Politics

posts on political issues relevant to Greater China

Urgent action for artist Gao Zhen

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Dear colleagues,

The Heroes and Martyrs’ Protection Law in China is a so-called punitive memory law: a vaguely worded law prohibiting and punishing views of the past that question the official historical narrative.

Amnesty International is organizing an Urgent Action for U.S.-based artist Gao Zhen, who was detained for “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs” because he employed satirical humor to shed light on the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and criticized former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976).

Please urgently write to the Chinese authorities in your own words or using the model letter below. Please remember to do so in your professional capacity.

With best wishes,
Antoon De Baets and Ruben Zeeman
(Network of Concerned Historians)

Source: Amnesty International (12/5/24)
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/8821/2024/en/

CHINA — PROMINENT ARTIST ARRESTED FOR HIS WORK: GAO ZHEN
First Urgent Action (UA) — 106/24 Index: ASA 17/8821/2024 — China — Date: 5 December 2024

Prominent Artist Arrested For His Work
On 26 August 2024, Gao Zhen, a prominent Chinese artist, was detained by authorities while traveling in China with his wife and son. Gao is charged with “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs,” a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. His formal arrest has been approved, and his wife and child have been prevented from leaving China. Chinese authorities must release Gao Zhen immediately and unconditionally, and cease using this and other laws to stifle creative expression. Continue reading Urgent action for artist Gao Zhen →

China’s Counter-Histories

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Source: NY Review of Books (2/27/25)
China’s Counter-Histories
By Perry Link

In Sparks, Ian Johnson writes of Chinese people who risk their careers and even their lives to uncover suppressed truths about their country’s modern history.

Hu Jie: Let there be light #16, 2015; from a series of woodblock prints about China’s Great Famine of 1958–1962

Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future, by Ian Johnson. Oxford University Press, 381 pp., $27.95; $19.99 (paper)

The word “China,” as used by Western journalists and government officials, almost always refers to the thoughts, values, positions, and plans of high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party. This is the case when one reads of “China’s” position on Ukraine, “China’s” effort to stimulate domestic consumption, and so on.

In Ian Johnson’s bracing book Sparks, “China” means something else. Johnson writes of Chinese people who uncover momentous truths about their country’s modern history and risk their careers, indeed their lives, to do it. Their values and actions are continuous with ancient moral traditions as well as with the daily life that lies beyond official reach today. They, too, are China.

The CCP presses them terribly and largely succeeds. The journalists, professors, rights lawyers, and primitively equipped filmmakers who make up Johnson’s “underground historians” (alternatively, “counter-historians”) appear to be only a tiny minority. But he shows how they draw on values that have not only survived dynasties but also helped to bring some dynasties down. Today’s rulers seem aware of that. Our best evidence of this is the highly expensive 24/7 “stability maintenance” measures that the regime uses to monitor, dissuade, and, if necessary, stifle them. The tools of dissuasion are basically two: threats designed to induce fear and offers of comfort to reward capitulation. Beyond that, punishment. Continue reading China’s Counter-Histories →

Thailand obeys China on refugees and kidnapping

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On the burning issue of Thailand’s pending forced repatriation to China of forty-some Uyghur refugees, to certain torture and probably death there, because of international protests (even from UN-appointed experts), and global media attention, top Thai political leaders and the national police chief have now come out, to tie themselves in knots while trying to defend their country’s actions and shore up an image of decency.

Thailand’s police chief has the audacity to say that the refugees, WHO HAVE BEEN DETAINED FOR TEN YEARS NOW, are “doing OK”.

This article also mentions the brave Thai senator Angkhana Neelapaijit, chairwoman of a Senate committee that has now asked to at last be allowed to see the detained men, and who also “expressed concerns shared by human rights organisations that the Uyghur group could face danger if they are sent back to China.”

