[VIDEO] Faily McWorseThanCarter Abroad: POTUS’ Full Speech To People Of Laos
Posted: September 7, 2016 Filed under: Diplomacy, Global, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Barack Obama, China, China–United States relations, Democratic Party (United States), East China, European Union, G20, Hangzhou, Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport, President of the United States, RUSSIA, Syria, United States, Xi Jinping, Zhejiang 2 Comments
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks in Laos and delivers an adress to the people of Laos. He is the first US President to visit the country.
…He also accused Americans of being isolated and ignorant because the United States is such a big country.
“The United States is and can be a great force for good in the world. But because we’re such a big country, we haven’t always had to know about other parts of the world,” he said. “If you’re in the United States, sometimes you can feel lazy and think we’re so big we don’t have to really know anything about other people.”
Decapitated Churches in China’s Christian Heartland
Posted: May 21, 2016 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Global, Religion | Tags: Beijing, Christianity, Communist Party of China, Government of the People's Republic of China, Han Chinese, President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, Xinhua News Agency, Xinjiang, Zhejiang Leave a comment
Christianity is Stigmatized, Feared, and Marginalized, in China as well as in the United States, because the Idea that Rights are God-Given Undermines Government Authority.
SHUITOU, China — Ian Johnson reports: Along the valleys and mountains hugging the East China Sea, a Chinese government campaign to remove crosses from church spires has left the countryside looking as if a typhoon had raged down the coast, decapitating buildings at random.
In the town of Shuitou, workers used blowtorches to cut a 10-foot-high cross off the 120-foot steeple of the Salvation Church. It now lies in the churchyard, wrapped in a red shroud.
About 10 miles to the east, in Mabu township, riot police officers blocked parishioners from entering the grounds of the Dachang Church while workers erected scaffolding and sawed off the cross. In the nearby villages of Ximei, Aojiang, Shanmen and Tengqiao, crosses now lie toppled on rooftops or in yards, or buried like corpses.
On a four-day journey through this lush swath of China’s Zhejiang Province, I spoke with residents who described in new detail the breathtaking scale of an effort to remove Christianity’s most potent symbol from public view. Over the past two years, officials and residents said, the authorities have torn down crosses from 1,200 to 1,700 churches, sometimes after violent clashes with worshipers trying to stop them.
A Sunday service at a state-sanctioned church in Wenzhou in 2014. There are an estimated 60 million Christians in China. Credit Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
“It’s been very difficult to deal with,” said one church elder in Shuitou, who like others asked for anonymity in fear of retaliation by the authorities. “We can only get on our knees and pray.”
The campaign has been limited to Zhejiang Province, home to one of China’s largest and most vibrant Christian populations. But people familiar with the government’s deliberations say the removal of crosses here has set the stage for a new, nationwide effort to more strictly regulate spiritual life in China, reflecting the tighter control of society favored by President Xi Jinping.
[Read the full story here, at The New York Times]
In a major speech on religious policy last month, Mr. Xi urged the ruling Communist Party to “resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means,” and he warned that religions in China must “Sinicize,” or become Chinese. The instructions reflect the government’s longstanding fear that Christianity could undermine the party’s authority. Many human rights lawyers in China are Christians, and many dissidents have said they are influenced by the idea that rights are God-given.
In recent decades, the party had tolerated a religious renaissance in China, allowing most Chinese to worship as they chose and even encouraging the construction of churches, mosques and temples, despite regular crackdowns on unregistered congregations and banned spiritual groups such as Falun Gong.
Hundreds of millions of people have embraced the nation’s major faiths: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and Christianity. There are now about 60 million Christians in China. Many attend churches registered with the government, but at least half worship in unregistered churches, often with local authorities looking the other way. Read the rest of this entry »
Progressive Activists in USA Inspired by Sweeping Action as China Tears Down Thousands of Crucifixes in Campaign to ‘Regulate Excessive Religious Sites’
Posted: April 9, 2016 Filed under: Asia, China, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Religion | Tags: Bailiff, Beijing, China, China Christian Council, China Resources Land, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Communist Party of China, Crucifixion of Jesus, Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, Jones Lang LaSalle, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China, Wenzhou, Zhang Kai, Zhejiang Leave a comment
China’s leadership launched the crusade to eradicate Christianity almost two years ago.
