The History Book Club discussion
CHINA
>
CHINA
Mod
China is planning to create the world's biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world...
Hi Bentley, can I mention a new book due out soon that covers European involvement in China; "The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914" by Robert Bickers. It looks quite interesting and I am tossing up if I should order a copy or not.
by Robert A. BickersDescription:
In the early 19th century China remained almost untouched by Britain and other European powers - ferocious laws forbade all trade with the West outside one tiny area of Canton. Anyone teaching a European to speak Chinese was executed. But as new technology began to unbalance the relationship, foreigners gathered like wolves around the weakening Qing Empire. Would the Chinese suffer the fate of much of the rest of the world, carved into pieces by the Europeans? Or could they adapt rapidly enough to maintain their independence? Humiliated by military disaster, racked by rebellions that cost millions of lives and ultimately invaded during the Boxer Rebellion by thousands of foreign soldiers, it looked as though the colonial Scramble for Africa was about to be followed by the Scramble for China. This extraordinary new book tells this epic story both from the European (mainly British) point of view and the Chinese. The degradation of China in this period is crucially important to understanding China today, whose government and people are steeped in stories of this terrible time and never wish to appear weak again. The Scramble for China is both highly original and brilliantly written - it reimagines these encounters between two equally arrogant and scornful civilizations, whether from the point of view of a Chinese governor or a British soldier. It is an epic of squalor, romance, brutality and exoticism, and it changed the world.
[
Mod
Mod
Source: Network NewsXPROFILE
BEIJING - A previously unknown group has urged Chinese citizens to replicate the popular protests in the Middle East and North Africa by staging peaceful "jasmine rallies" in cities across China every Sunday afternoon to demand greater accountability, an independent judiciary and an end to corruption.
The call went out in an unsigned open letter posted on a Chinese-language Web site, Boxun.com, a bulletin board for mostly overseas Chinese dissidents and bloggers that is blocked by China's Internet firewall. It was unclear how many Chinese could see the appeal or take part.
The letter listed public squares, parks and department stores in 13 cities where the nonviolent "strolls" would take place. It said people in cities not listed should go to the central square in their cities and do the same.
Chinese authorities appear to be watching closely for signs of unrest. Last weekend, President Hu Jintao called an urgent meeting at the Central Party School to tell his provincial and ministerial colleagues to be mindful of "social conflict" brewing in society.
Mod
Twitter is blocked in China but similar local services have tens of millions of users
China has warned the US not to use calls for internet freedom as an excuse to meddle in other countries' affairs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-...
Mod
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06...
Source: Bloomberg
Mod
As U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta tours Asia this week, he will find a region increasingly nervous about its future. Not unlike Europe in the late 19th century, nations large and small are seeking to enmesh themselves in webs of protective relationships that in turn feed the insecurities of others. The result is a worsening of the risk cycle and the increased possibility that miscalculation or nationalist fervor will trump common sense.
How reducing the Pentagon’s planned expenditures by nearly $500 billion over the next decade will limit the U.S. ability to maintain stability in Asia is a major concern of Asian states and should be a central part of the American debate over the next several years.
The cause for most of the worry in Asia is not simply the growth in Chinese military power over the past decade. Rather, it is the ways in which China is now exercising its new abilities. In particular, given the importance of trade routes, the expansion of the Chinese Navy’s operations throughout the East and South China Seas is causing alarm.
In the East China Sea, where both the United States and Japan maintain significant naval forces, China has largely limited itself to probing around the territory of Japan and ostentatiously sending flotillas through waterways near Japanese islands. Yet a near crisis last year over Japan’s detention of a Chinese fishing vessel in waters around the strategically important Senkaku islands revealed that Beijing was not afraid to take on the region’s largest democracy.
By comparison, the smaller nations of Southeast Asia field a very limited naval presence in the waters that lead to the Malacca Strait and link the western Pacific to the Indian Ocean. In the south, Chinese ships have been far more active and have been charged with interfering with vessels from nations ranging from the United States to Vietnam. In one incident in June 2010, an armed Chinese maritime fisheries vessel trained its gun on a smaller Indonesian naval ship that had detained a Chinese private fishing boat in Indonesian waters.
Remainder of article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/opi...
The New York Times
by the author of
by Michael R. Auslin
Mod
China 'to withdraw' foreign car investment support
Many of the world's leading carmakers are looking to boost sales in China.
China has said it will withdraw support for foreign investment in the country's car industry to encourage domestic carmakers, according to state media.
