Communist Party Intensifies Political and Ideological Study Among Young Teachers
5 June, 2013 at 18:38 | Posted in Children, China, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, Children, China, Society
By Annie Wu
Theoretical legacy of former regime leader Jiang Zemin, the Three Represents, given a silent rebuff.
China’s Ministry of Education on Monday published a directive on its website ordering local education agencies and Party organizations at universities across the country to strengthen the ideological and political education of young university instructors.
The circular, which carried the imprimatur of Party Central in Beijing, was aimed squarely at young people. It highlights the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) growing unease with their prolific use of the Internet, and facility in harnessing social media to expose the misdeeds of officials and join together for common causes.
The notice comes in the wake of an internal Party order to university administrators and professors known as the “7 Don’t Speaks,” which listed topics that were prohibited from being discussed in class, including issues like civil rights, civil society, and freedom of the press. The order was posted and widely circulated on China’s microblogging service, Sina Weibo, earlier this month.
“Both the seven taboos and the latest 16 advisories are new measures of stability maintenance the top leaders introduced because they are realizing there is an unprecedented political crisis, with the young generation being the most powerful threat that could topple the communist regime,” commentator Zhang Lifan told the South China Morning Post.
The recent educational directive, which listed 16 recommendations, noted that “strengthening and improving young teachers’ ideological and political thinking” is imperative because “young university instructors are close in age to their students, frequently interact with them, and have more direct influence on their thinking and actions.” It was jointly issued by the Organization Department of the Central Committee, the Ministry of Education, and the Propaganda Department on May 4, but was published online this Monday.
Constant reference was made in the notice to “improving political thought work” and “strengthening the study of political theory.” These are watchwords of communist doctrine that refer to inculcating strong adherence to and belief in Communist Party precepts, and loyalty to its rule.
These two recent directives targeting the youth population suggest the Chinese regime’s unease with their exposure and growing awareness of issues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) disapproves of—given the youth’s prolific use of the Internet.
“Both the seven taboos and the latest 16 advisories are new measures of stability maintenance the top leaders introduced because they are realizing there is an unprecedented political crisis, with the young generation being the most powerful threat that could topple the communist regime,” commentator Zhang Lifan told the South China Morning Post.
Wen Zhao, a Canada-based analyst of Chinese affairs with NTD Television, told The Epoch Times that this move by the CCP is to demonstrate that the Party still asserts its control over public opinion. “First, this is a kind of declaration, that is, the Chinese Communist Party will not only stubbornly hold onto its control over expression and ideology, but will continually strengthen its control. This is displayed for the rest of society to see, but also to those elements within the Party who are not resolute and firm in their Party ideology and loyalty.”
However, Wen believes that while the CCP’s attitude is more aggressive as of late, the Party does not enjoy a corresponding increase in its ability to control and censor. “From the Southern Weekend incident earlier this year, to the Masanjia [Labor Camp] being exposed in April, this year has shown that the CCP’s ability to control expression and ideology has been constantly challenged and weakened.”
In the first incident, journalists and editors at the iconic newspaper went on strike after the provincial propaganda chief overstepped the boundaries of acceptable censorship; in the second, a lengthy investigative report was published about torture at one of the most notorious labor camps in China, which primarily targeted practitioners of Falun Gong—discussion of which remains political taboo.
Wen Zhao said that as the CCP faces more challenges, more frequently, it will feel the need to test its grip over public opinion with such orders.
The prevalence of such ideological rhetoric is also raising doubts over the ability of the regime’s new leader, Xi Jinping, to bring about true reform, despite his calls for rule of law and upholding the constitution since taking power last November. “In front of the public, Xi Jinping wants to portray an open-minded image, but to certain people within the party, he will display a conservative side… Since he took power, his primary task is actually to promote economic reform in order to ease societal tensions, while consolidating his power.”
Scholars noted that in the first of the 16 points, reference was made to Marxist and Leninist ideology, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping notion of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” and former Party leader Hu Jintao’s “scientific development concept.” But no mention was made of previous regime leader Jiang Zemin’s trademark theoretical contribution to the communist canon, the enigmatic “Three Represents.”
Yu Maochun, a scholar of Chinese politics, strategy, and history at the U.S. Naval War College, said he was “very surprised” by the omission. “Jiang Zemin’s work style was flamboyant, undisciplined, and boastful,” he said, adding that Xi Jinping may be distancing himself from such traits by leaving Jiang’s theory off the list. Ding Li, a researcher with Chinascope, a news service that translates and analyses Communist Party propaganda, said it was “extremely weird.” He added: “If this is not a mistake, the missing of the mention of the ‘three represents’ is equivalent to saying that Jiang Zemin is no longer qualified to leave his legacy in the Party’s history.”
via Communist Party Intensifies Political and Ideological Study Among Young Teachers » The Epoch Times
You may also like:
…
China’s Drinking Water Poisoned, State Report Misses Cause
4 June, 2013 at 07:05 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Environmental issues, Food, Society, sustainable development | Leave a commentTags: Body & Mind, CCP, censorship, China, environmental issues, Food, health, Society, sustainable development
By Gu Chunqiu
Epoch Times
Following outrage among netizens, demands by Beijing attorneys, and media pressure, the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources recently issued a report on the quality of the nation’s groundwater. The report has failed to address the scope or the severity of the problem, say critics.
Concern about groundwater seized the public’s attention in early February after blog posts by the journalist Dong Fei about the pumping of industrial waste water underground in eastern China’s Shandong Province. Chemical and paper plants in Jiangsu Province, just south of Shangdong, and in Huabei (a region of several provinces in northern China) were also reported using wells to dispose of their waste water.
By mid-February 2.9 million netizens published posts with pictures of water pollution in their hometowns in response to a request from Dong.
Three Beijing attorneys then publicly requested that the authorities publish official data on China’s groundwater pollution and media in China took up the issue.
In later March, a 400-page report titled “2011 Data on Groundwater Quality at Nationally Monitored Sites” appeared.
Environmental scientist Zhao Zhangyuan , a retired member of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, told the state-run Jinghua Times (a subsidiary of Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily) that the report used outdated 1993 standards, which do not test for many organic pollutants that make up the bulk of modern pollution.
The Nanjing Survey Center of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences monitored groundwater near the Yangtze River Delta—a heavily urbanized area in eastern China that includes Shanghai—and found that it contained cancer-causing chemicals such as dichloroethane and dichloromethane, and other organic chemicals known to affect the nervous system, kidneys, and liver, such as toluene and chloroform. None of these chemicals are covered under the 1993 standards.
Available evidence suggests that China suffers from groundwater pollution on a much larger scale than the authorities have been willing to disclose.