Lizzie Stromme reports: More than two thousand crosses have now been forcefully removed from churches as part of a government campaign to regulate “excessive religious sites”.The nation’s leadership launched the crusade to eradicate Christianity in the coastal province of Zhejiang almost two years ago.
“Christian charity China Aid confirmed just before Easter that more than 2000 crosses had now been demolished by the government as part of their ‘Three Rectifications and One Demolition” campaign.'”
Several members of the public have since been arrested for attempting to halt the government’s crude attempt to suppress the Christian faith.
In this photo taken July 15, 2014, Pastor Tao Chongyin, left, speaks with church member Fan Liang’an in front of the Wuxi Christian Church with the words “Church of Jesus” in red, in Longwan, Wenzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province. Across Zhejiang province, which hugs China’s rocky southeastern coast, authorities have toppled, or threatened to topple, crosses at more than 130 churches. “I won’t let them take down the cross even if it means they would shoot me dead,” said Fan Liang’an, 73, whose grandfather helped build the church in 1924. (AP Photo/Didi Tang)
“It also claimed that since the beginnning of 2016 to early March, 49 Churches had been destroyed in the rampage to abolish Christianity.”
Among the arrested was prominent human rights lawyer Zhang Kai, who was detained after he mounted a legal campaign to challenge the removal of the crosses.
Mr Kai was detained for six months before he was “forced” to appear on the State channel to “confess” his
crimes against the Chinese governement by supporting the anti-establishment protest of the demolition of crucifixes.
Local Christian leaders condemned the forced confession from the lawyer, who also represented a group Christians who were detained for suspected financial crimes last year after they protested at the demolation of crosses, in a public letter.
“There are concerns that this campain to curtail the visable Christian precens in the province could gather momentum.”
Christian charity China Aid confirmed just before Easter that more than 2000 crosses had now been demolished by the government as part of their “Three Rectifications and One Demolition” campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
Beijing’s War on Rights Lawyers and Activists Continues
Posted: January 24, 2016 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Crime & Corruption, Global | Tags: 1972 Nixon visit to China, Beijing, China, China Law Blog, Chinese characters, Chinese law, Communist Party of China, Government of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Internet governance, President of the People's Republic of China, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Wuzhen, Xi Jinping, Zhejiang Leave a comment
Stanley Lubman
writes: A trio of recent repressive actions by the Chinese party-state represents a disturbing three-pronged attack that treats legality as an unnecessary burden on governance over society, and illustrates how far China is willing to go to snuff out dissent.
The actions include the arrest of seven lawyers accused of “subversion” and four others charged with lesser offenses; the televised “confession” of a China-based Swedish citizen who worked for a rights NGO and has been charged with “endangering state security;” and the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers and publishers One reemerged on CCTV to confess to a prior crime years earlier, and a second has written to his wife from Shenzhen to say that he has been “assisting in an investigation.”
Arrests for “subversion of state power”
The lawyers who have been arrested have all been in the forefront of defending controversial activists. Seven are accused of “subversion of state power,” an offense that has been on the books since 1997 but infrequently used. More commonly, activists such as Pu Zhiqiang have been convicted for the lesser charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” and “picking quarrels.” (Pu received a three-year sentence that was simultaneously suspended for the same length of time; however, because of his 
conviction, Pu is barred from practicing law.) Conviction for subversion can lead to a sentence of anywhere from three years to life in prison.
[Order Stanley Lubman’s book “Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao” from Amazon.com]
Three of the other lawyers were charged with the lesser offense of “inciting subversion against state power” which, according to a recent posting by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, is used against individuals who “express criticism of the government” and is punishable by a sentence of up to five years. One other person, a paralegal, has been charged with “assisting in destruction of evidence; other lawyers have been detained 
incommunicado or forcibly disappeared for at least six months.
[Order Stanley Lubman’s book “The Evolution of Law Reform in China: An Uncertain Path” from Amazon.com]
The arrests raise the severity of the charges by aiming at speech related to “subversion” — rather than acts. Foreign experts are dismayed; Eva Pils (Kings College London) comments that the situation “is basically about as serious as it gets for human rights advocacy.”
The arrest of the human rights lawyers is a continuation of the crackdown that exploded in July, but the rise of the accusation of “subversion” raises the odds of harsher punishment.
Arrest and televised “confession” of Swedish citizen affiliated with a human rights NGO
A Swedish man in his 30s, Peter Dahlin, a co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group (China Action) that organizes training programs for human rights defenders, was detained in early January, on a charge of “endangering state security.” On Wednesday, he was paraded on China Central Television and shown admitting to have broken Chinese laws, in a televised “confession” that has been denounced by rights advocates as coerced.