The Xinhua news agency cited a joint announcement from the Ministry of Commerce and the National Reform and Development Commission.
The report did not provide details of what support was being withdrawn.
Some of the world's largest carmakers, including America's General Motors and Germany's Volkswagen, operate in China.
The country is the world's largest car market.
According to Xinhua, Beijing will "withdraw support for foreign capital in auto manufacturing... because of the need of the healthy development of domestic auto making".
A number of the world's leading carmakers, particularly luxury brands, are focusing on boosting sales in China to compensate for weak demand caused by slow economic growth and the eurozone debt crisis.
Earlier this month, China said it would levy duties on some cars made in the US.
China's commerce ministry said in a statement that vehicles were being dumped on the Chinese market, causing damage to the domestic industry.
See remainder of article:
Source: BBC news
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16...
Mod
IPhone Scarcity During Chinese New Year May Benefit Samsung
January 19, 2012, 6:53 PM EST
Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc., whose skill at hyping new products helped make it the world’s most valuable technology company, became a victim of its own success after a botched introduction of its iPhone 4S in China led it to suspend sales.
Would-be customers who waited overnight as temperatures dropped below minus 9 degrees Celsius reacted with fury after the company’s main store in Beijing’s Sanlitun district failed to open. The company sold out of the handsets at stores that did open and later halted sales of all iPhones at its five retail outlets in the country “for the time being,” spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said by phone.
Apple had advertised that the store would open at 7 a.m. At 7:15 a.m., people began chanting “Open the door!” and “Liars!” after an unidentified man said over a bullhorn that the phone wouldn’t go on sale today, without giving an explanation. The store stayed closed “for safety reasons,” Wu said. Beijing police temporarily cordoned off the shop after it was pelted with eggs by the crowd.
“This is a debacle,” Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, a Shanghai-based retail advising company, said in a phone interview today. “Everybody knows there will be massive numbers of people when Apple has this kind of a launch. This shows very poor retail management ability
Two articles:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012...
and
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012...
Video:
http://www.usatoday.com/video/index.h...
Reuters (good video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Wq3_...
Mod
(Reuters) - China's leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping on Friday swiped away fears that his country's economic growth could stumble, and turned to courting American companies and states hungry for a slice of that growth on the final day of his U.S. visit.
Vice President Xi and his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden suggested that Xi's five-day trip, with its mixture of diplomacy and folksy public displays, could pave the way for steadier ties between the world's two biggest economies.
Xi (pronounced like "shee") told a business forum in Los Angeles that China will continue to promote greater domestic demand and turn more to the United States as a source of imports and site for investment.
Remainder of article and video:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/0...
Source: Reuters
China top military paper warns of armed confrontation over seasBy Chris Buckley | Reuters, April 20, 2012
China's top military newspaper warned the United States on Saturday that U.S.-Philippine military exercises have fanned risks of armed confrontation over the disputed South China Sea.
The commentary in China's Liberation Army Daily falls short of a formal government statement, but marks the harshest high-level warning yet from Beijing about tensions with the Philippines over disputed seas where both countries have recently sent ships to assert their claims.
This week American and Filipino troops launched a fortnight of annual naval drills amid the stand-off between Beijing and Manila, who have accused each other of encroaching on sovereign seas near the Scarborough Shoal, west of a former U.S. navy base at Subic Bay.
The joint exercises are held in different seas around the Philippines; the leg that takes place in the South China Sea area starts on Monday.
"Anyone with clear eyes saw long ago that behind these drills is reflected a mentality that will lead the South China Sea issue down a fork in the road towards military confrontation and resolution through armed force," said the commentary in the Chinese paper, which is the chief mouthpiece of the People's Liberation Army.
"Through this kind of meddling and intervention, the United States will only stir up the entire South China Sea situation towards increasing chaos, and this will inevitably have a massive impact on regional peace and stability."
Up to now, China has chided the Philippines over the dispute about the uninhabited shoal known in the Philippines as the Panatag Shoal and which China calls Huangyan, about 124 nautical miles off the main Philippine island of Luzon.
China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan in the South China Sea, which could be rich in oil and gas and is spanned by busy shipping lanes.
Remainder of article: http://news.yahoo.com/china-top-milit...
by Bronson Percival (no photo)
Mod
Mod
China's web users are powering dissent
Tens of thousands of people have responded to Ai Weiwei's internet appeal for financial support
This week has seen an extraordinary surge in support for the artist and government critic, Ai Weiwei, from people around China.
