Fabian's Hammer

Remnants of Socialism: PRC and Latin America

2006-05-14T20:31:00.000+08:00

It is current policy for the Peoples Republic of China to establish and develop friendly ties and cooperative relationship with all countries on the basis of the sometimes abused Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (mutual respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefits, and peaceful coexistence). These relations, it is said, "are never based on social systems or ideologies".

But some countries are more equal than others.

The PRC maintains special relationships with four other remnants of the former 'Socialist Camp': the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the Republic of Cuba - whose sole ruling parties maintain 'fraternal' links with the Communist Party of China.

While these relationships are sometimes strained, as experienced during the PRC's 1979 foiled invasion of Vietnam and the later clashes in the potentially oil-rich South China Sea, they continue to offer the 'Fraternal Four' the opportunity for intimate deals with the PRC outside of the constraints of international arrangements and alliances such as the Korea 6-party-talks and ASEAN.

Down Latin America way, Fraternal Fidel is networking the Socialist Camp into new oil deals.

Back to the Future: Andy Garcia's movie, The Lost City, is drawing attention to the condition of Cuba prior to the advent of Fidel Castro's communist regime. In his review, Humberto Fontova described 1958 Cuba as undergoing a rebellion not a revolution. "Cubans expected political change not a socio-economic cataclysm and catastrophe," he said. And now we rediscover that the Caribbean socialist paradise, a little larger that Taiwan but with an average income lower than China, was once the most prosperous country in Latin America. Here's a UNESCO report on Cuba circa 1957: "One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class ... Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than US workers. The average wage for an 8 hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 percent of gross national income. In the US the figure is 70 percent, in Switzerland 64 percent. 44 percent of Cubans are covered by social legislation, a higher percentage then in the US." In 1958 Cuba had a higher per-capita income than Austria and Japan. Cuban industrial workers had the 8th highest wages in the world. In the 1950s Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco. Cuba had established an 8 hour work-day in 1933 - five years before FDR's New Dealers got around to it in the USA. Add to this: one months paid vacation. Cuba, a country 71% white in 1957, was completely desegregated 30 years before Rosa Parks was dragged off that Birmingham bus and handcuffed. In 1958 Cuba had more female college graduates per capita than the USA. This period was marked by considerable construction of private highrises, and public tunnels and roads. Havana became the third most expensive and dynamic city in the world with more TV sets, telephones, and late model Cadillacs per household than any city in the USA. The Civic Plaza and all surrounding buildings, now renamed as Plaza de la Revolucin (Revolutionary Square), where Fidel Castro often speaks, was completed in these times.

General Fulgencio Batista y ZaldÃvar was the target of political dissatisfaction. The de facto military leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1940 and the de jure President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944, he then became the country's unchallenged leader, after staging a coup from 1952 to 1959. He was the son of Belisario Batista and Carmela ZaldÃvar, Cubans who fought for independence from Spain and considered socially a mulatto (mixed African and Spanish blood). Of very humble origins, Batista was forced to work from an early age. A self-educated man, he attended school at night and is said to have been a voracious reader. In his last period of power, Batista's Wikipedia entry reads, "he achieved the full support of the labor movement including the communist party. During these years Batista created the program to bring education to peasants, building schools (although modestly), and implementing the minimum wage for farm workers, a measure deeply resented by the landowners. Despite the unprecedented economic prosperity of the 1950s, opposition parties like the Orthodox and the Autenticos managed to promote social unrest instigating university students to plant bombs and kill civilians and military personnel alike. Batista's responded with repression of the subversives. Ultimately, the existing government corruption, tinted with claims of close relationship with the mafia, saw a rise in general opposition to his regime from the rich and middle class Cubans." Fontova further revealed that the Castro-lead, anti-Batista rebellion "was staffed and led overwhelmingly by college students and professionals. Here's the makeup of the 'peasant' revolution's first cabinet, drawn from the leaders in the anti-Batista fight: 7 lawyers, 2 University professors, 3 University students, 1 doctor, 1 engineer, 1 architect, 1 former city mayor and Colonel who defected from the Batista Army ... "

Human Rights: Last year a number of journalists, writers and showbiz figures, including Harold Pinter, Nadine Gordimer, Harry Belafonte and Tariq Ali, signed a letter claiming that in Cuba "there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959 ..." And now Cuba and the Peoples Republic of China have won seats on the new UN Human Rights Council. Prior to the election, Cuba's Ambassador to the PRC, Alberto Rodriguez Arufe, gave his regime's view of what was wrong with the outgoing UN Commission on Human Rights, which the HRC is replacing. The UNCHR had fallen into disrepute, he said as quoted by Patrick Goodenough of CNS News, because of the political manipulation, hypocrisy and double standards imposed by the United States and European Union. There was no point in replacing the UNCHR with the HRC if the new body did not confront those problems, Arufe added, citing as an example the fact that the commission had not taken up the issue of Guantanamo Bay.

Oil on Troubled Waters: China's interest in exploring oil and gas on Cuba's northwestern coast close to the Florida Keys has reportedly raised concerns in the United States about the threat that China may pose to US energy security. Last year, the Fidel Castro announced that Chinese drilling rigs would be used to further explore areas that had been identified by a Spanish company as promising. The Cuban government also signed a contract with Sinopec, China's second largest oil developer, to join the Cuba Oil Corporation (Cubapetroleo) to prospect for oil in a 1,700 sq km block to the north of the province of Pinar del Rio. The Shengli Oilfield Company, Sinopec's largest oil producing unit, will be responsible for the prospecting and the two partners will share production after commercial operations begin. Fu Mengzi, the director of the US Research Department of China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, disagrees with US concerns: "The competition between China and the US in energy is not really a matter that 'you get more and I lose more', even though China's impact on the world energy market is growing due to the rapid economic development," he said. As the top two energy consumers in the world, China and US do have more common interests than conflicts, and "we should enhance mutual trust." she told the Interfax newsagency.

Meantime, China has been hoping to strengthen its position in Latin America, cultivating its links with the region's biggest oil producer, Venezuela, and also signing pacts with the newly-elected government of Evo Morales in Bolivia. Recently, PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company, signed two cooperation agreements with the China State Shipbuilding Corporation and the China National United Oil Corporation, a branch of CNPC, the country's largest oil company, to buy 18 ships to optimize the marine transportation of crude and its derivatives to the expanding Asian market during the recent visit of its officials to the Beijing company. According to the deals, the Chinese oil monopoly will receive 100,000 barrels of heavy crude and 60,000 barrels of fuel oil per day from the Venezuelan company over the next two years. Venezuela has promised to supply 300,000 barrels of oil to China on a daily basis or 15 mln tons per annum within the next few years.

Pumping Tourism: China has listed Cuba as a priority destination for Chinese tourists since 2003, Vice General Director of the Chinese Tourism Administration Cu Shaoxi said, adding that the tourism ties between the two countries have been increasing. Cuba has so far this year received one million foreign travellers and the number is expected to reach 2.5 million in 2006, up 7.7 percent over the previous year. Cuba will open additional tourism promotion offices in China and Venezuela, bringing the total number of overseas offices to 30.

Chavez's The Man: The Socialist Camp's new best friend in Latin America is Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Who is he? "Is Chavez another Fidel Castro?" asked Alberto Garrido, a Caracas political scientist. "Is he a 19th-century caudillo? Or is he a Peron with oil?" His former lover, Herma Marksman, said he once shared a dream of "a prosperous Venezuela where justice would reign" but she now believes that he "is imposing a fascist dictatorship. A totalitarian regime is coming because he doesn't believe in democratic institutions. Hugo controls all the powers."

Venezuela's opposition leaders claim that behind the facade of a flourishing welfare program, Chavez has done nothing to improve a civic infrastructure riddled with fraud and ineptitude. "In Venezuela they say we have no good presidents or bad presidents," said Julio Borges, an opposition candidate in December's poll. "We have presidents who either benefit from high oil prices or suffer from low oil prices. Chavez had the luck to be a president with high oil revenues, but he's like a man who wins the lottery and at the end he spends it all and turns out more broke than before."

One pioneer Red Guard really wanted 'democracy'

2006-05-13T21:19:00.000+08:00

So, one of the earliest of China's Red Guards, the very woman who Mao Zedong publicised for "Bombarding the Headquarters" in the open days of the what became known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, reveals that her aspiration at the time was for building a "democratic China"!

According to Jane Macartney in The Times (UK), Nie Yuanzi is now a frail, slightly stooped 85-year-old who lives with her two persian cats in a tiny, borrowed Beijing bedsit.

"The Cultural Revolution was a disaster so huge that we can only understand it if we study it," she told Macartney. "Chairman Mao used what I wrote to set alight the Cultural Revolution, but I never knew it would play such a huge role. I was very happy at the time, but I did not understand the deeper significance."

She says she tried to curb the violence and now regards the turmoil as a terrible mistake that must not be repeated. "I could have committed suicide but I felt I must stay alive so that people understand the Cultural Revolution," she said.

Her involvement began soon after 16 May 1966 when the Communist Party of China's newspaper, People's Daily, published a coded attack on Mao Zedong's political rivals within the party. Nie, then Communist Party secretary of Peking University's philosophy department, says the attack inspired her to put up a poster charging the elite school of being under the control of the bourgeoisie. Mao had the poster read out over national radio, effectively giving his blessing to attacks on those in authority and triggering a decade of chaos.

"Students rose to oppose so-called revisionists, including bureaucrats, academics, officials and leaders. Radical students calling themselves Red Guards put dunce's caps on teachers and professors and paraded them through the streets. Government ministers were forced to kneel as they were beaten. Many committed suicide to escape persecution. As the turmoil gained momentum, student factions turned on each other. Hundreds of thousands of Red Guards gathered beneath the Tiananmen rostrum in Beijing, waving the Little Red Book of Mao's quotations and chanting 'long live Mao' in slavish adulation. Mao used the movement to regain the political initiative and supreme power that he had lost in the early 1960s after the disastrous famine caused by the Great Leap Forward," Macartney noted correctly.

Nie, apparantly, was detained in 1968 as Mao moved to regain control over the Red Guards and she spent the next 17 years in jail. "She now inhabits a bizarre limbo, with no pension, deprived of her political rights, banned from publishing or speaking and relying on the kindness of friends for food and lodging. She lives in a tiny flat lent to her by a former foe from Peking University," Macartney observed.

And her final assessment? "I thought we would build a democratic China, but today we are still ruled by a dictatorship," she said.

The South/SE Asian natural disaster affects us all

2004-12-29T20:46:00.000+08:00

Travel is preventing me blogging as usual until next week. However the Indian Ocean disaster draws me back early to recommend a visit to the Tsunami Help blog which is providing emergancy information for the wider region.

I notice that the Peoples Republic of China quickly allocated 21.63 million yuan (about US$2.7 million) in humanitarian aid to the earthquake and tsunami-struck countries in South and South East Asia and promised to airlift emergency equpment and supplies.

The Republic of China on Taiwan similarly announced immediate financial aid to Thailand, India and Sri Lanka and Indonesia and dispatched a 10-member medical team to Medan in North Sumatra along with 3,340 tonnes of relief aid.

My condolences to the families of the victims and my best wishes to all for the new year.

PRC suddenly cancels meeting on workers' rights

2004-12-09T15:25:00.000+08:00

The influential Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has announced that an approved meeting of global union and business leaders scheduled for next week in the Peoples Republic of China has been canceled due to the PRC government revoking visas issued to foreign participants.

The NewYork Times reports the PRC is claiming "inconvinient timing" as its excuse for blocking the meeting.

"This is the right time not the wrong time to discuss the rights of workers in China," John Evans, an OECD official based in Paris, said in a statement. "Labor standards of Chinese workers are now in the world spotlight and that spotlight is not about to be turned off."

According to the New York Times, US and EU labor unions have been pressing for years to communicate more directly with China's state-run union monopoly and the country's Communist Party leaders. Addressing worker issues under the aegis of the OECD, which includes 30 wealthy nations, was seen as a step toward that goal.

Torture "widespread and endemic" within PRC

2004-12-07T10:31:00.000+08:00

The Peoples Republic of China's growing number of human rights activists risk detention and torture, states a report from Amnesty International released to coincide with a summit of PRC and European Union leaders in the Netherlands this week. Amnesty wants EU delegates to call on the PRC to release those in prison for rights activism.

"A growing number of people in China are standing up and demanding the basic rights that we in Europe take for granted. For doing so, they face arrest, torture and even death," said Amnesty International Media Director Mike Blakemore.

Amnesty's 42-page report said even though many of those campaigning for better rights - including health, housing, labour, religious and ethnic freedoms - are members of groups set up by the Communist Party-directed government itself, activists are vulnerable because their rights are limited and poorly defined.

"Torture and ill-treatment remain widespread and endemic within China's criminal justice system, particularly at the pre-trial stage when beatings or other forms of torture are often used by the police in an attempt to extract a 'confession' from detained suspects ... Human rights defenders and others with strongly held beliefs or opinions who refuse to 'confess' to their 'crimes' are at particular risk of torture or ill-treatment," the report said.

According to BBC News, activists inside the CPC "are careful not to call themselves as such ... preferring terms such as organiser." This was also noticed recently by the Washington Post's, Edward Cody who observed that labor walkouts are being organized in advance throughout the country "but not by formal labor groups or permanent worker committees".

Some EU members like Britain say such human rights violations should prevent the Union from lifting the arms embargo, which was imposed after the Peoples Liberation Army brutally crushed pro-democracy protests in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. However France, which first pressed for a review of the ban and is one of the EU's biggest arms exporters, and Germany are seen as supporting an end to the embargo to open trade opportunities.

The PRC's Xinhua newsagency highlighted the French Foreign Ministry's statement yesterday that European arms embargo imposed on the PRC "no longer corresponds to the reality of the partnership".

"Of course we are in favor of a lifting of the embargo. It no longer corresponds to the reality of the Euro-Chinese strategic partnership," French Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Cecile Pozzo di Borgo said. "Member states of the EU agree on this ... The discussions are focused on the timetable and modalities for the lifting of the embargo," she said at a news conference.

Xinhua noted that while French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder favor an end to the arms embargo, the European parliament resolved on November 17 to oppose such a move until the adoption of a general EU code of conduct on all arms sales as well as concrete improvements in the PRC's human rights record.

However the newsagency commented that by announcing its intention to lift the embargo, at the EU-Chinese summit on Wednesday, the EU "would send positive signals to China ... without ... an immediate removal."

Remnants of Socialism: PRC and its Fraternal Four

2004-12-01T01:30:00.000+08:00

It is current policy for the Peoples Republic of China to establish and develop friendly ties and cooperative relationship with all countries on the basis of the sometimes abused Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (mutual respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefits, and peaceful coexistence). These relations, it is said, “are never based on social systems or ideologies”.

But some countries are more equal than others.

The PRC maintains special relationships with four other remnants of the former 'Socialist Camp’ – the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the Republic of Cuba - whose sole ruling parties maintain ‘fraternal’ links with the Communist Party of China.

While these relationships are sometimes strained, as experienced during the PRC’s 1979 foiled invasion of Vietnam and the later clashes in the South China Sea, they continue to offer the ‘Fraternal Four’ the opportunity for intimate deals with the PRC outside of the constraints of international arrangements and alliances such as the Korea 6-party-talks and ASEAN.

'Socialist Camp' round-up

Cuba: The PRC and Cuba will expand their mutually beneficial co-operation to benefit both peoples, visiting President Hu Jintao said in his talks with Cuba's President Fidel Castro in Havana (23 Nov). Castro spoke highly of Cuba's traditional friendship with the PRC, adding that the Communist Party of China has demonstrated that "socialism will definitively remain as the only real hope for peace and survival of our species." The PRC is now Cuba's third-largest trading partner, accounting for 10 percent of the island's foreign trade. Under new accords, Cuba will begin provide 4,400 tons of nickel annually to the PRC from next year. The PRC has agreed to invest $500 million in a new nickel plant in Moa, allow Cuba a 10-year extension to repay four interest-free loans provided between 1990 and 1994, during Cuba's severe post-Soviet economic crisis, finance one million television sets for the Cuban market and donate $6 million to Cuban hospitals.

Vietnam: The Vietnam-PRC Friendship Meeting Programme for young people was launched in Guangxi (28 Nov) by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee and the China CommunistYouth Union Central Committee. The two groups stressed that the friendship is a "significant factor in the success of each country's revolutionary cause". In Nanning (2 Nov), some 200 Vietnamese enterprises are to participate in the first China-ASEAN Trade Fair which includes a China-ASEAN conference and a Vietnam-China business forum.The state-controlled Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry has held a number of seminars on construction of two economic corridors involving the PRC's southwestern Yunnan province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and five Vietnamese localities of Hanoi, Hai Phong, Quang Ninh, Lao Cai and Lang Son. Bilateral trade, which reached $4.6 billion last year, is expected to surpass $5 billion this year.

Laos: The PRC and Laos will "further strengthen cooperation" through the official visit of premier Wen Jiabao to Laos during the 10th ASEAN summit, Ambassador Liu Yongxing said (26 Nov). Bilateral trade was $63.95 million in 2002 and reached at $110 million last year. The target is $200 million in 2005. Chinese-funded companies have taken about one third of the Lao market of construction projects and the PRC has become the seventh largest investors in Laos. About 97 percent of the motor cycles used in Laos are imported from the PRC. Amongst other projects, the PRC has built a national cultural museum and a hospital in Luang Prabang, the five-star Don Chan Palace Hotel in Vientiane and a Sino-Lao cement joint-venture has "already taken one fourth of Lao's market share". Besides trade and economic cooperation, the two countries have "also strengthened bilateral cooperation in national defense, public security, culture and education".

DPRK: Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, said PRC-DPRK relations have seen steady progress and that the PRC government will "consolidate and deepen the bilateral friendly cooperation in all areas" (20 Oct). Separately, PRC president Hu Jintao also said that,"under the guidelines of carrying forward tradition, facing the future, being good neighbors and friends and strengthening cooperation, China will continue to step up exchanges and cooperation between the Communist Party of China and the Workers' Party of Korea." The PRC is the DPRK's biggest source of fuel oil and aid. On the matter of the DPRK's attitude to the continuing postponement of the 6-party-talks on its nuclear program, the PRC is assuring the USA, Russia, Japan and South Korea that the DPRK is committed to the dialogue but not yet ready to resume due to perceived "US hostility" (30 Nov).

PRC escapes Burma-style grilling over labor strife

2004-11-30T01:05:00.000+08:00

Labor unrest continues to haunt the Communist Party of China. The Washington Post (27 Nov) describes an "unprecedented series of walkouts" marking "the first stirrings of unrest" emerging among the millions of youthful migrant workers who supply seemingly inexhaustible cheap labor for the vast expanse of factories in the PRC's booming Pearl River Delta.

"Some [factory owners] have concluded that the raw era in which rootless Chinese villagers would accept whatever job they could get may be drawing to a close, raising questions about China's long-term future as world headquarters for low-paid outsourcing," the Post's Edward Cody reported.

"The growing assertiveness of factory workers has posed a particular political problem for the governing Communist Party, which ideologically should champion poor laborers struggling against capitalist managers. But local governments have become shareholders in many of the factories, steering officials toward the management side of labor relations ... "

Apparently eager to show solidarity with restless workers, the government-run All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the only legal union in the country, recently issued a reminder that the law requires foreign as well as Chinese companies to accept federation branches wherever workers demand it. The official federation announced that Wal-Mart, the American merchandizing giant, had agreed to allow unions in its factories in China.

"But factory owners and workers in the Pearl River boom zone said the official union does little to represent labor, even in the rare cases when branches are formed, because it is a spinoff of local governments that own or rely on the businesses ... Even when they do not directly own companies, local governments have a high stake in preserving the Pearl River Delta's role as a magnet for U.S., Japanese and other firms seeking cheap labor unencumbered by unions ...