[Read the full story here, at China Real Time Report – WSJ]
According to a statement from China Action, the NGO focuses on land law and administrative law and trains non-lawyers to provide pro-bono legal aid to victims of rights violations. Dahlin is in need of daily medication due to affliction by a rare disease; Chinese state media reports say he is receiving it, but no other information has been available. China’s Foreign Ministry says it is granting Swedish consular officials access to him, although no information has been available on his whereabouts. Read the rest of this entry »
Another Chinese Billionaire Goes Missing
Posted: January 7, 2016 Filed under: Asia, China, Crime & Corruption, Global | Tags: Alibaba, Barack Obama, Beijing, Chengdu J-10, Communist Party of China, Counterfeit, Fosun International Limited, Government of the People's Republic of China, Guo Guangchang, Hong Kong, Jack Ma, Rui'an, Wenzhou, Wuzhen, Xi Jinping, Zhejiang Leave a comment
The billionaire founder of Metersbonwe, one of China’s best-known fashion brands, has gone missing, the latest in a series of Chinese business people and financiers apparently embroiled in the country’s anti-corruption campaign.
“The company said in a second statement on Thursday night that it was unable to reach Mr Zhou or the secretary of the board, Tu Ke. The statement gave no further details.”
Metersbonwe suspended trading in its shares on the Shenzhen stock exchange on Thursday while the company said it was investigating reports in the Chinese media that Zhou Chengjian, its chairman, had been picked up by police.
“Mr Zhou is the latest high-profile private sector businessman believed to have been caught up in probes, and his disappearance follows the detention last month of Guo Guangchang of the conglomerate Fosun, which owns Club Med.”
The company is a household name on the Chinese high street and Mr Zhou was China’s 65th-richest man last year, according to the Hurun Rich list, with a fortune of Rmb26.5bn ($4.01bn).
The company said in a second statement on Thursday night that it was unable to reach Mr Zhou or the secretary of the board, Tu Ke. The statement gave no further details.
[Read the full story here, at FT.com]
Mr Zhou is the latest high-profile private sector businessman believed to have been caught up in probes, and his disappearance follows the detention last month of Guo Guangchang of the conglomerate Fosun, which owns Club Med. Read the rest of this entry »
Our Spoiled, Emasculated, De‑Spiritualised Societies in the West are in Terminal Decline
Posted: January 3, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Global, Politics, Religion, Terrorism, Think Tank | Tags: Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, Angela Merkel, Beijing, China, David Cameron, EUROPE, European Union, François Hollande, Information technology, Internet, Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China, Internet governance, Member of Parliament, President of the People's Republic of China, Syria, United Kingdom, United States, Wuzhen, Xi Jinping, Zhejiang Leave a comment
In 2015 we witness a rare geopolitcal power shift – and in the face of every kind of new external challenge the leaders of the EU and the USA have never looked weaker or more bemused.
Christopher Booker
writes: As we enter this new year, what is the most significant feature of how the world is changing that went almost unnoticed in the year just ended? Two events last autumn might have given us a clue.
One was the very peculiar nature of that state visit in October, when the president of China was taken in a golden coach to stay at Buckingham Palace, down a Mall lined with hundreds of placard-waving pro‑China stooges, while the only people manhandled away by Chinese security guards were a few protesters against China’s treatment of Tibet and abuses of human rights.
[Read the full story here, at the Telegraph]
Queen Elizabeth II and President of The PeopleÕs Republic of China, Mr Xi Jinping, ride in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach along The Mall Photo: PA
Led by David Cameron, our politicians could not have fawned more humiliatingly on the leader of a country whose economy, before its recent wobbles, was predicted by the IMF to overtake that of the US as the largest in the world in 2016. While Britain once led the world in steel‑making and the civil use of nuclear power, the visit coincided with the crumbling of the remains of our steel industry before a flood of cheap Chinese steel, as our politicians pleaded for China’s help in building, to an obsolete design, the most costly nuclear power station in the world.