By midday on Friday, one of his staff members says, 7.57m yuan (£740,000; $1.19m) had been donated to help the artist fight his tax demand from the government.
That is over a million dollars raised in little more than a week.
Without a doubt it is the appeals for help that have gone out over the internet that are behind this.
They have been posted by Ai Weiwei and others on China's microblogs.
More than 26,000 people have come forward.
Many of them are convinced the tax demand is an attempt to silence Mr Ai and they want to show their backing for him.
Famous for helping design Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium for the Olympics, Ai Weiwei has become of the most vocal critics of the ruling Communist Party.
Before his arrest the internet was the tool that he used to spread his thoughts.
He would spend hours avidly posting on Twitter or his Chinese microblogs.
Some of Ai Weiwei's supporters sent cash in envelopes, others used paper aeroplanes to launch it over a wall into his garden
Since he was held in secret detention earlier this year, then presented with his tax demand, he has been confined to Beijing and is officially banned from giving interviews.
But he has returned to the internet and that is what has enabled Ai Weiwei to reach out to those sympathetic to him.
The numbers responding seem to have surprised even the artist himself.
China's authorities have demanded that he pay 15.22 million yuan. To fight the claim he has to put down half that sum as collateral.
Not long after midday on Friday he had raised just about enough and announced that he would challenge the demand.
Without his internet fundraising it is almost certain he would never have had the cash to be able to keep up his defiance.
'Healthy internet culture'
A few hundred miles away near Linyi city, another campaign of internet-powered dissent is playing out.
The blind, self-taught lawyer Chen Guangcheng will spend his birthday on Saturday still confined to his home by local authorities.
The building is floodlit, all communication with the outside world severed.
Chen Guangcheng's supporters are using social media to co-ordinate their campaign.
Chen Guangcheng spent four years in jail, convicted of organising a group to disturb traffic and damage property.
Most believe he was really targeted for highlighting official abuses like a campaign of forced abortions by local authorities.
Since his release more than a year ago, he and his family have been kept under unofficial house arrest, illegally, human rights groups say.
Chen Guangcheng's supporters will almost certainly use the occasion of his birthday to try, yet again, to visit him.
For weeks now they have been turning up in small groups at his village.
It is an unprecedented campaign by ordinary Chinese to reach someone the authorities have placed under detention.
All those attempting to get to him are intercepted by guards posted around the village - and many have been beaten up - but still they keep trying.
Again it is the internet and mobile phones they are using to co-ordinate and organise their defiance.
Last weekend, Communist Party officials called in senior executives from more than three dozen internet, telecommunications and technology companies to discuss controlling the flow of information on the internet.
They included the bosses of the main microblog services.
It was reported that they were urged to develop a "healthy internet culture."
And on Friday the General Administration of Press and Publications, the government department which regulates the print media, published new rules that ban news media from reporting any information on the internet unless it can be verified.
"Unverified reports are on an upward trend, and to a certain extent that has undermined the government's image, disrupted the information order, reduced the credibility of the media and brought a strong social response," the agency said.
Those new rules are designed to counter what officials say is the spread of "rumours" that can harm social stability.
That, of course, is a genuine concern for many governments.
But in two different parts of China, the supporters of Ai Weiwei and Chen Guangcheng are finding a new space on the internet to rally backers for their causes.
It is no wonder that the issue of how to control China's hundreds of millions of microblog users seems to be becoming more and more of a headache for the Communist Party.
Source: BBC
Mod
Chen Guangcheng's supporters are using social media to co-ordinate their campaign
Mod
Mod
BEIJING (Reuters) - Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng left the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday after winning striking concessions from Communist Party authorities that will keep him as a pivotal figure in China-U.S. relations.
Chen's dramatic escape from house arrest and his flight to the U.S. Embassy have already made him a symbol of resistance to China's shackles on dissent, and the deal struck between Washington and Beijing to have him remain in China will ensure he stays an international test case of how tight or loose those shackles remain.
China's Foreign Ministry said the blind Chen, who escaped the watch of the world's biggest internal security apparatus, had left the embassy of his own will. But the ministry criticised the United States' role, saying it was meddling in its domestic affairs.
Washington has said it will watch his treatment closely, and any effort by Beijing to fetter his activities could provide a new source of contention.
But it is far from certain that Chinese authorities, especially nervous with a leadership succession later this year, will grant him free rein.