"The result has been a near-total lack of representation for the millions of workers, most of them 18- to 22-year-old women, who toil on assembly lines more than 60 hours a week for wages that amount to about $120 a month. According to standard practice, most live at their factories in company-provided dormitories and eat in company cafeterias -- and then hand back a third of their pay for food and lodging.

"Some villagers, unhappy with such meager leftover savings, have gone home, and factory managers have begun to encounter labor shortages for the first time, " Cody noted.

According to Tony Latter, visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong, escalating domestic food prices are also encouraging labourers to return to rural districts.

"One might wish that soaring costs in the cities would eventually drive businesses to the cheaper regions. But, as other countries have found, market forces seldom deliver that result, at least not on the desired scale. The magnet of agglomeration is very strong. Even once necessary transport infrastructure is in place, remote locations may struggle to attract sufficient investors to reverse the tide of labour heading the other way in search of fortune. It would probably require a vast further commitment of public funds to redress the balance. But, paradoxically, any reduction in the march to the cities - and tentative signs have emerged of a slowdown as rising agricultural prices reduce the incentive to leave the land - might constrain growth and government revenue. This in turn also cuts back on the available means to fund the regional support needed to break the cycle," he wrote in the South China Morning Post (25 Nov).

Cody observed that the labor walkouts are being organized in advance "but not by formal labor groups or permanent worker committees" and most are resolved without violence within a few hours. "Nevertheless, they signaled that docility among Chinese migrant workers can no longer be taken for granted. "

In the latest unrest, about 1,000 workers staged a walkout on Nov. 7 at the Shanlin Technology appliance factory in nearby Guangzhou, demanding higher overtime pay and more days off, according to the government-run New China News Agency. The workers returned to the assembly line a day later after receiving assurances that overtime pay would rise by 12 cents to 36 cents an hour and that they would get two days off a month, the agency reported.

However the PRC is one of the small minority of International Labor Organisation member states that has still not ratified either of the two core ILO conventions (Nos. 87 and 98) on freedom of association, the right to organize and the right to engage in collective bargaining, Robert Munro pointed out in the Fall edition of Perspectives On Work.

"This means that despite the government's wholesale and egregious suppression of the independent labor movement in China - a crackdown that has continued unabated since the brief nationwide flowering in May 1989 of 'workers' autonomous federations' - [the PRC] cannot be subjected to the kind of intense grilling and criticism by the ILO's supervisory bodies that a country like Burma/Myanmar, which ratified the ILO's Forced Labor Convention (No. 29) back in 1955, is nowadays subjected to at every major ILO conference.

"Unfortunately, the same logic dictates that China is unlikely to ratify Conventions 87 or 98 at any time in the near future.

"The Chinese government and its official trade union want to enjoy the benefits of membership in the world labor club, but without having to shoulder the major duties and responsibilities of that role."

If You Go Carryin' Pictures of Chairman Mao ...

2004-11-23T17:35:00.000+08:00

(Lennon)

To the Communist Party of China, ‘Mao Zedong Thought’ was never a change to universal Marxism-Leninist ideology but its development through application to Chinese conditions. Nowadays, the CPC’s ‘people's democratic dictatorship’ and its ‘socialist market economy’ is guided more by ‘Deng Xiaoping Theory’ and the ‘Three Represents’ and the radicalism of its defining Chairman is as quarantined as Lilburne’s Levellers and Röhm's brown shirts in their waning days.

Worldwide, beyond the control of the PRC security forces (and, perhaps, biding their time within), hundreds of Maoist political organisations disagree. To them Maoism remains “a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power” and the political and military blueprint for defeating ‘US imperialism’, for the struggle against (and sometimes allying with) the ‘last’ superpower’s ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and for leading numerous people’s wars of liberation to victory and then through to the realisation of communism.

Maoist insurrectionist weekly round-up

Nepal Battles: Over 200 fighters of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) are believed killed in an attack on their Pandaun sub-regional training centre by Nepal government security forces. Elsewhere (23 Nov) a landmine placed by Maoists blew up a vehicle carrying five staffers of the Parsa Wildlife Conservation Area in Belawa forest of Parsa, killing all five; security forces gunned down one Maoist area committee member and arrested six others when they were attempting to extort money in Bastipur VDC-5 of Siraha district; Maoists tried to storm the police office at the Nepalgunj district headquarters; Maoists blocked all roads leading to Gulariya and detonated bombs in the municipality; a police inspector was killed and two other officers injured by underground bomb planted by the Maoists at the Nuwakot police training centre (22 Nov) and a seven-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl were killed while playing with a stray bomb placed by the Maoists on the window of Bhairab Pre-Primary School building; the office of the Annapurna Post (20 Nov) was damaged when a bomb planted by Maoists exploded in the toilet of a printing press located in the basement; an eight year old boy, a 60 year old man and a young man, all belonging to Naumule village of Dailekh district, were killed by a group of 20 armed persons, who also abducted six villagers, because of the community's open opposition to Maoist activities (20 Nov) and in Ghorahi Municipality of Dang the Maoists exploded a powerful bomb at the electricity distribution substation of the Nepal Electricity Authority disrupting electricity supply in the municipality; and Indra Bahadur Acharya, the deputy controller of examinations of Tribhuvan University, was killed in Pokhara by Maoist insurgents (19 Nov) who also burnt three bus passengers in Kapilvastu and Nawalparasi districts.

Naxal Terror Watch: The recent merger of the People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre will “amplify” the Naxal threat, India's Home Minister Shivraj Patil said. The two Naxalite groups, now forming the Communist Party of India (Maoist) account for 90 per cent of deaths countrywide. There is “regular exchange of men and material” between the Naxalite groups with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) with plans to spread into new areas to carve out a “compact revolutionary group”, spreading from Nepal, through Bihar and to the Dandakaranya region of AP".

Afghanistan Maoists Unite: Mobilised by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, an organisation sponsored by the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA, a congress of Afghanistan Marxist-Leninist-Maoists has united the Communist Party of Afghanistan, the Organization of Struggle for the Liberation of Afghanistan and the Revolutionary Unity of Workers of Afghanistan into the new Communist Party of Afghanistan (Maoist). Financial assistance from the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) was acknowledged as was the inspiration of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and Communist Party of Peru "in the path of people's war". The CPA (M) will lead the "people's resistance movement" against the "US and its allies".

Shining Path Trial: Experts on the Communist Party of Peru's Shining Path insurgency are concerned about the state's lack of preparation for the upcoming retrial of the Maoist leader Abimael Guzman in a civilian court and warn it could lay the legal basis for hundreds of high-level guerrillas eventually being freed. Guzman, 69, founder and mastermind of a bloody insurgency initiated in 1980, was captured in 1992 and sentenced by a secret military tribunal to life in prison without parole. Last year, Peru's Constitutional Tribunal annulled Guzman's life sentence as unconstitutional and ordered him to be retried in a civilian court. A truth commission has blamed the Shining Path for 54 percent of the nearly 70,000 deaths caused by rebel violence and a brutal state backlash.

Profile - Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

2004-11-23T17:20:00.000+08:00

* US Maoist party controlled from France
* Promotes defeat of US and allies in Iraq
* Associated with listed terrorist groups

The Revolutionary Communist Party is a United States political organisation directed from Paris, France. Its ideology is 'Marxism-Leninism-Maoism' and its objective is to seize power in the USA and establish a 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' under its exclusive control. It expects 'US imperialism' can only be toppled by armed struggle and has built an international alliance, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, with Communist parties engaged in violent ‘People’s War’ in Asia and South America.

The RCP evolved from the Revolutionary Youth Movement II (RYM II) faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the major USA campus force during the 1960s that was capable of mobilising hundreds of thousands of students nationwide for anti-Vietnam war activities. Following a power struggle in 1969, SDS split into three factions, each influenced by a version of the Marxist-Leninist view of the chairman of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong: the 'Worker Student Alliance' faction controlled by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), the SDS National Office's 'anti-imperialist' Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM I) which degenerated into the terrorist Weather Underground and RYM II, associated with the Bay Area Revolutionary Union of northern California.

Lead by a local Berkeley activist, Robert Avakian, the Revolutionary Union took advantage of the disintegration of SDS and expanded nationally through absorbing smaller Maoist-oriented groups. It suffered a split in 1971 when a senior leader, Stanford professor H. Bruce Franklin, left to form a short-lived, Guevarist-influenced terrorist group, Venceramos, which was committed to immediate armed struggle.

However Vietnam veteran Carl Dix was already organising the RU's infiltration of the militant 'Vietnam Veterans Against the War' whose leadership group at that time included John F Kerry. In April 1971, as a member of the VVAV's Executive Committee, Kerry testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, accusing US soldiers of widely engaging in officially sanctioned war crimes in Vietnam. In November the VVAW leadership debated and voted down a plan to assassinate several pro-war US senators. Kerry subsequently resigned from the executive but continued to represent the organisation for several months. By April 1973, the RU dominated the organisation and refocussed it to "fight US imperialism". After a split in 1978 the Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist continues the 'revolutionary' connection.

When the PLP condemned Mao Zedong for meeting US President Richard Nixon in 1972, the RU quickly positioned itself as the new leading 'Mao Zedong Thought' party in the USA and began a five year period of loyal support to the CPC through numerous foreign policy twists and turns. RU organiser C. Clark Kissinger established the US-China Peoples Friendship Association and RU leaders got to enjoy travelling extensively and lavishly in China as VIP guests.

By 1976, Avakian, Kissinger and Dix confidently turned the RU into the Revolutionary Communist Party but international events again intervened. The death of Mao Zedong that year was followed by the arrest and trial of Mao's wife and closest advisors ('Gang of Four’) and with the rise of Deng Xiaoping as paramount leader of the CPC, the RCP split again. In 1977, Avakian supported the 'Gang of Four' and denounced and expelled RCP central committee members M. Jarvis and L. Bergman and their supporters as “economists” and “revisionists”.

When Deng Xiaoping visited President Jimmy Carter in 1981, the RCP led protests at sites throughout Washington, DC and Avakian and others broke in to the White House grounds during the presidential welcome in the Rose Garden. As a result of criminal indictment for the break-in, reportedly threatening a 241 year prison sentence, Avakian fled to 'exile in Paris'.

Despite being denied status as a political refugee, Avakian continues to lead the RCP from France. Under the 'democratic centralist' rules of the party, Avakian's word is final. This is backed up by a 'personality cult' that portrays him to his US followers as a distant but all-knowing genius:

"Because I have followed and studied Chairman Avakian I do have answers and something to say to people! To know that there is somebody that we can have so much confidence in. let me tell you, things can get really crazy in the middle of such an intense struggle. We need to shift things--are we going to have Bush all puffed up and ready to rule the planet or are we going to have him with his pants pulled down in front of the world looking humiliated and naked? It's easy to stress out in the middle of all this, but it's important to step back for a minute and see that our Chairman is leading us to solve all these problems," is a typical accolade.

Avakian's residence in Europe in the 1980s put him at the hub of anti-American and third world radical movements including South America, Asia and the Middle East. Connections with extremists, from violent communists to Islamic Jihadists, were cultivated.

In October 1983 the RCP founded the ‘World Without Imperialism Contingent’ to block deployment of US Pershing and cruise missiles in West Germany and the RCP's Kissinger lead an eight-week tour of Germany through November-December. Already the WWIC contingent included members of the Communist Party of Peru (the 'Shining Light').

The RCP continued its activity in the anti-war movement within the United States. It was an initiator of 'No Business As Usual' in 1985, a national action day against anti-Soviet Union defences in Europe and the 'Refuse & Resist!' organization in 1987 which continues to work against national security preparations, even after the attacks on 11 September 2001. In 1992 the RCP and R&R openly supported what they called "the Los Angeles Rebellion," one of the worst riots in American history leaving 58 people dead, some 2,300 injured, and 5,300 buildings burned.

In the Middle East, the party had supported the Iranian Islamic revolution and sent cadres to visit the seized US embassy in Tehran. It subsequently opposed the US-lead liberation of Kuwait in 1991 and organized the 'Not In Our Name' organisation in the USA in 2002 to disrupt US assistance to the Northern Alliance against the Taliban and Al Queda in Afghanistan and against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.

The RCP is also sponsor of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) established in London in 1984. It has developed into an effective international alliance of Maoist parties, including three known to be the most active insurrectionists in the world - the Communist Party of Peru, Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) - each of which have been listed on the US government's list of foreign terrorist organisations.

RIM's founding Declaration asserted: "Today ...the forces fighting for a revolutionary line are a small minority encircled and attacked by revisionists and bourgeois apologists of all stripes. Nevertheless, these forces represent the future."

And its 20th anniversary statement triumphed: “Today, the RIM's accomplishments, and the challenges before it, can be seen right in the immediate situation in Nepal, where the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), a participating party in the RIM, has led an eight-year-long people's war which is now approaching a struggle for countrywide power. Nepal, a small country, threatens to shake the South Asian subcontinent by inspiring hundreds of millions of oppressed.”

And of RCP’s role and commitment: “The RCP, USA has been part of these struggles in the RIM, and gladly takes up its responsibility to do all it can, facing all reactionary attacks, to advance the revolutionary struggle in the US, to work to strengthen the RIM, and to develop the heartfelt enthusiasm and deep support among the people for the revolutionary struggles led by the Maoists of the world.”

“To do all it can”.

Once were Maoists ...

2004-11-23T17:01:00.000+08:00

A regular Fabian Hammer listing of prominent or otherwise interesting individuals who were once members (or claimed to be ‘associated with’) Maoist-oriented Marxist-Leninist communist parties and organisations outside of the Peoples Republic of China. Contributions are welcome. Please email confessions and/or published links to Fabian.

(XML001) José Manuel Durrao Barroso: New president of the European Commission, former Prime Minister of Portugal. "As a young man, he was an activist in the extreme left-wing Maoist Party, the Movement for the Reorganisation of the Party of the Proletariat. It used the Lisbon University Law Faculty as its base. Of all the radical groups which sprang up in the Portuguese revolution of 1974, the MRPP was the most radical – and Mr. Barroso was one of its most radical members." (Mail on Sunday, 3 Oct 04). Mr Barroso "grew up and left Chairman Mao’s fold in 1977 at the ripe old age of 21. Three years later he joined Social-Democratic Party (PSD), where he remains to the present day." (more at Fabian's Archive).

(XML002) Jose Pedro Simoes Ferreira: Retired brother of Teresa Heinz Kerry. In a November 1974 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story on her thoughts on the political unrest transpiring at the time in her native Mozambique she said "she did not mind Maoists in the government, and she mentioned that Ferreira had been a Maoist when he was younger." (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 31 Oct 04).

(XML003) Bernard-Henri Lévy, ex-Maoist, ex-journalist ... a moralist in philosophy, a nominalist in world view, and an anti-totalitarian in politics. He discovered, in a mood of "the darkest and most tragic pessimism," that the Marxism he once believed in is a lie: "No socialism without camps, no classless society without its terrorist truth." (New York Review of Books, 24 Jan 80). Lévy is a bestselling writer, philosopher, political campaigner, pundit and luscious-locked superstud in France (The Observer, 16 June 03).

(XML004) CK Yu, the son of a Taiwanese general, ran a Maoist bookshop in California during the 1970s. Staffed by 15 young women dressed up in fake ears, fluffy bottomed skirts and fishnet stockings, Mr Yu has opened the Buck and Bunny bar in Sanlitun, Beijing's diplomatic district. Apart from the police and cultural ministry officials who dropped in to warn that the skimpy uniforms were unacceptable, the bar has been almost empty. Customers say it is hard to tell whether the club is behind or ahead of the times. (The Guardian, 10 May 04).

(XML005) Yemane (Jamaica) Kidane, former Maoist fighter against the Ethiopian military junta with the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. His poems from the 1970s were published this year in English in "Soaring Spirits" (Commercial Information Agency). He is now a retired civil servant who believes in an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary one. “‘I am rather sobered by the experience of life. In hindsight, Haile Selassie’s continuation with a peaceful transition would have been much better than what we have now. Had the violent period of the Derg been avoided, we could have brought about economic development through a peaceful struggle. I was an idealist then, I am a realist now. A realist and pragmatist." (Walta, Sep 04)

Socialist-theocracy alliance weakens trade embargos

2004-11-18T13:22:00.000+08:00

The Washington Post backgrounds the ever closer strategic relations between Iran and the Peoples Republic of China:

Last month, the two countries signed a preliminary accord worth $70 billion to $100 billion by which China will purchase Iranian oil and gas and help develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field, near the Iraqi border. Earlier this year, China agreed to buy $20 billion in liquefied natural gas from Iran over a quarter-century.

Iran wants trade to grow even further. "Japan is our number one energy importer for historical reasons . . . but we would like to give preference to exports to China," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said this month, according to China Business Weekly ...

China's trade with Iran is weakening the impact on Iranian policy of various U.S. economic embargoes, analysts here say. "Sanctions are not effective nowadays because we have many options in secondary markets, like China," said Hossein Shariatmadari, a leading conservative theorist and editor of the Kayhan newspapers.

Accurate trade figures are difficult to get, in part because trade is increasing so rapidly and partly because China's large arms sales to Iran are not included or publicized. But at the second annual Iran-China trade fair here in May, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said trade had increased by 50 percent in 2003 over the previous year, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Beijing has also provided Iran with advanced military technology, including missile technology, U.S. officials say. In April, the Bush administration imposed sanctions on Chinese manufacturers of equipment that can be used to develop weapons of mass destruction ...

China with its one-party political system appears to feel fewer restraints than do Western nations in dealing with the world's only theocracy. "For China, issues like human rights don't affect your relations with Iran," Namazi said.

Update: The father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, delivered weapons grade highly enriched uranium to Iran in 2001 and Iran aims at getting a nuclear bomb next year, charged Farid Soleimani, senior official of National Council for Resistance in Iran. Khan has admitted to being the ringleader of a smuggling network that supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea with sensitive nuclear technology. Khaleej Times

Update: Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has denounced what he said are crimes - "massacre of civilians, women and children by the thousands, the execution of wounded, the destruction of homes, mosques and other places of prayer" - committed by "infidels" in the Iraq city of Fallujah. AFP via iranvajahan.

Update: The USA has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon, further evidence that the Islamic republic is determined to acquire a nuclear bomb," Secretary Powell said. Washington Post via MSNBC

Update: Secretary Powell said the USA is insisting on referring Iran's nuclear programs to the United Nations Security Council. Under prodding from the United States, the IAEA set late November as the deadline by which Iran must comply with demands that it do more to disclose its nuclear activities of face sanstions. Xinhua

Democracy Lite: Powell's parting thoughts on China

2004-11-17T14:04:00.000+08:00

Colin Powell has stepped down as US Secretary of State and will be replaced by President Bush's first term national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Reportedly a "realist" in an "administration of ideologues", Powell is credited with convincing George Bush to pursue "engagement rather than confrontation" with the People's Republic of China. Despite Powell's recent denial of Taiwan ROC's sovereign status and call for the country's "peaceful reunification" with the PRC during his visit to Beijing last month, the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs diplomatically thanked him for his contribution to Taiwan-US ties, paricularly his support for Taiwan's participation in international organizations, including the WHO. However, many of Powell's US critics accuse him of significantly contributing to misguided US policies on the PRC. "These policies appease and reward the brutal Communist government, place trade and relations over human rights and democracy, and undermine America's economy and safety," argued Curry Kenworthy, Executive Director at China Support Network.

Powell's most recent interviews suggest, at the least, a generously accomodating view of the PRC's drive to a one-party, "socialist market economy":

P J O'Rourke for The Atlantic:

P J O'Rourke: I was wondering whether we should be concerned about issues like, we've got some countries out there that seem to be trying to decouple the idea of economic freedom from personal liberty and political liberty something we once would have called Fascism.

Secretary Powell: Yes, without naming countries, we're nervous about this trend, but I don't think it works. Because if you are going to be economically successful you can't really constrain your people too much. Your people are the ones who are going to make it happen for you. You have to turn them loose. They may originally start out being robber barons, but so did we. The society eventually catches up with them and makes something useful. We had robber barons in the last century and we had junk bond dealers and a number of them went to jail. But, man, before they went to jail, did they get something going. The cellular industry, the computer industry it was junk bond guys who did that in the '80s. We probably wouldn't have advanced as quickly as we did if it had not been for junk bond dealers who went to jail.