She also reminded us all about how the coup government of general Prayut Chan-o-cha in 2013 already forcibly returned 109 Uyghur men to China at Beijing’s request, and to this day, their fate remains unknown. (Of course, we can assume they have all long since put to death).

In another report, a deputy PM and defence minister says Thailand will handle this decently (again, that’s after holding these refugees for 10 years!!), and “promises to adhere to human rights.” This minister’s pronouoncement has been seized upon as a hopeful sign, by Uyghurs in exile.

But I for one wonder, about Thailand and human rights. The country has refused to sign the international refugee convention on refugee treatment, and that same coup general once mocked the very same Uyghur refugees he sent to their probable death, as lowly animals. Continue reading Thailand obeys China on refugees and kidnapping →

Tibet dam project alarms neighbors and experts

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Source: NYT (1/27/25)
China’s Large and Mysterious Dam Project Is Alarming Neighbors and Experts
The hydropower dam, in quake-prone Tibet, is set to be the world’s biggest. But China has said little about the project, which could affect nearby countries.
By Tiffany MayIsabelle Qian and Suhasini Raj

A dramatic, mountainous landscape with a river in the foreground.

China says it will build a dam in Medog, a remote county in Tibet, that could generate three times as much electricity as the Three Gorges Dam. Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Step aside, Three Gorges Dam. China’s latest colossal infrastructure project, if completed, will be the world’s largest hydropower dam, high up in the Tibetan plateau on the border with India.

China says the Motuo Hydropower Station it is building in Tibet is key to its effort to meet clean energy targets. Beijing also sees infrastructure projects as a way to stimulate the sluggish Chinese economy and create jobs.

But this project has raised concerns among environmentalists and China’s neighbors — in part, because Beijing has said so little about it.

The area where the dam is being built is prone to earthquakes. The Tibetan river being dammed, the Yarlung Tsangpo, flows into neighboring India as the Brahmaputra and into Bangladesh as the Jamuna, raising concerns in those countries about water security. Continue reading Tibet dam project alarms neighbors and experts →

Suipian (Jan. 2025)

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碎篇 // Suipian // Fragments
By TABITHA SPEELMAN
JAN 26, 2025

Welcome to the 4th edition of Suipian, my personal newsletter in which I share thoughts and resources that help me make sense of Chinese society and its relationship to the rest of the world. See here for more information on Suipian. I’m happy to send you this dispatch from Beijing. Ahead of the New Year holidays, the city – never too loud these days, what with all the EVs and population control – is getting downright quiet. But it’s been a lovely (worryingly mild) winter here so far, with lots of blue skies. Since I last wrote, I’ve spent time reporting here, in Holland, and in Taiwan, working on some stories I’d long wanted to do. I’ll save you a blow-by-blow account, but see below for a few links and thoughts. 新年快乐.

随笔 // Suibi // Notes
Sharing thoughts or resources related to my work as a correspondent

  1. Reporting politics. When CNN’s Clarissa Ward recently interviewed a Syrian man who pretended to be someone he was not, the journalistic error was corrected within days. I’ve been wondering what it says about China reporting that it has taken years for some of the media that cited controversial, Holland-based dissident Wang Jingyu on topics including Chinese overseas police stations and influencing practices to retract those stories, following mounting evidence of his unreliability. NPR, which has led the way in uncovering that evidence, has cited journalism experts who think it is one of the largest cases ever of a single unreliable source influencing media coverage. Assisting two colleagues on a related investigation in recent months, I learned a lot from diaspora interviewees, some of whom had long been documenting and warning about Wang’s misconduct, exchanging information across big political divides (from dissident to United Front-adjacent) in search of the truth. Continue reading Suipian (Jan. 2025) →

The Crushed Promise of the Chinese Internet

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Source: NYT (1/20/25)
TikTok, RedNote and the Crushed Promise of the Chinese Internet
Leer en español | 阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
China’s internet companies and their hard-working, resourceful professionals make world-class products, in spite of censorship and malign neglect by Beijing.
By Li Yuan

Dongyan Xu.