Chen had not requested asylum or safe passage to the United States days after a daring escape from house arrest on April 21, a U.S. official said.
"I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng's stay and departure from the U.S. Embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Beijing where she had arrived hours earlier for this week's top-level U.S.-China talks.
"(Chen) has a number of understandings with the Chinese government about his future, including the opportunity to pursue higher education in a safe environment. Making these commitments a reality is the next crucial task. The United States government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr. Chen and his family in the days, weeks and years ahead."
The drama over Chen, who was driven to a Beijing hospital accompanied by U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke, threatens to overshadow this week's U.S.-China talks.
Quite apart from the importance of developing ties between the world's two largest economies, both governments are aware of the impact the case could have on their domestic politics.
Later this year, U.S. President Barack Obama will seek a second term, knowing that his Republican foes are already accusing him of being too soft on China. They may now criticise him for not doing enough to ensure the activist's safety.
Also later this year, China's ruling Communist Party will bring in a new set of leaders, a normally well choreographed process that has been wrong-footed by a scandal enveloping senior leader Bo Xilai. That too was triggered after a senior Bo aide sought refuge in a U.S. diplomatic mission.
Some analysts said the issue appears to have divided the top leadership and may have upset hardliners who want to keep a firm lid on any thing they see as undermining Party rule.
"As soon as you lighten the pressure on dissidents or political activists, a herd of them are going to wake up and are going to stand up," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China political expert at Hong Kong's Baptist University.
CHINESE PUBLIC ANGER
The Chinese Foreign Ministry's first public reaction was anger.
"The U.S. method was interference in Chinese domestic affairs, and this is totally unacceptable to China. China demands that the United States apologise over this, thoroughly investigate this incident, punish those who are responsible, and give assurances that such incidents will not recur," ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a statement.
Rights lawyer Teng Biao said he had spoken briefly with Chen's wife, Yuan Weijing, and said that both she and their two children were now in Beijing.
He had no details on how they had been treated since Chen escaped.
"I think the outcome has been positive for China's human rights situation," said Li Fangping, a Beijing lawyer who has defended dissidents and protesters. "... it shows that the international community has a role to play in cases like this."
Censors were still blocking searches for Chen's name on China's wildly popular Twitter-like service Weibo, but many people were able to skirt restrictions by simply calling him "the blind lawyer".
"I've beaten the censors to find out about this great event - respect to the blind lawyer," wrote one user.
"The blind lawyer has broken out from the stockade to freedom. So gratifying," added another.
As for Chen himself, he was in high spirits. A U.S. official quoted him as telling Clinton by phone: "I want to kiss you."
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard, Don Durfee, Lucy Hornby and Michael Martina in Beijing and Brian Rhoads, James Pomfret and Tan Ee Lyn in Hong Kong; Writing by Jonathan Thatcher; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Mod
BEIJING — For several hours, it appeared the U.S. and China had struck a deal that would allow Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng to walk free — and avoid a diplomatic disaster.
American officials said Wednesday that they had had obtained promises from Chinese authorities that the blind 40-year-old lawyer could live in a Chinese city of his choice and attend a university to continue his legal education. They portrayed Chen, who had dramatically fled house arrest in his village for the protection ofthe U.S. Embassyhundreds of miles away in Beijing, as exuberant over the deal.
But shortly after Chen was released from the embassy on Wednesday, he appeared to question whether officials had dealt with him in good faith. In a series of phone interviews from a hospital room, Chen said he had agreed to remain in China under the U.S.-devised deal only because American officials had told him that his wife would be beaten to death if he left the country.
"We'd like to rest in a place outside China," Chen said in an interview late Wednesday with the Associated Press. He entreated U.S. officials for help in leaving for a safe refuge.
The cascade of events left U.S.-Chinese relations in a questionable state and threatened to deliver an embarrassing blow to the Obama administration.
American officials, who had hoped they were on the verge of a diplomatic triumph, denied that they had warned Chen that harm could come to his wife, and scrambled to convince skeptical Chinese activists and the world that in their six days of tense negotiations they sought only to do what Chen had wanted.
But the setback risked damage to the administration's efforts to show itself strongly committed to the cause of human rights in China. And it threatened to prolong a diplomatic crisis with China a day before the opening of high-level talks aimed at smoothing relations on urgent issues including Iran, Syria and the global economy.
