on the points of view of Chinese intellectuals concerning their country and its future itinerary, noting that these opinions were formed and expressed only after the death of Mao Zedong.
Thirty-six years have passed since the death of Mao Zedong, the leader of mainland China, on 9 September 1976. Mao was one of those rare figures in the history of mankind to have made a deep impression on his country, either by causing the population to live in glory and happiness or by bringing it suffering and pain.
In ancient China there was a tyrant called Jie (桀) who provoked people to call: “We would rather perish together with you!” At the time of Mao’s death TV news reports and documentary films showed ordinary people crying and wailing loudly. It was as if their grief was so great that they wished they too had died, much as was seen after the deaths of the North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. What was not reported was that some Chinese rejoiced at Mao’s death and at the possibility of the restoration of normal life. On 9 September 1976 I belonged to the latter group. I had an optimistic premonition that there was hope for my life and for my motherland.
Mao’s death led to the end of the Cultural Revolution and to China’s transformation towards a market economy. Among Chinese intellectuals and philosophers there was a renewal of independent thought and intellectual discourses on history, society and culture. This latter development has made very slow progress, however.
I wish I could say that there has been a great change in the history of the People’s Republic of China, but I must remember what one writer told me: Eight hundred million Chinese people had only one head during the Cultural Revolution; that meant that only Mao Zedong was allowed to think, and everyone else had to obey. As a result, anything Mao Zedong approved of was said to be right, and anything he disapproved of was said to be wrong.
After Mao died, everybody realized he had a head on his shoulders and could think for himself. People also remember what Marshal Lin Biao, Mao’s assistant and successor, said during the Cultural Revolution: “Every sentence Chairman Mao says is truth, and one sentence of Chairman Mao works as ten thousand sentences.” Tens of thousands of Chinese were declared guilty, even sentenced to death, for questioning or disagreeing with what Mao said.
I call opinions on China’s modernization and future and social criticisms by Chinese intellectuals Chinese contemporary social thought —that is, non-governmental thought. The Party has monopolized theory, and thinking has been the privilege of the top leaders, for a very long time. Strictly speaking, Chinese contemporary social thought emerged in the 1990s, but our story should be narrated from the 1980s on. Although Chinese intellectual discourses or social thought did not come into being in the 1980s, they originated or bred in this period.
For Chinese intellectuals the 1980s are worth recalling. When that time is talked about we use terms like “culture fever” and “culture craze” to describe the variety and excitement of cultural activities in that decade. In my understanding “culture fever” indicates the tremendous enthusiasm demonstrated by Chinese citizens, especially university students. It may sound rather exaggerated to designate enthusiasm or interest as a “fever” or “craze”, but it is not unreasonable.
For example, people lined up throughout the night outside the doors of bookstores for literary masterpieces such as Anna Karenina or Shakespeare’s works. Almost every university student loved poetry, and almost everyone wanted to be a poet in China at that time. Almost every publishing house tried its best to produce “hot” items—surprisingly enough Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Heidegger’s Being and Time. These two books reached record sales figures of over 100,000 copies within several months.
The nature or character of the cultural activities of the 1980s was nongovernmental. None of them was organized by the Party or the government. It was the first time in the history of the People’s Republic of China that all books were chosen and edited by scholars, then given to official publishing houses to be printed.
Scholars and activists formally established non-governmental organizations usually called editorial boards. The five most influential ones were as follows. Firstly, the Towards the Future Editorial Board, whose core was composed of research fellows of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, young scholars good at the natural sciences who devoted their major efforts to recommending the methodology and world outlook brought about by recent scientific developments and who tried to investigate history and to predict the future with a new conception of that discipline.
Secondly, the Academy of Chinese Culture, which was headed by the grand old scholars studying Chinese traditional culture. They regarded reviving this field and recommending contemporary Confucianism as their duty.
Thirdly, the magazine New Enlightenment, which was edited by a group of open-minded Marxist theorists advocating an explanation of Marx based on humanitarianism.
Fourthly, the Culture: China and the World Editorial Committee, whose main task was the recommendation of twentieth-century Western humanities. I was a member of this group.
Finally, the 20th Century Book Editorial Board, which was engaged in translating and recommending Western social sciences such as sociology, science of law, economics, political science etc. Each group co-operated closely with certain publishing houses, helping them choose, organize, edit and publish many good books that would not have been possible otherwise.
It should be noted that people talked a lot about culture in the 1980s, but politics constituted the starting point and purpose. Everybody knew that the most important and pressing task was political, not cultural, but they had to advance by the roundabout cultural route because politics was a forbidden zone. So translation is needed in order to understand intellectual discourses in the 1980s. For example, when we criticized China’s feudalism, what we were actually referring to was the autocracy of contemporary China.
Some so-called rebellious and frightening opinions that the Party launched a campaign to criticize were in fact common sense. For example, Li Honglin (李洪林) maintained that there should be no “forbidden zone” in reading and that political problems could be discussed.i People were surprised at such daredevil slogans, and the newspapers and magazines publishing what he said were waiting for punishment. Perhaps we are astonished that such common sense was worth discussing.
However, when we think about some of the events of the past, we know that it can be life-threatening to espouse common sense in China. One example is Yu Luoke (遇罗克), who was sentenced to death as a thought criminal during the Cultural Revolution for insisting that the future of a young person should be determined by his or her performance, not by family background.
That those scholars, so-called teachers of youth or cultural heroes in the 1980s, were rather limited in their outlook and philosophy can be seen from an example. Liu Zaifu (刘再复), a respectful and enlightened teacher, was condemned as an advocate of bourgeois liberalization by the Chinese authorities in the 1980s. When he visited Claude Monet’s garden in France, he said excitedly: “Look, we failed to train and bring up any great painter like Monet under Chinese cultural policies.” He thought that he was criticizing the Chinese educational and cultural system, but at heart he was the same as the government officials. All of them thought that an Impressionist master like Monet could be trained and brought up under a certain system or policy.
The culture fever in the 1980s could also be called aesthetic fever, for the most important discipline at that time was aesthetics or literature. The most influential theorist was Li Zehou (李泽厚), an aesthete, and another influential theorist was Liu Zaifu, a literary critic.
People were concerned with politics in general, but they read and thought about problems of aesthetics, literature and ethics. The reason for this can be sought in Chinese traditional culture. The most interesting problem for the Chinese from ancient times to the present has been the so-called issue of ultimate concern — that is, how to be a gentle and noble person. There has been very little attention in the Chinese cultural tradition to the principles guiding social and political institutions.
It can be said that Chinese intellectuals were not prepared for any social movement or social transformation in the 1980s. They failed to give any practical advice or suggestions to students apart from expressions of moral support when the latter took to the streets and appealed to the authorities for democracy.
Part two of Xu Youyu’s talk will be posted Thursday, May 29.


