China Watch

Google is working with the US government, using international trade rules, to try to make it illegal for countries to censor the Internet by, reported Register Online (US) Jun 14.

Chinese worker are refusing to abide by the old saying that they must “eat bitterness”, reflecting a changed situation in which citizens expect better treatment from their government. In the past week, strikes and stoppages to demand double-digit pay rises have spread like Chairman Mao’s “single spark that lights a prairie fire”, reported Times Online (UK) Jun 13.

China on Jun 8 issued its first white paper on internet policy. The paper claimed that the 31-page document "guarantees the citizens' freedom of speech on the Internet as well as the public's right to know, to participate, to be heard, and to oversee (the government) in accordance with the law".

Dangerous cracks are appearing in neighbourhoods along China’s massive and highly prestigious Three Gorges Dam and the government has neither the will nor the fund to address the problem, according to a blog posting on the Telegraph.co.uk Jun 7.

Ma Ying-jeou, the most pro-China of Taiwanese Presidents so far, Jun 3 urged China to try to heal the historical wounds inflicted by its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in Jun 1989, reported The China Post (Taiwan) Jun 4.

The Tiananmen Square massacre of Jun 3-4, 1989 was the handiwork entirely of the paramount leader of the time, Mr Deng Xiaoping, although the hatchet man of the moment, Premier Li Peng, was in full support of it.

Budding journalists in China have been told that their dual mission is to give Chinese leaders a fast and accurate picture of current events and to deftly manipulate that picture for the public to ensure social harmony, and by extension, the Communist Party’s hold on power.

The military and the political leadership in China are pursuing their own interests in their own ways and the two do not necessarily match, according to the US Defense Secretary Mr Robert M Gates.

The police in Hong Kong on May 30 confiscated a statue mourning the victims of China's 1989 armed crackdown on protesters on the Tiananmen Square and arrested 13 activists, said agency reports May 30.

The United States must respect China’s core interests and major concerns, and pay particular attention to handling sensitive issues such as those regarding Taiwan and Tibet.

China said May 20 that a total of 3,058 officials, including several mayors, had received punishments of up to life in prison for stealing stimulus money or taking bribes for construction projects, among other crimes.

The use of torture to extract confession to convict accused persons is regular and pervasive in China. However, when the issue came to a head recently with a claimed murder victim reappearing in his village on Apr 30 and the man accused of the supposed crime having already been in jail for 11 years, China sought to present the case as an exception rather than the rule.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) May 18 noted with concern that China had censored online reporting about the US-China dialogue on human rights which took place in Washington, DC, on May 13-14.

Internet services were fully resumed in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (East Turkestan) on May 14, 10 months after the riot in capital Urumqi on Jul 5’09, reported China’s official Xinhua news agency May 14.

After having buzzed Japanese destroyers twice in the East China Sea within the month, and being protested against for it, China has now expressed strong displeasure when Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Force recently monitored its navy fleet off the Japanese coast.