Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

New Year’s Eve, 2020

My wife is in the other room right now, crying. She has been reading Wuhan stories, those that get through before they are blocked.

Even now, with the panopticon state nearly complete, some individual wechat messages do get through for a while. The stories are too long to relay here. I can only give you a sense of the despair – doctors, nurses, people of Wuhan.

It is The Plague (1). People lined up at hospitals by the hundreds, carrying their x-rays with them, hoping against hope for someone to see them. In most cases, people will not leave the hospital, or their place in line, so they sleep – without food, without shelter – on the floors, outside, anywhere that preserves their intention to see a doctor. People dying on the floors untreated because there are no beds, no medicines, doctors cannot leave hospitals, people traveling – now by foot or bike, since buses are shut down – to five or six hospitals hoping someone will do the final checking that will allow them to be treated. People who are seen by a doctor and deemed not sick enough yet are sent away. There are certainly hundreds of those patients. At least some deaths are not reported as virus related. Masks and hazardous treatment clothing are in short supply. Some other provinces have sent teams of doctors to Wuhan, but it is not nearly enough.

The government in Wuhan comes in for special hate. The provincial governor told everyone two days ago – after the quarantine was instituted – that all is well, don’t worry. In his annual New Year’s speech to residents, the Hubei Party leader made no mention of the coronavirus at all. As of Wednesday, the 22^nd, the first mention of the virus in People’s Daily was a small item on page 4. The first two pages of the paper were all about Xi’s trip to Yunnan. Mr. Xi’s New Year’s Message, reported from Xinhua, made no reference to Wuhan at all.

No hospital is permitted to make announcements about contagious diseases – all such announcements have to come from the government. The crisis leader is an 87-year old doctor who led the SARS crisis treatment (2). Only when he announced that the virus could be transmitted from person to person did the government agree.

All public forms of transportation are shut down to Wuhan and now ten other cities in Hubei. No intra- or inter-city buses. No air traffic or expressway traffic. If your license plate has a Wuhan letter indicator, you cannot cross the border on the expressway without special permission. The only way to get around inside Wuhan is to walk, bike, drive, or take a taxi. You know how many people don’t have cars. People are significantly weakened by fever and lungs filling up with virus. People have to make choices between staying with a sick parent in line or on the floor at the hospital for dozens of hours and taking care of their own children at home. Hospitals have been told to report zero infections among staff, so doctors and nurses who might be infected are not reported.

I haven’t heard this yet, but since the whole city is shut down, there will be food shortages in a day or two. Supplies will certainly be allowed in, but not likely in sufficient supply.

Doctors at hospitals in Wuhan said they expect the total number of infected to be more than 6000. My own personal guess is that is a low number, based on nothing more than the severity of the foreign reporting, the paucity of Chinese government reporting, and the anguished stories on wechat. Doctors are reporting that some of those infected do not show any fever, so using temperature as a diagnostic is not completely effective, and the incubation period for the virus could be up to two weeks. Today, Friday, January 24, at the moment of writing, there were 900 officially reported cases, an unknown number of unreported cases, and reports are that the virus tripled over last weekend and has spread to 32 of 34 provinces. The Wuhan lockdown is unlikely to be effective, first of all because a lockdown of a huge area of 11,000,000 people has never been tried before, and the window for controlling spread of the virus had already closed before the lockdown was announced on Wednesday. Not to mention the number of cases officially not reported.

Thursday, January 23, central government mouthpiece People’s Daily sent out a cheery message. The Chinese people are united in their support for Wuhan. This is unspeakable.

Wuhan, hang in there! You have the support of all people across the country. The more difficult the situation is, the more united the Chinese people are. This has been constantly proven by both history and reality.