CMP fellow Pu Zhiqiang held by police

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

Prominent rights defense lawyer and China Media Project fellow Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) was escorted from his home by Beijing police in the early hours of May 5 after taking part in a seminar commemorating the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations on June 4, 1989. Several others who attended the event, including well-known scholar Xu Youyu, were reportedly detained and remain unreachable. [Chinese report here]
Pu Zhiqiang was reportedly taken away by police under the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a crime often leveled against dissidents in China.

june 4 commemorators detained

Veteran journalist and CMP fellow Xiao Shu, whose China Citizens Movement website reported on the June Fourth seminar here, wrote on Facebook this afternoon:

We especially encourage civil society to face up to the abuse of police powers, and the dreadful trend of expanding police powers. The so-called [charge of] “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” was first expanded to the online world by the Supreme People’s Court [in cases where posts have] at least 500 re-posts. Now [these charges] of “picking quarrels” have expanded to cover scholars holding seminars, which is preposterous. The police state has grown more and more severe, so that civil rights cannot be protected and human rights are under assault.

Hong Kong’s RTHK quoted human rights activist Hu Jia (胡佳) as saying that the authorities hoped to create a climate of fear ahead of the 25th anniversary of June Fourth, dissuading Chinese from commemorating the event.
A diverse group of Chinese lawyers, writers, scholars and bereaved parents attended the May 3 seminar, which was called, “2014 Beijing Seminar on June Fourth Commemoration” (2014·北京·六四纪念研讨会).

