MCLC Resource Center

Yesterday, Oct 17, 2018, marked 3 years since Swedish citizen, publisher, writer, and poet Gui Minhai was kidnapped from Thailand by Chinese agents, on Oct 17, 2015, and imprisoned by China. He remains imprisoned there, and his circumstances unknown.

A new rally was held Oct 17 outside the Chinese embassy in Stockholm, with the support from Sweden’s Publishers Assn., Sweden’s Journalists Assn., and Swedish PEN and Sweden’s Writers’ Assn.  

A Chinese language report on the rally: https://hk.news.appledaily.com/international/daily/article/20181018/20524560

Swedish Radio made a report in English, on the rally: https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=7069515

As mentioned in the report, China’s intimidation campaign against people speaking up for Gui Minhai continues unabated: This includes the embassy writing to politicians like Left Party leader J. Sjöstedt, who got a threatening letter from the embassy the same morning, scolding him for talking about Gui Minhai, China and human rights, and then he went to the rally at noon! Listen to his interview in English in the segment above. Continue reading →

Kerry Brown is right that Marxism in China imports a model of irreversible linear progress to a culture long steeped in a cyclical view of the world.  But (perhaps to soften the absurdity of Xi’s use of Marx), Brown paraphrases the German philosopher:  “No matter what, the laws of history as outlined by Marx meant that things would work out,” and “All of this had to end somewhere good.”

I think Marx would snort with contempt at this vague, feel-good formulation.  He was much more specific. The telos he envisioned involved control over the means of production and (to enlist Engels) the withering away of the State.  As Brown notes, Marx’s rare mentions of 19th century China were suffused with “lofty disparagement and disdain.”  Could he be resurrected to assess Chinese labor relations and wealth distribution today, he would update his views but I doubt they would become much more favorable.

A. E. Clark <aec@raggedbanner.com>

P.S.: The subtitle is: The key to Marx’s appeal for modern China lies in his conception of history.–Alessandro Burrone <alessandroburrone@gmail.com>

Source: The Diplomat (May 14, 2018)
What Has Karl Marx Ever Done for China?
By Kerry Brown, Kerry

Visitors walk past a photograph of Karl Marx at an exhibition to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth at the National Museum in Beijing (May 5, 2018). Image Credit: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

One of the paradoxes of modern Chinese history is that, during the most xenophobic and anti-foreign period in the country’s modern history, in the depths of the Cultural Revolution half a century ago, the words of German émigré Karl Marx and the ideology that bore his name imported from that maligned, distrusted, and hated outside world were untouchable parts of the dogma.

Nien Cheng in her celebrated memoir of the era, Life and Death in Shanghai, put her finger on this paradox. Responding to her interrogators when attacked for working for a foreign company in Shanghai, she asked, why was that such a problem? The Communists, after all, she said, were serving a set of ideas born abroad, created by a foreigner. She could have gone further. The Red Guards were idolizing a foreigner whose vast corpus of work, when it mentioned China (which was rarely), did so with lofty disparagement and disdain. The country, Marx thought, was decades, if not centuries away from the revolutions he predicted were about to topple governments in Europe and the West. Continue reading →

Source: China Digital Times (10/15/18)
Translation: How I Made it to Renmin University’s Student Blacklist

Six weeks ago, 22-year-old Marxist student activist Yue Xin was detained, just over a week after she posted an open letter, translated in full by CDT, to the CCP Central Committee expressing support for protesting Jasic Technology Factory workers. Yue was one of about 50 student activists and workers who were detained while rallying for the protesting workers in Shenzhen. At the South China Morning Post, Guo Rui and Mimi Lau report that Yue is still yet to be seen since the detention, and notes the advocacy techniques of the new generation of Marxist activists that she represents, and that some Chinese universities appear to be targeting:

The detentions were part of an intensifying clampdown by the authorities on a growing number of young Chinese activists who have found inspiration in Marxism in recent years, hoping to bring change on issues ranging from feminism and income equality to workers’ rights.