Clearly Powell did not answer O'Rourke's question.

The WSJ Report with Maria Bartiromo:

Maria Bartiromo: Let me ask you a bit about China. You and the President are headed there on an important trip to the Asia and Pacific countries next week. We have a large trade imbalance with virtually all of Asia, particularly I really want to hit on China, though. What points will you be making to the Chinese to try to improve that?

Secretary Powell: We have said to the Chinese, and I was in China just a couple of weeks ago, that we're pleased that we have such a strong economic relationship with them. We'd rather be competing with them in the world of economics than in other kinds of worlds, and we see China as an important trading partner. But we need them to buy more of our products and they have significantly increased their imports from the United States over the past year, by a factor of a couple. And so they're doing more to purchase from us. We want to see them do even more. We want them to protect property rights, intellectual property rights. This is a major issue that we have with them.

And so we know that the Chinese are sensitive to this trade imbalance and they're doing more to buy more from us, and we expect them to do even more. They also say they help us a great deal by their direct investment in the United States, so to some extent that offsets it to a degree. But we have a good relationship with China. I would submit it's the best relationship that the United States has had with China in over 30 years. And the important manner in which we've crafted this relationship doesn't rest on a clich or a slogan. When we agree about things, we talk about that agreement.

When we disagree about things, such as proliferating companies or entities in China or human rights problems in China, when we feel a problem with China, we bring it to their attention and we talk to China about it, as two mature nations dealing with each other in a mature fashion.

Maria Bartiromo: But, most people expect China's power, influence and economy to only get larger over time. Should the U.S. be taking a more cautious stance?

Secretary Powell: Well, we are both cautious and open. We are watching what they do. We watch their military improvements and modernization and we improve and modernize our forces. We're more interested in what their attitudes are with respect to their neighbors and are they working with their neighbors to deal with regional problems.

I have found the Chinese leadership over the last three or four years that I've been Secretary of State to be very helpful as we worked our way through problems on the subcontinent, the challenge that we faced two years ago between India and Pakistan. I found China to play a helpful role in the resolution of that problem. China is playing a very helpful role in the resolution of the problem with North Korea. It's China that's been hosting these six-party talks and playing a leadership as well as a hosting role.

So what we want to do is engage China, watch how they develop in the future, watch it with caution, but not with fear; watch it for the purpose of moving along with China and not trying to contain China. China is an important country. It's going to be a more important country and it's going to have needs. It's going to have huge energy needs that we're now just starting to see manifested in the international oil markets. It's going to have huge needs for investment. There are still a billion people out there who are not yet benefiting in the miracle that we see in the eastern part of China along the coast.

And so there are many things we can do together with China, watching them with caution but at the same time not with fear, looking at them as a partner, looking at them as a country with whom we have friendly relations in the economic area, and we can do more and more working with them and our other regional allies -- Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia -- to make sure that Asia remains a stable, safe place. There are no wars going on in that part of the world right now. We have problems in North Korea. We have problems in Burma. Otherwise, we have relative stability in Asia and in the Pacific region and we want to keep it that way.

A peculiar turn of phrase to describe the PRC's dealing with/responding to its human rights problems as one of a "mature nation" in a "mature fashion". Caution to the extreme and, arguably, appeasing.

Updates on military, energy and political posts

2004-11-15T12:52:00.000+08:00

Mick Hartley picked up our posting last week on the "brewing cold war between Japan and China", in which the former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Michael Vatikiotis, warned of a future military conflict between the Peoples Republic of China and Japan -- and added breaking news on a PRC submarine that had just penetrated Japan's territorial waters.

The vessel spent about two hours near the southern island of Okinawa, the site of major US military bases, that lies near islands and gas resources eyed by Japan, China and Taiwan. Japan sent two destroyers along with a P-3C surveillance plane that tracked the submarine until it left Japanese waters.

Two days earlier, Kyodo News agency reported that Japan has charted out scenarios for a Chinese attack against Japan which could be triggered by disputes over Taiwan or energy resources. It said the outline for potential Chinese attacks was part of a confidential defense strategy study drawn up by military planners in September.

In the case of a clash between the Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan, the PRC could attack parts of Japan to prevent aid from US forces based in the country, the study said.

Under a second scenario, Beijing would try to take over disputed islands between Taiwan and Japan -- called Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China -- to rally support if public criticism challenged the communist leadership.

The study listed a third scenario in which the Defense Agency believes the PRC could take military action to secure its interests in the East China Sea where Tokyo and Beijing dispute the development of gas fields near their maritime boundary.

A spokesman for the Defense Agency declined comment on the Kyodo report, but confirmed the agency filed a report in September on Japan's defense capability. According to Kyodo, the defense planners called for diplomatic efforts to avoid conflicts with China.

Beijing reacted strongly to the report on 9 November. "The parties concerned should give up their Cold War mentality and work to promote peace and development in Asia, and the world as whole," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said. Beijing accused Tokyo of trying to meddle in the Taiwan issue, and said such comments and actions are an affront to its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

The two countries are already in dispute over energy resources in the East China Sea and PRC research and naval ships have repeatedly entered Japan's exclusive economic waters without prior notice.

Adam Crouch of The Raw Prawn posted an extensive review of our article "PRC a tough new competitor for global oil resources" with useful references to a Congressional Commission that concluded that China has been giving nuclear technology to Iran in exchange for oil and evidence that China has provided information about nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia and Libya.

"China's leaders seem to be so blinded by their desire to keep natural resources flowing in and to keep the economy growing at lightning speed, that they've treated some real long-term problems for both themselves and the rest of the world," he commented.

Also noticed was Logan Wright’s posting at his Survived SARS blog on the PRC's new energy deals with Iran and the call by Foreign Minister, Li Zhaoxing, for the issue of Iran's nuclear power program to stay out of the UN.

"I [told] colleagues that, to my knowledge, Iran is having a pretty good cooperation with the IAEA," he said. "And I also opened my mind to them that according to my reading of the pictures, according to my analysis, to bring the matter to the Security Council will only make the issue more complicated and more complex than necessary and more difficult to work out," Li said.

"This is vaguely similar to China's position on Darfur--self-interested but procedurally sound--in which they sort of dodged a bullet as the crisis alleviated somewhat," Wright commented.

And for those interested in further back-grounding of Zhao Ziyang, the former premier of the Peoples Republic of China and former Communist Party of China general secretary, who recently celebrated his 85th birthday under house arrest, visit Foreign Affair’s website where the entire text of The Tiananmen papers are available online.

Here is a sample - an exchange between Zhao and the true master of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping, on 13 May 1989, discussing the continuing pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in the days leading up to the visit by Soviet Union leader and ‘glasnost’ promoter, Mikhael Gorbachev:

Deng Xiaoping: As I've said before, the origins of this incident are not so simple. The opposition is not just some students but a bunch of rebels and a lot of riffraff, and a tiny minority who are utterly against opposing bourgeois liberalization. ... This is not just between the students and the government.

Zhao Ziyang: The consensus in the Politburo has been to use the policies of guiding and dividing, winning over the great majority of students and intellectuals while isolating the tiny minority of anticommunist troublemakers, thereby stilling the movement through democratic and legal means.

Deng Xiaoping: What do the ordinary people in society think?

Zhao Ziyang: The protests are widespread but limited to cities that have universities. The rural areas aren't affected, and the farmers are docile. So are urban workers, basically. The workers are unhappy about certain social conditions and like to let off steam from time to time, so they sympathize with the protesters. But they go to work as usual and they aren't striking, demonstrating, or traveling around like the students.

Deng Xiaoping: ... We must not give an inch on the basic principle of upholding Communist Party rule and rejecting a Western multiparty system. At the same time, the Party must resolve the issue of democracy and address the problems that arise when corruption pops up in the Party or government.

Zhao Ziyang: ... When we allow some democracy, things might look "chaotic" on the surface; but these little "troubles" are normal inside a democratic and legal framework. They prevent major upheavals and actually make for stability and peace in the long run.

Could Zhao have led the struggle for democracy?

2004-11-13T18:56:00.000+08:00

Zhao Ziyang, the former premier of the Peoples Republic of China and former Communist Party of China general secretary celebrated his 85th birthday in the quiet of his home in the Fuqiang Hutong district of Beijing on 17 October. He has been under house arrest since he was removed from his position 15 years ago, when the pro-democracy movement was violently suppressed in Tiananmen Square.

According to The Epoch Times, veteran party members and former CPC officials have pleaded for Zhao’s freedom. They claim that Zhao has been deprived of his rights as an ordinary citizen, rights which should be protected by China’s Constitution:

Hu Jiwei, once the chief editor of People’s Daily and a member of the Standing Committee of the Peoples’ Congress, was removed when the pro-democracy movement was suppressed with the Tiananmen Square massacre. He said, “I can’t remember how many times I’ve spoken out for Zhao. Limiting his freedom now doesn’t make any sense at all. Hu Jintao (the current Party General Secretary) emphasizes the importance of China’s constitution, and he is right. But he is facing two challenges. First, he must unconditionally comply with China’s constitution and protect peoples’ human rights, and secondly, he must firmly stop any unconstitutional acts, which include Zhao’s case.”

The Epoch Times also reported on the “Zhao Ziyang and China’s Reform" conference conducted by Columbia University’s Modern China Research Center on 16 October.

Yan Jiaqi, the former director of the China Institute of Political Science, spoke about two of Zhao’s major contributions to the PRC. First, he recalled the political and economic reforms during the 1980s. He said no one could beat Zhao’s contributions in initiating foreign capital.

Secondly, Zhao had advocated democratic and peaceful means to legally solve the student protests in Tiananmen Square. When Beijing was flooded with university students and teachers mourning the death of former CPC general secretary Hu Yaobang and calling for a rebirth of his democratic ideals, the CPC split.

Li Peng, the premier, had advocated a crackdown on the students, while Zhao had pressed for dialogue and compromise. Zhao was overruled, and eventually accused of splitting the party by siding with the students. He was deprived of his political career and confined to his house, where he remains today.

Yan suggested that if China had been able to follow Zhao’s leadership, the country would be more democratic today. He also said that if Zhao ever gets the opportunity to guide the market economy, establish China’s economic base and implement democratic principles, China will be able to take its place in a peaceful and democratic way in the 21st century.

Hu Ping, chief editor of Beijing Spring magazine, said that looking back over these 15 years, he has seen that time only makes evil stronger. While people’s memories have grown dim, the evil permeates and corrodes people’s thinking. Since 1989, although Chinese society has changed drastically, hardly any abuse seems surprising anymore.

According to Hu, the government now openly uses violence against its people, acts that would have been unimaginable in the 1980s.

Spectre of unhappy, organised masses haunts CPC

2004-11-13T18:53:00.000+08:00

The Communist Party of China is worried that mass protests occurring throughout China could lead to the collapse of its control. "The Soviet Union used to be the world's number one socialist country, but overnight the country broke up and political power collapsed," Vice President Zeng Qinghong wrote last month in the CPC’s People's Daily.

"One important reason was that in their long time in power, their system of governing became rigid, their ability to govern declined, people were dissatisfied with what the officials accomplished, and the officials became seriously isolated from the masses," Zeng said, as quoted by The Washington Post.

There were more than 58,000 major incidents of social unrest in the country last year, about 160 per day on average, according to the Communist Party magazine Outlook. That was an increase of 15 percent over 2002 and nearly seven times the figure reported by the government just a decade ago.

Another study of police statistics, by Murray Scot Tanner, a scholar at US-based Rand Corp, concluded the demonstrations were growing in size while violence, including attacks on party and state officials, was also on the rise. He said statistics indicate the number of "mass incidents" jumped from 8,700 in 1993 to 32,000 in 1999 and has kept increasing.

Most protestors appear to be victims of the economic disruption caused by the change to a market economy in the Peoples Republic of China and who have been unable to protect their rights through approved channels.

The PRC’s courts received nearly four million petition cases in total last year; the national legislature had nearly 20,000 petitioners, one-third more than in 2002, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Communist Party officials argue that the CPC’s recent call to improve governance is an attempt to address this problem by making officials more responsive to the public and less corrupt. But the party continues to rule out democratic reform as an option.

“Except in the largest, most volatile situations, the government's approach is to monitor demonstrations and allow them to end peacefully. It reacts later, in some cases addressing the complainants' issues, but almost always aggressively prosecuting the organizers to send a message that further activities will not be tolerated,” the Chicago Tribune commented.
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In one recent example in Beijing, the police declined to use force when suburban villagers - upset over a government land deal - blocked school buses bringing foreign children to the International School of Beijing. A few days later, the police rounded up seven or eight protesters and pressed serious criminal charges against three of them.

Chinese Communist anti-corruption fighter busted

2004-11-13T18:50:00.000+08:00

A Chinese Communist Party cadre who came to notice throughout China by denouncing official corruption has been relieved of his duties and placed under a form of house arrest while authorities investigate his conduct, Washington Post reported.

Huang Jingao, party secretary for Lianjiang county in Fujian province, attracted attention in August when he posted an open letter on the CPC’s People's Daily website complaining that his efforts to investigate and prosecute corruption were being thwarted by party leaders and government officials because of what he called "the underlying rules" by which unscrupulous functionaries protect one another.

Huang's anti-corruption efforts centered on what he described as crooked deals in which officials took bribes to confiscate peasants' land and sell it at below-market prices to developers.

Within days, the letter disappeared and Huang was accused of "individualism" by higher-level, Fujian officials and ordered to "do a complete self-examination."

Taking to wearing a bullet-proof vest after receiving 26 death threats, Huang has since found himself effectively replaced by his deputy as the county's party secretary and confined to his home or office.

"Lianjiang county officials have been told to make a clear break from Huang Jin'gao and march in step with Fuzhou," a government official told Reuters.

Huang's office, home and cell phones are bugged and he is watched around the clock, other sources said. His request to attend the Central Party School in Beijing, which trains Communist Party apparatchiks, has been rejected.

He declined to be interviewed, saying that as a Communist Party member for more than 30 years, he was not allowed to talk to foreign media without the permission of his superiors. "I can't talk to foreign media. I would be breaching party discipline," Huang told Reuters by telephone.

Beijing and Jakarta talk on 'rejuvinating weaponry'

2004-11-13T18:43:00.000+08:00

As the Peoples Republic of China ramps up its courting of Indonesia, Jakarta strategists are encouraging new president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to accommodate the demands of the United States so that American military assistance can be resumed.

The USA imposed military equipment bans on the PRC following its massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Beijing in 1989 and also on Indonesia following widespread allegations that gross human rights abuses took place when East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999.

Bara Hasibuan, a former congressional fellow and the National Mandate Party's director of international relations, said that for the sake of his global campaign against terror, President Bush will persuade the US. Congress to lift its embargo on the Indonesian military. "But the Indonesian government must be proactive in reaching out for it and leave its passive approach behind," he added.

"The Bush administration considers Southeast Asia as a breeding ground for terrorism and Indonesia will continue to be its partner in fighting terrorism," he said, quoted by the Jakarta Post.

The newspaper reported scepticism that approaches from Indonesia will bear fruit as the Indonesian military “has steadfastly refused to acknowledge its poor human rights record”.

Meantime, visiting Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan said he had met with President Yudhoyono, discussing broad bilateral issues including defence cooperation. "We held talks on defence cooperation and we have agreed to increase cooperation and consultation on security," AFP reported.

Separately, Foreign Minister Wirayuda said Jakarta hoped from the talks China could "provide ways to help (us) rejuvenate our weaponry."

President Hu Jintao's also extended an invitation for Yudhoyono to visit China, Tang said, adding that the two leaders could possibly hold separate bilateral talks at the 22 November ASEAN summit in Laos.

Last week, delegates to a meeting of Asia's biggest security grouping called for closer military cooperation amid concern about terrorism and North Korea's nuclear program. The three-day meeting in Beijing brought together the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the USA, PRC, Japan, India, Russia, the two Koreas, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand.

Delegates plan to take up "the role of the armed forces in coming days in combating regional threats," the Peoples Republic of China envoy, Gen Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army, as reported by AP.

"It is our common mission to maintain regional peace and stability, to strengthen trust among militaries and promote cooperation among countries and capabilities to properly meet the challenges and changes," he said.

PRC adds panache to nationalism to 'lead' E Asia

2004-11-13T18:34:00.000+08:00

According to Eric Teo Chu Cheow, council secretary of the Singapore Institute for International Affairs, many Chinese academics and intellectuals suspect that Washington intends to choke off the Peoples Republic of China’s “access routes to regional energy and natural resources to try to contain China's growth”.

Writing in The Japan Times, he said the PRC itself “is now convinced” that having provoked the disintegration of the USSR and “successfully moved into Central Asia, India and the Middle East (notably Afghanistan and Iraq)”, the USA “seeks to curb China's rising power by blocking trade access to the Pacific”.

As a result, Beijing is pursuing a more active diplomacy around its southern periphery in Southeast Asia where, Cheow stated, “Beijing has shown real panache and sophistication” in dealing diplomatically with individual members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, Malaysia and Thailand), while touting an ASEAN-China free trade agreement.

Recent PRC initiatives in ASEAN include a $400 million soft loan to the Philippines for a rail link between Manila and Clark ("which prompted Manila to conclude a defence cooperation pact" with the PRC); an "early harvest" agreement a year ago on fruits and vegetables with Thailand (which lead to the Asian Cooperation Dialogue hosted in Qingdao); and convincing Vietnam to delay "tourist excursions" to the disputed Spratley Islands after discreet backdoor intervention by the Communist Party with its Vietnamese counterpart.

“In all cases, Beijing has been using nationalism and the ‘glories of the Chinese civilization’ to try to instill a sense of unity among Chinese nationals in and outside of Southeast Asia”, Cheow concluded.

“Although Beijing may acknowledge that rampant nationalism poses a danger to its own internal stability, it has astutely harnessed it to build a ‘new’ Asian pride that it hopes will help establish a new Asian system of politics, economics, security and culture within the ASEAN-plus-Three (Japan, South Korea, China)" framework - which Beijing hopes will be transformed ultimately into an East Asian community under its leadership.”

The PRC's trade with its ASEAN has risen on average 20 percent annually since 1990 and should surpass US$ 100 billion dollars this year.

The economic co-operation framework agreement in signed by the PRC and ASEAN in 2002 is designed to lead to the world's biggest free trade zone of more than 1.7 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of $2 trillion by 2010.

In September, the two sides completed negotiations on the trade of goods and will begin to implement tariff cuts in 2005. The next phases of an FTA will concern trading of services and investment.

Maoists increase intimidation of Nepalese media

2004-11-09T17:20:00.000+08:00

Here is an unusual story of local and international media protests against mounting Maoist terror in Nepal including the actioning of 'execution orders' against reporters in the country and the unexplained, and perhaps unrelated, murder of a Nepalese journalist in the USA.

18 August 2004: Following the brutally killing of Dekendra Raj Thapa, a Dailekh-based journalist affiliated to state-owned Radio Nepal, Nepal News reports that Maoists have issued ‘execution orders’ against ten more journalists in the country. Harihar Singh Rathour and Bed Prasad Timilsina, affiliated to Kantipur Publications, are among those targeted. According to the Federation of Nepalese Journalists, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has killed six journalists in the last eight years and is suspected to be behind the disappearance of three more.

19 August 2004: Nepal News reports a Nepalese American Journalist Association (link in Nepalese) press release asking underground Maoists to immediately stop all human rights violations, to respect press freedom and the fundamental rights of the people.

24 August 2004: Nepal News reports a Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) statement asking the CPN (M) leadership to make clear the party’s view on press freedom within a week otherwise all the news related to the Maoists would be boycotted. The FNJ asks for immediate release of three journalists Dhan Bahadur Magar, Parek Rai and Kul Bahadur Shahi who are in Maoist captivity and urges the rebels to stop intimidation of journalists.