Three weeks later came the rather less prominent visit of Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, whose even faster-growing economy is predicted by financial analysts to become bigger than Britain’s within three years, and to overtake China’s as the world’s largest in the second half of the century. Read the rest of this entry »
Chinese Communist Party Modernizes its Message — With Rap-aganda
Posted: December 29, 2015 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Entertainment | Tags: Beijing, China, Internet, Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China, Internet governance, President of the People's Republic of China, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Website monitoring, Wuzhen, Xi Jinping, Xinhua News Agency, Zhejiang Leave a comment
The rap was released in conjunction with a special program on CCTV called ‘The Power of Deepening Reforms‘.
Alyssa Abkowitz, Yang Jie and Chang Chen report: As 2015 comes to an end, China Central Television is rolling out a novel rap song that presents a year in review, Communist Party style – with only good news.
On Monday, the state broadcaster released a 2:44-minute rap to celebrate the achievements of everyone’s favorite party organ, the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, which will mark its two-year anniversary on Dec. 30.
The song — which struck China Real Time as more Skee-Lo than Kendrick Lamar – reminds the Chinese public to “trust the government” and look at China’s progress on advancing education, combating smog and reforming the health care system during 2015.
It also features voice clips from President Xi Jinping (although the soundbites appear to have been sampled from Mr. Xi’s speeches rather than performed by the Chinese leader live in-studio).
The rap was released in conjunction with a special program on CCTV called “The Power of Deepening Reforms.” It comes on the heels of the second year of Mr. Xi’s far-reaching anticorruption campaign, which has snagged, as the song says, hundreds of “flies, tigers and large foxes.”
It also touts China’s establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the International Monetary Fund’s move to accept the yuan as its fifth reserve currency and the progress made by the “One Belt, One Road” network of infrastructure projects.
[Read the full story here, at China Real Time Report – WSJ]
Xi makes his debut at around 49 seconds with the phrase: “To turn the people’s expectations into our actions.” Ten seconds later, he comes back, saying, “An arrow will never return once it’s shot.” Read the rest of this entry »
China’s Latest Crackdown: Homemade Porn
Posted: August 11, 2015 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Mediasphere | Tags: Beijing, China, Chinese Internet, Communism, Fujian, Fuzhou, Mainland China, Pingyang County, Pornography, Social media, The Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications, Uniqlo, viral, Xinhua News Agency, Zhejiang Leave a comment
The Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications mentioned the videos in its notice and declared that they are ‘having an extremely bad impact on society’.
Felicia Sonmez
reports: Chinese authorities are striking back after a string of high-profile incidents involving explicit homemade videos, according to a notice by the country’s antipornography office.
“So-called ‘indecent videos’ are harming social virtue, promoting pornography, severely disturbing order on the Internet and trampling on the moral and legal bottom line,” reads the notice, which was posted Thursday on the website of China’s National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.
Last month, a clip of a couple having sex in a Uniqlo dressing room went viral on the Chinese Internet, in an episode that inspired scores of online parodies and prompted thousands of couples to take selfies outside of the downtown Beijing store where the incident took place. Four people have been detained in connection with the video.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ – Follow Felicia on Twitter @feliciasonmez]
Since the Uniqlo incident, several other risqué videos have found their way to the Chinese public eye. In one case, a clip made by several people in Shengzhou in coastal Zhejiang province after a night out at a karaoke parlor went viral online late last month. Read the rest of this entry »
#Robot Waitress Debuts in #Zhejiang
Posted: July 29, 2015 Filed under: China, Food & Drink, Global, Robotics | Tags: CCTV News, China, Shanghai, Waitress, Yiwu, Zhejiang 1 Comment
On Wednesday, a company in Yiwu, eastern China Zhejiang Province, has finally launched their first batch of catering robots that can deliver food to customers, and other types of robots such as security robots after a three-year endeavor. Such gorgeous-looking robots are expected to be available in the market very soon. These robots basically consist of human simulations and chasses, through which they can discern the chromatism on the floor and thereby make moves. Catering robots are able to endure weight of more than 35 kg while security robots patrol on their own.
China: Zhejiang Man on Scooter with a Sack of Cement and Dog on Head
Posted: December 7, 2014 Filed under: Asia, China, Global | Tags: China, Commute, Motorcycle, Twitter, Zhejiang, 储百亮 Leave a commentOn your commute think of the Zhejiang man who zips around with sack of cement and dog on head. http://t.co/VQkeet0LRH pic.twitter.com/cWqGmHgbvL
— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) December 7, 2014
China’s Crackdown on Christianity
Posted: August 8, 2014 Filed under: Censorship, China, Religion | Tags: Beijing, China, Christianity, Christianity in China, Communist China, New York Post, Pew Research Center, Wenzhou, Xi Jinping, Zhejiang Leave a comment
Photo courtesy of Lecheng neighborhood church
The crackdown may foreshadow a national shift in official policy on religion, a bid by President Xi Jinping to shore up political stability.
