China :: Exposé

Willa, an elementary student from eastern China's Kunshan, Jiangsu province, is probably the youngest press spokesperson in the history. The background scene of the press conference is decorated with court indictments and judgments. At the top is "Press Conference Held by An Elementary Student." (Courtesy of a Chinese blogger) The 8-year-old Willa from Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, is one of the youngest press spokespersons in historythough it was not an occasion for celebration. My name is Willa. I am eight years old. My grandfather filed a lawsuit six years ago, but still hasnt received any compensation and resettlement, she said in a video posted to the blog of Cai Julin, her grandfather. In the video, Willa, still in elementary school, read out a statement against a background decorated with pages of court indictments and judgments. A Chinese banner hangs across the top: Press Conference Held by An Elementary Student. The young girl appeals for everyone to pay ...

Last Wednesday, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) read brief excerpts from a classified U.S. State Department cable on the House floor . The cable was written in 1990 by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie and described her conversation with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein shortly prior to Iraqs invasion of Kuwait. It was released January 1 by WikiLeaks. Since the cable specified that its entire text is classified secret, this means that by reading a passage or two from the document, Rep. Paul was technically publicizing classified information and introducing it into the Congressional Record . This action was not nearly comparable in significance or audacity to Sen. Mike Gravel reading the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971. It would hardly be noteworthy at all except for the contrast it presents with current congressional guidance to avoid the material released by WikiLeaks altogether. The Senate Office of Security, for example, has directed that Senate employees should not even visi...

Every year in China, tens of thousands of petitioners across the country flock to the capital of Beijing. They hope to file complaints that their local authorities did not address. Its a growing social problem where many petitioners are sent back home or are detained illegally. On Monday, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao met with petitioners in Beijing for the first time to hear their concerns. But the highly publicized event is already raising doubts. The petition office had just eight petitioners inside. When I went, there were always long lines with hundreds of people. This is a basic fact. We are long time petitioners and have experienced this. News like [this meeting] no longer excites us, because we have been disappointed too many times, Wu Huaying, Fujian petitioner, complained. State-run television widely broadcasted Wen's visit to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, the central office that handles petitioners. Some, including Beijing-based rights lawyer Ni Yulana former pe...

A man looks at a laptop computer displaying Twitter in a cafe on January 27, 2011 in Cairo, Egypt. People across Egypt are using Twitter and other social media to mass organize protests. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images) The word Egypt suddenly became a sensitive word on the Internet in China Friday. The word was blocked on all the main search engines in China, including the popular micro-blogging site, Sina. Some reports say the ban was lifted sometime Saturday. But an AP report said searchers on Sina typing in Egypt on Friday were greeted with a message saying, According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown. Encouraged by Tunisia, where massive protests pushed President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia, more than 80,000 Egyptians took to the streets Friday, demanding President Hosni Mubarak step down. But in mainland China, the news about Egypt was consistently blocked and all media had to use a Xinhua news release.Free More News (...

Editors Note: President Obama invited Chinese pianist Lang Lang to the White House to perform on Jan. 19 at the state dinner for visiting Chinese paramount leader Hu Jintao. Lang Lang played a solo, the famous Chinese propaganda song, My Motherland, for the participants. The song created great controversy, because it is the theme song of a famous 1956 anti-American movie about the Korean War, titled Battle on Shangganling Mountain. China calls that war a War to Resist America and Support (North) Korea. Lang Lang denied that he was aware of the songs background. Chinas state media also said not to read too much into the song, but to many Chinese, this is a great diplomatic victory over the United States, especially right after the United States had demonstrated superior military power. The following are some comments by Chinese netizens. Later, I played a solo song, My Motherland. In the minds of us Chinese, it is one the most beautiful songs. To be able to play this ...

Every year in China, tens of thousands of petitioners across the country flock to the capital of Beijing. They hope to file complaints that their local authorities did not address. Its a growing social problem where many petitioners are sent back home or are detained illegally. On Monday, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao met with petitioners in Beijing for the first time to hear their concerns. But the highly publicized event is already raising doubts. The petition office had just eight petitioners inside. When I went, there were always long lines with hundreds of people. This is a basic fact. We are long time petitioners and have experienced this. News like [this meeting] no longer excites us, because we have been disappointed too many times, Wu Huaying, Fujian petitioner, complained. State-run television widely broadcasted Wen's visit to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, the central office that handles petitioners. Some, including Beijing-based rights lawyer Ni Yulana former pe...