But in sharp contrast to the official Marxist line, this new generation of Marxists emphasises individual freedoms, with some even showing interest in a Western constitutional democracy – a stand the country’s mainstream Marxists and Maoists usually dismiss as the wrong path for China.

[…] Most of the protesters detained in August have since been released, but four have been placed under “residential surveillance at a designated location” – a form of secret detention – while four others are still in custody and could face prosecution, according to their friends and other activists.

But the whereabouts of Yue, as well as her mother, who has been out of contact since early September, remain unknown. […] [Source] Continue reading →

Truly frightening account of what goes on in Xinjiang. See below. (+ will include it in my periodically updated list of news on Xinjiang, https://uhrp.org/featured-articles/chinas-re-education-concentration-camps-xinjiang)–Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/notes/gene-bunin/the-uyghurs-of-kazakhstan-have-been-pressured-into-inactivity/2271471456418034/

“The Uyghurs of Kazakhstan have been pressured into inactivity”
Gene Bunin
OCTOBER 6 · PUBLIC

The following is a translation of the Azattyq interview of Kakharman Kozhamberdi by Ayan Kalmurat, published in Russian on October 4, 2018. I’ve decided to translate it as it answers a question that I’ve often found myself asking during my time in Kazakhstan: “So, where are the local Uyghurs in all this?”

The Kazakhstan Uyghur Association has not been active in searching out relatives arrested in Xinjiang, nor has it made many statements regarding the issue. Azattyq talked to a main advisor of the World Uyghur Congress, Kakharman Kozhamberdi, about the reasons behind this state of affairs. Continue reading →

Soundcloud link for last Friday’s Ithaca, NY, radio show on Xinjiang human rights:

<https://soundcloud.com/wrfihumanrightsshow/magnus-fiskesjo-and-john-weiss-oct-5>

Magnus Fiskesjö and John Weiss, Human Rights and Social Justice, hosted by Ute Ritz-Deutch, 4-5PM, Friday, 5 Oct. 2018, on FM 88.1, WRFI.org, in Ithaca, N.Y.

–Magnus Fiskesjö and John Weiss talk about the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority in the Xinjiang province of China (formerly known as East Turkestan). They have been targeted by the Chinese government because of their ethnicity and religion. An estimated one million Uighurs have been threatened, disappeared or sent to so-called Re-Education camps. Those who have left China fear being forcibly returned. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported on this human rights crisis and the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) has compiled news sources as well. For more information visit uhrp.org.

Posted by:  Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu (As always, comments welcome!)

Yesterday US Vice-President, Mike Pence, gave a speech on China at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington. Near the end of the speech, he cited Lu Xun, of all people. He said:

The great Chinese story-teller Lu Xun often lamented that his country “has either looked down at foreigners as brutes, or up to them as saints, but never as equals.” Today, America is reaching out our hand to China; we hope that Beijing will soon reach back – with deeds, not words, and with renewed respect for America. But we will not relent until our relationship with China is grounded in fairness, reciprocity, and respect for sovereignty.

We can now add the Trump administration to the long list of “political uses” of Lu Xun. By the way, the quote is from the opening to “Impromptu Reflection, no. 48” (隨感錄四十八) and reads in the original:

中國人對於異族，歷來只有兩樣稱呼：一樣是禽獸，一樣是聖上。從沒有稱他朋友，說他也同我們一樣的。

Not sure where he got the translation, but Pence did not use (thankfully?) the translation, by Eileen Cheng, in Jottings under Lamplight (Harvard UP, 2017), which reads:

The Chinese have had, throughout the ages, only two terms of address for other races: either “beasts” or “royal highnesses.” They have never been called friends, nor said to have anything in common with us. (p. 253).

If you can stomach it, the whole speech, both in text and in video, is here:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?452478-1/vice-president-pence-intimidated-china

Kirk