The Chinese social media app RedNote is full of cute, heartwarming moments after about 500,000 American users fled to it last week to protest the looming U.S. government ban on TikTok.

Calling themselves “TikTok refugees,” these users paid the “cat tax” to join RedNote by posting cat photos and videos. They answered so many questions from their new Chinese friends: Is it true that in rural America every family has a large farm, a huge house, at least three children and several big dogs? That Americans have to work two jobs to support themselves? That Americans are terrible at geography and many believe that Africa is a country? That most Americans have two days off every week?

Americans also posed questions to their new friends. “I heard that every Chinese has a giant panda,” an American RedNote user wrote. “Can you tell me how can I get it?” An answer came from someone in the eastern province of Jiangsu: “Believe me, it’s true,” the person deadpanned, posting a photo of a panda doing the laundry.

I spent hours scrolling those so-called cat tax photos and chuckled at the cute and earnest responses. This is what the internet is supposed to do: connect people. More important, RedNote demonstrated how competitive a random Chinese social media app can be from a purely product point of view. Continue reading The Crushed Promise of the Chinese Internet →

Statement on Uyghur asylum seekers in Thailand

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See below for information on signing a statement protesting the Uyghurs being held by Thailand and who are at risk of being deported to China. –Magnus Fiskesjö

======================

Dear Friend and colleagues,

You will have seen the tragic news that 48 Uyghurs face immediate deportation from Thailand to the PRC where they will certainly face persecution.

We urge you to sign the following statement addressed to the Thai authorities asking for the group of detained Uyghur men to be given safe haven: https://forms.gle/zWw3GbTvvqiuNLRX7.

We hope that this statement will raise awareness of the detainees’ situation and prevent their deportation to the PRC.

Kind regards,

Nyrola Elimä, Rune Steenberg, David Tobin <d.tobin@sheffield.ac.uk>, and Emily Upson.

The Anaconda in the Chandelier review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Jeffrey Kinkley’s review of The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China, by Perry Link. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/kinkley2/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, our literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

The Anaconda in the Chandelier:
Writings on China

By Perry Link

Reviewed by Jeffrey C. Kinkley

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January, 2025)

Perry Link, The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China Perry Link. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2025. viii + 287 pp. ISBN 9781589881983 (paper)

Perry Link’s eminence as scholar and as public intellectual is well known to most MCLC readers. His pioneering scholarship on twentieth-century Chinese popular narratives and on the linguistic inventiveness of Chinese oral and written expression more generally is embodied in full-length monographs,[1] supplemented by studies of the circulation of Mao-era printed novels and unapproved hand-copied manuscripts, as well as essays on comedians’ dialogues (xiangsheng 相声) of the Mao and post-Mao years. Link’s 2007 essay on xiangsheng in the early People’s Republic of China (PRC) serves as a bang-up penultimate chapter for The Anaconda in the Chandelier.[2] The book prints in total thirty-one of Link’s 1998-2023 short and medium-length essays, book reviews, and prefaces, including a number of Link’s longer and more academic articles, together with their footnotes. Most are reprints—with revisions, says the preface, but changes are scarcely visible. Many of these contributions take on the dark task of explaining the finely tuned mechanics, psychology, and social psychology of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control of Chinese communication through censorship, pre-censorship, and, above all, the creation of an unconscious, second-nature self-censorship among writers and the general public. Link calls the condition “fossilized fear.” That was the subject of a landmark monograph from Princeton University Press he published in 2000—on the “uses” of literature in China.[3] He updated the story in newsy and learned essays published in The New York Review of Books and various op-ed and human rights forums. (NYRB-related contributions make up about half of the essays anthologized in The Anaconda in the Chandelier.) The author’s expertise, Chinese friends and informants, and ever-critical yet always humanely empathetic social probings enabled what is probably now his best-known research: historical and biographical accounts of Chinese dissidence and protest. That focus, too, dates back to the 1980s, when he began to translate, edit, and publish short fiction and essays by freethinking PRC writers who surfaced, or, like Liu Binyan 刘宾雁, resurfaced, after the demise of Mao.[4] Consideration of the 1989 June Fourth massacre accelerated Link’s major collaborative academic projects and human rights activism, which includes documenting and explaining the before-and-after of China’s nationwide 1989 calamity, the Charter 08 movement, and the life story of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波.[5] Through it all, Link has pursued yet another vocation: teaching in and administering Chinese language programs, while coproducing textbooks for them.[6] Continue reading The Anaconda in the Chandelier review →