Studies done by the China Geological Survey since 2006 show that in the Huabei region, only 22.2 percent of the region’s groundwater was safe to drink. Groundwater makes up the bulk of the region’s drinking water supply.
The study found that throughout the region, groundwater at shallow levels was found to be heavily polluted. Although the groundwater at deeper levels was found to be cleaner, 12.86 percent of it was found to be polluted as well.
Drinking Water
According to the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, a Shenzhen-based think tank, China will increasingly turn to groundwater sources for its drinking water supplies between now and 2017, due to the country’s relative lack of water resources.
The research institute projects that approximately 70 percent of the Chinese population, or over 400 out of China’s 660 cities, will draw their drinking water primarily from groundwater sources.
China’s rural population draws most of its drinking water supplies from wells, which tap into shallow-level groundwater sources. However the indiscriminate use of fertilizer and pesticide has severely polluted groundwater in the countryside.
“Cancer villages” have appeared in Henan, Anhui, Sichuan, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, and Shandong provinces.
According to a Voice of America report, groundwater in the Huabei region has been found to contain heavy metals far exceeding allowable limits, including mercury, chromium, cadmium, and lead.
In addition, organic substance pollution has appeared in: the southern suburbs of Beijing; Shijiazhuang, the capital of northern China’s Hebei Province; Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province; and the Yuxi Plain in Henan Province. The main pollutants are benzene, carbon tetrachloride, and trichloroethylene, all of which can cause cancer and other health problems.
Besides these pollutants, at least 100 million people in China are drinking groundwater with dangerous levels of arsenic, which can cause cardiovascular problems and an increased risk of cancer, as well as fluorine, which is known to cause bone deformities in children and kidney problems.
Future Generations
According to the Voice of America report, companies throughout China have been digging wells for the sole purpose of discharging industrial effluent into the groundwater for the past 20 years.
Chinese netizens have since gone online to express their unhappiness over the issue. On Sina Weibo—a popular microblog service similar to Twitter—a user named Wang Pan wrote, “Large businesses are heartlessly pumping pollutants into our groundwater supply, and yet the government, blinded by political goals, has ignored and even openly tolerated this.
“Our rivers and streams suffer from the pollution of surface water, but our very water sources suffer from the pollution of groundwater. How is this different from nuclear waste? This will end the lives of our future generations. When there is no more clean water left in China, what will be the use of having GDP?”
Wang Pan’s account was removed shortly after the comment was posted, showing the regime’s unwillingness to allow free discussion of the problem.
According to Fan Xiao, a geologist and chief engineer at the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, China currently lacks official regulations on the discharge of wastewater into groundwater sources, and state agencies lack the capability to enforce regulations.
“[We] are heavily reliant on our groundwater sources, and if they become polluted, cleaning them up will be virtually impossible,” Fan said.
Rapid urbanization has driven the growth of both the extent and severity of mainland China’s groundwater pollution problems. Key to this is the communist regime’s single-minded pursuit of GDP growth.
According to the 2012 Chinese Cancer Registry Annual Report, due to extreme levels of environmental pollution, there are 3.5 million new cases of cancer in mainland China every year, resulting in 2.5 million deaths annually. This is the equivalent of 8,550 new cases of cancer being diagnosed every day.
via China’s Drinking Water Poisoned, State Report Misses Cause » The Epoch Times
You may also like:
…
Banned ‘Tombstone’ Author Receives Literary Prize in New York
3 June, 2013 at 08:59 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Culture, human rights, Society | Leave a commentTags: Body & Mind, books, CCP, censorship, China, Culture, human rights, Society
By Cassie Ryan
Epoch Times
A former senior editor for the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda mouthpiece collected the Manhattan Institute’s Hayek Prize Wednesday night.
The book award is given by the libertarian-leaning think tank to acknowledge recent works that “best reflect Hayek’s vision of economic and individual liberty.” It comes with a $50,000 cash prize.
Chinese journalist and historian Yang Jisheng’s book, “Tombstone,” was published in English last year; it is a comprehensive account of the Great Chinese Famine from 1958 to 1962, during which his father starved to death among over 36 million other peasants.
At the time, Chairman Mao attributed the tragedy to “the three years of natural calamities,” but Yang, through his own experiences and 15 years of research while working for Xinhua, learned the truth: to exponentially increase grain and steel production during the so-called Great Leap Forward, Mao expended the lives of countless rural workers.
As grain was sent to the cities and abroad, Chinese in the countryside were prevented from leaving to find food. Desperate, they tried to subsist on things like clay, elm bark, and bird droppings; some parents even ended up eating their own children.
“Mao’s powers expanded from the people’s minds to their stomachs,” Yang recently told the Wall Street Journal. “Whatever the Chinese people’s brains were thinking and what their stomachs were receiving were all under the control of Mao. . . . His powers extended to every inch of the field, and every factory, every workroom of a factory, every family in China.”
In his 1944 book “The Road to Serfdom,” Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek had called this approach the “fatal conceit” of socialism, contrasting it with a free market, which allows producers to match prices to consumers’ preferences without coercion or waste of human and natural resources.
Hayek’s book was translated into Chinese in 1962, but could only be read by Party leaders wanting to study a critique of socialism. Years later, a censored version became available to the Chinese public, which greatly influenced Yang’s thinking on events that had unfolded since the Mao era.
Manhattan Institute founder Sir Anthony Fisher spoke with Hayek on how to reverse the erosion of freedom, who advised beginning “on the battlefield of ideas.”
In “Tombstone,” Yang said that the totalitarian regime was the root cause of the famine. In a more open system, people would have realized immediately, and leaders would have modified mistaken policies, he said.
During the event in New York, Yang explained the significance of the name he chose for the book. “There are four levels of meaning to the book title–first it’s the tombstone of my father, who died of starvation during that time; second it’s the tombstone of the 36 million Chinese, who died during those three years of starvation; third I hoped it would be a tombstone for the system that allowed so many people to die of starvation; and fourth, due to the danger I was in while writing, I thought it might be my own tombstone.”
Although he supports democracy and freedom of information, Yang questions how soon these can come to China while the Communist Party still holds power.
“If a people cannot face their history, these people won’t have a future,” he told the Journal. “That was one of the purposes for me to write this book. I wrote a lot of hard facts, tragedies. I wanted people to learn a lesson, so we can be far away from the darkness, far away from tragedies, and won’t repeat them.”
via Banned ‘Tombstone’ Author Receives Literary Prize in New York » The Epoch Times
You may also like:
…
Mercury Taints Venerable Chinese Pharmacy’s Remedies
30 May, 2013 at 07:17 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Food, Society | Leave a commentTags: Body & Mind, CCP, China, Food, health, Society
…
…
By Li Wenhui
Epoch Times
Recurring scandals are tarnishing the brand of Tongrentang, a Beijing-based, 360-year-old manufacturer and retailer of traditional Chinese medicine remedies that sells its products around the world. The firm’s difficulties reflect systemic problems with the production of traditional remedies in China.