3 November 2004: Dallas/Fort Worth's Channel 8 reports that a convenience store employee died Monday night (1 Dec) after being shot in his South Zang Boulevard store. Keshav Lal Shrestha was found injured in the back office of the Zang Food Store about 1:20 pm with gunshot wounds to his face and stomach. A witness told police that Mr Shrestha was at the front of the store during the shooting and called home before stumbling into the back office.

4 November 2004: Nepal News reports an "unidentified group" shot and killed Keshav Lal Shrestha, a Nepali journalist living in Texas, USA. Shrestha was known as publisher and editor of Makwanpur’s oldest weekly newspaper, "Kurakani". The Federation of Nepalese Journalists and Kurakani weekly, issuing separate statements, expressed deep sorrow at the news.

5 November 2004: Nepal News reports that the CPN (M) has imposed a ban on journalists in the mid western district of Rukkum. Maoist district secretary Bishal said reporters must obtain permission of the ‘people’s government’ before traveling to any part of the district for collecting news.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is supported in the USA by the Revolutionary Communist Party, publisher of the Revolutionary Worker.

PRC a tough new competitor for global oil resources

2004-11-09T16:20:00.000+08:00

The Peoples Republic of China’s growing appetite for energy has stressed the global oil and gas industry and is posing the threat of new armed conflicts over limited resources. The PRC’s oil imports have doubled over the past five years, surging nearly 40% in the first half of 2004 alone, and the country is now second only to the USA as the world's biggest oil consumer.

“The country's industrial base is gobbling up vast amounts of petrochemicals to make everything from fertilizer to Barbie dolls. The number of cars on mainland roads - about 20 million -i s expected to increase by 2.5 million this year alone. Even if China's blazing GDP growth of 9.4% this year moderates to 8% in 2005 … the country is now a permanent major player in the global competition for oil,” Time Asia reported.

And just as oil is seen driving American foreign policy, the PRC's geopolitical strategies are "increasingly influenced by the country's inability to meet its energy needs solely through domestic production".

For instance, news of the discovery of a new offshore oilfield in northern Vietnam last month was warmly welcomed by Vietnam and fellow South East Asian nations but harshly criticised the by PRC which claims "indisputable" sovereignty in the South China Sea. "China is seriously concerned and strongly dissatisfied," PRC Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.

The two Communist Party-ruled neighbours fought a significant land war in 1979, which Vietnam was considered to have won, and their forces clashed in the South China Sea in 1988 and 1992 when the Chinese emerged victorious.

The oil find, announced by a partnership of Petronas Carigali Overseas of Malaysia, American Technology Inc Petroleum, Singapore Petroleum Co and PetroVietnam's Petroleum Investment and Development Co, is at the Yen Tu field, about 70 km east of Vietnam's Hai Phong seaport. It is the "first oil strike" in the waters off northern Vietnam with estimated preliminary reserves at 181 million barrels.

The PRC’s territorial claims cover 80% of the South China Sea, sections of which are also claimed by the Republic of China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. In the mid-1990s, the Chinese put up what it called shelters for fishermen on islets claimed by the Philippines, fueling concerns in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations about increased aggression by China and "prompting increased diplomacy to engage Beijing".

The PRC is also disputing Japan’s sovereignty over natural gas reserves in the East China Sea and is preparing to begin exploiting large gas reserves in the Xibu Trough, just west of the line Japan claims as the boundary of its exclusive economic zone.

The trough, which lies 400 km east of Shanghai, contains the Chunxiao gas fields, the largest gas deposit yet discovered in the East China Sea, with reserves estimated at about 300 billion cubic metres.

Beijing rejects Tokyo's claim as an infringement of sovereignty, and has signalled it will not jointly explore the Chunxiao gas field with the Japanese. "Why should we consider a demarcation border when there wasn't one in the first place?'' asks a spokesman from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China. Some Chinese officials have talked of military conflict with Japan over the rights to the gas.

No doubt leaders in Beijing want to avoid numerous military confrontations and, where possible are looking to invest in exploration and development in countries that have oil fields but lack the capital or technology to exploit them. Once PRC state-woned companies have a stake in oil coming out of the ground, even if it originates abroad, they'll have secured long-term supplies.

The PRC’s state-owned CNOOC and CNPC, for example, now control over 12% of Indonesia’s own oil production, acquired from exiting US and European companies.

In North Asia, the PRC is trying to entice the Russian Federation to build a 1,500-mile pipeline from Russia's Angarsk, near Lake Baikal in Siberia, to China's Daqing to ship up to 700 million tonnes of oil between 2005 and 2030. However, the Japanese also know how to play hardball.

The PRC project has been slowed by environmental worries and is now threatened by a competing plan to route a pipeline to Japan. Russian President Putin says he prefers Russia to build a pipeline to the Pacific coast near Japan rather than the proposed link to China. Japan, keen to become a major Russian oil buyer, is offering Moscow up to 900 billion yen to develop an associated oil field in Eastern Siberia.

Elsewhere the scope of the PRC’s energy diplomacy is extensive:

Two weeks ago Iran and China signed an MOU to award development of the Yadavaran oil field to China's state-owned Sinopec. The countries also decided to form a joint oil and gas committee to follow up strategic cooperation in the area of energy including joint investment in construction of an LNG refinery in Iran.

Iran also spoke of it's readiness to cooperate with Chinese companies in oil-related activities in Central Asia. In June, PRC's President Hu led a delegation to Uzbekistan to start building relations with the oil-and-gas-rich, ex-Soviet republics.

Other reported Asian projects include a 600-mile, $2 billion pipeline from Burma's deepwater port of Sittwe, which will follow a projected railway line to China's south-western province of Yunnan. Another is the development of Gwadar Port in Pakistan, which China hopes to use to ship oil and gas from the Gulf. A pipeline to Xinjiang over the Karakoram Pass will follow.

The PRC is investing in West Africa's oil fields in the Gulf of Guinea, and to Central Africa, where oil production in several countries is also coming on line, VOA reports. In recent interviews, China's deputy foreign minister Zhou Wenzhong said the PRC will pursue its oil interests in Africa without political restrictions or concerns. He has been quoted as saying China tries "to separate business from politics."

The state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, for instance, is developing oil projects in Chad, which has diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

West Africa's oil currently comes mainly from Nigeria, Equatorial-Guinea, Congo-Brazaville and Gabon. Other countries like Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Niger are also trying to develop oil production. PRC companies are reportedly signing oil contracts in many of these countries, even though few of the deals are getting much publicity.

During President Hu's visit to Gabon, though, one new arrangement was made public. The China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation refinery, Gabon and France's Total Gabon signed agreements guaranteeing China a steady flow of Gabonese oil.

Most controversial is the PRC’s efforts to prevent the United Nations’ Security Council imposing sanctions on Sudan over the crisis in the Darfur region to protect its oil imports from the country. For the past six years Beijing has been the Sudanese government's main backer, buying 70% of its exports, servicing its $20 billion debt and supplying the Khartoum government with most of its weapons.

The PRC was identified by diplomats as the member responsible for watering down September’s Security Council resolution which threatened to halt Sudan's oil exports if it did not stop atrocities in the Darfur region, where Arab militias are terrorising African villagers.

Sudan is the largest recipient of PRC overseas investment and some 10,000 Chinese are working in the country. Since 1999 China has poured up to $3 billion into developing several oil fields and building a 930-mile pipeline, refinery and port.

Sudan's attraction to the PRC, "other than its pariah status," the Independent reported, " is that it holds Africa's greatest unexploited oil resources, even greater than those of the Gulf of Guinea. China has helped to boost Sudan's crude oil production from 150,000 barrels per day in 2000 to an expected 500,000 bpd in 2005. All this comes from oil fields in central and south-central regions which may hold only 15 per cent of Sudan's total reserves".

Theory may prove China on brink of social upheaval

2004-11-06T20:31:00.000+08:00

Prof Niu Wenyuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a special adviser to the Peoples Pepublic of China’s State Council, has apparently devised a scientific model to predict the “social ignition point” at which unrest will break out.

As reported by the Straits Times’ experienced Editor At Large, Leslie Fong (6 November), Prof Niu considers a widening gap between rich and poor one of the most important factors in a country's social combustibility and his model integrates the “Gini coefficient” used widely by economists to gauge whether wealth is distributed fairly.

On a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 denoting perfectly equal distribution of wealth, Prof Niu believes, any country with a Gini coefficient of 0.4 or more is vulnerable. He says that studies of peasant revolts, the Taiping rebellion and the Communist insurrection started in the 1920s backs his theory.

So what has it been like in recent years? According to figures compiled by Chinese economists, Gini was 0.341 in 1988, 0.343 in 1990, 0.389 in 1995, 0.417 in 2000, 0.448 in 2002 and 0.457 last year.

And even the cautious Fong can work that out: “If the trend continues, it can spell trouble for China and a China caught in the throes of social upheaval is bad news for the world as well”.

China v Japan poses ‘real threat’ to Asian security

2004-11-06T18:24:00.000+08:00

A former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Michael Vatikiotis, writes that the real threat to security in Asia is the “brewing cold war between Japan and China” which he does not believe will be restrained by the “growing economic symbiosis between Asia's largest economy and its largest market”.

“Energy could well provide the spark for a future conflict between China and Japan. The flashpoint is a small chain of islands off the coast of Japan, which China also claims. The Senaku islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, are thought to straddle potential fields of oil and gas. Tokyo recently angered Beijing again, by renting several privately owned islands in the chain to reinforce its claim,” Vatikiotis stated in today’s Jakarta Post.

“At a recent security conference, one Chinese academic went so far as to imagine a military clash if a Chinese oil company began prospecting for oil and gas in the area and Japan mounted a challenge.”

Quite clear.

Massive gender imbalance influences violent crime

2004-11-06T17:18:00.000+08:00

Jamie Miyazaki writes in the Asia Times of the huge gender imbalance in the Peoples Republic of China: ‘there aren't enough Chinese women out there, and it appears to be getting worse. According to a 2000 census, the sex ratio at birth in China is now 118 boys for every 100 girls; in most countries the ratio is roughly 105 boys born for every 100 girls. And it's not just a rural phenomenon, as widely believed; in affluent coastal Jiangsu province the imbalance is over 120 - that is, 120 boys for every 100 girls born”.

The PRC's "missing girls" are regarded as an “unintended consequence” of the Communist Party's one-child policy, where sons traditionally have been more highly valued than daughters. Government campaigns in rural areas - largely futile - remind residents that "girls are worth as much as boys", and aborting female fetuses is illegal in some places. But it may still be too late. In China's poorer provinces of Shaanxi, Ningxia and Guangxi, there are already scatterings of "bachelor villages".

“A good trade in foreign brides has emerged around the North Korean and Vietnamese borders to satisfy the bride shortage. One enterprising doctor in Guangdong province was arrested last year after drugging and selling mentally ill female patients from a psychiatric ward to men looking desperately for wives,” Miyazaki reports.

He also quotes a warning from Andrea den Boer, co-author of Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population: "We are already seeing signs of societal instability in parts of China where segments of China's large floating population of up to 150 million (overwhelming men) are believed responsible for the increase in violent crime in urban areas."

PRC downplays stinging foreign policy attack on USA

2004-11-04T15:08:00.000+08:00

The Peoples Republic of China does not endorse stinging criticism of US President George W. Bush's foreign policy published in the Communist Party-controlled, English-language China Daily newspaper, but apparantly doesn't shrink from it either.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told a news briefing that Beijing had responded to a US request for clarification but said the PRC believed that unilateral actions by any government didn't fit current international conditions. "We should rely on multilateralism to handle problems facing the world, including terrorism and other challenges." she said.

On the eve of the US presidential election, one of the PRC's most senior foreign policy advisors publicly condemned the "Bush doctrine," said the Iraq war had destroyed the global anti-terror coalition and blamed arrogance for the problems dogging the United States worldwide.

The United States was dreaming if it thought the 21st century was the American century, wrote Qian Qichen, a former foreign minister credited with breaking the PRC out of the diplomatic isolation that followed its 1989 massacre of protestors in Tiananmen Square.

"The current US predicament in Iraq serves as another example that when a country's superiority psychology inflates beyond its real capability, a lot of trouble can be caused," Qian wrote.

"But the troubles and disasters the United States has met do not stem from the threats by others, but from its own cocksureness and arrogance."

The invasion of Iraq "has made the United States even more unpopular in the international community than its war in Vietnam," he said.

"The Iraq war has also destroyed the hard-won global anti-terror coalition," Qian added, saying it had caused a rise in terrorist activity around the globe and widened a rift between the United States and Europe.

The US strategy of pre-emptive strikes would bring insecurity and ultimately the demise of the "American empire," Qian said.

"It is now time to give up the illusion that Europeans and Americans are living in the same world, as some Europeans would like to believe," Qian said. "The 21st century is not the 'American century'. That does not mean that the United States does not want the dream. Rather it is incapable of realizing the goal," he said.

After the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, the "Bush doctrine" created "axes of evil" and pre-emptive strategies.

"It linked counter-terrorism and the prevention of proliferation of so-called rogue states and failed states ... It all testifies that Washington's anti-terror campaign has already gone beyond the scope of self-defence," Qian said.

Politics professor David Zweig, at the Hong University of Science and Technology, told VOA that Qian's comments reflect the Peoples Republic of China's growing prominence in international affairs. He said Beijing for the first time is seeing itself affected by US policy in other parts of the world.

"The fact that Chinese are being kidnapped, killed in Pakistan," he said. "China is now involved in the civil war in Darfour, in the Sudan. All of a sudden, what goes on in terms of American presence, of instability in the world has a much bigger impact on China than it did before."

In Washington, the US State Department summoned Chinese Ambassador Yang Jiechi to a meeting with James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

US officials expressed doubt that Qian's remarks were a coincidence. According to the Washington Times, “they noted that there is no free press in China, and the article in question hardly could have slipped past the censors”.

A senior State Department official speculated that Beijing was doing contingency planning, in case Sen. John Kerry won the election.

Labor MPs test limits of ‘reasoned criticism’

2004-11-04T06:43:00.000+08:00

Former Australian Environment Minister in the Australian Labor Party’s Hawke government, Barry Cohen, dropped a shocker last month publishing an article declaring “anti-Semitism is now rampant” in the ALP - Australia’s oldest political party and currently in government in every state and territory.

In a country without institutionalised racial or religious regulation, the accusations are startling. Unlike Malaysia, for instance, religion is no barrier for election to Australia’s highest positions of government and, unlike, most other Asian countries, neither is one’s place of birth or ethnicity.

Cohen’s complaint is that “Labor’s hard left” has subverted the ALP’s balanced position on the rights of the State of Israel and of Palestinian Arabs through anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism “so grotesque” that criticism of Israel has moved to the anti-Semitic “ranting and raving, common among the extreme right”.

The former member of the House of Representatives called on the party to continue to reject all forms of prejudice and to return to “reasoned criticism” on middle-east issues.

Current MHR Tanya Plibersek, strongly criticised by Cohen for calling Ariel Sharon "a war criminal" and Israel a "rogue state" has since reaffirmed her support for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue and her condemnation of acts of terror such as suicide bombing.

She said at no point, had she ever felt that her criticisms of the Sharon Government “were anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish or threatened the survival of the State of Israel”.

Recently appointed the ALP’s federal Shadow Minister for Work, Family and Community; Shadow Minister for Youth and Early Childhood Education; and Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader on the Status of Women, Plibersek added:

“I am proud of my statements criticising the Taliban for its treatment of women in Afghanistan and the mullahs for their repression of democracy in Iran.

“I do not believe these criticisms make me anti-Arab”.

Spot on Shadow Minister. Afghanistan and Iran are not Arab countries.

PRC puts down regional demos and ethnic fighting

2004-11-03T23:38:00.000+08:00

The Chinese government is playing down the ethnic aspect of a large-scale protest in central Henan province in which seven people were killed, 42 people were injured and 18 arrested. Beijing, in a rare move on Monday, confirmed the clash in Zhongmou county in the provincial capital Zhengzhou.

"China is a country with many minorities, but we have a healthy and good policy towards them. So this kind of problem is only a single incident, just between the villages. It should not be exaggerated. This is a problem that happened in China, so it's not necessary for foreign countries to know about it," foreign ministry spokesman Zhang Qiyue told a news conference quoted by international media.

According to reports, a traffic dispute involving an ethnic Han Chinese and a member of the Hui Muslim minority sparked rioting by some 5,000 people last Wednesday. The clash continued until Sunday.

Central government authorities reportedly declared martial law and brought in 10,000 anti-riot and military police to contain the fighting. Villagers clashed with them, too, swinging iron bars and throwing bricks and stones, witnesses said. Public notices have been posted in ethnic Hui villages, warning residents not to give refuge to anyone involved in the violence.

The clashes appeared to have been exacerbated by the arrival of hundreds of Muslim Hui from other parts of the country who rushed to the region to support their ethnic brethren. Military police set up checkpoints and, with the help of local imams, persuaded many of the outsiders to go home, the official at the mosque said. But residents said some eluded police and joined the clashes.

In another incident, police in western Sichuan province clashed with demonstrators at the site of a proposed dam Friday, beating one man to death and injuring several others, residents said. More than 50,000 villagers participated in the protests, disbanding over the weekend only after officials promised to suspend construction and discuss compensation for farmland to be flooded.

Dealing with China: What the Taiwanese really want

2004-11-01T03:45:00.000+08:00

Laurence Eyton, deputy editor-in-chief of Taipei Times, writes that the fundamental divide in Taiwan "is an argument about eventual goals; it is not an argument about current status":

The unificationists think of Taiwan as the continuing Republic of China, founded in 1912, forced to move to Taiwan in 1949 but never out of business as a sovereign state. "The communists, by founding a new country in 1949, have in effect created two current Chinas, and the world needs to accommodate itself to this reality".

The independence lobby maintains that Taiwan, occupied by Imperial Japan in 1895, was not returned to China by treaty at the end of World War 2 and "that it was illegally occupied by the Chinese Nationalist Party regime until the early 1990s, when democratic elections were held, in effect constituting an act of self-determination that established a new and sovereign country".

The current Democratic Progressive Party government tends to a middle course between the two positions "but if there is one thing that all sides are agreed upon it is that the Taipei regime is independent and sovereign".

The main problem for any Taiwanese government dealing with the Peoples Republic of China's demand for (re)unification, Eyton states, is what the people of Taiwan want:

"And in fact they overwhelmingly don't want it. The most recent poll by Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council - the government ministry that deals with China policy - indicates that fewer than 2% of Taiwanese want unification now and only about 11% want it at all. (This is compared with 6% who want a formal declaration of independence immediately and 18% who want it some time in the future.) Forty percent of all Taiwanese prefer the status quo now/decision later option, while 18% want the status quo to last forever".

So, apropos of Colin Powell's recent statements on eventual (re)unification, Eyton summarises: not all parties are seeking it; 43% of Taiwanese (pro-independence plus pro-status quo forever) don't want it at any price; and another 40% don't even want to consider it until the Peoples Republic of China has changed into a democracy.

He warns that Powell's comments severely shocked the Taiwanese public who now fear that the US is going flaky on their security. So much so that a radical move is being mooted in Taiwan to provide a "sharp reminder" to the US and Japan as to "where their strategic interest lies".

Much more in Taiwan Reels from Powell's Anti-Sovereignty 'Goof'

What price 'a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power'?

2004-10-31T18:22:00.000+08:00

A rare first edition of Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong's sixties-era Quotations of Chairman Mao, better known as the "Little Red Book", has failed to meet its reserve price at a London auction. A spokeswoman at Bonhams said the publication had been expected to fetch between £2,500 and £3,000.

The copy for sale was published in May 1964. "Paper binding a bit stained, also with light stain at top right page corners, handling creases but overall still a good copy", the catalogue stated. It even retains the endorsement page from the then Party Vice-Chairman Lin Biau (Mao's Thought is "a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power") although his name is inked-over. When Lin was declared a traitor, spy, dog, etc in September 1971, most Chinese Communists defaced their copy by ripping out his offending page.