Call for article retraction

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Greetings and Happy New Year. We write to bring to your attention a recent article on Tibetan children and “racial empathy bias” that was published in the US psychology journal, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology (the journal of the American Psychological Association’s Society for the study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race), by a pair of Han Chinese psychology scholars (Jing Sheng and Li Wang) and their graduate students at South China Normal University. In their article, they claimed that their research in the TAR among Tibetan “primary school” students received the approval of their university’s “human ethics” board, but we and others think the scholarship is deeply suspect both ethically and theoretically, in that they make racist claims about Tibetan children’s alleged “racial empathy bias” toward Han Chinese.

The scholars’ claims were so explicitly racist that the journal received complaints after it was published. To their credit, the editors published an apology, and required the authors to strike the most egregious statements (see below). However, the article was NOT retracted, and remains published in the journal. Given recent Chinese state efforts to shape scholarly discourse on Tibet abroad, we feel strongly that this article needs to be completely retracted and that the continued presence of this article and others like it in US academic journals threatens the credibility of these journals and the well-known scholars on their editorial boards (this journal seems to have a huge editorial board, as well as a large list of “editorial consultants,” scholars from major colleges and universities across the U.S.).

Please support our call to the journal editors to retract this article by signing the open letter (see below) to the editors through the Google Form link at the top of the letter. Your name and affiliation will be automatically added to the letter. Continue reading Call for article retraction →

Filmmaker sentenced for doc on White Paper protests

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Source: China Digital Times (1/8/25)
Filmmaker Sentenced to More Than Three Years in Prison for Documentary on White-Paper Protests
By 

In a closed-door trial on Monday, a judge sentenced 33-year-old Chen Pinlin to prison for three years and six months for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Chen had produced a documentary film about the White Paper protests on their one-year anniversary in November 2023. The film’s Chinese title is “Urumqi Middle Road,” a reference to the street in Shanghai where protesters gathered to express their anger over the government’s restrictive zero-COVID policies and censorship. As Nectar Gan reported at CNN, Chen’s documentary was in part a critique of the government’s attempts to smear protesters as “foreign forces”:

In English it was called “Not the Foreign Force.” Chen previously said that he wanted to use the documentary to counter the government’s attempt to discredit the protests and blame “foreign forces” for orchestrating dissent – a tactic often deployed by China’s ruling Communist Party to explain away moments of genuine public anger.

Like many young people who took part in the protests, it was Chen’s first time voicing his political demands in China when he took to the streets of Shanghai on November 26, 2022, according to a post he published when releasing the documentary.

He said he produced the documentary to convey his personal experience and reflections.