According to a May 9 report in the mainland Chinese newspaper Southern Daily, on May 7 Hong Kong’s Department of Health ordered a recall of the remedy Jian Ti Wu Bu Wan from all retail outlets because its mercury content was found to be five times the permitted limit. The medicine was not even supposed to contain mercury, said a Department of Health spokesman.
After Jian Ti Wu Bu Wan was withdrawn in Hong Kong, sources in the traditional Chinese medicine industry told Southern Daily that two of the company’s other products, Niu Huang Qian Jin San and Xiao Er Zhi Bao Wan, were found to contain 17.3 percent and 0.72 percent of mercury sulfide by weight, far exceeding international safety limits.
The publicity about the high levels of mercury in these three remedies came just after Tongrentang’s subsidiary, Beijing Tong Ren Tang Chinese Medicine Co Ltd (8138:Hong Kong) launched an IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange on May 6. News of the heavy metal contamination thus gained much media and public attention.
The Tongrentang brand has been considered a benchmark for traditional Chinese medicine. The company was established in 1649 and served the imperial court. Today, its website reports its products are sold in 40 countries and regions, and the Chinese regime mouthpiece People’s Daily has referred to the company as the largest producer of traditional Chinese medicine.
According to industry sources cited by Southern Daily in a May 21 report, the problems involving mercury contamination are not limited to a few Tongrentang products.
The sources say around 40 medicinal products widely sold by Tongrentong contain mercury sulfide. In addition, about 30 percent of the company’s medicine products for children also contain mercury sulfide, according to the insiders.
The Chengdu Business Daily in a May 22 article reported that the illegal additive mannitol was detected in January this year in the Pobifong pollen flakes produced by Tongrentang, which violates China’s National Food Safety Standards.
Dried Chinese foxglove slices produced by Beijing Tongrentang (Bozhou) Sliced Chinese Medicine Co. Ltd. failed in April to meet requirements over total ash content as well as acid-insoluble ash content, also according to Chengdu Business Daily.
Dr. Wang Quansheng, vice director of the Integrated Therapy of Traditional and Western Medicines at central China’s Wuhan Union Hospital, told the Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po that according to China’s official pharmacopoeia, the daily intake of mercury sulfide should not exceed 0.1 – 0.5 grams per person. The long-term intake or overdosage of the compound could result in damage to the liver, kidneys, and nervous system.
Tongrentong issued a statement on May 22 on its official website, saying that cinnabarite (or mercury(II) sulfide) is a traditional Chinese medicine with a history of about 2000 years, and as long as patients follow the doctor’s instructions, it should be safe to take.
The quality control issues that have surfaced with Tongrentang are not particular to it.
Shi Lichen, cofounder of the Medical Business Unit at the Alliance PKU Management Consultants Ltd., a specialized management consulting company held by Peking University, said that Chinese companies need to adopt strict controls to ensure that the raw materials they use are free from heavy metal contamination, with possible sources including herbs grown in contaminated soil, and middlemen who secretly add heavy metals to raw produce to increase its market weight. Companies must also ensure that their manufacturing processes do not introduce heavy metals into their medicine products as well.
The public has in the past shown great concern over the issue of heavy metal contamination, and the Tongrentang incident has left some wondering.
Mr. Wang Jingye, a famous Chinese tenor who now lives in Singapore wrote on his Weibo, “If I can’t even trust such an established medicine brand as Tongrentang, is my best hope to await death if I fall ill?” “God, if even medicine is poisonous now, can you please tell us what is still safe to eat [in China]?”
Translated by Leo Chen. Written in English by Shu Yan Tan.
via Mercury Taints Venerable Chinese Pharmacy’s Remedies » The Epoch Times
…
New Rice Contamination Reported in China
28 May, 2013 at 09:27 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Food, Society | 2 CommentsTags: Body & Mind, CCP, China, Food, health, Society
BEIJING— Authorities are investigating rice mills in southern China following tests that found almost half of the staple grain in one of the country’s largest cities was contaminated with a toxic metal.
The mills in Hunan province’s Youxian county were ordered to suspend business and recall their products after samples showed excessive levels of cadmium, according to an official notice issued Tuesday by the county government.
It said the mills had been operating legally and sourced their rice from local farmers.
The announcement followed reports over the weekend that government inspectors discovered that 44.4 percent of rice and rice products tested this year in the southern city of Guangzhou in Guangdong province showed high levels of cadmium. The carcinogenic metal can seriously damage the kidneys and cause other health problems.
Hunan is a heavily agricultural province that borders on Guangdong, although it wasn’t clear if there was a direct connection between the mills and Guangzhou’s tainted rice.
While investigations are continuing, cadmium is believed to have entered the rice from soil polluted with heavy metals. Air and soil pollution are chronic problems in China, caused by poor regulation of industrial emissions and heavy dependence on coal to generate electricity.
China’s food supply also suffers from deliberate faking or adulterating by unscrupulous operators, leading to occasional public panic over products from infant formula to cooking oil and a deep lack of trust in the government’s ability to ensure food safety.
In one of the worst scandals, at least six babies died and 300,000 became sick in 2008 after being fed milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, which was illegally added to watered-down dairy products to make their protein content appear normal.
via New Rice Contamination Reported in China » The Epoch Times
You may also like: Heavy Metal Pollution Threatens China’s Rice Industry
…
After Rescuing Girl From Polluted River, Chinese Policeman Gets Sick
28 May, 2013 at 07:09 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Environmental issues, Society, sustainable development | Leave a commentTags: Body & Mind, CCP, China, environmental issues, Society, Spirituality
By Cassie Ryan
Epoch Times
A police officer ended up ill in hospital after jumping into a filthy river in Zhejiang Province to rescue a 14-year-old girl trying to commit suicide.
Zhang Guangcong, 51, dived beneath the severely polluted water three times to reach the teenager, who had sunk below the surface of the river in Wenzhou City.
He told the Metro Express that the water was so dirty he kept his eyes closed the whole time, and relied on instinct to find her.
A few hours later, Zhang began to cough and vomit, and went to the hospital the next day with other symptoms like dizziness, and skin irritation. He was diagnosed with a severe lung infection, probably caused by bacteria from the dirty water.
According to the Express, that part of the river is black with pollution, and has a terrible stench. The banks are covered in rotten food and other domestic waste, and there are rats running around during the day.
An elderly local called Mr. Lin told the media that he used to wash his clothes in the river, but now no one dares go near the water. He added: “A badge factory discharges its electroplating waste directly into the river; they were sued by residents over 10 years ago, but they kept on doing it anyway.”