Lang Lang, a Chinese pianist, plays the piano at the White House on Friday, Jan. 21. (Screenshot taken from Youtube) While some in the U.S. media have been sympathetically reporting Lang Langs claims of ignorance, some Chinese scholars are holding him responsible for his performance at the White House state dinner for President Barack Obama and his guest Chairman Hu Jintao. Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang responded to critics in an interview with NPR on January 24. He said he knew nothing about the background of My Motherland, the Chinese song he played at the end of the state dinner. It is the theme song for Battle on Shangganling Mountain, a 1956 anti-American movie about the Korean War. He said he had performed the piece many times simply because he likes the melody. Zhang Kaichen, the former Liaison Director of the Propaganda Department of the Shenyang City Communist Party Committee who moved to the United States a year ago, said: I dont believe it was Lang Langs decision. It must h...

Yu Haidong was executed on Oct. 14, 2008. His mother says he was innocent, and the real killer bribed the judge. (Courtesey Zhu Jingru) A Chinese woman accuses corrupt court officials and the Chinese regime of wrongfully executing her son for the murder committed by another man. She says the killer bribed the judge and was given a prison sentence while her son was made the scapegoat. Yu Haidong, a clean-cut, handsome young man, was executed by the Chinese state on Oct. 14, 2008 when he was 28 years old. Two years later, his mother, Zhus Jingru, a medical doctor from Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province still has strong feelings of bereavement and disdain for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its legal system in which her family had trusted all their lives. We lost our only child because we blindly trusted in the CCP, she said. I will spend the rest of my life exposing the evil of the government and the judicial and legal systems, so that they can not destroy someones life ...

A bronze statue of Confucius in Tiananmen Square. (AFP/Getty Images) A 31-foot bronze Confucius statue recently erected on Tiananmen Square has become the subject of debate. Confucianism, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) once harshly denounced, is now being promoted in the Partys heartland. The CCP says that this statue symbolizes China's return to its national origins. A permanent statue so prominently placed is a significant gesture. By comparison the portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Karl Marx are only displayed once a year. Is Confucius the regime's new, genuine cultural ambassador? A number of anticommunist Chinese observers would rue seeing the day. Wu Fan, a political and economic commentator and Chief Editor of China Affairs thinks the CCP chose Confucius because Communism has lost steam in China. Western democracy is criticized by the CCP as counterrevolutionary, Confucius hence became an alternative, Wu said. He added that Chinese people are sick of...

Chinese authorities carry sticks as they stand guard while workers demolish houses which are claimed illegal by the local government in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province on May 7, 2010. (AFP/Getty Images) The Chinese regime is selling off the peoples land at a furious pace to hike up the states gross domestic product (GDP) index, fill its coffers, and line officials pockets. Meanwhile, millions of ordinary people have become land grab victims, faced with displacement, destitution, and violent assault by callous officials if they resist eviction. The general public is becoming increasingly sensitive and outspoken. In an online poll 7,500 Chinese were asked to summarize what the year 2010 meant to them. One fourth of respondents expressed their sentiments with the Chinese character chai, which means demolish. It indicates how forced demolition in China has become a profound and ever-present threat for ordinary people there. All land in China is owned by the state. W...

CCP Stages "Self Immolation" drama in Tienanmen Square- Part 1 The TV producer Chen Mang took an amoral view of his job. He once said in 2001 at a symposium in California, News does not have any elements of truth. He also said, Whoever feeds me, I will work for him wholeheartedly. Chen Mang, formerly known as Chen Xiaobing, worked wholeheartedly for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from the time he joined CCTV as a reporter. He achieved his greatest professional success in 2001, when he produced a propaganda film on the Tiananmen Square self-immolations. This film has played a key role in the persecution of Falun Gong. The film was an elaborate hoax. It purported to show five Falun Gong practitioners immolating themselves on Tiananmen Square on Jan. 23, 2001. In March 2002, NTD TV broadcast the documentary film False Fire, which analyzed the CCTV film produced by Chen. False Fire showed numerous discrepancies in the CCTV account that demonstrated that th...