*Cui Weiping (崔卫平), a professor at the Beijing Film Academy
*Guo Yuhua (郭于华), a professor of sociology at Tsinghua University
*Hao Jian (郝建), a Chinese film critic
*Hu Shigen (胡石根), a dissident writer
*Li Xuewen (黎学文), an independent writer and scholar from Beijing
*Liang Xiaoyan (梁晓燕), a former lecturer at Beijing Foreign Studies University who supported the students in 1989
*Liu Di (刘荻), an online dissident writer known by the moniker “stainless steel mouse”
*Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强), a well-known rights defense lawyer who has represented many cases related to freedom of speech
*Qin Hui (秦晖), a Chinese historian and public intellectual
*Wang Dongcheng (王东成), a professor at Beijing’s China Youth University for the Political Sciences
*Wu Wei (吴伟), an independent scholar who in the 1980s served in the Office for Political Reform Research (中央政治体制改革研讨小组办公室)
*Xu Youyu (徐友渔), a noted Chinese scholar of political science and history
*Ye Fu (野夫), an independent scholar
*Zhang Xianling (张先玲), the mother of a victim of the Tiananmen Incident
*Zhou Feng (周枫), an associate professor at the China Youth University for the Political Sciences

Addresses to the event in writing were also made by several noted public intellectuals who could not be present, including political scholar Chen Ziming (陈子明), legal scholar He Weifang (贺卫方) and writers Murong Xuecun (慕容雪村) and Wang Xiaoshan (王小山).

What is the Price of Press Censorship?

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

Recently, the deputy chief of the Internet Team of the Haikou City Public Security Department was sentenced to 10 years in prison. His crime: accepting bribes. Local media made a point of obscuring his name, identifying him simply as Wei X-Ning (魏某宁). Only when Southern Weekly followed up with an investigative report did everyone learn that his name was Wei Yining (魏一宁).
But one thing no media inside China bothered to talk about was the fact that this was a case of corruption in which the power to control the press (舆论监控) was abused — and the case should prompt deeper reflection on corruption of the propaganda system itself.
The court found that Wei Yining had used “the convenience of his position,” with the power to control the internet, to delete more than 280 internet posts in exchange for around 700,000 yuan. The bribe payers were 11 web police from the public security bureaus of 11 local cities in 6 provinces. They were responsible [to their local superiors] for removing posts on two major Haikou-based websites that was detrimental to the image of their local governments. They would pay up, and Wei Yining would send down an order for the posts to be deleted.
The way this was done was actually quite simple. Once the local internet control officers had paid Wei Yining the fee he demanded, Wei would issue orders for deletion of the content to senior web managers at the sites in question via QQ message. For the web managers executing such orders was simply a matter of habit. Even if they had their doubts, they wouldn’t dare say anything. Generally, it would take only 10 minutes for an order to be executed from start to finish.
Censorship for Hire
The Wei Yining case makes clear just how much room there is for corruption in the execution of ostensible official business. It is now routine practice for local governments to pay for the removal of criticism or for the promotion of laudatory coverage.
Many people have already noticed the way that official Party mouthpieces and individuals can enrich themselves by virtue of their official power and monopoly status. Local governments, for example, engage in all sorts of misconduct in order to ensure that their own local prestige projects (形象工程) are reported on China Central Television.
According to a report from The Beijing News, there is now a case before the court in Beijing’s Fengtai District in which it has emerged that a public relations company was searching online for negative news about governments and enterprises and then approaching them with offers to delete the content for between 500 yuan and 2,000 yuan per item. The suspects in that case include a person named “Liu X” who is identified as an internet cop. This Liu X was allegedly using his position as an internet cop — responsible for removing pornography and other undesirable content — in order to delete posts on behalf of this public relations company. The case is estimated to involve more than one million yuan in bribes.
The Golden Goose of Propaganda
The fact that Chinese media don’t dare report is that in the larger context of corruption within the propaganda regime, these web police are actually insignificant. The golden goose is the propaganda department and its local branches. The propaganda department controls not just the internet, but also newspapers, television and book publishing. It has not just the power to order the deletion of web posts, but can also tell all of the media under its shadow what needs to be reported.
Moreover, the propaganda department also controls personnel issues for the vast majority of media. It can order the punishment of media staff, remove publishers or editors in chief, and even tell media to fire journalists. Many local propaganda departments even have the power to impose economic sanctions on media.
I wrote an article last year for the iSun Times called “Striking Back Against the Propaganda Department” (“反击宣传部”), which recently won a Human Rights Press Award in Hong Kong. In that article I talk about two basic characteristics of propaganda departments. First, they operate without checks and balances. Second, they are completely non-transparent. There are no mechanisms, not even with the Chinese Communist Party apparatus, to check propaganda departments and address problems. Most resolutions or instructions from administrative departments in China are documented, and in many cases they must be open to the public. But the bans issued by the propaganda department are protected by the justification of national secrecy — and propaganda organs are in fact less and less willing to leave any sort of trail.
Who Watches the Propaganda Department?
It’s probably difficult for most people even to imagine how a junior web control official can swallow millions in bribes. How much more is possible for a senior-level propaganda official with nearly boundless power? But the secret nature of propaganda work is such that no media would ever dare expose corruption among the commissars charged with keeping them in line.
However, if you conduct an internet search for the term “bribery by propaganda officials” (宣传部长受贿), you will discover to your surprise that a great many propaganda heads or deputy heads have been removed for corruption. Looking at the public trials or investigations for propaganda officials we’ve seen recently, we have big fish like former deputy propaganda chiefs Li Dongsheng (李东生) and Shen Weichen (申维辰), and small fry like the former deputy propaganda chief of Zhejiang’s Yuhuan County, Geng Jiangping (耿江平). And between these there are no doubt countless propaganda officials acting with impunity.
You will find, however, the none of these propaganda officials have been tried for corruption they engaged in while serving in propaganda positions. No one it seems (based on our partial sample) has been tried for abusing their power to censor the media.
Is is that there’s no fat to skim off the surface in propaganda posts? Is it that the conduct of these officials was unimpeachable while they serve in propaganda posts? This recent case against internet cop Wei Yining suggests that the answer to both questions is NO, and that this corruption is just the tip of the iceberg.
This article was first published in Chinese at PaoPao.