Read more: After Rescuing Girl From Polluted River, Chinese Policeman Gets Sick » The Epoch Times
…
Ending a Crime Against Humanity in China
27 May, 2013 at 08:37 | Posted in China, Falun Dafa/Falun Gong, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Falun Gong, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
By Hon. David Kilgour, J.D.
China’s 5000-year-old civilization deserves the respect of the entire world. This talk is about governance and violence committed by its current party-state since 1949 on those deemed its opponents, which has most recently resulted in large scale pillaging of organs from Falun Gong practitioners for commercial transplantation purposes. No Falun Gong “donors” survive transplantation operations anywhere in China because both kidneys and all other vital organs are invariably seized and their bodies are then cremated.
David Matas and I located 52 kinds of direct and circumstantial proof about this commerce occurring since 2001. For the period 2000-2005 alone, we concluded that for 41,500 transplants the only plausible explanation for sourcing was Falun Gong. We arrived at this figure by deducting from the government figure of 60,000 transplantations over the six-year period, which appears accurate, the best estimate available about executed convicts (18,550) for the same years.
State Organs
In the 2012 book, State Organs, researcher/writer Ethan Gutmann’s best estimate is that about 65,000 Falun Gong were killed for their organs during the years 2000-2008, selected from about 1.2 million practitioners he considers were interned in China’s forced labour system (Laogai). A police signature is sufficient to send anyone to the camps for up to three years. As Mark Mackinnon of Canada’s Globe and Mail put it recently, “No charges, no lawyers, no appeals.” In 2007, a U.S. government report estimated that at least half of the inmates in 340 camps were Falun Gong. Leninist governance and “anything is permitted” economics created the conditions for organ trafficking to occur and persist today.
Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) is a spiritual discipline, which seeks to improve health and ethics. It contains features of traditional systems, like Chinese Qigong, Buddhism and Daoism, combined with a set of gentle exercises. Because it grew astonishingly rapidly in popularity from its inception in 1992, former Party head Jiang Zemin saw it as a threat, labeled it a cult, and commenced persecution against its practitioners from mid-1999 on.
After 1980, the post-Mao Party began withdrawing funds from the health system across China, requiring it to make up the shortfall from service charges to mostly uninsured patients. Selling the organs of executed convicts became a source of income for surgeons, the military and other participants. After 1999, Falun Gong prisoners of conscience became a vast live organ bank for wealthy Chinese patients and “organ tourists” from abroad, the former often preferring that the “donors” were Falun Gong, being normally healthy persons.
Matas and I visited about a dozen countries to interview Falun Gong practitioners sent to China’s forced labour camps, who later managed to leave the camps and the country. Practitioners told us of working in appalling conditions in camps for up to sixteen hours daily with no pay and little food, crowded sleeping conditions and torture. They made a range of export products as subcontractors to multinational companies. This is both gross corporate irresponsibility and a violation of WTO rules; it shrieks for an effective response by all trading partners of China. Each government should ban forced labour exports by enacting legislation which places an onus on importers in each country to prove their goods are not made by slaves.
Constructive Engagement
The responsible international community should nonetheless engage as constructively as feasible with the new government in Beijing, while pressing it to end organ pillaging.
Read more: Ending a Crime Against Humanity in China » The Epoch Times
…
What has happened since last time III?
26 May, 2013 at 11:53 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Culture, Environmental issues, Funny things :-), human rights, IT and Media, Nature, persecution, Science, slave labor camps, Society, sustainable development | Leave a commentTags: archaeology, Body & Mind, CCP, China, Culture, environmental issues, film, funny things, health, human rights, IT and Media, labor camps, Nature, persecution of dissidents, Science, Society, sustainable development
…
And some more…
….
Chinese Documentary Exposes Mao-Era ‘Juvenile Auschwitz’
By Michelle Yu
Epoch Times
“When I die, bury me on the sunny side of the hill, because I’m afraid of the cold,” a child, now nameless and faceless, said to his fellow teenage prisoners over half a century ago. For the 4,000-5,000 juvenile prisoners at the Dabao labor camp, such requests were common, as the children were surrounded by death every day.
via Chinese Documentary Exposes Mao-Era ‘Juvenile Auschwitz’ » The Epoch Times
Chinese State Media Dodges Torture Victims
By Gu Qinger
Epoch Times
Chinese torture victims have confronted Xinhua, the official propaganda organ of the Chinese regime, over its publication of a report by Liaoning officials which denies that inmates are being tortured at a labor camp in the northeast of the country called Masanjia.
via Chinese State Media Dodges Torture Victims » The Epoch Times
Harrowing Documentary About Slavery and Torture in China Released
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times
It would have been impossible even very recently in China to produce a documentary about torture and slavery in an officially-run labor camp, and not be thrown in jail for it. Chinese independent filmmaker Du Bin, however, has done just that, and he’s now in Hong Kong speaking at film screenings and blithely taking interviews from overseas media.
via Harrowing Documentary About Slavery and Torture in China Released » The Epoch Times
Group Wants Global Effort to Unveil UFO Evidence
By Shar Adams
Epoch Times
WASHINGTON—After five days and 40 testimonies from international witnesses from the military, scientific and academic fields, a committee of six former Congress members agreed to seek international support to break a “truth embargo” on encounters with extraterrestrial life.
via Group Wants Global Effort to Unveil UFO Evidence » The Epoch Times
Ring Around the Sun: What Causes It?
By Jack Phillips
Epoch Times
Some are questioning the origin so-called “ring around the sun” that appeared on Monday.Reports said that the ring is a 22-degree halo, also known as a sun halo, according to ABC News. The halo is formed by small ice crystals that are contained in cirrostratus clouds. The sunlight then refracts through the ice at the 22-degree angle, creating the optical phenomenon.
via Ring Around the Sun: What Causes It? » The Epoch Times
Group of Chinese Lawyers Beaten After Visiting Brainwashing Center
By Matthew Robertson and Carol Wickenkamp
Epoch Times
A group of nearly a dozen Chinese human rights lawyers who attempted to investigate an extralegal “brainwashing center” in the southeast of the country were violently set upon by guards on May 13, before being handed over to police, who beat them further and held them overnight before releasing them.
via Group of Chinese Lawyers Beaten After Visiting Brainwashing Center » The Epoch Times
H7N9 Bird Flu Spreads by Direct Contact in Mammals
By Cassie Ryan
Epoch Times
While the latest official news from China says that the H7N9 bird flu outbreak is now under control, a new international study urges continued caution.
via H7N9 Bird Flu Spreads by Direct Contact in Mammals » The Epoch Times
Bottled Water in China Worse Than Tap Water
By Gao Zitan
Epoch Times
Chinese media recently exposed quality issues in the bottled water industry, saying its regulation levels are from the Soviet era.