人民网评：越是艰难险阻，愈益众志成城

苏秦

2020年01月23日11:18 来源：人民网-观点频道

分享到： “1月23日10时起，全市城市公交、地铁、轮渡、长途客运暂停运营；无特殊原因，市民不要离开武汉，机场、火车站离汉通道暂时关闭。”武汉市连夜发出公告，传递明确信号：武汉正在采取更细致、更深入、更扎实的防控举措，全力遏制疫情扩散蔓延。

非常之时，非常之举。这昭示了一个基本逻辑，为了守护人民群众的生命安全：不怕兴师动众、不怕“劳民伤财”、不怕十防九空！

传染病防治有其复杂性，更有其规律性，必要时候必须采取非常之举，这于情于理于法都有坚实支撑。非常之举，必然要打破常规、影响常态。武汉市民的生活将不可避免地受到影响，我们向武汉市民的付出致敬！打赢这场防疫硬仗，每一位武汉市民都值得感佩，每一名积极参与者都值得我们呈上敬意。

非常之举，更需要政府部门遵循全心全意为人民服务的常理。积极回应民众的合理诉求，最大限度减少应急措施带来的不利因素，也是当务之急。这是对我们治理体系的测试，是对我们治理能力的检验。除了武汉，没有哪一座城市可以作壁上观。这不仅是因为疫情的联动效应，更是因为我们对人民的庄严承诺。

疫情来得迅疾，目前一些地方、一些环节面临挑战，做好药品、消毒、器械等防控物资的储备供应，显得迫在眉睫。需要看到，中国作为世界工厂，并不缺少物质生产力，补上物资缺口并非难事。一些地方出现物资短缺属于结构性的，只是“地域错配”，加上春节工厂放假因素而导致缺货。我们呼吁，口罩等物资的相关厂家能急疫情之所急，开足马力生产；全国各地也能紧急驰援、相互支持。

只要全国一盘棋，统筹安排，协调推进，相信很快就可以解决物资短缺等难题。在这个时候，我们就是要把长期培育的社会动员能力和制度优越性充分释放出来。我们的党员干部在危机面前尤其要发挥先锋模范作用，引领大家增强必胜的信心，打赢这场硬仗！

武汉加油，全国人民支持你们。越是遭遇艰难险阻，我们愈益众志成城。这是被历史和现实不断验证的中国逻辑。

Crash-out

Or D-Day – Disaster Day – minus 7

The original D-Day was salvation for Britain and Europe – even, in its way, for Germany. This one seems less promising.

Not much to say anymore. Cue the violins and watch the China moves.

Update at April 28 – Aside from the current delay in the crash-out – From Brexit to Belt and Road by Keith Johnson in FP – Britain’s turn to China for salvation

Read Ives Smith at Naked Capitalism – https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/brexit-opening-the-seals.html

She opens with

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?

– Revelations 5:1-2

I didn’t know, but this is where the Four Horsemen come from. And it is the apocalypse.

Right following the Brexit vote in 2016, I thought Britain had voted itself out of being a major world economy. Now it appears we will see if that was right. China, of course, will be sympathetic to a now developing country that needs assistance.

This can only be shuang yin – win-win for China. Or maybe win-win-win. Help the Chinese economy, better entre to the EU, more confounding of US policy.

Shuang Yin Win-Win

China censorship by extortion in London

Update at October 7, 2019 – The NBA self-censors for China

The NBA is a business – we know that. But the NBA has been the professional league in which players and coaches have had the most freedom to speak their minds about issues of rights and morality. Now, apparently, that freedom of speech stops at the Chinese border. The New York Times has the story – NBA executive’s Hong Kong tweet starts firestorm in China.

Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted an expression of support for protesters in Hong Kong. This upset the Chinese Basketball Association, and some Chinese fans, who see Hong Kongers as only hooligans and destroyers of Chinese harmony. Morey’s tweet suggested that he “stands with Hong Kong.” He has now apologized to the NBA’s largest international market. The NBA has disavowed his comment, although it did suggest weakly that he had a right to say what he said. Of course, the Chinese league commented with the old trope, that Morey had hurt the feelings of all Chinese people (who are basketball fans).