"This could look terrible for them," said Douglas Paal, a former U.S. official and China analyst at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Chen fell afoul of Chinese authorities for his criticism of forced abortions and sterilizations committed underChina'sone-child policy on population control. After seven years of prison and 16 months of house arrest, he fled Dongshigu with the help of fellow activists on April 26, in a dramatic escape to the U.S. Embassy that grabbed headlines around the world.
U.S. officials initially exulted over Wednesday's deal. But only hours later, after Chen had been taken to a Beijing hospital for treatment of injuries suffered in his escape, he began to complain that he had been pressured to remain in China.
His activist friends amplified his protests, criticizing the United States, and demanded that he be allowed to leave the country. Zeng Jinyan, a close friend of Chen, said in tweets after speaking to him that he had explained to her that he left the embassy because he had feared he wouldn't see his family again if he left the country.
Bob Fu, a friend of Chen who is now head of the Texas-based China Aid Assn., said Chen had agreed to the deal only because of threats to his family. He said the reports show that the United States "has abandoned Mr. Chen."
U.S. diplomats, stunned at the turn of events, released pictures showing Chen happily mingling with them during the negotiations and insisting in interviews and statements that there had been no pressure and that he had wanted to remain in China. Victoria Nuland, the chief State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement that no U.S. official had spoken to Chen about threats to his wife or children. She did acknowledge that the authorities intended to send his family back to the eastern province of Shandong where they had been detained illegally and beaten by authorities.
"All our diplomacy was aimed at putting him in the best possible position to achieve his objectives," Nuland said.
U.S. officials said they could not explain Chen's seeming change of heart and the conflicts between the stories. He maintained that U.S. officials had left him in the hospital with no American present to protect him, another charge U.S. officials denied.
Some activists and experts speculated that Chen's about-face may have occurred because of the pressure he has been under, combined with worries about what could happen to his family if he left the country. But others speculated that Chen may have been warned by his activist allies that he should simply not trust the Chinese government's promises and that he needed to renew his efforts to seek refuge abroad.
"They may have told him that he simply shouldn't trust the government," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a top China advisor to the Clinton administration at Brookings Institution who is close to U.S. and Chinese officials.
Some activists said they were surprised to hear that U.S. officials had received assurances from the Chinese about Chen's freedom, especially after only six days of negotiations. U.S. officials told human rights activists in briefings Wednesday that they intended to collaborate with private rights groups to make sure that China lived up to its promises to allow Chen's freedom, but they also acknowledged some uncertainty about whether China would make good.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged that uncertainty in a statement, in which she said that making China's promises a reality "is the next crucial task."
An American-based rights activist close to the developments said the United States has some political leverage in trying to hold China to its promises, because Beijing would want to avoid a worldwide outcry over mistreatment of Chen. Yet this activist said there is no real precedent for such a deal. "There just aren't a lot of tools in the toolbox here," said the activist.
Jerome Cohen, a New York University law professor who has been advising Chen, said part of the administration's plan was for President Obama to make a public statement of support for the deal, which would help guarantee that China's top leaders would become involved. The U.S. supposition was that if the Chinese didn't live up to their promises and the deal fell through, "the United States, having given him full backing until that moment, would use its influence to have him finally leave the country," Cohen said.
Though U.S. officials insisted that the Chinese had been businesslike and cooperative in the negotiations, China also made known its displeasure at what it saw as foreign meddling again in sovereign issues. Liu Weimin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, declared that the U.S. actions "interfered in the domestic affairs of China," and said Washington should apologize for its "abnormal means" of dealing with the Chen affair.
But the White House was not expected to apologize, particularly in an election year when Republicans foes have repeatedly accused Obama of apologizing too often to foreign powers.
Human rights in China has been an especially tricky political issue for Obama, whose team over the last term has been criticized by both Democrats, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), and Republicans such as former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton for being insufficiently zealous in supporting activists against the authoritarian Chinese government.
One Republican,Rep. Christopher H. Smith(R-N.J.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs human rights subcommittee, trained his fire on the deal, saying he believed it was "artificial."
"Who will monitor whether he is truly free?" Smith said.
david.pierson@latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
Pierson reported from Beijing and Richter from Washington. Times staff writers Barbara Demick in New York, Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles, Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Houston and Kathleen Hennessey in Washington contributed to this report.