The new National Declassification Center (NDC) reviewed 83 million pages of classified historical records in 2010, but so far only 12 million of those pages have been declassified and released to the open shelves at the National Archives, according to a new report (pdf) from the NDC. At a time when currently classified records are being leaked and published online nearly every day, it may seem quaint that government agencies are investing time and money to painstakingly review records that are more than 25 years old for possible declassification. But the NDC process is more productive than leaks have been to date, yielding millions of newly disclosed pages, not just thousands. The NDC has been directed by the President to process more than 400 million pages of historical records for declassification and public release before the end of 2013. The results to date, which leave a large majority of records beyond public reach even after review, call into question the criteria that are be...

CCP Stages "Self Immolation" drama in Tienanmen Square China was bewildered one morning in late 1971 when it awoke to find that Lin Biao, Chairman Maos trusted successor, had actually been a political swindler, an intriguer, and a man with foreign connections all along. The Chinese press later said that he had masterminded a scheme to assassinate Mao, but that it had been thwarted, whereupon he tried to escape to the Soviet Union. On the way, they said, his plane crashed. Photos were circulated but could never be verified. All of Lins revolutionary slogans were dropped, rallies were organized, songs were sung, and Party newspapers went to great lengths explaining why the plot of the renegade and traitor had somehow not been uncovered earlier. No one will ever know what really happened to Lin Biaoit is believed that Mao saw him as a threat and had him liquidatedbut his case is one of many in a history of political stunts enabled by a controlled media environment and rele...

Daniel P. Mulhollan, director of the Congressional Research Service, told CRS staff last week that he will be retiring in April. Mr. Mulhollan, who joined CRS in 1969, has been director of the congressional support organization for the past 14 years, making him its longest-serving leader. Although the basic parameters of CRS operation are set by Congress, Mr. Mulhollans departure may encourage reconsideration of some particular CRS policies that he favored. These could include, for example, the CRS posture of strict neutrality, the deliberate erosion of CRS expertise in recent years, and perhaps the policy of barring direct public access to CRS reports. Dan loved CRS, and he worked hard to keep it above the Hills political fray, said one CRS analyst. He kept CRS from suffering what GAO did getting downsized because it was viewed as too friendly to one political party. But a former CRS analyst saw the issue of CRS impartiality differently: In 2003, Dan invented a new standard of neutral...

Do not visit the WikiLeaks site, the Office of Senate Security told Senate employees and contractors in a memorandum (pdf) that was circulated to Senate offices this week. Senate employees are free to access news reports that may discuss classified material, but they were instructed not to download the underlying documents that themselves are marked classified (including classified documents publicly available on the WikiLeaks and other websites). The Updated WikiLeaks Guidance was issued by the Office of Senate Security. The one-page memo is undated, but a Senate staffer said it was received in Senate offices this week. In a paradoxical way, the WikiLeaks project is dependent upon the very secrecy system that it works to disrupt. Without secrecy, after all, there cannot be leaks. So why doesnt the U.S. government try to disarm WikiLeaks by pro-actively disclosing the cables that WikiLeaks has already obtained? Instead of passively enduring months or years of selective disclosures, t...

From the New Year holidays until now, peasants from Sichuan province have been visiting the Zunhua Municipal Office for Petitions and Appeals in Hebei province to inquire about the progress of their overdue salary case. In sub-zero conditions they kneeled down in front of the government building seeking what they are due, but the communist bureaucrats inside ended up disappointing.On Jan. 13, Sichuan Online published an article titled Immoral Developer Delays Sichuan Peasants Salary, Peasants Seeking Help from the Government. The article, which included several photos of peasants kneeling down in front of the appeals office, explained how the peasants salary had been delayed and that their case had made no progress after they had fought for their rights through various channels. According to representatives of the group He Dongping and Cheng Mingdi, in Nov. 2009 a group of peasant workers from Bazhong City, Santai City and Yilong City of Sichuan province, and peasant workers from Hebei...

