21 Jan 12 | Asia and Pacific, China
The defection of Chinese writer and dissident Yu Jie last week revealed shocking allegations of torture and beatings more usually associated with rogue American troops in Iraq.
Yu, a close friend of imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo, is most famous for his mocking attack on the country’s premier, China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao, published in Hong Kong in late 2010.
Yu fled with his family to the US on 11 January. Shortly after, he held a press conference in Washington and released a written statement on why he had chosen to defect. Below we pick out the most shocking of these claims.
Though I was physically in China, I became an ‘exile at heart’ and a ‘non-existent person’ in the public space.
Illegal house arrests, torture, surveillance, tracking, and being taken on ‘trips’ became part of my everyday life.
Several of the plainclothes officials came at me again and began beating me in the head and the face without explanation. They stripped off all my clothes and pushed me, naked, to the ground, and kicked me maniacally. They also had a camera and were taking pictures as I was being beaten, saying with glee that they would post the naked photos online.
They forced me to kneel and slapped me over a hundred times in the face. They even forced me to slap myself. They would be satisfied only when they heard the slapping sound, and laughed madly. They also kicked me in the chest and then stood on me after I had fallen to the ground.
The head state security officer told him:
If the order comes from above, we can dig a pit to bury you alive in half an hour, and no one on earth would know… If the central authorities think that their rule is facing a crisis, they can capture [all China’s dissidents] in one night and bury them alive.
While the post-Tiananmen Square period was a time when Chinese dissidents defected in their droves, there is still a steady trickle of Chinese who seek refugee status overseas. Some of them leave legally, while others, who are denied passports or the right to leave smuggle themselves out, usually via Vietnam. They include fellow writer Liao Yiwu, who has been living in Germany since 2011; Chinese diplomat, Chen Yonglin, who fled to Australia in 2005; and AIDS activist Wan Yanhai, who left for the United States in 2010. The wife of Chinese dissident human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, Geng He, has also been living in the US for the past two years. Her husband is currently serving a three-year prison sentence for violating probation rules, having been missing for more than a year.
17 Jan 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
A veteran Chinese dissident is facing subversion charges for writing a poem urging people to defend their freedoms. Zhu Yufu was arrested last April for “inciting subversion of state power” but no trial date has yet been set. Authorities decided to prosecute the activist almost a year after the poem “It’s time” was published online. One verse reads “It’s time, Chinese people!/the square belongs to everyone/the feet are yours/it’s time to use your feet and take to the square to make a choice.” Yufu’s lawyer said the poem was written around the “time of chaos” in the Middle East.
09 Jan 12 | China
As the number of Confucius Institutes continues to increase, there have been renewed concerns about how these organisations restrict free expression, particularly from among the international community.
The centres, which are dedicated to Chinese language and culture, education and research, are funded by the Chinese government — just as the UK has its British Council, Germany its Goethe Institut and France its Alliance Française. These European organisations don’t shy away from their purpose: to promote their nation’s culture and win allies. As the British Council states: “Put simply, the British Council exists to build trust between the UK and other countries and people and thereby win lifelong friends for Britain.” So why is it wrong when China tries to do it?
By last August, in just over six years, China had set up over 350 Confucius Institutes and 473 Confucius Classrooms in over 104 different countries, according to the Institute’s website. No small feat, as the British Council, set up in 1934, has only 220 offices in 110 countries and territories.
These organisations, which spread the teaching of Chinese language and culture (including activities as harmless as cooking classes) and provides advice to people looking to do business on the mainland, are overseen by Hanban, ostensibly an NGO but broadly controlled by the Chinese Ministry of Education. In some more prestigious universities the institutes also sponsor research programmes into sinology.
According to a USA Today story last week, some academics have voiced concerns that the money and resources that Confucius Institutes bring in can also help stifle what can be discussed, researched and taught in western universities where the institutes are located.
The article says that in the US, a partnership with a Confucius Institute typically brings in funds “in the range of $100,000 to $150,000”.
It quotes Anne-Marie Brady, associate professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand as saying that Confucius Institutes will “ always [have] no-go zones, and the no-go zones are obvious: Tibet, Taiwan, Falun Gong.”
But academics at some American universities that have collaborated with Hanban vehemently deny these claims.
Richard Saller, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University told USA Today: “I said what I always say, which is we don’t restrict the freedom of speech of our faculty, and that was the end of the discussion. I’ve had domestic donors walk away because of that, and in this case Hanban did not walk away.”
Other academics interviewed by the paper also said that having a Confucius Institute on campus had not restricted their freedom to hold talks on Taiwan, Tibet or any other sensitive issue. Yet.
While the western press were busying querying the Confucius Institutes, as reported by The New York Times, Chinese president Hu Jintao was bitterly critical of western culture: “We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernising and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration”. He also urged the country to put more energy into spreading Chinese culture and ideas, precisely through organs such as the Confucius Institutes.
Hu did not address the issue of just what is Chinese culture. Just 30 years ago under Mao, Confucius was a dirty word and his ideas were vigorously opposed. Today, he is the Communist Party’s golden boy, representing historical greatness, culture, and stability.
05 Jan 12 | Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Index Index, minipost
A Tibetan writer has been sentenced to four years in jail by a Chinese court in eastern Tibet. Kalsang Tsultim, also known as Gyitsang Takmik, was first arrested in July 2010 for committing what the Chinese authorities termed “political error.” He had widely circulated a Video Compact Disc (VCD) in which he urges the international community to “act swiftly on behalf of the Tibetan people” to end repression in the tense region, while calling for the return of the Dalai Lama from exile.