The book is one of the most frequently reprinted books ever published, second only to the Bible, with an estimated 5 billion copies printed in 50 languages, including braille, over the past forty years ... all at the Chinese taxpayer's expense.

According to Oliver Lei Han, an antiquarian expert consulting to Bonhams, the book's longevity in print reflects Mao as "the Father of his country, truly the last Emperor, a symbol of power and reverence who has been exonerated for the mistakes of his reign and consequently recognized for his achievements as hope for the future."

Han also describes Mao's ideology as forming "a brilliant concept that is still readable and admired today for its political theories and strategies, and no doubt he would be very proud to know the effect he has had on his own country and the world will never forget him."

No doubt Han would agree with Ritesh Doshi's letter published last week in London's metro newspaper, spotted by Eric The Unred. Noting the LRB's failure at auction, Ms Doshi commented: "Mao was one of our time's greatest thinkers (and leaders, regardless of one's political beliefs) and it is sad that our society places such a low value on someone who has shaped the lives of more than 20 per cent of the world's population. Frankly, it says something about the dumbing down of society".

Eric replied: "Frankly, the fact such a letter can be written says a lot more about the dumbing down of society, than the failure to sell a copy of Mao's thoughts. Just as some continue to have a blind spot on the Gulags of the Soviet Republic and Stalin's purges, there seems an equivalent amount of ignorance about Mao's Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution. Aside from the millions who died during these ill thought-out schemes and the fiction of the People's Democratic dictatorship, Mao watched over massive economic failure, and allowed his Red Guards to torture brutally without trial, burn down temples, mosques, churches, and destroy ancient art, artifacts, antiques, ancient buildings, ancient scrolls and books."

And that nightmare, still fresh in the Peoples Republic of China, is well addressed by Running Dog in its current feature article, "Bonfire of the bourgeois vanities".

"In China, people of a certain generation will tell you stories about an era that might as well be a millenium ago. There are thousands of children, amassed in Shanghai's train station, waiting for the beginning of what feels to them to be a big and important adventure. Their parents are weeping, watching their children bound towards the carriages on their way to the countryside, where - as part of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution - they will spend their formative years learning from the peasants.

"The kids who participated in this vast exodus are now in their forties and fifties, and most complain of the gap in their education and the wasted decade lasting from 1966 to the death of Chairman Mao in 1976. Others, usually slightly older, have been forced to live with their complicity in the Cultural Revolution, and their part in the Red Guard movement ...."

Running Dog describes a Maoist reign of terror - when "a swarm of revolutionaries sacked and destroyed temples, smashed sculptures to pieces and drove writers to their deaths" - as "matching anything the Taliban did", arguing this was a "bonfire of bourgeois vanities, and Mao was its Savonarola".

The article ranges across "mass man-made famines" overshadowed by "a surreal alternative world designed by state planners and their faked statistics", of centuries of "agricultural production based on empirical experience" discarded for Maoist dogma, of the failure of the Great Leap Forward, and the purges of the Cultural Revolution.

Under Mao's clarion call, "It is right to rebel!", millions were set in motion in one of the biggest and most disastrous political struggles in history.

"Schools and hospitals were forced to close, temples and relics were destroyed, 'capitalist roaders' and counter-revolutionary 'cow demons' were hounded and tortured and forced to sweat out their sins doing years of back-breaking correctional labour. No one could objectively confirm what a revisionist or poisonous weed was, and so, as a result, everyone was a potential target ..."

Talking of "dumbing down", in Maoist China expertise, in any field, became a sign of decadence and revisionism.

"In the new reality, only Mao Zedong Thought could produce results. Only Mao Zedong Thought - the exaltation of pure revolutionary spirit not only above practical economics but above even nature itself – could triumph. The general will of the people – described as the Mass Line but echoing Rousseau in its assumption that a society was One – could overcome the 'paper tigers' of science, nature, and truth itself. Contemporary documents show a world turned on its head, a world where Mao Zedong Thought is used to cure tumours, improve rice yields and defy gravity ..."

Read it all here.

So, the truth was always out there

2004-10-30T17:34:00.000+08:00

After much global speculation that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, organised the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 to start a war between Muslims and Christians (as repeated time and again by Akram Khan Durrani, chief minister of Pakistan's Taliban-ridden Northwest Frontier Province), Osama Bin Laden has finally confessed.

We agreed with Mohamed Atta, God bless him, to execute the whole operation in 20 minutes. Before Bush and his administration would pay attention and we never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time to execute the operation thank God – transcript The Belmont Club.

You’ll find the amazing story of bin Laden’s “hidden links” to Mossad in Fabian Hammer’s 2001, pre-Michael Moore exclusive expose of the master Zionist agent.

China and Taiwan exchanges blunter as US steps in

2004-10-29T23:21:00.000+08:00

US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has qualified statements he made in Beijing on Wednesday by insisting that the international community's goal "really is to have a peaceful resolution of the problem" between Taiwan and China, which split amid civil war in 1949.

Officials of the Peoples Republic of China earlier had strongly praised Powell's warnings to the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) that it is not an independent nation and should not seek to become one.

"There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation," he said.

The comments were described as going “beyond the ambiguous language American officials had used for several decades in managing relations between China and Taiwan”.

The United States recognises the Peoples Republic of China’s claim that there is only "one China," including Taiwan, just as it had previously recognised the Republic of China’s “one China” claim even after it had withdrawn from the mainland.

While State Department officials insisted that the secretary's comments did not reflect a change in United States policy, both China and Taiwan, sensitive to every accent and inflection in the American approach, reacted strongly.

Recently, regional friends of Taiwan, Australia and Singapore, distanced themselves from the ROC's drift towards declaration of Taiwan's formal separation from China ... a move that the PRC government warns would be a precursor to renewed war between the two administrations.

Unabashed, Chen Shui-bian, ROC's president, replied through local media: "Taiwan is absolutely a sovereign and independent country. It does not belong to the People's Republic of China."

However his presidential spokesman, James Huang, described Powell's subsequent statement as "a positive development and helpful to clarify the whole incident."

Challenging path of insurrectionist to nation builder

2004-10-28T22:30:00.000+08:00

It is said that China's Mao Zedong was a great admirer of Michael Collins, the Irish independence leader whose 114th birthday is celebrated this month. Mao and many other insurrectionists of the 20th Century applied the urban guerrilla tactics which Collins successfully used against the British in Ireland. He had smuggled arms, been elected to the British House of Commons, lead an underground army and, as a fundraiser, was so successful that Lenin went cap in hand to him after the Russian revolution.

Collins was a young man when he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood's ill-fated Easter Uprising in 1916 but became a vigorous military leader soon after. Once elected to the executive committee of the Sinn Fein independence organisation, he organised a prolonged assassination campaign against British security officials in Ireland, primarily the Royal Irish Constabulary and the army. The murder of its officers brought a tit-for-tat policy from the British.

As violence and intimidation escalated and civilian casualties increased, the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was given blunt advice by his military: "Go all out or get out". After eight hours meeting alone with George, the Irish republican president, Eamonn de Valera, ordered Collins to join Arthur Griffin in leading an Irish delegation to London to “negotiate and conclude” a peace treaty with the British Government.

After three difficult months of talks, it was agreed that Ireland would have its autonomy returned as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire but the six Scots-Irish Protestant-dominated northern counties would be allowed to remain part of the United Kingdom.

The treaty was highly unpopular on both sides and Collins, who saw it as but part of a process that would lead to full Irish independence, knew the risks he would face when he returned home. At the treaty signing on 6 December 1921, Britain’s Lord Birkenhead said to him, “Well Collins, I signed my political death warrant”. Collins replied, “That’s nothing. I’ve just signed my actual death warrant”.

The Irish parliament (Dáil) accepted the treaty by seven votes but de Valera, in turn, rejected the parliamentary majority and the terms of the treaty. He was immediately replaced as president and Collins was appointed chairman of the provisional government which would take over Ireland once the British had left.

Collins pleaded with de Valera not to withdraw from the parliament. "By all means oppose us in this house, castigate us, push us further so that we can go again, as we have the right under this Treaty to discuss it in the immediate years ahead, but, do it within the Dáil", he said, but to no avail.

In Neil Jordan's film on Michael Collins, Collins' is shown asking de Valera to support peace: "It's not worth fighting for. Anymore. We've got to learn to build with what we have." This message is reinforced in the closing titles, which tells of the need still to "finally remove the gun from Irish politics".

After Mass, on 17 March 1922, de Valera addressed a crowd of 20,000 and he said to them: "To prevent this Treaty working, we will wade, if necessary, through brother’s blood”. Those who did not support the treaty fell back on violence and a civil war took place in Ireland from April 1922 to May 1923.

On 22 August 1922, Collins journeyed to County Cork. He was due to meet troops of the new Irish Army. His car was ambushed at a place called Beal na mBlath and Collins was shot dead. His body lay in state in Dublin for three days and thousands paid their respects. Thousands also lined the streets for his funeral procession.

He was just 31 years of age when he was killed but the Free State he founded evolved into the Republic of Ireland; a profoundly democratic country and now a prosperous member of the European Union.

There are some who see a similarity between Michael Collins' "land for peace" deal with Britain that enraged both Irish nationalist and British unionist no-compromise-fanatics and the 1993 Oslo Accords signed by Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestine Liberation Organisation's president, Yasser Arafat.

Again, two species of fanatics were enraged and a leader was assassinated. Many were surprised that it was Rabin who died for the peace treaty, murdered by an Israeli Jew, rather than Arafat by an Islamic militant from Hamas or one of the other Palestinian rejectionist groups sponsored by Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya.

Palestinian campaigner Edward Said, compared Arafat and Collins and the compromise over partition that led to the latter's assassination and accused Arafat of coming "away from the negotiating table with a lot less than Collins". But Arafat survived anyhow.

As Palestinian campaigner Robert Fisk put it, "Arafat is not the stuff of which martyrs are made. He knows what happened to Irish revolutionary Michael Collins after a one-sided 'peace'.''

To be sure. For in none of the territories surrendered to Arafat's Palestinian Authority by the Israelis were the Arab rejectionists controlled and disarmed by the new autonomous government and civil society and democracy introduced. Less than is worthy of a father of a nation, he denied his people their freedom from fear and for opportunity for the sake of hiding from an assassin's bullet.

Michael Collins put the required deeds of leadership into perspective in a blunt statement on his breach with de Velara at the commencement of the civil war. Words that should have been heard from the lips of Yasser Arafat.

Two duties faced [the Provisional] Government: To take over the Executive from the English, and to maintain public order during the transition from foreign to native government; and to give shape in a constitution to the freedom secured.

If the Government had been allowed to carry out these duties no difficulty would have arisen with England, who carried out her part by evacuating her army and her administration.

No trouble would have arisen among our own people. And the general trend of development, and the undoubted advantages of unity, would have brought the North-East quietly into union with the rest of the country, as soon as a stable national government had been established into which they could have come with confidence.

Mr de Valera, and those who supported him in the Dáil, were asked to take part in the interim government, without prejudice to their principles, and their right to oppose the ratification of the Treaty at the elections ... They did not find it possible to accept this offer of patriotic service ...
It must be remembered that the country was emerging from a revolutionary struggle. And, as was to be expected, some of our people were in a state of excitement, and it was obviously the duty of all leaders to direct the thoughts of the people away from violence and into the steady channels of peace and obedience to authority. No one could have been blind to the course things were bound to take if this duty were neglected. It was neglected, and events took their course.

The foreign Power was withdrawn. The civil administration passed into the hands of the elected representatives of the people. The fight with the English enemy was ended. The function of our armed forces was changed. Their duty now was to preserve the freedom won---to enable the people to use it, to realise that for which they had fought---a free, prosperous, self-governing Gaelic Ireland ...

Under the democratic system which was being established by the representatives of the people---the freest and most democratic system yet devised---the rights of every minority were secured, and the fullest opportunity was open for every section of opinion to express and advocate its views by appeal to reason and patriotic sentiment.

To allow such a situation to develop successfully required only common sense and patriotism in the political leaders. No one denied that the new Government had the support of the people.

Of all forms of government a democracy allows the greatest freedom---the greatest possibilities for the good of all. But such a government, like all governments, must be recognised and obeyed.

The first duty of the new Government was to maintain public order, security of life, personal liberty, and property ... The peace and order necessary for that progress was rudely broken. The united forward movement was held up by an outbreak of anarchic violence ...

The nation which had kept the old heroic temper, but had learnt to govern it so that violence should be directed against the national enemy, and its differences should be matters of friendly rivalry, found itself faced with a small minority determined to break up the national unity and to destroy the government in which the nation had just shown its confidence.

They claimed to be fighting for the nation. That might be possible if there were any enemies of the nation opposing them. There are not. Resolved to fight, they are fighting, not against an enemy, but against their own nation. Blind to facts, and false to ideals, they are making war on the Irish people.

Michael Collins was just 31 years of age when he was killed but the Free State he founded evolved into the Republic of Ireland; a profoundly democratic country and prosperous member of the European Union.

Workers organise strikes, demos throughout China

2004-10-27T21:01:00.000+08:00

The Peoples Republic of China is facing growing labor unrest over jobs and the government's failure to provide other support in the dismantling of its cradle-to-grave welfare system. According to the International Herald Tribune, major strikes are breaking out throughout the country:

-- About 6,800 workers at China Resources, a Hong Kong-listed retailer, on strike for a seventh week in northern China, complaining that the company is forcing them to sign "unfair" labor contracts.

-- In Anhui province, about 10,000 textile workers and retirees recently protested decreases in pension payments, the lack of medical insurance and compensation for injuries.

-- In Shaanxi 6,800 workers, the majority of them women, striking at the Tianwang Textile Factory. In one incident about 1,000 police positioned at the factory gates with water cannons were met by thousands of workers who surrounded them, forcing them to back down.

Communist officials are also targeting labor activists, according to China Labor Watch, which cites the arrests of Ding Xiulan and Liu Meifeng, leaders of a strike at the Zhongheng textile factory in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

Beijing uses electric prods against asylum seekers

2004-10-26T22:01:00.000+08:00

Back in 2001, anticipating the selection of Beijing as the host city for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, the PRC central government established new anti-riot squads to "develop a more effective and non-lethal method" of countering growing demonstrations and protests and to avoid "escalating conflicts by inappropriate measures," according to a Chinese public security official cited then by the Xinhua News Agency.

Apart from changing the uniforms of Beijing's police from military green to blue, however, the efforts do not seem to have developed a softer stance.

This week prominent Korea watcher, The Marmot's Hole, describes the use of electric cattle prods by Beijing public security officers to prevent a group of 18 North Korean asylum seekers, largely women and children, from making it into the grounds of the South Korean (ROK) embassy.

Sometime early morning on the 25th of October a group of 18 North Koreans attempted to enter the South Korean consulate building inside the Embassy compound ... They then scaled a wall/fence to enter the compound and made for the consulate building.

On the film you can see it was a hard scrabble, since they had no ladders or scaling equipment, and it appears that at least one of them cut their feet on the barbed wire. In the end 14 of them got inside, and another 4 were arrested or ran away from approaching Chinese security police.

It was at that moment that Chinese guards/police came at them, wielding truncheons and (sickeningly) electric cattle prods. Watch the footage if you dare. It’s awful. At one point a Chinese guard says ... “zap him, just zap that guy!”

Around this point (hard to tell exactly when without seeing the unedited footage), some of the North Koreans unfurled a South Korean flag and banged on the shut metal door of the consulate, demanding it be opened and crying out “We are North Korean defectors! Save us!”

According to a YTN report on the same story, “with the North Koreans running around trying to avoid the electric cattle prods and screaming, calling out “save us", while the children were crying loudly, it was a really miserable scene.” You can only imagine.

Somehow, three of the defectors - a woman in her 30s with her 9 year-old son and another woman in her twenties - managed to get into the building by pushing desparately on the shutter door. All the rest were taken away.

Update: PRC Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue has called on foreign embassies in Beijing to "refrain from providing refuge" to North Korean asylum-seekers, complaining that they are really "illegal migrants" led by activists with "ulterior motives."

Update: The Marmot's Hole finds breaking news that Beijing police on Tuesday raided a North Korean refugee shelter in Beijing and arrested 65 defectors gathered while preparing to seek asylum at a foreign embassy or school before making their way to South Korea.

PRC nationalism has "ominous implications"

2004-10-26T10:50:00.000+08:00

The British socialist website, Socialism In An Age of Waiting, has again commented on political issues in the People's Republic of China, arguing the country "is governed by a 'party' of self-perpetuating gangsters for whom 'democracy' ... means only having to bring in troops from the provinces to massacre workers and students."

SIAW usefully links to a major article on nationalism in the PRC by Geoffrey York in Canada's Globe and Mail. "As Communism slides into irrelevance,' York reports, "the new nationalists are emerging as a powerful force in China, with ominous implications for its neighbours ..."

The nationalist mood seems to be gaining strength every year here. The schools are filled with patriotic education' classes. Young people are organizing boycotts of Japanese products. Web petitions against the Japanese government are attracting millions of supporters. The Japanese are routinely denounced as 'devils' and 'little Japs' in chat rooms on the Chinese Internet, and one bar in southern China went so far as to post a 'Japanese not welcome' sign.

A few years ago optimists had hoped democracy would be nurtured by China’s growing personal freedoms and its new internet culture. But in reality it is the nationalists, not the democrats, who have scored the biggest victories from the relaxed atmosphere

Thousands of petitioners and protesters in Beijing had been rounded up by police during the Communist Party meeting to avoid any embarrassment to the political elite. Yet, even as arrests continued, the Chinese patriots were allowed to carry out their demonstration freely, under the noses of police officers who carefully supervised the event and even escorted one of the organisers inside the [Japanese] Embassy’s fence to deliver his petition.

York concludes that China's communist leaders "are seeking to harness Chinese nationalism as a unifying force, a sentiment that can be tapped by authorities to build loyalty, to quell opposition, and to fire the passions of young people who might otherwise drift into dissent".

Australian missiles “not directed against Indonesia”

2004-10-25T03:21:00.000+08:00

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirayuda, has backed warmer relations with neighbouring Australia and said a security treaty will be important for strengthening ties.

Speaking exclusively to The Age newspaper, Mr Wirayuda “revealed concerns within Indonesia about Australian plans to buy cruise missiles.”

He said he told the public that Australia's cruise missiles "would not be directed against Indonesia but how many times am I able to convince the public that Australia has no ill intentions against Indonesia?"

To combat negative public perceptions, he said, a treaty ruling out use of force against each other would be "an important element in strengthening bilateral relations."

Australia’s aircraft and new weaponry are primarily configured to prevent a Chinese navy from taking possession of the South China Sea, an area the PRC claims as its indisputable sovereign territory (see Australia's cruise missiles have South China Sea role) .

China, Cuba CPs advancing 'socialist cause'

2004-10-24T23:53:00.000+08:00

The Communist Party of China soley directs the state-to-state foreign relations of the Peoples Republic of China as well as conducting its own party-to-party program. Officially, the CPC maintains relations and exchange with numerous parties - "regardless of their ideological differences" - based on "independence, complete equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each other's internal affairs".

Last week for instance, the CPC met with a delegation of Spain's ruling Socialist Workers' Party to discuss enhancing cooperation between the two parties.

Last month a meeting between the CPC and Syria's ruling al-Baath Arab Socialist Party emphasised that the "level of coordination between China and Syria on the world arenas and UN" will continue.

In June a CPC delegation, headed by Politburo member Li Chanchun visited Kazakhstan's ruling Otani Party for talks "focused on economic relations, extremism, and terrorism" and "improving inter-party relations".

However, some parties are more equal than others.

Exchanges between the CPC and the ruling parties of the remaining communist states, North Korea (DPRK), Vietnam, Laos and Cuba, are invariably described as "good comrades ... forever", sharing "a common belief, ideal and tasks" and "advancing hand in hand".

