World-China Forum

China after Tiananmen

Spring always brings new blossoms, but 20 years ago, spring brought to China an unprecedented flowering. In hundreds of cities, citizens took to the streets in peaceful protests to demand freedom, government accountability and an end to corruption -- and the government, once among the most repressive on Earth, stood by and let them.

It was an intoxicating moment that didn't last. By the morning of June 4, the government had reversed course, sending the army to crush the long-running student demonstration in the capital's Tiananmen Square, leaving hundreds dead, and the Beijing spring was over.

Since that day, China has undergone such a broad transformation that it is almost unrecognizable. The economy has opened up to markets, private property and foreign trade. Living standards have soared. The government that once preached world revolution now provides credit to sustain American consumption. Chinese students go abroad to attend universities in bastions of capitalism.

But the bloody events of 1989 are still a live issue in China. Last month brought forth the posthumous secret memoir of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party chief removed because of his sympathy for the protesters. In it, he denounced the crackdown as "a tragedy to shock the world" and said his country deserved "a state more suitable to a democratic society." (Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribute)

'Great Firewall' is raised in China as anniversary of 1989 protest nears

There is no tweeting about Tiananmen Square, or anything else, in China this week. In a crackdown apparently timed to the 20th anniversary Thursday of the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations, the Chinese government has pulled the plug on the social-networking site Twitter and dozens of other Internet sites and blogs. 

And government monitors have shut down message boards on more than 6,000 Web sites affiliated with colleges and universities, apparently to head off any talk about the 1989 events, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Not to neglect the old-fashioned methods of censorship, pages have been strategically ripped out of foreign newspapers sold in Beijing in the past few days. Television screens in the diplomatic compound went black when the British Broadcasting Corp. was airing a report about Tiananmen Square, only to come back on when reports switched to the missing Air France jet.

"They feel this is a fragile time for China," said artist and activist Ai Weiwei, whose popular blog was shut down by authorities over the weekend. Notwithstanding the two decades that have elapsed, the demonstrations remain one of the most sensitive subjects in China. The very mention of the date June 4 (when the People's Liberation Army moved in to crush the demonstrations) is banned in the Chinese press. Police have been detaining writers, activists and especially former dissidents who participated in the 1989 demonstrations. Others have been put under surveillance or house arrest, barred from traveling to Hong Kong, where a demonstration marking the anniversary took place on Sunday. (Barbara Demick, Seattle Times)

Will the web bring democracy to China?

The internet has helped Chinese dissident Wang Dan span the distance from his exile home in Los Angeles to Beijing, where 20 years ago he shot to fame as a top leader of the Tiananmen democracy protests. Wang - still youthful-looking at 40, but fleshier than when the reedy Peking University history major rallied the masses at Tiananmen - also believes information technology will help civil society change China in the ways for which he fought.

"The internet has changed the meaning of exile," he said in a wide-ranging interview days before the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown in the heart of China's capital.  "I don't think we're really in exile, because I use the Internet, MSN, Skype, Twitter, Facebook ... so I have a lot of contact with mainlanders," said Wang.

He was jailed twice and has not been allowed back to China since being exiled in 1998. Now chairman of the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association, with a Harvard doctoral degree, Wang concedes that the China of today is far richer, more powerful and influential than the country he left. But he insists that Communist Party rule by force and deception remains the norm and the basic characteristic of this government never changed.  "The government has already lost control of activities of civil society on the internet - that's the hope," said Wang, describing the World Wide Web as a key weapon in an ongoing struggle between state and society. (Reuters/TVNZ)

Learn from landmark court case against the government

On March 25, Hu Xingdou, a professor of economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, received an email from his Internet service provider, the Beijing Xin Net. The email was a notice to shut down his personal website because it contained "illegal content", which, according to the notice, were three online posts he wrote on corporate bribery among Chinese officials, reform of the press system and abolishment of the reform-through-labor system. A Xin Net employee told Hu that they shut down his website on orders of the Internet monitoring section of the Suzhou police in East China's Jiangsu province.

For most Chinese blog and website administrators, this would be the end of the story. But Hu, who firmly believes that his website contained nothing illegal, decided to fight back. He gathered a group of legal professionals and sued Xin Net.

Ten days ago, the Daxing district court in Beijing ruled in favor of Hu because Xin Net could not provide proof for its claims of the so-called "illegal" content. Xin Net was also ordered to repay Hu's service fees for the past two years totaling 1,370 yuan. While the amount might be insignificant, Hu's determination and the court's verdict are not.

The case, which was unfortunately reported in very few newspapers, has been hailed as a milestone in the country's history. Its exemplary effect on other courts, other ISP firms and some 300 million Chinese netizens should not be underestimated.

A controversial figure he may be for his critical writings on social, economic and political issues, Hu should be applauded for his courage to take on Xin Net and the Suzhou police, even though his chances of winning the case were bleak. Hu has reminded us that we should not give up although the road seems tough and the pace seems slow. Instead, we should use the law to protect our rights and let the perpetrators face justice.