Mod
[image error]
Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng shakes hands with U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke, right, as U.S. State Department legal advisor Harold Koh applauds in Beijing. (U.S. Embassy Beijing Press Office, AFP/Getty Images / May 1, 2012)
Mod
[image error]
In this photo released by the US Embassy Beijing Press Office, blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, left, is helped by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, right, and U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke as they leave the U.S. Embassy for a hospital in Beijing Wednesday May 2, 2012. (AP Photo/US Embassy Beijing Press Office, HO)
Mod
This undated photo provided by the China Aid Association shows blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng, right, with his son, Chen Kerui, with his wife Yuan Weijing, left, in Shandong province, China. Chen, a blind activist said Wednesday, May 2, 2012, that U.S. officials told him that Chinese authorities would have beaten his wife to death had he not left the American Embassy, where he sought sanctuary after fleeing persecution by local officials in his rural town. A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, denied that the administration had passed on to Chen Guangcheng any threat of violence to his family, but did say that Chen was told that if he stayed in the embassy indefinitely, his family would be returned to their home province. (AP Photo/www.ChinaAid.org)
Mod
Chinese paramilitary police patrol outside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China, Wednesday, May 2, 2012. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived Wednesday in Beijing, where a tense human rights showdown awaits over the fate of a blind Chinese lawyer said to be under U.S. protection after escaping from house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
Mod
In this photo released by the US Embassy Beijing Press Office, blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng is wheeled into a hospital by U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke, right, and an unidentified official at left, in Beijing Wednesday May 2, 2012. (AP Photo/US Embassy Beijing Press Office, HO)
Mod
China's Chen Guangcheng phones US Congress for help
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has telephoned a US Congressional hearing to plead for help in his attempts to leave China with his family.
Mr Chen said he feared for the safety of his family and wanted to meet visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton face-to-face.
The activist is in a Beijing hospital sealed off by Chinese police.
He had spent a week at the US embassy but left after initially accepting China's assurances of his safety.
Mr Chen said that only after leaving the embassy did he fully realise the threats that had been made against his family members.
'Dark day'
In his call, broadcast live to the Congressional hearing from a mobile phone, he said: "I want to come to the US to rest. I have not had a rest in 10 years.
"I'm concerned most right now with the safety of my mother and brothers. I really want to know what's going on with them."
He said villagers who had helped him were "receiving retribution".
Mr Chen told Rep Chris Smith, who was chairing the hearing at the Congressional commission on China: "I want to meet with Secretary Clinton. I hope I can get more help from her."
Mr Chen's supporter and friend, Bob Fu, acted as translator.
Mr Smith told Mr Chen that the activist's friends in the US had expressed "desperate concern" for him.
"We are praying for you and we will be unceasing in our efforts" to help, Mr Smith said.
Mr Chen is in the hospital with his wife and children but the building is ringed by police and the BBC's Damian Grammaticas, who tried to visit on Thursday, said the activist was effectively under detention.
Our correspondent says guards prevented him, as well as lawyers and US diplomats, from reaching Mr Chen.
Mr Chen has expressed repeated concerns about his family members in his home village in eastern Shandong province.
He earlier told the BBC his wife had relayed to him the extent of the threats there.
"She told me our house has been installed with seven CCTV cameras inside the courtyard. There are people in and outside of our house and on the roof... They just eat and stay in our house, and they plan to build up electric wires around my house."
Although he initially said he wanted to stay in China, Mr Chen told the BBC he had changed his mind because he believed China had reneged on an agreement to guarantee his safety.
A Hong Kong cable film crew was stopped trying to get to Chen Guangcheng's home village in Shandong and their car was attacked
There is no official confirmation about the nature of any such agreement, but media reports from the US suggest that Mr Chen had been promised safety in a university town elsewhere in China.
The case has increasing political resonance in the US.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said if reports that US officials had persuaded Mr Chen to leave the embassy were true "this is a dark day for freedom and it's a day of shame for the Obama administration".
White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama was "not concerned about political back-and-forth on this issue".
Mr Carney said: "He is focused on the need to advance US interests in our broad-based relationship with China... He has and will continue to make a priority in that relationship or a part of that relationship an open and frank discussion of our concerns about human rights."
The US has said that at no point did Mr Chen ask for asylum and he was never put under any pressure to leave the embassy.
State department spokesman Mark Toner said there had only been telephone access to Mr Chen on Thursday, adding: "It's our desire to meet with him [on Friday] or in the coming days. But I can't speak to whether we'll have access to him. I just don't know."
'Bundled into car'
Mrs Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are in Beijing for annual bilateral talks, focusing heavily on Syria and North Korea.
As the talks opened, Mrs Clinton did not mention Mr Chen by name but addressed the topic of human rights.