"Your post is inappropriate"

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

On April 11, 2014, the day a Chinese court upheld a four-year jail sentence for lawyer Xu Zhiyong, the founder of the New Citizens Movement, I posted the following Chinese passage from Xu on Sina Weibo.

公民们，就让我们从现在开始吧。无论你身在何处，无论你从事何种职业，无论你贫穷还是富裕，让我们在内心深处，在现实生活中，在互联网上，在中华大地的每一寸土地上，坚定而自豪地说出本来属于我们的身份： 我是公民，我们是公民.
Citizens, let us begin from this moment. No matter where you are, no matter what your profession, rich or poor, let us in the depths of our hearts, in our daily lives, on the internet, and on every inch of this vast land, firmly and loudly declare the identity that rightfully belongs to us: I am a citizen; we are citizens.

The post was removed minutes later, and I was sent the following personal message from Sina:

a

Hello, you have been informed on by another user for violation of regulations. According to Sina Weibo Community Management Regulations, your post made on April 11, 2014, at 11:39:37, “Citizens, let us begin from this moment …” has already been designated as inappropriate for public sharing.

I was directed to a “Help Center” that listed out questions any user whose post suffered a similar fate might wish to ask. Like this one:
Why have I been notified that I’ve said something I can’t?
Answer:

In order to provide users with a clean Weibo environment, if your Weibo account is disciplined because it was found to have violated the Sina Weibo Community Regulations or relevant laws, regulations or policies, you might result in your inability to make subsequent posts. The specific time of the punishment will generally be sent to you by private notice. You are advised to check your private inbox to confirm. In order to avoid this situation happening again, we advise you to share healthy and upright Weibo content.


I am a citizen

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

The second trial of lawyer Xu Zhiyong, the founder of the New Citizens Movement, is set to begin in Beijing this morning. For more, see our post yesterday.
The following are Xu Zhiyong’s words, conveying the spirit of the New Citizens Movement and shared today by the movement’s members:

Citizens, let us begin from this moment. No matter where you are, no matter what your profession, rich or poor, let us in the depths of our hearts, in our daily lives, on the internet, and on every inch of this vast land, firmly and loudly declare the identity that rightfully belongs to us: I am a citizen; we are citizens.
公民们，就让我们从现在开始吧。无论你身在何处，无论你从事何种职业，无论你贫穷还是富裕，让我们在内心深处，在现实生活中，在互联网上，在中华大地的每一寸土地上，坚定而自豪地说出本来属于我们的身份： 我是公民，我们是公民.

xu zhiyong

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