The case has taught us that silence and inaction in such a situation only makes you guilty of abetting injustice. Resorting to legal action also reflects Hu's faith in the law, which though still fragile, is gradually improving, as evident at the Daxing district court.

For this, the little known court in the suburbs of the capital deserves the nation's respect for the unprecedented ruling. In the past, most courts would use various excuses not to accept such a case simply because the real defendant behind the case is a government department. The judge at Daxing district court, who upheld the law, has rekindled hope into those who had lost faith in the country's legal system.

This case should go down in law books at schools. It proves writing critically about issues does not constitute an "illegal" action, so academics as well as the general public should continue pursuing the truth. The job of an academic, after all, is to examine problems with a critical eye.

Implications of the case are many. Now that Hu and the Daxing district court have set a good example, it is time for other courts and individuals to continue to guard individual rights and uphold the rule of law. (Chen Weihua, China Daily)

Legal process too difficult: Netizens

The difficulty in bringing a lawsuit before the court is one of the main hurdles of people expecting solutions from the judicial system, a press conference was told Tuesday. It was one of 13 major concerns raised by Internet users since April, when the Supreme People's Court (SPC) and 485 lower-level courts asked for suggestions to be e-mailed to their new mail boxes.  Others significant issues included corruption concerns and difficulties in filing an administrative case.

"Many Internet users feel it is difficult to get a case filed, communicate with court staff and have a case well handled, especially in the district and county-level courts," the SPC spokesman Sun Jungong told the conference. "Many people have little knowledge of the procedures of filing and handling a case or which law can best protect his or her rights and interests," Sun told China Daily.

Qiu Baochang, dean of Beijing-based Huijia Law Firm, said court staff, especially those at the district and county-level, would enforce strict standards with filing because they were already overworked. Many people also found legal costs, including lawyer fees, too expensive, Qiu added.

Dong Hongda, a popular blogger on Sina.com, said: "Some court officials are indifferent to the vulnerable litigants without any social and finance background. Some even take bribes." "Though only a small number of judges behave like that, they have led to ugly impression on the overall judges," Dong wrote.

Sun said many people complained about the difficulty in getting a court to accept an administrative case, in which legal action was launched against officials or government agencies. "Some Internet users said some courts would groundlessly refuse to accept, handle or conclude an administrative case," he said.  Wang Cailiang, dean of Beijing-based Cailiang Law Firm, compared citizens engaging an administrative case to an egg striking a rock. "Administrative cases usually involve local government agencies, but the personnel and finance sectors of the court system are subordinate to the management of local government, who sometimes intervene in cases where local government departments are being sued," Wang said.  Sun said the SPC would continue organizing inspection tours nationwide to deal with corruption cases by whistleblowers. More supervisors would also be installed in local trial and enforcement departments. (Xie Chuanjiao, China Daily)

Sex and corruption in China's Dream City

While there was little public sympathy for the dead man or his injured cohort, suddenly a previously unknown pedicurist working in a seedy hotel was being hailed by Chinese netizens as a champion of women's rights and hero of the underclass. Women's groups, including the semi-governmental All-China Women's Federation, took up her cause, and even state media picked up her story, which has become a national sensation.

Until last week, that is, when the country's censor tsar, jittery about public ire manifested in any form as the 20th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown approaches, decided to pull the plug.

“Hubei's case concerning Deng Yujiao,” a gag order from the Central Publicity Department stated, “has been under judicial investigation in accordance with the law, and news organizations should halt following up the case temporarily and call back journalists working in Hubei immediately.”

Since the department issued this edict, two journalists - Kong Pu of the Beijing Times and Wei Yi of the Nangfang People Weekly - have reportedly been beaten and detained as they attempted to interview Deng Yujiao's grandmother, and Yesanguan has been sealed off by local authorities.(Kent Ewing, Asia Times)

Who Controls the Internet?

In order to please our European allies and our Third World critics, the Obama administration may be tempted to surrender one particular manifestation of American "dominance": central management of key aspects of the Internet by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Other countries are pushing for more control. Early this year, British cabinet member Andy Burnham told the Daily Telegraph that he was "planning to negotiate with Barack Obama's incoming American administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites." It would be a mistake for the administration to go along. America's special role in managing the Internet is good for America and good for the world.

Internet domain names (such as www.google.com) are managed hierarchically. At the top of the hierarchy is an entity called IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, operated on behalf of the Commerce Department. The U.S. government therefore has the ultimate authority to review or revoke any decision, or even to transfer control of IANA to a different operator.

There are persistent proposals to break the connection between IANA and the U.S. government. In these schemes, IANA would be directed by some international body, such as the United Nations or the International Telecommunication Union, which coordinates international phone networks. It is unclear what problem such proposals attempt to solve. There have been no serious complaints about American stewardship of the Internet, no actual abuses perpetrated by American overseers. But were we to abdicate this stewardship, a number of difficulties could arise. (Ariel Rabkin, Weekly Standard)