SCN: China

[patrick]

Of course, most people do not know about Chinese society.

Chinese government is run by individuals who have good connections. Laws do not
mean much in Asia, it is for the lowly class, above Confucian principles. And
so the law is applied as one wishes, as it is not the law that is consistent,
just the inconsistent abuse of that power.

Dissidents are often people who are as well-connected. They have motives. They
may want democracy, but democracy as they see it. Chinese society is not really
democratic by any means. The dissidents often use their power in society and
they usually want power for themselves, not to change the government.

I read articles about China very skeptically. The articles often use the same
terms, the same ideas, the same labels to Chinese society, and those views are
old and stale, as are the terms they use to label Chinese.

I have great admiration for Chinese society. However, it is different from our
American society (which I am less fond of, day by day) and we can't compare it
with our society. If I had the chance, I'd be living over there right this
minute, in Shanghai, preferably.

The real trick to the articles is to read between the lines. However, for most
people, their only exposure to China is through these articles. There is a good
article that was profiled on Salon.com yesterday, about China, the internet,
and it's new culture (which has a generational change about every two to three
years, according to someone interviewed for the article.)

Patrick




--- Steve <steve at advocate.net> wrote:
> x-no-archive: yes
> 
> 
> ==========================
> 
> 
> 
> (Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon)---For more than two-and-half months, Yang 
> Zili, 30, a Chinese writer and software developer, has been under arrest in 
> the custody of the Beijing State Security Bureau. Among his apparent 
> crimes: being a Web handyman for pro-democracy Chinese intellectuals.  
> 
> 
> "There are a lot of senior veteran dissidents who don't even know how to 
> use e-mail," explains Richard Long, editor of VIP Reference, a U.S.-based 
> Chinese dissident online publication. "They've been restricted by their 
> technology handicap, and all of a sudden you have this guy coming in and 
> helping them to get online and get their articles published. That's 
> something that the government doesn't like."  
> 
> 
> Yang was arrested in mid-March, along with three fellow founding members 
> of the New Youth Society, a group that meets weekly to discuss political 
> and social reform. Another member of the group was detained but never 
> formerly arrested, and has since been released and put under "supervised 
> residence." The four arrested members of the group, including Yang, have 
> been charged with "subverting state power." There's no word on when their 
> trials or sentencing will take place.  
> 
> 
> "These five young men are the pride of the 1970s generation of China," said 
> one friend of Yang's, who asked not to be identified. Aside from Yang, they 
> are Xu Wei, a reporter who organized the Book Reader's Society at Beijing 
> Normal University when he was a philosophy graduate student; Zhang 
> Honghai, a freelance writer who, when he was an undergraduate at Beijing 
> Broadcast College, organized the Book Reader's Society there; Jin Haike, a 
> geologist who organized the Youth Forum as an undergraduate at China 
> Geology University; and Zhang Yanhua, another geologist who studied at 
> China Geology University and who was just detained and then released.  
> 
> 
> On March 13, Yang was on his way back to Beijing from his grandmother's 
> funeral in Hadan when he simply disappeared. It wasn't until mid-April that 
> his wife, Lu Kan, received official notice of the arrest and the charge. 
> According to a letter posted on the Free Yang Zili Web site by Lu, she was 
> also arrested. The couple's home was ransacked, and Yang's computer 
> was seized along with other household items, including the couple's love 
> letters from before they were married. Lu was released after three days. 
> According to people close to Yang, his friends have also been interrogated.  
> 
> 
> While he was a master's student at Beijing University, Yang co-founded the 
> Current Affairs Society, a student discussion group on social issues in 
> China. The school forced the group to dissolve, and Yang has been under 
> surveillance ever since.  
> 
> 
> Yang's more recent association, the New Youth Society, which held 
> meetings and published articles online, apparently drew many university 
> students to its discussions. The four arrested members of the group also 
> served as volunteer teachers in illegal underground schools in Beijing that 
> educate children whose families are not official residents, although they 
> may work or live in the city. Without a "hukou" -- or official family 
> registration card -- the children are not allowed to go to local state
> schools, 
> and the alternative schools that they attend are outlawed.  
> 
> 
> But it's Yang's activities online that made him really stand out. Until his 
> arrest, Yang published a Web site called "Yang Zili's Garden of Ideas," 
> which still exists on a mirror site. He published his pro-democracy writings 
> on the site, like this March poem titled "The Ghost of Communism." He was 
> also critical of the government crackdown on the Falun Gong. But the 
> software developer is hardly the most outspoken or visible critic of the 
> Chinese government among liberal thinkers and intellectuals in Beijing.  
> 
> 
> "If you are famous, you have bigger protection," explains Long. "Yang Zili 
> is someone who is a small potato." Still, beyond anything he wrote and 
> disseminated online, Yang posed another kind of threat: He had Web and 
> computer skills. In Beijing pro-democracy circles, he was known to be the 
> go-to guy for computer problems and online publishing.  
> 
> 
> "The fact that he could help others get around the official censors was 
> particularly threatening to the state," said Minky Worden, electronic media 
> director at Human Rights Watch. "There is some indication that he is part of 
> a more general crackdown on those who are liberals in academia and the 
> press, and in particular people who had anything to do with the Internet."  
> 
> 
> According to the Digital Freedom Network, Yang and his colleagues are 
> among some 10 other Chinese political prisoners who have been detained 
> because of their actions on the Net. For example, two years ago, Lin Hai, a 
> Shanghai computer company owner, received a two-year sentence for 
> selling 30,000 e-mail addresses to VIP Reference. The dissemination of the 
> addresses was ruled an "incitement to subvert the state."  
> 
> 
> "It's about information. It's about losing control on the monopoly on 
> information. The Chinese government is scared," says Long. The Chinese 
> government may be scared, but it also seems to be quite comfortable using 
> the Net to crack down on the behaviors that it deems subversive.  
> 
> 
> Worden explains: "The Chinese government wants the Web for commercial 
> purposes but does not want the Web to be used for any political or 
> organizational activity. There's a lot that is frequently said about the
> ability 
> of the Internet to jump borders and empower activists, and that may be true 
> in the long term. But the Chinese government is using the new technology 
> to make it an instrument of control, and those who are pushing the envelope 
> with technology are the ones who are most likely to be targeted by the state 
> for punishment."  
> 
> 
> But Yang and his cohorts are not being forgotten in mainland China and 
> beyond. Liu Xiaobo, a literary critic and prominent dissident who has been 
> arrested twice and served a three-year sentence, is among the well-known 
> critics of the Chinese government within China who has taken up their 
> cause, writing articles about them and publishing them on Web sites like 
> VIP Reference. And on May 17 a group of overseas Chinese dissidents 
> awarded Yang a Young Freedom Fighters award of about $1,000, which was 
> sent to his wife. Long explains: "They are trying to find a way to help them 
> spiritually and materially."  
> 
> 
> 
> <color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>C</color>opyright 2001 Salon.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> <nofill>
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