Department of Defense employees who downloaded classified documents from Wikileaks onto unclassified government computer systems may delete them without further sanitizing their systems or taking any other remedial measures, the Pentagon said in a policy memo (pdf) last week. The release of classified State Department cables and other classified documents by Wikileaks has produced special consternation among security officers, who have tended to respond by the book to this unprecedented breach of security procedures. But the book, which is the product of an earlier era, is quickly becoming obsolete. And in the worst case, some officials say, the governments unimaginative response to Wikileaks could do more damage than the original disclosures. But now some tentative signs of flexibility can be detected from Pentagon policy makers. Under the new guidance , DoD employees and contractors who have downloaded classified documents from the Wikileaks website onto an unclassified government...

Chinese bloggers expressed rage and despondence after learning about the plight of 12 mentally retarded men from Sichuan province who were sold into slavery to work at a building materials plant in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, according to a CIA review of the Chinese blogosphere (pdf) during the week of December 10-17, 2010. The CIA survey portrays Chinese bloggers as alert, engaged and influential in shaping government policy. The controversy over the mentally retarded workers set off a passionate discussion in the blogosphere on such topics as the treatment of disabled people in society and the role officials play in allowing workers to be exploited in private enterprises. The public reaction resulting from the storys popularity in the blogosphere as well as in traditional media almost certainly had an effect on the quick government response, the CIA report said. A copy of the report was obtained by Secrecy News. See This Week in the Chinese Blogosphere: Week Ending 17 Dec...

Chinese bloggers expressed rage and despondence after learning about the plight of 12 mentally retarded men from Sichuan province who were sold into slavery to work at a building materials plant in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, according to a CIA review of the Chinese blogosphere (pdf) during the week of December 10-17, 2010. The CIA survey portrays Chinese bloggers as alert, engaged and influential in shaping government policy. The controversy over the mentally retarded workers set off a passionate discussion in the blogosphere on such topics as the treatment of disabled people in society and the role officials play in allowing workers to be exploited in private enterprises. The public reaction resulting from the storys popularity in the blogosphere as well as in traditional media almost certainly had an effect on the quick government response, the CIA report said. A copy of the report was obtained by Secrecy News. See This Week in the Chinese Blogosphere: Week Ending 17 Dec...

Seizing the timing of Hu Jintaos much vaunted visit to the United States, friends of abducted civil rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng have called for his release. Gao, by now a renowned figure internationally, has been missing since April 2010. Beijing human rights lawyers Jiang Tianyong, Tang Jitian, and Xie Yanyi have demanded that authorities release Gao, also condemning the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) human rights atrocities. After an eight month absence the story of Gao Zhisheng was brought back into the public spotlight on Jan. 10 by the Associated Press, who published a detailed account of the torture Gao experienced after he was kidnapped in 2009. Gao had given the interview in April 2010, when he was briefly freed and able to talk to the press, and told them to embargo publication until he was either outside China or had been missing for a while. Jiang Tianyong, another renowned civil rights lawyer in Beijing, said the complete lack of news on Gaos disappearan...

The Fundamental Classification Guidance Review is the Obama Administrations most ambitious effort to confront the problem of overclassification. It requires each agency that classifies information to conduct a detailed review of all of its classification guides in order to identify obsolete classification requirements and to eliminate them. As spelled out in section 1.9 of executive order 13526 , the deadline for completion of the Reviews is June 29, 2012, two years after the effective date of the executive order. So far, the Review process is off to an uneven start. A Secrecy News survey of dozens of federal agencies shows that a few agencies are taking the process very seriously, others are ignoring or deferring it, and still others wrongly believe it does not apply to them. By far the most impressive response comes from the Department of Energy, which has developed a detailed plan (pdf) for implementing the Review. Over a dozen DOE working groups are set to evaluate more than 2,500...

The purposes, authorities, and instruments of congressional oversight are described in detail in a newly-expanded Congressional Oversight Manual (pdf) prepared by the Congressional Research Service. Congressional oversight and investigations can often, though not always, become adversarial, the CRS Manual observes. This is especially true when the entity being targeted, whether a private individual, corporation, or executive branch agency, has information Congress believes is necessary to its inquiry but refuses to disclose. In those situations the targeted entity may attempt to use several methods of avoiding disclosure. A commonly used tactic to avoid disclosure is to assert that the information cannot be disclosed due to a specific law, rule, or executive decision. Another common tactic is to assert that the information itself is of such a sensitive nature that Congress is not among those entities entitled or authorized to have the information. The Manual proceeds to scrutinize the...