Beijing News reported May 2 that over 10 Chinese experts had found that the standards for bottled water are very low, with only 20 test indices versus 106 for tap water quality.
via Bottled Water in China Worse Than Tap Water » The Epoch Times
Fossil Fuel Subsidies Help Asia Roar
By Will Hickey
One reason behind greater pollution leading to global warming has been artificially lowered gas prices brought by subsidies. Governments have carried on this shortsighted policy to foster growth and satisfy consumers. But as world fuel prices begin rising again, the costs of subsidy—both budgetary and environmental—will come to the fore.
via Fossil Fuel Subsidies Help Asia Roar » The Epoch Times
Chinese Professors Given 7-Point Gag Order
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times
University professors and administrators in China have been given clear instructions recently about precisely what topics of discussion are off-limits in the classroom.
via Chinese Professors Given 7-Point Gag Order » The Epoch Times
Chinese Authorities’ Temple Tourist Trap Fails
By Sally Appert
Communist officials in Shaanxi Province have resorted to hiring fake monks to collect donations in an attempt to recover the debt they incurred from a large development project near the ancient Famen Temple.
via Chinese Authorities’ Temple Tourist Trap Fails » The Epoch Times
Award-winning Chinese Filmmaker Undone by His Alliances
Accused of violating one-child policy, Zhang Yimou’s real crime was backing Jiang Zemin
By Xia Xiaoqiang
A successful Chinese film director becomes entangled with the propaganda schemes of a brutal dictator. The director enjoys a rich and privileged life, but then loses everything when the dictator’s political opponents charge him with violating the nation’s family-planning laws.
via Award-winning Chinese Filmmaker Undone by His Alliances » The Epoch Times
Byzantine Mosaic Floor Found in Israel
By Zachary Stieber
Epoch Times
Byzantine mosaic floor: The “extraordinary” floor was in a public building during the Byzantine Period in what is today Isreal, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.
via Byzantine Mosaic Floor Found in Israel » The Epoch Times
…
What has happened since last time II?
25 May, 2013 at 10:48 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Culture, Environmental issues, human rights, IT and Media, Nature, persecution, Science, slave labor camps, Society, sustainable development, Technology | Leave a commentTags: Body & Mind, CCP, China, Culture, documentary, environmental issues, film, human rights, IT and Media, labor camps, Nature, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Science, Society, sustainable development, technology
…
Since I have not posted any articles in a long time I will post some so you can select those that are of interest to you.
…
Just stick this portable outlet to your window to start using solar power
By Sarah Laskow
We have seen a lot of solar chargers in our day. And among all of them, this is the first one we’ve seen that we will definitely run out and buy as soon as it’s made available in the U.S. It’s a portable socket that gets its power from the sun rather than the grid. You plug into a window instead of into the wall. It’s easy.
via Just stick this portable outlet to your window to start using solar power | Grist
Mimicking Firefly Light to Design Tomorrow’s Light Bulbs
By Joshua Philipp
Epoch Times Staff
Watching the soft glow of fireflies could become a more common activity if researchers at Syracuse University have anything to do with it. They’re developing a method to artificially create luciferase, the chemical behind the soft glow of fireflies, and are working to create commercial lights that mimic the insects’ bioluminescence.
Nomads in Kyrgyzstan: Another Way of Life
These migrants know why they keep moving
By Francisco Gavilán
When I was going to travel through Central Asia for the umpteenth time, I was looking for new and enriching experiences, including living for a while with the nomads of Song Kul, in Kyrgyzstan.
via Nomads in Kyrgyzstan: Another Way of Life | Travel | Life | Epoch Times
Earth Permanently Deformed by Earthquakes
By Tara MacIsaac
Epoch Times
Earth permanently deformed: Geologists have discovered that the Earth’s crust may not be as elastic as previously thought. Quakes in Northern Chile have permanently deformed the Earth.
via Earth Permanently Deformed by Earthquakes » The Epoch Times
The 2,556th Birth Anniversary of Buddha Shakyamuni
Celebrating compassion and higher living across the globe
By Arshdeep Sarao
Epoch Times
In India the full moon day of May 25, 2013, is being celebrated as Buddha Purnima or the birth anniversary of Buddha Shakyamuni. This year the Buddha becomes 2,556 years old.
via The 2,556th Birth Anniversary of Buddha Shakyamuni » The Epoch Times
The Sixty Million Dollar Decision
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times
‘I didn’t take blood money from a government that is murdering its people,’ says Jeffrey Van Middlebrook, Silicon Valley inventor.
via The Sixty Million Dollar Decision » The Epoch Times
Finding Happiness and the Science Behind it
By Leonardo Vintini
Epoch Times
Everybody longs for happiness, but it seems like a hidden treasure. One way or another—consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly—everything we do, our every hope, is related to a deep desire for happiness.
via Finding Happiness and the Science Behind it » The Epoch Times
…
Chinese Scientists Create Mutant Bird Flu
12 May, 2013 at 18:24 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Science, Society | Leave a commentTags: Body & Mind, CCP, China, health, Science, Society
Single gene swap enables avian virus to change hosts
By Cassie Ryan
Epoch Times
Chinese researchers have created a virus that can infect mammals via coughing and sneezing by hybridizing the H5N1 bird flu virus with the H1N1 swine flu strain that caused the 2009 pandemic.
Their paper was published in the journal Science on May 2, the same day a man from Henan Province died from the H7N9 bird flu virus–reportedly the first death outside of eastern China and the 27th death among over 120 cases to date.
The H7N9 virus is believed to be a reassortment of several avian flu viruses, but is relatively benign in birds, according to recent research by another Chinese team published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
H5N1 bird flu is highly pathenogenic, but does not easily infect people, whereas H1N1 swine flu infected many millions in 2009. As yet, there is no evidence that the two viruses have mixed in nature, but they do overlap geographically and share some host species.
In the controversial new research the Chinese scientists deliberately manipulated the two viruses to make them more dangerous, for what they said was for the purpose of improving their understanding of pandemic risks. Some of the resultant mutants easily spread through the air between guinea pigs in the lab.
“If these mammalian-transmissible H5N1 viruses are generated in nature, a pandemic will be highly likely,” said research leader Hualan Chen at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“High attention should be paid during routine influenza surveillance to monitor such high-risk H5N1 hybrid viruses in nature.”
While Chen believes her work could benefit disease control and prevention, other scientists are critical of these so-called gain-of-function mutation studies, as manipulating viruses requires excellent lab security standards to prevent the viruses spreading or being accessed by terrorists.