China-Cuba mutual ties are said to be "experiencing their best period ever" and Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and PRC President said recently that China has set an "unswerving policy on consolidating ties with Cuba" and that policy "will not alter regardless of changes in international situation".

Hu made the remarks at a meeting with Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee and vice president of the Council of State of Cuba.

Hu said he highly valued the achievements made by the Communist Party of Cuba, led by Fidel Castro Ruz, in leading the Cuban people to "pushing forward the socialist cause".

Grandson of adventurer denounces failed revolution

2004-10-24T04:15:00.000+08:00

That Cuban President, Fidel Castro, 87, should fall and break his knee after visiting the mausoleum of the late Ernesto 'Che' Guevara is ironic. While Che has returned as an iconic pin-up boy of western fashion dudes and young wanna-be revolutionaries, Castro is seen, increasingly, as an aging tyrant.

With the demise of the Soviet Union Castro's Cuba has relied on the Peoples Republic of China as its international counter-weight to the 40-year trade embargo imposed on it by neighbouring USA. China-Cuba mutual ties are said to be "experiencing their best period ever", a statement that surely would have amused the Maoist-oriented Che.

It is said that the Soviet Union's prime minister, Alexei Kosygin, disliked Guevara, and probably disliked him more in early 1965 when Che got a better reception in China than he did. Che moved closer to the political views of China's Mao Zedong whose willingness to openly support armed insurrections paralleled his own.

As the ideological bickering between Peking and Moscow during that period divided Communists throughout the world, Che exacerbated Cuba's situation by stating in an interview that "the Cuban people would resist to the last drop of blood any attempt by the USSR to make Cuba a satellite." The leader of Cuba's pro-Soviet group, Anibal Escalante, pressured Castro into accepting Che's resignation from his cabinet in 1965. Escalante blamed Cuba's economic instability and her strained relationship with the Soviet Union on Che's "impractical projects and pathological adventurism".

The Soviet Union and the legion of pro-Moscow communists who dominated the Castro regime saw Che as a radical Maoist who sought to stir revolutions throughout the world without benefit of party leadership …. and so it was, in 1967, that Che, leading an isolated, bedraggled band of rebels in the mountains of Bolivia, was easily gunned down by Bolivian and US rangers.

It is reported that western observers observed Castro's shock at the rapid move to capitalism and growing social differences he witnessed in China last year. "There is no coincidence that a lot of this has happened since he visited China. Many people say he was horrified with what he saw," said a European ambassador quoted by Reuters.

His response was to reassert state control over the Cuban economy; cutting back permits for private traders and small businesses and strengthening the hold of state corporations, especially in tourism, the island's main source of hard currency. There, military officers have moved into key posts.

Which brings us to a remarkable story in the Mexican leftist weekly Proceso in which the dissident grandson of Che Guevara – Canek Sanchez Guevara – recently denounced Fidel Castro as an “aged tyrant” and as “messianic” leader who persecutes trade unionists and poets alike.

Marc Cooper provides a valuable translation of synopsis that appeared, briefly, on cubanet.org:

The Cuban Revolution died some years ago: it had to be killed off by those who act in its name to make sure it didn’t turn against them; it was institutionalized and smothered by its own bureaucracy, by corruption, nepotism and the rigidity of the much-celebrated Cuban ‘revolutionary’ state.

All of my criticism of Fidel Castro come from his walking away from the ideals of liberty, from his betrayal of his own people and his frightening zeal to place the interests of the state above those of his people.

Let’s be honest, a young rebel like Fidel Castro in today’s Cuba wouldn’t be sent into exile. He’s be shot.

This puts China’s Hu Jintau’s recent praise for Castro for "pushing forward the socialist cause" in a useful context.

India pips PRC in Myanmar reshuffle

2004-10-22T13:17:00.000+08:00

The removal of Myanmar's prime minister, General Khin Nyunt, by the military junta is expected to be greeted with some dismay in Beijing, according to "well-informed diplomatic sources" quoted by the South China Morning Post. The newspaper reported that Chinese leaders "had been well aware that Khin Nyunt was in a power struggle with his hardline rival General Than Shwe and had been trying to shore up the premier's position".

Last month Khin Nyunt returned from Beijing with "an armful of trade deals and soft loans to boost his clout at home" courtesy of the Chinese government's desire to keep him in place.

According to regional diplomats quoted by SCMP:

Beijing was keen that Khin Nyunt remained in place, as he was seen as the best bet for maintaining stability in his country through his advocacy of albeit-glacial political reform. Than Shwe's ultra-hardline approach was seen in Beijing as more likely to result in social unrest ...

Beijing also backed Khin Nyunt because he was keen on developing economic ties with China. Not only is Myanmar resource-rich, but it can also provide China with access to the Indian Ocean. Than Shwe was seen in Beijing as a xenophobe.

The Asia Times also picked the PRC as the loser in the power struggle adding that with the "arrest of ... Khin Nyunt, known to back China in the Sino-Indian contest for influence in Myanmar, the balance is believed to have tilted in India's favor."

India is preparng to greet Than Shwe, head of Myanmar's powerful State Peace and Development Council and also commander-in-chief of its defense forces, the first Myanmar head of state to visit India in 25 years.

Neutralizing China's significant influence in Myanmar has been a key concern that has driven and determined India's policy in recent years. While India was backing Myanmar's democratic movement, China was backing the generals and engaging in diverse forms of cooperation, including the sale and supply of military equipment, trade in consumer goods and building Myanmar's infrastructure.

China's rising profile in Myanmar was seen in Delhi as a direct threat to Indian security interests. Most worrying for India was the growing Chinese naval presence in the Bay of Bengal. Indian intelligence agencies have repeatedly drawn attention to the Chinese-built radar facility on Myanmar's Coco Islands (near India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands), which is reportedly serving as a listening post for Beijing on India's missile-testing facilities situated on its east coast.
The raging insurgency in the Indian northeast that borders Myanmar was an important factor. Many of the insurgents have set up camps and training facilities across the border in Myanmar ... There was also the problem of the narcotics said to be flowing from the Golden Triangle through Thailand and Myanmar into India.

But dealing with the generals has not been an easy game. Given the bitter power struggle within the senior ranks, India's interaction with the junta meant that it, too, would be sucked into the power game. With Khin Nyunt backing China, it was only natural that his main rival Maung Aye, the second-most-powerful man in Myanmar, warmed up to India.

Writer Sudha Ramachandran concludes that Maung Aye was concerned with Myanmar's excessive dependence on China and used this issue to undercut Khin Nyunt's influence by being more responsive to India.

Update: India welcomed Myanmar's army strongman General Than Shwe, who arrived today (24 Oct) on an official visit. The Myanmar leader, accompanied by a high-level cabinet delegation whose portfolios include industry, energy and communications, was greeted at the airport by India's junior foreign minister E. Ahamad and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran.

China's alleged plot to annex North Korea

2004-10-22T04:37:00.000+08:00

According to the South Korean newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, a lecture given by a professor of politics at Beijing University and subsequently posted on Chinese-language internet, discloses a plan by the Peoples Republic of China to absorb the territory of the DPRK (North Korea) if that regime collapses. Quotes from the lecture include:

The North Korean regime cannot survive more than 10 years. If a pro-Chinese military faction grasps power following a collapse of the regime, China intends to incorporate North Korea into its military federation and eventually make it a subordinate state.
The Northeast Asia Project now in progress is aimed at accumulating a historical basis for it ...

Last week another South Korean newspaper detailed what it described as the official South Korean plans for coping with the possible collapse of the North Korean regime and for handling a mass defection from the communist state, including a contingency for dealing with insurrection.

The plans, revealed by Grand National Party Representative Chung Moon-hun at a Republic of Korea National Assembly hearing, "are the first significant look at the government's readiness in case the leaders in Pyeongyang lose control over their country and the South is forced to step in" the JoongAng Daily reported:

Mr Chung's office said the details have been kept classified, but the Unification Ministry, seeking to assure the public, provided selective details. Under the plan, code-named "Chungmu 9000," South Korea will establish an emergency administrative headquarters in the North, which will work to liberalize the economy and society. South Korea's unification minister will head the agency with powers greater than a governor.

Unification Ministry staff will be deployed to operate the organization and officials from other ministries will follow to establish systemic authority in the North.

According to the plan, Seoul has already designated public facilities in the South, such as schools and stadiums, to house defectors who are expected to rush south in the event the North loses its grip on the population. The facilities are capable of accommodating 200,000 defectors, the plan said.

Separately, the ROK military has already established 10 refugee camps near the inter-Korean border under the supervision of the Army and Navy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up the plan in 1993 and have been conducting exercises to prepare for mass defection since then.

PRC government denies it is harbouring Bin Laden

2004-10-21T13:28:00.000+08:00

People's Daily Online report (links added):

On the afternoon of October 19, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a regular press conference. A reporter asked: a British journalist familiar with Middle-East affairs reported that Osama Bin Laden is now possibly on the Chinese side of its border with Pakistan. What's your comment on this?

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue answered: "I haven't read the report you just mentioned yet, even less do I know any ground for this report. I think he is irresponsible for writing such a report. I can explicitly tell you that Bin Laden isn't in China ...

On October 13 Spanish newspaper El Mundo carried a sensational report claiming that Bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda group, is hiding in China.

The article described with every detail vividly: at the beginning of 2004, Bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda group, escaped to China and "met with Chinese government officials'', hoping he was "given asylum'' by Chinese government in exchange for his guarantee for the "peace cause'' in the northwest area. It is obvious that both sides have "reached an agreement''.

The report continued "vividly'' to say, just like Bin Laden guaranteed to the Chinese government in the past summer that the region had been relatively calm since Bin Laden's arrival.

"Desiring to see the world plunged into chaos'', the journalist added that Bin Laden's refuge had been spotted by a US satellite and was near a lake on the Pakistan-China border. He said a detachment of Pakistani and US special forces were lying in wait on the Pakistani side, hoping to capture Bin Laden in fight towards Pakistan border and then send him to Bush by air.

When getting the news, media made inquiries of US government and military officials about the news in addition to making inquiries of Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman about this matter.

In an interview with The Chicago Tribune US Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "We don't know where Bin Laden is and have not heard the so-called report that he is in China, but we think he is alive. We are working closely with the Pakistanis to capture him. US President George W. Bush is briefed on it regularly so he has not taken his eye off the Bin laden ball. After all, this is the guy responsible for 9/11.

Powell still stressed again US is doing well in relations with most of US allies and friends. He said our relations with China are the best we have had in 30 years under the efforts of both governments ...

Now that China denies Bin Laden is in China and the US government refuses to mention the matter, then where does the sensational news come out?

If glance over the newspaper one will know the reporter is Gordon Thomas claiming that he is a British senior journalist. He often says he has maintained long-term cooperative relations with national intelligence institutions ... With no sensational news for a long time, Thomas is so idle that he has played a joke on that the world is concerned about Bin Laden. Nevertheless, what he did has not won due results as nobody believes in it.

Actually, it is nothing strange for Thomas to dramatize Bin Laden is in China. As three years ago, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao once said openly that it is groundless for the rumor of West media that Bin Laden is in China.

At the regular press conference held on September 22, 2001 some reporters asked: "According to a report by British The Guardian on September 22 Bin Laden has escaped from Afghan and entered into China. At present he is hiding in somewhere in China. Please confirm.''

Zhu said in reply, "The Guardian's report is groundless. I don't know what is the purpose for the reporter to spread the rumor.''

Full text here

French on their own on weapon sales to PRC

2004-10-20T01:21:00.000+08:00

I just came across Jonathan Power’s plea for French restraint in last Friday’s South China Morning Post. He argues that French President Jacques Chirac promotion of arm sales to the Peoples Republic of China not only threatens Taiwan’s peace, if not survival, but also a catastrophe for the whole region.

Although Taiwan suffers by not having the seat it deserves in the United Nations, in nearly every other way, it acts as an independent state. Beijing is stalled in an old imperial ambition, but gains the goodwill of Taiwanese investors with their cutting-edge technology. The US gets the best from both sides, and is happy with the fudge that keeps them calm. Europe and the rest of the world have the promise of more prosperity by trading with a peaceful China and Taiwan.

So why is the European Union considering intruding on this precariously balanced situation? A decision to start selling Beijing state-of-the-art weaponry would directly unsettle things. It is not that the weapons would improve Beijing's ability to invade Taiwan - it already has that capability. Instead, it would strengthen its hand against the US, should matters ever come to a showdown.

It is no wonder that Washington is upset, and Europe cleaved down the middle.

The split is at the top. Javier Solana, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Policy, wants the embargo lifted. But the Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, does not. The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly against ending the embargo.

French President Jacques Chirac has said: "The embargo makes no sense today." But the French have a long record of selling arms to nations who later decide o turn their guns on the west.

For Germany, however, this is a new departure. Given that the Green Party, with its long record of opposing arms sales, has its man at the helm of the Foreign Ministry, it is incomprehensible for Berlin to support the French. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer says pitifully: "Sometimes, there are situations where you have to make bitter decisions."

Right now, China is threatened by nobody. Sino-US relations have never been so good. Bill Clinton hit on a policy that President George W. Bush has continued - regularly drumming on about human rights issues while strengthening trade, commercial and educational links.

Part of the human rights stance has been to maintain the joint US-EU arms embargo, introduced following the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

If Europe is going to destabilise this carefully crafted policy, together with the equally subtle and related one towards Taiwan, then it should come up with a better idea. It surely cannot. The status quo is the best for everyone, and Europe should not work to undermine it.

CIA releases declassified papers on Mao’s China

2004-10-19T01:02:00.000+08:00

The Central Intelligence Agency has made public 71 previously classified documents on China, including the National Intelligence Estimates issued over the 30-year period of Mao Zedong's rule.

The collection is available on the agency's web site and will be released by the US Government Printing Office on compact disc.

In his introduction to the documents, Robert L. Suettinger, a career intelligence analyst, described the collection as "an impressive one" in which "the fundamentals are consistently right."

Among the most important judgments, Mr. Suettinger wrote, was a consistently accurate assessment that the Communist Party in China was never challenged from 1948 on its predominance of power on the Chinese mainland. Other assessments contained in the documents include:

one written in 1950, on the eve of the Peoples Republic of China's entry into the Korean War, correctly stating that that Communist Chinese forces were capable of either halting the northward path of United Nations forces or of "forcing U.N. withdrawal further south through a powerful assault."
a Special National Intelligence Estimate issued in 1966, stating, "At present levels of American action [in North Vietnam], we continue to believe that China will not commit its ground or air forces to sustained combat against the U.S."
a 1967 intelligence estimate correctly predicting the demise of Red Guard politics after Mao: “As long as Mao is capable of political command, China's situation will probably be tense and inherently unstable" … a "disorderly and contentious" struggle would follow and eventually a move away from "discredited" policies to "secure modest economic growth”.

A main shortcoming, Suettinger wrote in his assessment, was "overestimating the importance of ideological solidarity and other centripetal forces within the Communist Bloc at least during the 1950's."

Dalai Lama says Tibetan demands may change

2004-10-18T01:21:00.000+08:00

In a candid conversation with Time magazine's Alex Perry at his cottage in McLeod Ganj, India, the Dalai Lama admits that he now believes the only way forward for the Tibetan people may be to "remain within China" - while hoping China preserves Tibet's unique culture. He makes the point that the PRC is "already in a win-win situation" as "it already controls Tibet". His new assessment includes:

“Despite some economic improvement and development, the threats to our cultural heritage, religious freedom and environment are very serious. Then also in the countryside, facilities in education and health are very, very poor. It's like the big gap in China proper between rich and poor. So the whole picture, it almost looks hopeless ... That's why we are trying to gain meaningful autonomy.

“Many communist and authoritarian regimes have changed, including the Soviet Union, not by force but by their own people. These are very positive developments. China [still has] the same system, but the reality is that much is changing. Freedom of information, religious freedom and freedom of the press are much better .... So on that level, the situation in Tibet is hopeful ...

“We renewed direct contact with Beijing three years ago. We're not expecting some major breakthrough-the Tibetan issue is very complicated, and China is oversuspicious and very cautious. It will take time …

“Some Tibetans now accuse me of selling out their right to independence. Even my eldest brother is for complete independence and he always accuses me [of this]. But my approach is actually in our own interest.

"Tibet is backward, it's a big land, quite rich in natural resources, but we completely lack the technology or expertise [to exploit them]. So if we remain within China, we might get a greater benefit, provided it respects our culture and beautiful environment and gives us some kind of guarantee. For us [it would mean] more modernization. The new railway [into Tibet], for instance. This is generally speaking a good thing, very beneficial for development, providing it is not used politically …”

Full story at A Conversation with the Dalai Lama

RAN and PRC units in first joint exercise

2004-10-17T22:56:00.000+08:00

Australia’s 191-crew frigate "HMAS ANZAC" is to take part in a joint excercise with ships of the Peoples Republic of China navy, including the guided missile destroyer "HARBIN", off China's north east coast. Rear Admiral Rowan Moffitt, Australia's maritime commander, described the program as a “fairly elementary” search and rescue exercise, which is “all about establishing communications and confidence in manoeuvring two ships together and conducting a common mission - in this case to search and eventually rescue someone in distress at sea”.

Moffitt told Radio Australia that the Royal Australian Navy had been “increasing the complexity” of its engagement with the PRC in a "very gradual step-by-step" manner since Australia recognised the Communist Party government in 1972 ... but the process had become “more important as the Chinese navy ventures further afield and we see them more broadly in the world”.

The closer relationship, he said, provides a number of benefits to the RAN: “We engage in a high level, and that's one of the reasons why I'm here. We seek to also engage at the unit level which is why the ship is visiting and the benefit accrues by the fact we get to know one another, we become more confident in our relationship with each other and practically we're able to be more confident in the fact we'll be able to work productively at sea as mariners and avoid misunderstandings which is always an important thing for fighting forces.”

He indicated that the status of Taiwan was not necessarily one of sources of potential misunderstandings between the two navies. “Australia's position on Taiwan is quite clear to them and is not a source of (dis)comfort to them,” he said.

A tragic report of brutal, religious persecution

2004-10-16T23:18:00.000+08:00

Hamish McDonald writes in the Sydney Morning Herald: “A small nameplate beside the high, burnished metal gates announces the building inside as ‘Guangzhou City Law School’. But this grimy industrial area on the outskirts of China's great southern commercial metropolis is an unlikely place for an academic institution.

“No students are visible. The only signs of life are the black official cars and police vans that come and go through the forbidding gates. Nearby, across the Pearl River, is a grim set of barracks, called Chatou, behind high walls and watchtowers.

“According to one woman who has been inside, the school is a front for a state gulag, where police re-educate followers of Falun Dafa, a quasi-religious movement based on meditation and taichi-like exercises that was banned by the Government five years ago as a 'dangerous cult'.

" ‘It is a brainwashing centre - one of many in China, almost one in every district,’ says Tang Yiwen, a slight and soft-spoken 37-year-old interpreter who was grabbed off the street by police in February and taken to the Guangzhou institution. ‘It is said to be one of the most brutal.’

“She said the inmates are mostly Falun Gong followers who, like her, have refused to renounce their beliefs even after serving three to four years in brutal labour camps like the one across the river …” Full story at Inside China's brainwashing gulag

A HK clown to oppose "a puppet regime"

2004-10-15T23:35:00.000+08:00

After winning a seat in Hong Kong's Legislative Council a professional protester has added a touch of bizarre to an institution regarded by most voters as a hindrance to rather than beacon of democracy in the Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China.

According to local teacher and writer Kent Ewing, 48-year-old Leung Kwok-hung’s “histrionic mastery of the slogan-filled art of Protest has become an amusing sideshow in Hong Kong's evolving political life”.

This all moved to centre stage as Leung, dressed in his trademark Che Guevara T-shirt and wearing a black armband in commemoration of those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, was sworn in as a new legislator with cries of "Long live democracy! Long live the people! Elect the chief executive and Legco by universal suffrage!"