Yale Environment 360 has produced a video documentary, The Warriors of Qiugang , which chronicles the plight of villagers fighting a chemical plant in Anhui . Watch it here : Like many villages in China’s industrial heartland, Qiugang — a hamlet of nearly 1,900 people in Anhui province — has long suffered from runaway pollution from nearby factories. In Qiugang’s case, three major enterprises with little or no pollution controls churned out chemicals, pesticides, and dyes, turning the local river black, killing fish and wildlife, and filling the air with foul fumes that burned residents’ eyes and throats and sickened children. The pollution from the Jiucailuo Chemical plant became so egregious that in 2007, Qiugang’s residents — working with a fledgling environmental group, Green Anhui — began to try to do something about it. Their efforts soon attracted the attention of Chinese-American filmmaker Ruby Yang, who with cinematographer Guan Xin and longtime collaborator Th...

The technology for sequencing human DNA is advancing so rapidly and the cost is dropping so quickly that the number of individuals whose DNA has been mapped is expected to grow “from hundreds of people (current) to millions of people (probably within three years),” according to a new report to the Pentagon (pdf) from the JASON defense science advisory panel. The Defense Department should begin to take advantage of the advances in “personal genomics technology” by collecting genetic information on all military personnel, the panel advised. The cost of sequencing complete human genomes has been falling by about a factor of 30 per year over the last six years, the JASONs said . As a result, “it is now possible to order your personal genome sequenced today for a retail cost of under ~$20,000″ compared to around $300 million a decade ago. “This cost will likely fall to less than $1,000 by 2012, and to $100 by 2013.” “At costs below $1,000 per genome, a number of intriguing applications of ...

A bill in the last Congress “to provide a comprehensive framework for the United States to prevent and prepare for biological and other WMD attacks” was described in a lengthy Senate report last month. The report provided a detailed congressional perspective on a range of biosecurity issues, inspired in part by the Graham-Talent Commission on the subject. However, the bill was not enacted, and its provisions did not achieve consensus support. It drew criticism in particular from Sen. Carl Levin whose dissenting comments were appended. See “WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2009″ (pdf), Report of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, December 17, 2010. The Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) was remembered in several fascinating and inspiring articles in the December 2010 issue of Physics Today. Perhaps the most stimulating one of them, written by Freeman Dyson, is freely available to non-subscribers on the Physics Today website. See ...

The technology for sequencing human DNA is advancing so rapidly and the cost is dropping so quickly that the number of individuals whose DNA has been mapped is expected to grow from hundreds of people (current) to millions of people (probably within three years), according to a new report to the Pentagon (pdf) from the JASON defense science advisory panel. The Defense Department should begin to take advantage of the advances in personal genomics technology by collecting genetic information on all military personnel, the panel advised. The cost of sequencing complete human genomes has been falling by about a factor of 30 per year over the last six years, the JASONs said . As a result, it is now possible to order your personal genome sequenced today for a retail cost of under ~$20,000 compared to around $300 million a decade ago. This cost will likely fall to less than $1,000 by 2012, and to $100 by 2013. At costs below $1,000 per genome, a number of intriguing applications of DNA seque...

Supporters of Hong Kong's iconic democracy activist Szeto Wah are still attempting to gain entry visas to attend his memorial service (Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty Images) One of the long-time leaders of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong passed away on Jan. 2, but even in death he is still inspiring challenges to the Beijing authorities.Supporters of Hong Kong's iconic democracy activist Szeto Wah are still attempting to gain entry visas to attend his memorial service. Leading Chinese dissidents from around the world want to journey to Hong Kong to attend, while the Chinese regime would prefer to keep them out. In the case of one of China's most-wanted exiled dissidents, Wang Dan, the precious entry visa may be givenit appears that Beijing has left the decision on his entry up to Hong Kong authorities. Related Articles Szeto Wah, Chinese Democracy Activist, Dies at 79 (Video) Hong Kong Police Confiscate Tiananmen Statues, Arrest Activists The South China Morning Post reporte...