Microbiologist Richard Ebright at Rutgers University, New Jersey, said two other studies had already looked at how H5N1 mutations spread through the air between mammalian hosts–in that case ferrets. That flu research triggered a debate about biosecurity, and led to a one-year moratorium on any similar projects.
“This argument—even if one accepts it, which I do not—does not provide a rationale for the third, fourth, fifth, and nth research projects confirming the same point,” Ebright told Science Magazine via email.
Baron May of Oxford, a former U.K. government chief scientist, told The Independent that the work by Chen’s team is “appallingly irresponsible.”
“They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” he added.
Further research by Chen and colleagues has apparently been delayed by investigations into the new H7N9 virus.
via Chinese Scientists Create Mutant Bird Flu » The Epoch Times
You may also like:
- Chinese Vet Says Authorities Concealed H7N9 Poultry Epidemic
- New Bird Flu Travels Across Strait to Taiwan
…
Teacher in China Feels Earthquakes Before They Happen
11 May, 2013 at 12:15 | Posted in Body & Mind, China, Funny things :-), Nature, Science | Leave a commentTags: Body & Mind, China, funny things, Nature, Science
By Li Wenhui
Epoch Times
Ms. Xiao Hongyun, a teacher at Changde Normal School in Hunan Province, usually suffers dizziness, tinnitus, and palpitations the day before an earthquake occurs. She has suffered these symptoms in conjunction with earthquakes in China as well as in Taiwan and Chile.
She recently experienced dizziness and insomnia a few days before the 7-magnitude earthquake in Ya’an in Sichuan Province, China on April 20.
Voice of China interviewed Ms. Xiao about her physical prediction of the Ya’an earthquake.
According to Ms. Xiao, she suddenly fainted while giving a lesson. She was sent to the hospital and examined, but no abnormalities were found.
Xiao said, “I began to feel dizzy on the 18th and I could not fall asleep during the night, especially on the 20th, I was still awake at 4 a.m., feeling very tired as if I were in a boat swaying on the water.”
She said to her husband, “I’m afraid a quake is about to happen somewhere.” The Ya’an earthquake did then happen on the morning of April 20th. “I was sitting on the sofa and my legs could not stop shivering when the quake took place,” said Xiao.
Ms. Xiao, age 53, says her physical episodes date from an electric shock she suffered at the age of 13. “At that moment, my whole body went numb and I collapsed on the ground. Luckily I was not hurt badly,” she said. Since then, she has experienced the dizziness and other symptoms from time to time, yet medical examinations have always been normal.
Ms. Xiao recalls that when she was 16 years old, one day she heard a roar in the field while harvesting rice crops, but people next to her didn’t hear anything. Many days later, she learned that the Tangshan earthquake had happened on that same day. (On July 26, 1976 the Tangshan earthquake struck in northeast China, killing hundreds of thousands of people.)
However, Ms. Xiao did not associate her abnormal physical symptoms with earthquakes until September 1999. “When I saw on TV the strong quake in Taiwan on September 21, 1999, I began to think, maybe my strange illness is related to earthquakes.” Xiao said, because she had suffered strong physical reactions the day before.
Since then, Ms. Xiao watches the news every time she feels unusual. “After my physical reaction, most likely there will be an earthquake. Based on the degree of the ringing in my ears, I can judge how far, how strong, and in what direction approximately a quake will be,” she said
Because nobody believed her and thought something was wrong with her, Xiao started recording every premonition that had been verified by an earthquake. She asked her family and colleagues to sign the pages as confirmation. According to her diary, the closest earthquake occurred in Linli County of Chengdu and the farthest occurred in Chile.
Ms. Xiao contacted Sun Shihong, a retired professor of the Chinese Seismograph Station, the day before the Yushu earthquake of April 14, 2010. She told him she had a strong physical reaction and that this usually happened the day before an earthquake.
Sun Shihong believed Ms. Xiao’s condition really is linked to earthquakes.
Subsequently, experts from various seismic stations throughout Hunan Province made a special trip to Ms. Xiao’s home to conduct an investigation and analysis.
The experts concluded that Xiao’s reactions were indeed linked to the earthquakes because her body could sense the infrasonic sound of the earthquake in advance. The higher the magnitude is, the stronger the sensation is.
Read the original Chinese article.
Translation by Alex Wu. Written in English by Arleen Richards.
via Teacher in China Feels Earthquakes Before They Happen » The Epoch Times
…
University of Sydney Criticized for Giving Degree to Huang Jiefu, Alleged Chinese Organ Harvester
5 May, 2013 at 07:10 | Posted in China, human rights, persecution, slave labor camps, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, human rights, Kilgour and Matas, labor camps, organ harvesting, persecution of dissidents, Society
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times
A prestigious Australian university has come under scrutiny recently for giving an honorary professorship to a former top Chinese health official who has been involved in unethical organ harvesting.
Researchers of organ harvesting in China spoke to the influential Australian news program the “7:30 Report” with information about Huang Jiefu’s involvement in organ harvesting in China; they called on the University of Sydney to rescind the honorary professorship they gave to Huang in 2008 and renewed in October 2011.
Researcher Maria Fiatarone Singh, a member of the faculty of health science at the University of Sydney, regards Huang as one of the former leaders of an unethical system of organ transplantation.
In the 1990s a very special form of lethal injection called slow lethal injection was perfected in China by Chinese officials. – Researcher Maria Fiatarone Singh
“In the 1990s a very special form of lethal injection called slow lethal injection was perfected in China by Chinese officials,” she said to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which produces the “7:30 Report.” This was meant to preserve the organs while the person is anaesthetised.
“They don’t die right away,” Singh said, giving the surgeon time to pull out organs before the lethal injection is finalized. “It’s done in a way that actually allows this very, very unsavoury mix of execution and medical care and treatment to be done by the same team of doctors,” Singh said. “It’s horrific, really.”
Huang was the vice minister of health from 2001 to 2013, and was the point person for international groups to hear the official word on the Chinese regime’s organ transplantation policies. He was also a member of the Party Leadership Group in the Ministry of Health, according to the Ministry’s website; and he is a reserve member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, ostensibly an advisory body for the Communist Party.
Huang also watched over a period of extensive harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience, according to the research of David Matas, a Canadian lawyer who co-authored the seminal “Independent Investigation Into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China,” first published in 2006.
Practitioners of Falun Gong are suspected of being the preponderant source of illicit organs trafficked through the Chinese system from the early 2000s onwards; tens of thousands may have been killed in that fashion, researchers indicate.
Much of that activity was carried out by the medical-military complex, where military hospitals work with labor camps to source organs and carry out the transplants in secret. Such hospitals are not under the purview of the Ministry of Health—but as head of the transplantation system, Matas holds Huang accountable.