“I hope to explore why, whenever internal conflicts arise in China, foreign forces are always made the scapegoat. The answer is clear to everyone: the more the government misleads, forgets, and censors, the more we must speak up, remind others, and remember,” he wrote. “Only by remembering the ugliness can we strive toward the light. I also hope that China will one day embrace its own light and future.” [Source] Continue reading Filmmaker sentenced for doc on White Paper protests →

Dissidents thought he was an ally, but he was a spy

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Source: NYT (1/10/25)
New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.
Shujun Wang seemed to be a Chinese democracy activist, but an F.B.I. investigation showed just how far China will go to repress citizens abroad.
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

Shujun Wang, a New Yorker convicted of acting as an illegal foreign agent for the Chinese government, in December. Credit…Adam Pape for The New York Times

One morning in late July last year, Shujun Wang shuffled into a courtroom at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, leaning on his cane as he made his way to the defense table. Settling into a seat next to his lawyers, the 76-year-old Chinese American scholar smoothed his jet-black hair and adjusted his tie, whose red-and-blue pattern, set against his white shirt, vaguely suggested the American flag. After an exchange of greetings with his Chinese interpreter, he surveyed the courtroom with an amused expression, almost beaming at the visitors’ gallery. For someone facing trial on charges of working as an illegal agent for China, Wang looked remarkably cheerful. It was hard to say if he was oblivious to the gravity of his situation or pleased to be the center of attention.

The government accused Wang of having led a double life for years. A historian who migrated to the United States from China in 1994, he had written many books on military and naval history, including one about the heroism of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during the Second World War. Starting in the mid-2000s, he had also been a member of a community of Chinese dissidents in the United States who oppose the Chinese Communist Party and push for democratic reforms in China. Wang helped organize events and rallies in the greater New York area to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre and protest the authoritarianism of the Chinese government. In 2006, he founded, with a group of prominent dissidents, a nonprofit in Flushing, Queens, called the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, with the mission of promoting democracy in China. Warm and affable, Wang became a recognizable face within the organization, managing its media relations and working to publicize the foundation’s activities in New York’s Chinese-language newspapers.

Secretly, according to federal investigators, he was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. Evidence presented at trial would show that at the direction of his handlers in the M.S.S., Wang spied on Chinese dissidents in Flushing and the New York area for years. His enthusiastic participation in the Chinese pro-democracy movement appeared to have been a ploy to gain proximity to its leaders and activists and to collect information about them for the ministry. United States authorities say the Chinese government uses such intelligence to intimidate and silence dissidents overseas. Continue reading Dissidents thought he was an ally, but he was a spy →

How China is erasing Tibetan culture

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Here’s snippet of a long, multimedia-based article on the Chinese government’s efforts to erase Tibetan culture.–Kirk Denton

Source: NYT (1/9/25)
How China is Erasing Tibetan Culture, One Child at a Time
By Chris Buckley

China Central Television

Across China’s west, the party is placing children in boarding schools in a drive to assimilate a generation of Tibetans into the national mainstream and mold them into citizens loyal to the Communist Party.

Tibetan rights activists, as well as experts working for the United Nations, have said that the party is systematically separating Tibetan children from their families to erase Tibetan identity and to deepen China’s control of a people who historically resisted Beijing’s rule. They have estimated that around three-quarters of Tibetan students age 6 and older — and others even younger — are in residential schools that teach largely in Mandarin, replacing the Tibetan language, culture and Buddhist beliefs that the children once absorbed at home and in village schools.

When China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, visited one such school in the summer, he inspected a dormitory that appeared freshly painted and as neat as an army barracks. He walked into a classroom where Tibetan students, listening to a lecture on Communist Party thought, stood and applauded to welcome him.

Mr. Xi’s visit to the school in Qinghai Province in June amounted to a firm endorsement of the program, despite international criticism. Education, he said, must “implant a shared consciousness of Chinese nationhood in the souls of children from an early age.”

Chinese officials say the schools help Tibetan children to quickly become fluent in the Chinese language and learn skills that will prepare them for the modern economy. They say that families voluntarily send their children to the schools, which are free, and that the students have classes in Tibetan culture and language. . . [READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE (paywall)]

Politically correct designations for China’s borderlands

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Source: Ethnic ChinaLit (1/2/25)
The Battle over Politically Correct Designations for China’s Borderlands
By Bruce Humes

The word “Tibet” has been replaced by “Himalayan World” accompanied by “Tibetan art.”