And that, Ewing complains in today's Asia Times Online, is where Hong Kong stands in its progress toward democracy:

“Since last April, when the mainland's standing committee of the National People's Congress quashed all hopes of universal suffrage in the territory for the near future, we have been stuck with a puppet chief executive officer, the singularly uninspiring Tung Chee-hwa. We are also stuck with a Legislative Council that, due to Hong Kong's perverse electoral system, is dominated by pro-government legislators, even though more than 60% of the Hong Kong electorate cast their votes for the pro-democracy opposition in last month's election.

“No wonder we have elected a clown to oppose a puppet regime. At least we can now enjoy some comic relief.”

One of the world's 'most unequal' societies

2004-10-14T22:47:00.000+08:00

Joseph Kahn's NYT article, The Great Divide/Managing Rebellion, follows the 10 year struggle of three Chinese peasants who vowed to fight to the end against Communist Party officials who imposed illegal taxes and fees on them and their families. They endured a violent police crackdown, got tax refunds, and even won the right to govern their own village. But power, vanity and the guile of the Communist Party tore them apart.

Kahn also documents the current plight of the working people in the Peoples Republic of China:

Since China's peasantry began falling far behind the urban elite in the go-go 1990s, the countryside has been a font of unrest. It is the rare village, among the 700,000 across China, where residents are not protesting something - corruption, high taxes or fees, confiscated land, punitive birth-control policies ...
China has not yet figured out how to make its capitalist-style economic growth egalitarian. It has become one of the developing world's most unequal societies ...
The government uses China's 800 million farmers to provide grain, labor and capital for urban development. State banks take deposits in rural areas but make loans almost exclusively to richer ones. The authorities pour resources into prestigious urban projects, like the $1.24 billion Shanghai spent to build a state-of-the-art Formula One racetrack and play host to the European event through 2010.
Villages rarely get such help. All farm families, regardless of income, pay land and agriculture taxes as well as fees for social services, often exceeding what wealthier urban residents pay ...
Partly as a result, the authoritarian government has learned to live with seething social discontent. It has become practiced at defusing confrontations that threaten one-party rule ...

Meantime, the average wealth among the PRC's top 100 entrepreneurs reached US$297 million, according to Shanghai-based accountant Rupert Hoogewerf, compiler of the China's 100 richest people list for the sixth straight year. Hoogewerf's research team found that China's wealthiest are in retail, information technology and investment.

A quarter of the entrepreneurs listed are believed to be Communist Party members and 38 have been co-opted into either the legislature -- the National People's Congress -- or the advisory body, the People's Political Consultative Conference.

Standing up for what Australians believe

2004-10-13T23:44:00.000+08:00

Australian Prime Minister John Howard projected strong comments on international issues in his weekend, re-election victory speech and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer today further amplified the Australian Government's views and values in an Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.

On Saturday evening Howard said:

No Australian should ever shrink from a passionate belief in the ability and the capacity of this nation not only to provide a wonderful homeland for our 20 million, not only to be a partner with our friends in our own region but to be a beacon of democracy, of tolerance, of hope and of achievement all around the world ... we are a nation that is respected around the world because we are prepared to stand up for what we believe in ...
Let us remember that this very same day the people of Afghanistan have had an election and for the first time in years. That election has been made possible by reason of the fact that a number of countries, including Australia, were prepared to take a stand for democracy and to take a stand against terrorism.
As the people of Afghanistan vote today, and particularly the women of Afghanistan, they have been so brutally suppressed for so long, we should be proud of the role that we have played in their liberating Afghanistan just as we should be proud of the role that Australia has played in many other areas in standing up for the values we believe in and the things we hold dear ...

Full text here .

According to Downer, Australia's federal election included clear foreign policy choices, particularly the commitment to the Iraq invasion and the War on Terrorism:

With opposition parties promising to bring home Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas, Australians could have taken the easy option to "cut and run." Instead, they strongly re-endorsed the government of Prime Minister John Howard and its promise to stay the course in Iraq.
Having been an original, modest but important contributor to the so-called Coalition of the Willing, Australia is not about to set any arbitrary deadline for leaving Iraq. We will not let down the Iraqi people. We will not let down our allies. And we will not let down the international community. Our troops are involved in the important work of training Iraqi security forces, patrolling the waters and skies around Iraq and protecting Australia's diplomatic staff in Baghdad. Our commitment also extends to reconstruction assistance, especially in the fields of agriculture and water management ...
Despite the vicious terrorist bombing against the Australian embassy in Jakarta a month before our election (which killed nine Indonesians and wounded scores of people including Australians), the poll result should not come as a surprise.
Australians have a proud record of standing for up for our values, our allies, our neighbors and our national interests abroad. In recent years we have done this in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands. The Australian government will continue to show resolve and commitment in the war against terrorism, especially in our own region. We have struck counterterrorism agreements with nine of our regional neighbors and co-hosted with Indonesia a regional summit on counterterrorism ...
We will also engage fully in the "battle of ideas" to ensure that the war against terrorism is not seen as a "clash of civilizations" but as a battle to root out the extremists ...

Full text here.

Korea claims Gando territory back from PRC

2004-10-13T01:06:00.000+08:00

South Korean newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, has revealed that the Republic of Korea is claiming a vast section of territory of the Peoples Republic of China bordering North Korea. An underlined phrase in text submitted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for parliamentary inspection states the Korean government's position that the 1909 Gando Convention, signed by Japan without Korea's consent, and the Eulsa Treaty, which deprived Korea of diplomatic rights in 1905, are null and void.

The Gando Convention was a treaty in which Imperial Japan handed over the Gando region, which was recognised as Korean territory, to Imperial China in return for certain privileges in Manchuria, including railway concessions. If the Gando Convention is null and void, the ROK is adopting a position that the region north of Mt Baekdu and Tumen River, home to the PRC's present Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, is Korean territory.

"Our government takes the position that the 1909 Gando Convention, signed by Japan without concern for Korea's position, is null and void, to the extent that the Eulsa Treaty, which deprived Korea of its diplomatic rights in 1905, is a null-and-void treaty obtained through duress," the ministerial document states.

A government official quoted by Chosun Ilbo, said, "It is our firm position that the Gando Convention is null and void, but taking into account how China has been reacting sensitively to the Gando Convention issue, even in relation to the Koguryo history issue, we've decided not to reveal that position to the outside."

Will PRC send 400,000 to join Korean hostilities?

2004-10-07T13:33:00.000+08:00

The Chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Kim Jong-hwan, has told the ROK National Assembly’s National Defense Committee that in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula, the Peoples Republic of China will dispatch military personnel in accordance with Article 2 of its mutual defense pact with North Korea (DPRK), which calls for the automatic insertion of men in the event of a conflict.

As reported by Robert Koehler in The Marmot's Hole, the South Korean military estimates that China will send 18 divisions – roughly 400,000 men – 800 aircraft and 150 ships to the peninsula by deploying 60% of the fighting strength of the Shenyang Military District (448,000 men, 1000 aircraft), 50% of the fighting strength of the Jinan Military District (256,000 men, 650 aircraft), and 30% of the Chinese Northern Fleet (518 ships).

According to Gen Kim, the combined ROK-U.S standing force of 720,000 men counters only 61% of the standing North Korean force of 1.17 million men.

Kim also mentioned the North's artillery threat of about 300 self-propelled gun targeting Seoul's metropolitan area. But as their ammunition is for use primarily against personnel and its ability to penetrate concrete is limited, Kim explained, apartment blocks would suffer much of the damage.

Marmot's correspondents were not so sure the PRC would automatically join in hostiolities on behalf of the DPRK. The troops would not be sent to help North Korea "but to stop the expected flood of refugee from the North" one wrote.

"The real worry is this, wrote another, "everyone has their illogical blind spot. And Taiwan is China’s. A simultaneous Chinese invasion of Taiwan / North Korean invasion of South Korea has to keep U.S. planners up at night, as it metaphorically does me. Add in the vast number of US forces tied down in Iraq and …. sigh. Conventionally defeated, the only recourses for America might be 1) humiliating acceptance of the loss of South Korea and Taiwan, or 2) limited use of nuclear weapons."

Update: Reuters reports the USA and South Korea will announce a three-year delay in current plans to cut the number of US troops stationed on the North Korean border by 2005. The USA intends to pull out one third of its soldiers, or 12,500 troops, from South Korea as part of a global realignment of its forces.

Australia's cruise missiles have South China Sea role

2004-10-06T21:42:00.000+08:00

The Australian newspaper disturbed regional security strategists when it preempted an Australian Government announcement that its F/A-18 Hornet fighters and AP-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft would be armed with cruise missiles from 2007 as the nation's ageing F-111 strike bombers are phased out by 2010. Although the air-to-surface missiles can destroy targets up to 400 kilometres away, F/A-18s armed with the new missiles would have at best 75 percent of the F-111s' range.

Costing up to A$450 million, the three missile options being considered by Canberra are Lockheed Martin's 400km-range Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile, the German, 350km-range Taurus Systems KEPD 350 precision-attack cruise missile and Boeing's 250km-range cruise missile known as SLAM-ER (Stand-off Land Attack Missile - Expanded Response).

The news story forced Australian Defence Minister, Robert Hill, to comment to the media before military attaches of neighbouring countries had been briefed. This provided a window of opportunity for unnecessary and ill-informed comment by the opposition Australian Labor Party, Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and regional media.

"What has it done to explain this to the countries in the region with whom we must be associated in the struggle with fundamentalist terror?" ALP spokesman Kim Beazley curiously said. "As far as I can see, the government has made absolutely no effort. In normal circumstances that would be bad, but in circumstances where we need to be alongside them, it's very foolish indeed."

Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa expressed concern about the plan, questioning why Australia was beefing up its offensive capacity. "We are talking here of an offensive capability, no longer defensive capability, and we have to ask ourselves against whom is this long-range cruise missile being directed."

"You cannot arm yourselves to the teeth and expect that will lead, of itself, to a sense of security," he said. "You have to work with the region to share in a sense of security. It's a qualitative advance for the region. We know Australia's government has until now been against the proliferation of advanced missile technologies in the region. There is a risk that raising the level of sophistication could lead to some kind of a counter response."

While confirming that the new air-to-air missiles, combined with upgraded precision-guided bombs, would make Australia's fighter jets the region's most lethal capacity for air combat and strike operations," Defence Minister Hill denied it would trigger an arms race. "In the same way as Indonesia and all our regional neighbours continue to build their capabilities, they expect Australia to do so," he said.

Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, said simply, "our regional neighbours will understand why we have done this."

Within two days, Indonesia's military confirmed it had no misunderstanding or apprehension about the Australian announcement. Military (TNI) Commander Gen Endriartono Sutarto said Australia's decision to equip its jet fighters with sophisticated missiles and to improve its defense system constituted no threat to Indonesia.

"It is Australia's right to develop its defence system and this must be respected by other countries, including Indonesia," he said, adding that Indonesia did not see the development as a threat. "So there is no need for Indonesia to excessively respond to the Australian missile program," he said.

So why the cryptic pussyfooting by the Australian government?

Simply, the aircraft and new weaponry are primarily configured to prevent a PRC navy from taking possession of the South China Sea, an area the PRC claims as its sovereign territory. According to the PRC, the South China Sea and Taiwan are the only two "non-negotiables" of Chinese foreign policy.

With overlapping territorial claims by South East Asian nations, the South China Sea is a highly sensitive security zone and Australia's contribution to the area's stability is its long-range attack aircraft. Along with its major trading partners, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, Australia also has a significant economic interest in the sea being completely open to north-south shipping.

The following report suggests the Australian government and political elite purposely limit public access to this information:

The missiles, to be used on Australia's F-18 Hornet fighters and AP-3C Orion
maritime surveillance aircraft [will] extend the lethal reach of the Australian
Defense Force as far as the South China Sea [and will provide] a long-range,
accurate and lethal attack against a range of targets including fixed and
re-locatable targets on land and sea ...

The Australian navy also intends to equip three new destroyers with cruise missiles of even greater range, and hopes to do the same with its submarines. Australia has already signed up for the U.S. joint strike fighter project and the missile defense program, and last year's review of the ADF structure has sharply increased the size and support system for Australia's special forces ...
What the Australians do not publicly mention is the country that started the Asian arms build-up -- China. The modernization of the Chinese military, replacing the massive armies of Mao's day with Russian-built Kilo-class submarines and Su-30 fighter-bombers, along with the breakneck pace of China's economic growth, has changed the strategic dynamics of the broader Asia-Pacific region.
For Australia, China is now a major customer ...
[However] Australians have read with careful attention the platform adopted ... by the Republican Party, whose section on Asia takes aim at China, expressing profound disagreements on human rights, over Taiwan and on Beijing's outdated path of seeking advanced weaponry.
[This denies] the right of Beijing to impose its rule on the free Taiwanese people. All issues regarding Taiwan's future must be resolved peacefully and must be agreeable to the people of Taiwan, the platform says. If China violates these principles and attacks Taiwan, then the United States will respond appropriately. America will help Taiwan defend itself.
The question is whether Australia will stick by its American ally in such an event, given that Australia has taken part alongside the Americans in every serious conflict since World War II.
It is the question that loomed over the recent five-day trip to China of the chief of Australia's Defense Force, Gen. Peter Cosgrove, for talks with his Chinese military counterparts ...
If you can foresee Australian forces operating alongside U.S. forces, say in the event of a collapse of the armistice in Korea or the hostilities between Taiwan and China, the type of missiles that are being sought as a result of this project would be the sort nof equipment you would need to operate Australian aircraft in that environment and keep the pilots comparatively safe ...

US interests aside, our region's continuing strategic concern is containing PRC militarism in the South China Sea and against the Republic of China on Taiwan. The PRC government's declared "inviolate" policy is that both territories are its own. That's an open enough war warning-- not only against the ROC and all nations claiming South China Sea territory but also those others who regard it as international waters.

It is reprehensible that while our investment in aircraft, missiles, ships and submarines only make sense as part of regional defence against PRC revanchism, Australian parliamentary papers never address that scenario.

Socialists on 'greatest threats to peace and justice'

2004-10-05T01:50:00.000+08:00

Fom Socialism in an Age of Waiting:

We just cannot be bothered to waste any more time on the claims of those who imagine that dictatorships can be on the side of progress, or that denigrating the small but vital gains made by liberal democracy - while offering no feasible alternative whatsoever - serves any useful purpose.

Let us put the choice as bluntly as possible. Which, really, is worse - allying with France and Russia (both of them, funnily enough, still capitalist states the last time we looked) in seeking to prevent the overthrow of a regime that directed torture and murder, on a mass scale, in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, for 35 years, aside from all its other crimes; or allying with the US, Britain, Australia and several other undeniably capitalist states in supporting its overthrow, even though, disgracefully, it had the side effect of permitting torture and murder to continue in those places for a few more months, until the democratic institutions of the US, for all their well-advertised inadequacies, put a stop to the abuse?

It’s not a question of good versus evil - in the real world it never is - but of a very great evil, potentially going on unseen and unpunished for still more decades under one or other of Saddam’s sons or henchmen, and a much lesser evil that has been seen and stopped, and will shortly be punished ....

At present the greatest threats to peace and justice - or rather, to any prospects for peace and justice - come from China and its satellites, on the one hand, and from Islamofascism on the other.

PRC's agriculture reform: feast or famine?

2004-10-04T22:35:00.000+08:00

A revolution in farming practices is bringing wealth to the Chinese countryside which is also bringing the PRC into fierce competition with the world's biggest food producers, writes Andrew Browne in the Far Eastern Economic Review. He observes that across large swaths of coastal China, traditional plots for grain are giving way to orchards and greenhouses:

"Between now and 2020, some 300 million peasants are expected to migrate to urban areas, giving further impetus to farm consolidation. At the same time, China is embarked on a mammoth project to build a national highway network. Suddenly, once-remote farms can start growing perishable crops like lettuce and strawberries and rush them to markets at home and abroad. China now produces half the world's vegetables and melons--five times more than India and 11 times more than the U.S.--compared with just over one third in 1995. Meanwhile, output of broccoli, carrots and other vegetables and tomatoes has more than doubled. Over the same period, China's planted area for vegetables has jumped by 89% and for fruit by 16%, while the area sown with grain has dropped by 10%."

Browne also notes a grim future for PRC agrciculture as predicted by U.S. economist Lester Brown in a paper called China's Shrinking Grain Harvest, published in March:

"As fruit and vegetable production expands and farmland is lost to factories or parched through lack of irrigation, a ravenous China eats through its own grain eeserves and then starts devouring American granaries. Long lines of grain-bearing cargo ships sail across the Pacific to try to satisfy the appetite of China's billion-plus people. But the demand is overwhelming: Water is getting scarcer in the United States, too. Food prices soar all over the world."

According to Lester Brown, the PRC's China's grain harvest has fallen in four of the past five years. Rising world wheat prices, he says, may be just "the early tremors before the quake."

Perhaps even more threatening is the rising anger of many of the 300 million farmers being dispossessed of the land they use by Communist Party officials and government authorities. "It's corruption," declared Huang Jinchun, 36, whose family lost a third of an acre in Shishan and, he said in an interview (The Washington Post, 5 Oct), has yet to receive a penny's worth of compensation. "They just took our land and put the money into their pockets."

The demand for justice is being raised throughout the country:

The Construction Ministry said it received three times as many complaints in the first quarter of this year as in the same period last year. By the end of June, Deputy Minister Fu Wenjia told the Beijing News that 4,000 groups and more than 18,600 individuals had lodged petitions over allegedly illicit land transfers.

Farmers have also taken their complaints to the street. Hundreds lined up bicycles and rickshaws to block traffic in a Beijing suburb on Aug. 20, protesting the seizure of land by a state-owned development company building high-end villas for foreigners and wealthy Chinese seeking to escape the capital's downtown pollution.

Farmers pushed from their land on an island in the Pearl River in southern China have repeatedly clashed with Guangzhou police in recent months. The New York-based organization Human Rights in China reported Sept. 1 that 15 people were injured in a clash Aug. 1 at a factory in the Fuzhou suburb of Cangshan between police and protesters who said their property had been illegally seized.

"The situation of peasants being deprived of their land is very serious in China," said Li Baiguang, director of the Beijing Qimin Research Center. Li, who has studied land seizures in Fujian and other rural provinces, added, "If the interests of the peasants cannot be properly protected and the conflicts cannot be settled, Chinese society might suffer from turbulence."

Beijing yet to factor rising wage demands

2004-10-03T19:33:00.000+08:00

The PRC's economy is likely to grow at a more sustainable pace of around 7 percent this year, instead of overheating. This is because macroeconomic controls adopted last year, particularly in the steel, cement, aluminium and real estate sectors, have helped cool off economic growth, Singapore's Straits Times reported.

The latest signals out of Beijing suggest that the Chinese central bank will not follow the United States Federal Reserve's move of raising interest rates to control economic growth. However there are fears of a resurgence of pent-up investment once the controls are relaxed.

The PRC's millions of export-industry workers may soon add substantial pay demands to the list of the central bank's concerns; that is, if the military allows them to be heard.

According to a recent report from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security quoted by The Washington Post, the PRC's factories lack 2.8 million workers, 2 million alone in the prime manufacturing zone along the Pearl River Delta:

It is not so much a labor shortage -- there are still tens of millions of peasants and former employees of the state-owned factories who need jobs -- as a mismatch between the cutthroat wage demands of the export trade and the rising expectations of Chinese workers ...
Where once a paycheck, even under harsh conditions, was enough to entice tens of millions of people to leave their villages in China's interior and flock to factories on the coast, workers are beginning to turn their backs on the prospect of laboring in 100-degree heat, living in rat-infested dormitories and being cheated out of their earnings.
As more and more of the world's manufacturing shifts to this country of 1.3 billion people, the notion has taken hold that China has so many peasants in such desperate straits that it will continue to press global wages lower for decades, particularly given that independent labor unions are banned and even the threat of organization meets with stiff prison sentences.

However, with workers already voting with their feet, some economists foresee steady wage growth as factories are forced to improve working conditions to keep operations running.