The University of Sydney defended itself with a note from Professor Bruce Robinson, Dean of the Medical School: “Huang Jiefu is recognised internationally for having made significant changes to the regulation of China’s organ transplantation processes in an effort to curb the practice of organ retrieval from executed prisoners.” Robinson listed some of the initiatives that were attributed to Huang, including “publicly stating that executed prisoners are not an appropriate source of organs for transplantation.”
But it’s likely that Huang has himself extracted the vital organs of executed prisoners, says Singh. Singh notes that even up until November of last year Huang was still carrying out liver transplants.
“That would be 100 organs a year,” Singh says. “Using his own figures, 90 to 95 percent of those would have come from executed prisoners.” Huang previously gave estimates that 90 or 95 percent of all organ transplants in China were from executed prisoners.
Before an operation in 2005, he also contacted the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing, which is affiliated with the Chinese military, as well as the Zhongshan School of Medicine located in Guangzhou, to obtain a blood-matched liver. Within about 24 hours, one arrived from Chongqing and he performed the transplant, according to a news report on a Chinese official website, recounting the incident in adulatory terms.
While David Matas, the lawyer and researcher, acknowledges that Huang played a public role in highlighting the need for the People’s Republic of China to reform its organ sourcing system, he said in a previous interview with The Epoch Times that it was far from enough.
“With Huang Jiefu, I mean, he says all the right things, but he’s a fellow traveller. This guy is sitting on top of a system of massive transplant abuse,” Matas said. “What I see is the system playing good cop/bad cop. Huang is the good cop. He has this notion of ‘Let’s change things gradually.’ He’s been saying this for many years now, and I don’t see a lot of changes. They do everything to hide the figures.”
Matas added: “I don’t buy the line that they’re doing what they can. They should stop it.”
You may also like:
More in China Human Rights
Harrowing Documentary About Slavery and Torture in China Released
Is Beijing Really Committed to Its New Mental Health Law?
…
Chinese Consular Officials Demand Japanese Forsake Shen Yun
26 April, 2013 at 18:55 | Posted in China, Chinese culture, human rights, persecution, Shen Yun, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, censorship, China, Chinese culture, classical Chinese dance, Shen Yun, Society
…
Letters sent to businesses and government officials ask for withdrawal of support
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times
TOKYO—Chinese consulates in Japan have recently sent letters to businesses, newspapers, and government officials in cities and prefectures across the country, demanding that they withdraw their support for Shen Yun Performing Arts, a Chinese classical dance company that tours the world. Good relations with the People’s Republic of China PRC are said to be at issue.
Shen Yun’s tour in Japan runs from April 19 until May 1. It will perform 11 shows in five cities, and is currently playing in Tokyo.
Last year, and the year before, Chinese consular officials also sent similar letters.
One of the letters, reviewed by The Epoch Times, asks a businessman to cancel his sponsorship of Shen Yun’s local promoters in Fukuoka, where the company is scheduled to perform on May 1. He was additionally asked to withdraw all public relations activities, “involvement,” or other support.
Local government officials have also received such letters, like that sent to the mayor of a city in the Fukuoka Prefecture, by Li Tianran, an official at a PRC consular office in Fukuoka.
Officials in prefectural governments in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka, and Aichi, at least, have also received the letters, according to the local promoters in those areas, who were contacted by confused officials after receiving the abusive notes.
So have theaters, television broadcasters, magazines, and three of Japan’s largest newspapers.
The letters frame their demands as being “for the sake of Sino-Japanese relations,” according to the text in the letter seen by The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times devotes a segment of its website to feedback from audiences that have seen Shen Yun.
The Chinese authorities have long attempted to shut down Shen Yun’s performances around the world. The company is frequently sponsored by the Falun Dafa Associations where it performs; Falun Dafa, a spiritual practice, is persecuted ferociously by the Communist Party in China.
A focus of the round of letters in Japan was to slander the host Falun Dafa Association, using the Communist Party’s propaganda against the practice.
In addition, analysts say that the Chinese regime fears the attractiveness to Chinese audiences of the traditional Chinese culture Shen Yun presents. The Chinese Communist Party has sought over the past 60 years to stamp out China’s traditional culture.
The demanding letters were sent in the context of ongoing maritime disputes between Japan and the PRC, where many Japanese feel that the PRC is acting like a bully.
This round of letters targeting Shen Yun is unlikely to reassure the Japanese that China is a generally benign presence, indicated Koyu Nishimura, a Japanese critic and journalist, who read the letter sent to government officials.
“We have the freedom to think, freedom to speak, and freedom to believe. This is what the Communist Party is most frightened of,” he said in an interview with The Epoch Times. “The world is awakening to the real nature of the Communist Party.”
Nishimura continued: “If this has been happening each time the performers come to Japan, we should not keep silent. We must take action.” He added: “We shouldn’t forgive these actions.”
As a result of the letter-writing campaign, some of the sponsors of the hosting organization withdrew their support, and newspapers have been reluctant to run advertising for Shen Yun.
In the history of Shen Yun’s performances this response is unusual. Letters of this kind are regularly sent to sponsors and politicians who support the hosting organizations in countries around the world, and are often ignored or dismissed. Sometimes they are roundly rebuffed.
In early 2011 one such letter reached Dr. Cathy Casey, a member of the city council of Auckland, New Zealand. “I was quite outraged by it,” she said in an interview at the time. “I’m really upset that the consulate should think it can influence elected members in a host country, where they’re our guest. … How dare they!”
After seeing Shen Yun on April 20, Hirosato Nakatsugawa, a member of Japan’s House of Representatives, said: “I deplore the Chinese Communist Party sabotaging the performing arts. It is just pure artistic performance. People want this emotional experience.”
Updates: The article was updated to reflect the widespread nature of the letter-writing campaign, the content of the letters sent, and the impact they had in Japan.
Translation by Yukari Werrell. Written in English by Matthew Robertson.
Read the original article in Japanese.
via Chinese Consular Officials Demand Japanese Forsake Shen Yun » The Epoch Times
You may also like:
- Producer: Shen Yun Dancers Have ‘Surrendered their hearts to oneness’
- The Curtain Rises on a Farce in China
- Shen Yun Dancers Are ‘Beautiful Angels’
- Shen Yun Nearing Sellout at Lincoln Center
- Tanzanian Consul Says of Shen Yun: ‘I wish everyone could experience this’
- Filmmaker Inspired by Shen Yun New York Performance
…
Chinese Regime Prioritizes Stability Maintenance Over Quake Rescue Efforts
26 April, 2013 at 12:25 | Posted in China, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, China, Society
…
…
By Ariel Tian
Epoch Times
The Communist Party has banned civilian volunteers and groups from entering the Sichuan earthquake disaster region without permission, and is also calling for donation of money instead of supplies.