Labels matter. As Confucius (reportedly) said:

名不正，則言不順
言不順，則事不成

If names are not rectified, then words are not appropriate.
If words are not appropriate, then deeds are not accomplished.

— The Analects (Trans. Raymond Dawson)

New politically correct designations for China’s traditional frontiers — homelands to Tibetans, Mongols and Turkic Muslims  — are emerging, but their usage outside the Middle Kingdom is proving controversial.

According to a report by Radiofrance (le mot “Tibet” supprimé), two major museums in Paris made changes to their labeling of Tibetan art in 2023 and 2024. On the explanatory panels in its galleries, Quai Branly began replacing “Tibet” with “Xizang,” China’s name for the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Then Musée Guimet — which houses one of the largest collections of Asian Art outside of Asia — repackaged its “Nepal-Tibet” section as “Monde Himalayen” (Himalayan World).

These changes were noted and vigorously critiqued by French scholars, who accused the museums of bowing to pressure from China in its campaign to force the outside world to accept its colonialist terminology. “Is it the job of museums to rewrite history at the behest of an authoritarian regime? “ queries French Tibetologist Katia Buffetrille, according to Radiofrance. Continue reading Politically correct designations for China’s borderlands →

How a feminist comedy came to rule China’s box office

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Source: NYT (12/11/24)
How a Feminist Comedy Came to Rule China’s Box Office
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
“Her Story” touches on sensitive topics in China, like censorship and gender inequality. But its humorous, nonconfrontational approach may have helped it pass censors.
By Vivian Wang, Reporting from Beijing

Three adults and a child wearing matching black sweaters with the words “Her Story” printed in pink, stand with a promotional placard at an event.

Shao Yihui, right, the director of “Her Story,” a feminist-themed comedy that has become a box office hit in China, along with members of the cast at a premiere in Beijing. Credit…Visual China Group, via Getty Images

The movie calls out stigmas against female sexuality and stereotypes about single mothers. It name-drops feminist scholars, features a woman recalling domestic violence and laments Chinese censorship.

This is not some indie film, streamed secretly by viewers circumventing China’s internet firewall. It is China’s biggest movie right now — and has even garnered praise from the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece.

The success of “Her Story” [好东西], a comedy that topped China’s box office for the last three weeks, is in some ways unexpected, at a time when the government has cracked down on feminist activism, encouraged women to embrace marriage and childbearing and severely limited independent speech.

The film’s reception reflects the unpredictable nature of censorship in the country, as well as the growing appetite for female-centered stories. Discussion of women’s issues is generally allowed so long as it does not morph into calls for rights. “Her Story,” which some have called China’s answer to “Barbie,” cushions many of its social critiques with jokes.

The director of “Her Story,” Shao Yihui, has emphasized at public appearances that she is not interested in provoking “gender antagonism,” an accusation that official media has sometimes lobbed against feminists. Continue reading How a feminist comedy came to rule China’s box office →

Telling Zhejiang’s story

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Source: China Media Project (12/4/24)
Telling Zhejiang’s Story
As international communication centers, or ICCs, open across China to beef up its global impact, one province has become home to a disproportionate number. What’s behind the ICC boom in Zhejiang?
By Alex Colville

International communications centers, or ICCs, are sprouting up all over China. These centers, a crucial piece in the leadership’s bid to remake its external propaganda matrix, have opened in nearly every province and dozens of cities nationwide. Their spread has been expansive — but far from even. One province, coastal Zhejiang, now hosts 16 “local international communication centers” (地方国际传播中心) at the municipal level or lower — five times the national average.

Zhejiang is one of China’s wealthiest provinces, but this alone cannot account for its surge in new ICCs. Even wealthier provinces, like neighboring Jiangsu and Fujian, have not experienced similar growth. So why has Zhejiang become home to so many ICCs? Continue reading Telling Zhejiang’s story →