According to Jonathan Anderson of UBS Investment Research in Hiong Kong, "manufacturing wages are going up, and they are going to keep going up." He predicts that the PRC will continue to capture low-end manufacturing jobs from around the world for the next decade but, by then, average wages are likely to exceed $100 a month, up from the current $50 to $60.

A doubling of wages, even over a decade, adds an interesting dimension to economic planning.

Websites critical of Beijing Olympics

2004-10-02T20:03:00.000+08:00

Reporters Without Borders has launched a website calling for a boycott of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. The Paris-based media watchdog said the PRC had failed to improve its rights record since being controversially awarded the Games in 2001:

History has shown that totalitarian regimes are more sensitive to a balance of power than to 'constructive dialogue'. A boycott therefore seems the only strategy to force Chinese authorities to respect human rights before 2008.
The Olympic movement was discredited in 1936, when it allowed the Nazis to make the Games a spectacle to glorify the Third Reich. In 1980, in Moscow, the IOC suffered a terrible defeat when more than 50 countries boycotted the Olympics.
In 2008, the international sporting movement must refuse to tolerate one of the world's bloodiest dictatorships. The People's Republic of China is the world's biggest prison for the press. Twenty-seven journalists and more than 60 Internet users are detained for crimes of opinion.

New York-based Human Rights Watch also launched a China Olympic Watch website. While refraining from calling for a boycott, the group also said China had failed to make progress on human rights:

China continues to have serious human rights problems. As China enters the
global arena, the 2008 Beijing Olympics will provide an opportunity for China to
come into compliance with international legal standards that protect human
rights.
While recent leadership changes have sparked some optimism that respect
for human rights in China will improve, in fact this has not happened.

On [Grand Prix] Contradictions

2004-10-01T18:58:00.000+08:00

Veteren China Watcher, Philip Bowring, reckons Karl Marx might have managed a wry smile. when Shanghai celebrated the debut of Formula One motor racing in the PRC. It coincided, he said, with the government unveiling its "Decision of Enhancing the Party's Ability to Govern," the outcome of the recent plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The message: Tighten the party's faltering grip.

One of the more favoured Chinese chef's at Koko's, the ultra-chic Japanese restaurant at Melbourne's Crown Casino told me the McLaren team had flown him to Shanghai for the race (perhaps not trusting the local cuisine first time around or to arrange a police escort for the team's arrival courtesy of a well-placed relative). Nonetheless he claimed it was a grand event with Communist Party leaders enjoying the limelight. He had no idea what Chairman Mao might have thought.

Bowring is far more critical, noting that "the expenditure of huge sums of public money on such an elite and environmentally unfriendly sport said much about the party's present condition":

If you want to know why infrastructure is so deficient in the rest of China, why rural incomes have lagged, why rural education and health services have declined, come to Shanghai and see where public money has gone.
Want to know why China's banking system is so riddled with nonperforming loans? come to Shanghai and see the office palaces built by state enterprises with money from the state banks and tax breaks from the central government.
Want to know the biggest sources of the corruption that so distresses the party? Come look at the processes of real estate development in Shanghai.
Want to know why the party is unable to contain abuses? Look at how those with political power seek to maintain state control while glorifying private acquisition of wealth.
Want to know why high-level corruption in Shanghai, as elsewhere, though much bemoaned, is seldom exposed? Listen to the party's demand that controls on the news media be tightened - in other words, that nothing be written that brings senior party men into disrepute, whatever their behavior.

According to Bowring, Shanghai is alive with capitalist endeavor and individual entrepreneurship but is unwilling to face up to how much it owes both to the central government and its own exclusivist city-state policies "which would be unthinkable in freer countries, like India or Indonesia".

Correspondence on Langer and the late Jim Bacon

2004-07-13T20:14:00.000+08:00

Posted by Fabian Hammer at Harry's Place's Smartening ourselves up

Mr Will of General Theory of Rubbish is no slouch in abuse with two slurs against me in one post: (1) I am a "stalker" of Mr Langer and (2) am a "right wing freak". Both pathetically unsubstantiated, but I’ll give him a point for interesting political imagery.

Countering my rejection of Mr Langer’s assertion that “there is no great distance from effectively leading rebellious students and workers to effectively leading governments”, Mr Will referred me to Portugal’s Prime Minister, Durão Barro, whose political activity started with the Maoist PCTP-MRPP.

According to my reading, Mr Barro grew up and left Chairman Mao’s fold in 1977 at the ripe old age of 21. Three years later he joined Social-Democratic Party (PSD), where he remains to the present day.

He was elected a Member of Parliament at 29 years of age, becoming Sub-Secretary of State in the Internal Affairs Ministry. In 1987 he was appointed Secretary of State for Cooperation in the Portuguese Foreign Ministry and in 1992 he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.

After losing office in 1995 he lead the Parliamentary Commission on Foreign Affairs and worked as Director of the International Relations department at the Lusiada University, Lisbon.

In 1999 he was elected president of PSD and became the Opposition leader and, in 2002, he was elected Prime Minister.

Is that 24-year social democratic, parliamentary career (1980-2004) evidence that “there is no great distance from effectively leading rebellious students and workers to effectively leading governments”? Not in my book.

And what of Jim Bacon, Premier of the Australian state of Tasmania until his unfortunate passing earlier this year at the age of 54? His political activity started with the Maoist CPA (M-L) at Monash University and then extended into the then-Maoist-controlled national office of the Builders Labourers Federation.

According to my reading, Jim Bacon also grew up and left Chairman Mao’s fold around 1977. In 1980 he became Tasmanian State Secretary of the BLF and, in 1990, CEO of the Tasmanian Trades and Labor Council. During this time he joined the Australian Labor Party and served on its state executive.

In 1996 he was elected as an ALP Member of the House of Assembly for the Tasmanian Parliament and became ALP parliamentary leader and Opposition leader in 1997. In 1998, he led the first majority [Tasmanian] Labor Government in 20 years into office and his government was re-elected in July, 2002.

When Jim Bacon succumbed to lung cancer, the federal ALP leader, Mark Latham, whose national leadership Bacon supported vigorously, described him as “a good Labor man - a committed trade unionist and successful, reformist Premier of Tasmania” who had “transformed the State for the better, giving it new education and economic opportunities” and who would “be sadly missed by the Labor movement and the people of his State”.

Is that 24-year social democratic, union and parliamentary career (1980-2004) evidence that “there is no great distance from effectively leading rebellious students and workers to effectively leading governments”? Not in my book.

To Mr Langer, whose only role in Australian parliamentary elections has been to encourage people not to vote, the whole business of governance may seem easy and hardly worth a quarter-century learning curve.

So much easier to wait for the next “high tide” to sweep one into power, forever, with the time-tested tools of the proletarian dictatorship.

But Mr Langer and his tiny group of unreconstructed Maoists, or “Anarcho-Stalinists” as he prefers, currently needs political oxygen and publicity.

Thus his articles and interviews claiming the late Jim Bacon as a closet Maoist who only joined the Australian Labor Party because it was a “necessity” if he wanted to be “leader of Tasmania's unions”; that he only wanted to be Premier of Tasmania because "what else is there to do right now?"

Of course, Mr Langer never made these claims when Jim Bacon was alive; and Jim Bacon didn’t seem to notice Mr Langer’s importance. He could have, after all, appointed Mr Langer Chief of Police, Secretary of the Department of State Development; State Librarian, or anything. But didn’t.

And so, Mr Will, with all your talk of resistance to fundamental paradigm change and so on, there is more than just a choice between “being a bad communist” or a “right wing freak”. It is being a democrat.

Perhaps a social-democrat, a liberal-democrat or even a conservative-democrat. But certainly not a “pseudo-democrat”.

Correspondence on Langer and the late Jim Bacon

2004-07-13T15:33:00.000+08:00

Posted by Will at Harry's Place's Smartening ourselves up

Mr Hammer: According to their great leader's latest musings, being red is better than expert: "There is no great distance from effectively leading rebellious students and workers to effectively leading governments."

The quote Mr Hammer refers to is from here.

Well I think he may be onto something. Didn't stop this fella either.

And as for expertise/experts surely that's a matter of being able to examine the evidence and not a reliance on authorities/technocracy. In day-to-day life, as in science, we all resist fundamental paradigm change. Social scientist Jay Stuart Snelson calls this resistance an ideological immune system: "educated, intelligent, and successful adults rarely change their most fundamental presuppositions".

According to Snelson, the more knowledge individuals have accumulated, and the more well-founded their theories have become (and remember, we all tend to look for and remember confirmatory evidence, not counterevidence), the greater the confidence in their ideologies. The consequence of this, however, is that we build up an "immunity" against new ideas that do not corroborate previous ones.

I get the impression you are an 'expert' (or maybe a stalker of) on Mr Langer.

I know I'd rather be a bad communist than some right wing freak. You're not the former.

Correspondence on Langer and the late Jim Bacon

2004-07-13T14:59:00.000+08:00

Posted by Fabian Hammer at Harry's Place's Smartening ourselves up

Why not ask your fraternal "anarcho-stalinist" mates at "LastSuperpower" for some web/IT advice?

According to their great leader's latest musings, being red is better than expert: "There is no great distance from effectively leading rebellious students and workers to effectively leading governments" he says on a satellite website dedicated to "body-snatching" the memory of the late Jim Bacon, a schoolboy maoist who grew up to become a popular Australian Labor Party state premier.

Unfortunately their main site crashed at Christmas and they haven't been able to restore its files let alone its political potency. Not even chanting from the Little Red Book is overcoming the difficulties to win victory.

Correspondence on Langer and Last Superpower web

2004-06-04T21:17:00.000+08:00

Posted by Fabian Hammer at Harry's Place's Saddam's Own Party

Nick Cohen heaps praise on the Greens for avoiding an alliance with the SWP. He also warns that those who join a coalition with the SWP will not find their shared “belief in a common cause” reciprocated. The SWP, he writes, “is never about opposition to war or the British National Party. It is always about the party's power”.

This adds to the campaign by Oliver Kamm to “reject and condemn anyone who would knowingly ally” with the SWP and its front organisations “let alone speak from those organisations' platforms”.

The irony is that “Harry's Place" itself lists the Australian Maoist “lastsuperpower” front as a “fraternal” website.

Apart from its pro-Iraqi war agenda, this grouplet of downunder's self-styled “anarcho-Stalinist” matches Cohen’s description of the SWP as people “not too keen on openness or democracy” and its history parallels what Kamm condemns in the SWP’s “totalitarian ideology, antisemitic bent and intolerant (and often thuggish) conduct”.

If Cohen is making a moral call -- and Harry's Place agrees -- where is the consistency?

Correspondence on Langer and the CPA (M-L)

2004-05-23T23:14:00.000+08:00

Posted by Oliver Kramm at Beyond the fringe II

You may be assured that I am not being generous in my assessment of Mr Langer's intent or his political position. Knowing - and reading, as I dutifully have done here - the fringe character of that position, I am disinclined to engage it in debate, but I am concerned that Mr Langer should not feel that his opinions are being in some way disadvantaged in this forum. To that end, I have given him a great deal of leeway - far more than I normally would from anyone else in this forum - to express his views as he wishes. Unfortunately I am unable as yet to get him to understand that, as Hubert Humphrey presciently remarked, the right to free speech does not entail a right to be taken seriously.

Correspondence on Langer and the CPA (M-L)

2004-05-23T19:12:00.000+08:00

Posted by Fabian Hammer at Oliver Kramm's Beyond the fringe II

Albert Langer’s reply to my brief posting devotes considerable attention to Dr J Salaam’s The CPA (M-L) and Political/Industrial Violence: Rationale And Results. While praising that document’s descriptions of various sorts of fascists and violent extremist groups as “valuable insight” and “useful information”, however, he declares any of Salaams observations of his own activities “paranoid anti-semitic [sic] raving”.

Unfortunately for Brother Langer’s claim, Salaam’s comments were clearly to praise him not to bury him. Salaam credits the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), Brother Langer himself, his “Jews Against Zionism and Anti-Semitism” group and the community radio station 3CR, which broadcast the group’s programs, with intensifying the spread of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian propaganda in Melbourne.

And that is true. Although Jews Against Zionism and Anti-Semitism was overwhelmingly rejected by Melbourne’s Jewish community which too easily recognised it as a Maoist front group, the controversy stimulated by the group’s leaders, particularly Brother Langer and fellow Maoist, Victor Zbar, speaking as Jews, against Israel, elevated anti-Zionist and pro-PLO propaganda out of the universities and the (Maoist and Trotskyist) radical left and into Melbourne’s mainstream political arena and media.

The group’s name was a parody of the religious Jews against Zionism organisations whose views are still often quoted by Brother Langer (but with which “for the record” he must tell us, he does not agree) with an “Anti-Semitism” tag to provide cover for the Maoists’ years of violent confrontation with a politically inconsequential, rag-tag gang of local neo-Nazis.

It is this use of political violence that attracted Salaam -- who appears to hide nothing of his white-racist-nationalist politics and associates and convictions for political violence -- to research the CPA (M-L) to “see in the Maoist organization particular ideas of great worth in the struggle to construct a Nationalist party able to challenge State power”.

The CPA (M-L) has been described elsewhere (”Living by the Little Red Book”, by Mark Dapin, Good Weekend, 13 Dec 2003, The Age/SMH) as “an obsessively secretive, fantastically disciplined organisation to which hardly anybody beyond its public leadership has ever admitted belonging … former comrades still have trouble talking about it”.

So much so, it seems, that Brother Albert, the original “point” man for the CPA (M-L) at Melbourne’s universities and high schools, only reluctantly admits his embarrassment (see in this thread, above) for “closely associated with them” for nearly a decade. Astonishingly, he admits not to being a party member, nor a central committee member, nor a prominent leader … just a simple soul, “closely associated.”

His unfamiliar coyness is also reflected in his claim that he “assisted in dislodging supporters of the CPA(ML) from control of Community Radio 3CR while simultaneously defeating a Zionist attempt to have that station branded as ‘anti-semitic’ [sic].” It is well known that he opposed the CPA (M-L) control of 3CR only after he split with the party (because of his support for the “Gang of Four” in China) and was simultaneously protecting his own faction’s rapidly weakening influence through the station’s anti-Zionist programming.

In “Living by the Little Red Book”, however, his former wife Kerry (who remains a close collaborator in his cutting edge but “currently minimal” www.lastsuperpower.net website) fearlessly disclosed her recruitment to the CPA (M-L). A chapter on student activists in 1969 in the recently published left-wing history, “Radical Melbourne 2”, commenting admiringly of the then “militancy and discipline of the Maoists”, also highlights Brother Langer’s membership of the CPA (M-L) at the time.

Sister Kerry is, moreover, a credible and forthright source of basic information on the indiscrete armed militia training that Brother Langer claims never happened.

In “Living by the Little Red Book” she relates how Maoists proposed a Monash University “People's Militia” funded by the Student Council. A campus-wide referendum rejected that idea but endorsed the less-aggressive-sounding Monash People's Defence Corps. "We'd all go out and practise karate or something like that, one afternoon a week," she reportedly said. "Later, the [Maoist] Military Groups appeared … I was in communications … taking a message from the beginning of a demonstration to the end.” Others took their guns and rifles to the Young Communist League's Camp Eureka “and practised firing them”.

No doubt the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation has numerous photographs of Brother Langer’s “non-existent” armed Military Groups whose “weapons training”, it is reported,” was a measure of the Maoists' seriousness.”

Brother Langer, I believe Oliver Kamm to be far too generous to you and your intent. The only point I give to you is one for chutzpah.

Correspondence on Langer and the CPA (M-L)

2004-05-23T13:29:00.000+08:00

Posted by Oliver Kramm at Beyond the fringe II

Mr Langer - I followed the link that you commented on at length, and recognised it immediately as one I too have linked to when explicating the views of the far-Right (specifically those of the founder of the Red Army Fraction, Horst Mahler). You are right in your designation of it, but not, as I understand it, of my correspondent's use of it.

The point that my Israeli correspondent Maor found funny in your comments was your insistence that the UN General Assembly's resolution in 1975 that Zionism was a form of racism demonstrated the mainstream quality of that belief. I found it funny too. I think perhaps you should look into the background of that decision - who moved it, for what purpose, and who supported it.

You may be assured that I am not in the least "inclined to throw in personal attacks based on attempting to 'document' [your] history": my interest in your autobiography is a good deal less than you suppose.

While some people (of whom I am not one, for reasons I have intimated) do appear interested in engaging you in debate, I would appreciate it, if you wish to make use of the comments facility on this blog, if you would desist from accusing them of being clueless and of engaging in pathetic ravings. Please take this as a mild and cordial warning: if you don't heed it, I shall take appropriate action in line with my stated policy on comments.

Correspondence on Langer and the CPA (M-L)

2004-05-20T20:54:00.000+08:00

Posted by Oliver Kramm at Beyond the fringe II

Mr Langer - Anyone is welcome to post comments here provided they are relevant to the subject and conform to certain conventions that I've previously stated (e.g. no obscene or 'unparliamentary' language). Putting the word 'Jew' in inverted commas when not a quotation strikes me as redundant at best, and I could understand your taking some offence at it, but the mere term 'Maoist Jew' doesn't breach those conventions. It is moreover dwarfed by your own off-hand use of the term 'neo-Nazi' to denote the comments you find exceptionable. 'Neo-Nazism' is so grave a charge to make of someone that it requires substantiation if it's not to debase the discussion altogether. (I have myself used the term in relation to causes I have written about here - notably sections of the German Left in the 1970s - and have presented at some length the evidence for that term's aptness in the context.)

Please be aware, as I have said, that this is a moderated forum, which requires a certain degree of civility to other contributors. Your own remark above that your interlocutor's comments are 'too incoherent to be worth replying to' comes close to that boundary. If in your judgement a contributor's comments are too incoherent - or eccentric, or vapid, or crankish, or frivolous - to merit a response, then the proper course is not to respond. As you have already noted, that is the approach I myself adopt in such cases.

Correspondence on Langer and the CPA (M-L)

2004-05-18T20:44:00.000+08:00

Posted by Fabian Hammer at Oliver Kramm's Beyond the fringe II

Albert Langer was Australia's original Maoist "Jew" against Zionism. His own polemics against Israel are not available online but others have documented how the anti-Zionist line of Brother Langer and the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) -- of which he was Vice-Chairman -- “introduced pro-Palestine positions into the Australian Left” (see The CPA (M-L) and Political/Industrial Violence: Rationale And Results).

That, of course, was during the early to mid 1970s when Brother Albert and the CPA (M-L) had the City of Melbourne enthralled with violent demos, indiscrete armed militia training and calls for a united front of “patriotic classes” for, variously, the overthrow of US imperialism or Soviet social-imperialism (see Living by the Little Red Book, by Mark Dapin, "Good Weekend" 2003-12-13. The Age, Melbourne).

Nowadays you can can’t but notice Brother Langer’s postings to international blogs promoting his “pseudo-left” catch-phrase – but you’ll search the web forever looking for his explanation or self-criticism of four decades of political arrogance and ideological failure.

Brother Langer’s sudden discarding of his anti-Zionist line in favour of the “Palestinian [!?!] compromise offer for a two state solution made long ago” (see this thread) is equally vacuumous.

He insists that “Zionists cannot be our allies, let alone our friends” (see thread It really is extremely stupid) but advocates a position that has been overwhelmingly supported by the people of Israel since their State was established and has been the basis of every Israeli peace deal proffered to neighbouring states or the PLO!

Brother Langer has indicated that, yawn, he’s “not really interested in this debate” and “can't promise further replies on this topic, as there are far more important things going on in the world”.

But I will be waiting breathlessly for him to “try to put up” a meaningful insight into how he has developed “some of this stuff.” Perhaps it is time for Harry or the soon-to-be blogger-bludgers at ‘Socialism in an Age of Waiting’ to help Brother Langer get his cutting-edge, www.lastsuperpower.net website “fully functional again.”