After the devastating quake hit Lushan county in Ya’an on April 20, volunteers nationwide formed rescue groups, and headed to the quake-hit areas. Several non-official charities and civil rights activists joined in, but encountered heavy resistance from authorities.
New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television interviewed Huang Qi, founder of China Tianwang Human Rights Center, who rushed to Lushan from Chengdu with three other volunteers. After the 2008 Wenchuan quake, Huang exposed the shoddy “tofu” school buildings, that had claimed numerous children’s lives.
When the four men arrived at Ya’an city, they were blocked by the local stability maintenance department, and taken to a police station. The officers checked their identities, and then said they were “not welcome.”
Huang said that the police told them not to “cause trouble,” and that it would be bad for the locals if they went to the disaster areas.
Huang’s center has again revealed poorly-constructed projects that collapsed in the Ya’an earthquake. He said the communist authorities are afraid they would see more examples if they went to the scene. “The authorities don’t want us to have close contact with local quake victims. I think this is mainly because they don’t want us to expose problems associated with the quake.”
The day after the Ya’an earthquake, the Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement, saying that China has adequate rescue and medical forces, and relief supplies, and foreign assistance is not required for the time being.
However, two news reports issued by official media People’s Daily and China National Radio contradicted this statement, saying there is a shortage of relief supplies, with 30,000 tents and 40,000 blankets and clothing needed, and that Ya’an has food and water shortages, with only enough water to last three days.
Shenzhen-based author Zhu Jianguo told NTD that he also believes the regime is trying to hide the real situation in the disaster areas. “If any other third-party rescue forces arrived there, the truth would be revealed against the authorities’ wish. So the government rejected foreign and even non-official rescue assistance as early as possible”
Many netizens were upset that the authorities refused the donation of supplies and only wanted money, especially as media said there is a severe shortage of relief materials.
One Internet user blogged: “I told them, ‘We can’t possibly place money in your care. The Red Cross has been notorious for its corruption. I won’t give a penny to the government-run Red Cross.’”
Others commented that the Communist Party has insisted on taking a closed approach to the rescue effort, and that it places more importance on stability maintenance than people’s lives.
Read the original Chinese article.
Translation by Jane Lin. Written in English by Cassie Ryan.
via Chinese Regime Prioritizes Stability Maintenance Over Quake Rescue Efforts » The Epoch Times
You may also like:
…
Chinese Regime Bans Reporters From Quoting Foreign Press
25 April, 2013 at 07:03 | Posted in China, human rights, IT and Media, persecution, Society | Leave a commentTags: CCP, censorship, China, human rights, persecution of dissidents, Society
By Cassie Ryan
Epoch Times
Beijing has tightened its grip on mainland media with a new directive that forbids the use of information from overseas news outlets “without permission.”
The General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the office charged with regulating the media, announced the move Wednesday. The office claimed it wanted to “strengthen management” and stop the “spread of harmful information.” The prohibition also applies to freelancers, NGOs, and commercial organizations.
The move coincided with the news that The New York Times had just won a Pulitzer Prize for its October 2012 report on the hidden wealth of ex-premier Wen Jiabao and family.
Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RWB) condemned the ruling as “draconian,” saying that the Communist Party’s censorship has been increasing steadily since its 18th Congress last November, when the new leadership was selected.
“The censors have had the foreign media in their sights ever since they published embarrassing revelations about China’s leaders,” the report said. “The regime is trying to prevent the Chinese media from repeating such revelations.”
The report added that foreign media play a key role in informing the international community about events in China, as well as the Chinese public, which it described as “the victim of the government’s growing censorship of local media.”
However, burgeoning Internet use in China, for example via Sina Weibo microblogs, renders censorship virtually impossible.
“The initiative seems bound to fail in the era of Weibo and social networks, where information and revelations from the foreign media circulate like wildfire,” the RWB report said. “But it could be used to justify new acts of censorship and could therefore have an impact on the Chinese media, which often quote international news agency reports in particular.”
Beijing journalist Gao Yu, two-time Courage in Journalism Award winner, and former deputy editor-in-chief for Economics Weekly, told the Sound of Hope Radio Network that the Internet has broken the Party’s censorship restrictions, and the move is further evidence of a crisis in officialdom.
“[News about] communist officials’ scandals, natural and mining disasters can be spread around the world in a few minutes or seconds,” Gao said.
“For years the Chinese media’s brainwashing propaganda has destroyed the Chinese people’s morality. With the development of the Internet, the brainwashing propaganda can no longer be sustained,” she added. “This is the Chinese regime’s crisis, and that’s why they are tightening control.”
The ban could have a big impact on domestic newspapers, as international agencies like Reuters provide most of their foreign coverage.
Bloggers responded strongly, particularly journalists. A Beijing journalist cited by citizen media website Global Voices said on his Weibo: “Public opinion supervision is essential for a healthy society. The scale of criticism is the scale of democracy–if criticism is not free, then praise is meaningless. The correct conclusion is from a wide range of voices, rather than what is chosen by the authority.”
Another Weibo user added: “What is harmful information? I think there’s only true and false information. The purpose of the news is to broadcast the truth, which is the basic need of a society. Most of the harmful information as defined by the propaganda department throughout the history of the Chinese republic proved to be accurate. Blocking information and opinions may be effective temporarily, but such a policy of self-denial won’t work in the long run.”
A third referred to a Chinese idiom, saying “The more one tries to hide, the more one is exposed.”
With research by Jane Lin.
via Chinese Regime Bans Reporters From Quoting Foreign Press » The Epoch Times
You may also like:
More in Chinese Regime
Chinese Amateurs’ Successful Quake Predictions ‘Broke the Law’
Chinese Consular Officials Demand Japanese Forsake Shen Yun
Chinese Vet Says Authorities Concealed H7N9 Poultry Epidemic
…
Welcome!
Life is important and our choices are important.
On this website I will in different ways express what I think gives meaning to life and also what might be a challenge.
It may include the need for sustainable development for our planet, or various questions about our health and mental well-being.
To be truthful, to be good, to have patience and compassion, are spiritual qualities that are a part of my cultivation of self through Falun Gong /Falun Dafa, the way of insights. To refine and improve myself to a better, more compassionate human being gives my life great meaning.
I also bring up more difficult issues , like the persecution of Falun Gong and others in China and explain more about the mentality of the Chinese regime. We can never forget about the Human Rights!
What's important is also everything that makes life beautiful; as good thoughts, beautiful music, healthy food, beautiful art and beautiful scenery. And loving relationships.
I hope you will find something that might interest you in this blog and perhaps brighten up your day or give you a new understanding.
TRANSLATE THE BLOG
Photo of the Month
SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS
Flickr Photos
More PhotosRecent Comments
-
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