For the New York Post, Jillian Kay Melchior writes: Chinese police attacked the Christians gathered outside of Wenzhou Salvation Church last month, beating them with electric batons.
Pastor Tao Chongyin, left, speaks with church member Fan Liang’an in front of the Wuxi Christian Church with the words “Church of Jesus” in red, in Longwan, Wenzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province. (AP Photo/Didi Tang)
“I won’t let them take down the cross even if it means they would shoot me dead.”
— Fan Liang’an, 73, whose grandfather helped build the church in 1924.
At least 14 and as many as 50 worshippers — some elderly — sustained wounds, including a fractured skull, broken bones and internal injuries.
Their crime? Rallying to guard their church cross, government-slated for demolition.
“It’s a risky game: In targeting the church, the Communist leaders also target a crucial source of social stability…”
It was just the latest in the intensifying persecution in Zhejiang Province, one of China’s most Christian regions.
[From our August 3rd edition: Report: China on Course to Become World’s Most Christian Nation within 15 years]
Communist China’s effectiveness at resisting reform and discouraging dissent would almost guarantee that Christianity’s future in China is not hopeful as it might appear. With Maoist China’s record of hostility to Christianity, and current success at containing or crushing competing ideologies, is this report drawing premature conclusions? (read more)
Since January, Communist officials there have toppled the crosses of at least 229 churches. The government has also torn down some churches entirely, and issued demolition notices to over 100 more.
“…and may end up politicizing a large and growing part of the population.”
And the crackdown may foreshadow a national shift in official policy on religion, a bid by President Xi Jinping to shore up political stability. Read the rest of this entry »
Report: China on Course to Become World’s Most Christian Nation within 15 years
Posted: August 3, 2014 Filed under: Asia, China, Religion | Tags: China, Christian country music, Communist China, Easter, Jesus, Mao Zedong, Pew Research Center, United States, Westminster Abbey, Zhejiang 1 Comment
The number of Christians in Communist China is growing so steadily that it by 2030 it could have more churchgoers than America.
Speaking with our Hong Kong Bureau Chief yesterday about the often overlooked historical role of the post-reform Christian church as an incubator of enlightened self-governance and radical reform (try to imagine the civil rights movement without it) I was left with the impression that Communist China’s effectiveness at resisting reform and discouraging dissent would almost guarantee that Christianity’s future in China is not hopeful as it might appear. With Maoist China’s record of hostility to Christianity, and current success at containing or crushing competing ideologies, is this report–predicting an uninterrupted rise of Christianity in China–drawing premature conclusions?
Note the reverse image in the mirror: the decline of Christianity in the west. And consider the more troubling historical reverse: the persecution, slaughter, and displacement of Christians around the world.
Liushi, Zhejiang province – For the Telegraph, Tom Phillip reports: It is said to be China’s biggest church and on Easter Sunday thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.
“It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence.”
The 5,000-capacity Liushi church, which boasts more than twice as many seats as Westminster Abbey and a 206ft crucifix that can be seen for miles around, opened last year with one theologian declaring it a “miracle that such a small town was able to build such a grand church”.
“It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change.”
The £8 million building is also one of the most visible symbols of Communist China’s breakneck conversion as it evolves into one of the largest Christian congregations on earth.
“Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this. It’s ironic – they didn’t. They actually failed completely.”
“It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence,” beamed Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor who was admiring the golden cross above Liushi’s altar in the lead up to Holy Week.
U.S. v China: Is This the New Cold War?
Posted: February 23, 2014 Filed under: Asia, China, Diplomacy, Think Tank, War Room | Tags: China, Chinese language, Cold War, Dennis Blair, Geoff Dyer, Guided missile destroyer, Pacific, Pacific Ocean, South China Sea, Zhejiang 1 Comment
The launch of a Chinese guided missile destroyer in Zhejiang last year
The new era of military competition in the Pacific will become the defining geopolitical contest of the 21st century…
“Ninety per cent of China’s time is spent on thinking about new and interesting ways to sink our ships and shoot down our planes”
— Dennis Blair, former US Pacific commander
Read Geoff Dyer’s article at FT.com