"The United States believes that no state can legitimately deny the universal rights that belong to every human being - or punish those who exercise them," she said.
Chinese officials on Wednesday accused the US of interference in China's domestic affairs and demanded an apology for housing Mr Chen at the US embassy.
Mr Chen had been at the embassy for almost a week after escaping from house arrest in his village in Shandong.
He had planned his escape from house arrest for months. On 27 April, he scaled the wall the authorities had built around his house and was then driven hundreds of miles to Beijing.
ABC News quoted US officials as saying an embassy vehicle drove out to meet a car carrying Mr Chen, but the staff realised they were being followed. The two cars met hurriedly in an alleyway and Mr Chen was bundled into the US car and driven back to the embassy, ABC said.
Several people involved in Mr Chen's escape have been detained or have disappeared in recent days.
The activist has spent seven years in prison or under house arrest after he exposed human rights abuses, including the way thousands of women were forced to have abortions under China's "one-child-policy".
Madame Chiang Kai-shek may not have played an immense major role, but the book caught my eye enough to purchase it to read down the road.Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady
Laura Tyson LiSynopsis
Madame Chiang Kai-shek — is the first biography of one of the most controversial and fascinating women of the twentieth century. Raised in a powerful Chinese family, the beautiful, brilliant, and captivating Soong Mayling married Nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and went on to become his chief adviser, interpreter, and propagandist. When the Communists broke with Chiang’s Nationalist Party, Mayling and her sister, the widow of Sun Yat-Sen, found themselves on opposing sides of a civil war. A relentless crusader speaking out against Communism well into her nineties, she sparred with international leaders and impressed Westerners and Chinese alike with her acumen, charm, and glamour. But she was also decried as a manipulative “Dragon Lady” and was despised for living in Western-style splendor while Chinese citizens suffered under her husband’s brutal oppression. The result of years of extensive research in the United States and abroad and access to previously classified CIA and diplomatic files, here at last is the story of an extraordinary woman who has become a symbol of America’s long, vexed love affair with China and China’s own struggle to define itself as a world power.
Mod
Mod
October 17, 2012
WATCHING THE DEBATE IN CHINA: THE PANDA SLUGGERS
Posted by Evan Osnos
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...
Mod
By Angus Foster
BBC News, Beijing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19...
Source: BBC News
Very interesting - in terms of how things seem to work
Mao: The Real Story
Alexander PantsovSynopsis
This major new biography of Mao uses extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to biographers to reveal surprising details about Mao’s rise to power and his leadership in China.
Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was champion of the poor and brutal tyrant, poet and despot.
Pantsov and Levine show Mao’s relentless drive to succeed, vividly describing his growing role in the nascent Communist Party of China. They disclose startling facts about his personal life, particularly regarding his health and his lifelong serial affairs with young women. They portray him as the loyal Stalinist that he was, who never broke with the Soviet Union until after Stalin’s death.
Mao brought his country from poverty and economic backwardness into the modern age and onto the world stage. But he was also responsible for an unprecedented loss of life. The disastrous Great Leap Forward with its accompanying famine and the bloody Cultural Revolution were Mao’s creations. Internationally Mao began to distance China from the USSR under Khrushchev and shrewdly renewed relations with the U.S. as a counter to the Soviets. He lived and behaved as China’s last emperor.
This was an interesting account of China's rise by British economist Martin Jacques. He delves back into the history of the Japanese economic rise and uses it to understand China's current position in the world economy.
by Martin Jacques (no photo)Here's an excellent TED talk that Jacques gave entitled "Understanding the Rise of Modern China"
http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacqu...
Angela
Mod
Mod
First official trip abroad by Xi Jinping expected to bolster "strategic partnership" and trade that hit $87.5bn in 2012.
China's newly elected President Xi Jinping has chosen to visit key ally Russia for his first foreign trip, with both leaders expected to be alert to economic opportunities.
Xi is due in Moscow on Friday to meet his host President Vladimir Putin.
The world's largest energy producer, Russia, and its most voracious consumer, China, want to bolster their common clout as a financial and geopolitical counterweight to Europe and the US, whose "Asia pivot" regional strategy has caused concern in China.
"Certainly Russia is important to China as a source of advanced weapons, important raw materials, and there is a lot of room for further improvement in trade and investment activities in view of the economic difficulties in the US and western Europe," Joseph Cheng, a Chinese University of Hong Kong professor, told Al Jazeera.
In his interview, released by the Kremlin hours before Xi's planned arrival, Putin said bilateral trade had more than
doubled in five years and reached $87.5bn in 2012.
Putin and Xi, less than a year apart in age, echoed one another in interviews before the visit, each saying the Chinese leader's choice of Moscow as his first destination was evidence of the "strategic partnership" between the nations.
"There is an element of pulling together the forces of Russia and China against possible threats coming from the US [through the Obama administration's military focus towards Asia]," Chinese University of Hong Kong professor Willy Lam said.
Source: Al Jazeera
Note: Interesting that the talks are scheduled the same week that Obama is visiting the Middle East.
Chinese president Xi Jinping, right, greets the US treasury secretary, Jacob Lew, during a visit to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photograph: Feng Li/Getty
Question for the group: Whenever you hear about Truman and the Korean war, there is always mention of a China lobby - Republicans and other anti-communists who never forgave Truman and/or America for losing China to the Communists. Who were these people, and is there any books that people can recommend? Thanks.
R.M.F.:Purifoy argues it was the atmosphere of the Red Scare/McCarthyism that affected Truman:
(no image)Harry Truman's China Policy: Mc Carthyism And The Diplomacy Of Hysteria, 1947 1951 by Lewis McCarroll Purifoy
R.M.F wrote: "Question for the group: Whenever you hear about Truman and the Korean war, there is always mention of a China lobby - Republicans and other anti-communists who never forgave Truman and/or America f..."There were a bunch of people - The Luces (of Time Magazine), MacArthur and a bunch of his fans - I remember reading about this, but I forget where. It may have been in
David HalberstamYou could also check out
William Raymond Manchester
I own a copy of American Caesar - one of my all time favourites. I'll check out the other book as well. Thanks for the heads up.
Mod
by
William Raymond ManchesterWilliam Manchester was the author if it is the well known book you are thinking of Peter. Peter please update message 39 with the correct info author's photo and author's link.
Thanks all.
Mod
Mod
Indeed. And who knows where that fish winds up? Some gets eaten by people in China. But I bet some winds up other places. Other animals also eat fish.
Mod
Mod
The early days of the industrial revolution in the UK were pretty grim, so as China develops, it's only logical that they will probably go 'green.'
Mod
China is a big country - with quite varied terrain and populations with some very remote areas. I found that the changes are coming much slower to many of these locations outside of the big city limits. The majority of visible changes are in the cities like Shanghai which has been allowed quite a bit of economic and cultural latitude and strangely enough Beijing which I feel is the most classic Chinese city in China. It really epitomizes China itself (its history and its future). Within those two cities I have noticed the most changes. Not so much in Xian, Guilin, or in Southwest or Northern China. Most changes have occurred along the Eastern coast or in Beijing which is inland but still the main core of the Chinese government. For instance, Zhengzhou is one of the Great Ancient Capitals of Ancient China yet it is also listed as one of the thirteen emerging cities by the Economist. So there is a real schism in some of the ancient cities between the old and the new which must be disconcerting for a population trying to catch up with the outside world. I think that China being able to be a member on the world stage and the perks associated with that entry has opened up a very closed off environment for the better. How that affects other cultural and historical entities remains still to be seen.
Pudong for example in Shanghai was just a dirt pile in the distance and now huge sky scrappers and other complexes dot the view from the Bund. Major building and construction has changed the landscape. It was just a little undeveloped agricultural area which could only be accessed by a ferry. Now it is the economic hub after a 21 year development plan - major difference from what it once was.
Mod
I also feel that for China - a full democracy would produce pandemonium.
Mod
This was an interesting article posted today in the Huffington Post:
Something America and China Could Do Together
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-...
The above article claims that both America and China have governments that are not keeping pace with the times. Maybe that is a true statement in both cases. Not sure.
You posted a great discussion question and it would be wonderful to hear from group members who have some opinions or background experience in this area of expertise and/or are from China.
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
To Rule All under Heaven: A History of Classical China, from Confucius to the First Emperor (other topics)The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform (other topics)
The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War? (other topics)
The US vs China: Asia's new Cold War? (other topics)
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol 1: From Earliest Times to 1600 (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Andrew Seth Meyer (other topics)Odd Arne Westad (other topics)
Jude Woodward (other topics)
William Theodore de Bary (other topics)
Martin Jacques (other topics)
More...
Setting up a thread here to discuss this country which is growing by leaps and bounds seems like a great idea.