The story is less that the NBA wilts in the face of Chinese outrage, but that the outrage is so unified, potentially deadly, and in accord with CCP desires. Plenty of other western businesses have set the pattern, whether on Hong Kong, Xinjiang, or Taiwan. The takeaway is that FBI director Christopher Wray is correct in his assessment of China as a “whole of society” threat. The ease with which we self-censor in the face of Chinese assessment that we have offended the whole of the Chinese people (how DO they make that determination?) is a threat to our own values in more than just business. In 2002, eminent China scholar Perry Link wrote of Chinese censorship as the “The Anaconda in the Chandelier” – everyone knows it is there, we can’t see it, and don’t know when it will strike. It is powerful, and causes us to behave differently. We fear all the more what we don’t know and can’t see. National inability to tolerate a single tweet by a relatively minor official of the NBA is itself a bargaining tactic to worry about. Who knows where it will strike next?

The original London theater story below.

—–

China censorship by extortion in London

There cannot be anyone who still thinks “peaceful rise” is a metaphor for China’s relations with the world. But the real fear is not what we see in the papers. The real fear is not China’s military, or trade power, or isolating Taiwan, or OBOR, or votes and influence at the UN and in other international bodies. In a sense, not even IP theft, although that is the only current trade concern of real import.

What the world should fear over the next ten or twenty years is export of business and government practices conducted via cheating, extortion, threats to innocent parties, arrests under false pretenses, no rule of law, no free press, prison torture, and police and government action with impunity.

The latest example is threats to a theater performance in London.

The Guardian has the story –

From Beijing to Hampstead: how tale of HIV whistleblower rattled Chinese state

Now we have threats to the performing arts – a theater, in London. Via threats to the family and friends and daughter of the woman who is the subject of the play. Chinese security officials are threatening the family in China of a former health bureau official who exposed coverup of an HIV and hepatitis scandal in China in 1992 and 1995. Apparently the loss of face for CCP over events of 27 years ago is still salient.

Dr. Wang Shuping is not the author of the play, the director, an actor, and probably not an investor or audience member. The play is about her story to expose the coverup of “epic proportions” – demands to falsify medical data and then physical destruction of her lab and samples of blood tainted with hepatitis and HIV from donors. Wang is now an American citizen, a practicing nephrologist in Williamsburg, VA.

From Wang’s statement to the media –

On 22 August 2019, I received a phone call from a relative in America who told me that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of State Security have sent officers from Beijing to Zhoukou, my hometown, to investigate my colleagues and relatives … During the past ten years, officers from the PRC Ministry of Health, Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State Security have been to my hometown to interrogate my relatives and colleagues several times, trying to silence me.

From the Guardian story –

The plot closely follows the battle Wang and her colleagues waged to uncover the truth. “I first reported the HCV [hepatitis] epidemic among blood donors to the Ministry of Health of PRC [People’s Republic of China] in 1992,” said Wang. “Three years later, I discovered and reported a serious HIV epidemic among the plasma donors to the Health Bureau of Zhoukou Region and the ministry of health of the PRC … Only after I reported my results to the central government in Beijing was any action taken. They requested that I falsify my information about the HIV epidemic situation among the plasma donors but I refused. To cover up the HIV epidemic situation, they broke up our clinical testing centre, hit me with a heavy stick and insulted me.” Wang resisted pressure to close her laboratory, but the health bureau cut off the electricity and water supplies, forcing it to discard thousands of blood samples.

Officials have threatened the livelihoods of Wang’s friends and family in Beijing, and attempted to contact her daughter, to threaten her also. The director of the play says they will do what Dr. Wang wishes – presumably, cancel the play if she feels the threats are extreme. She wishes the play to go on, even with the threats to family and friends.

Wang’s closing statement –

The only thing harder than standing up to the Communists and their security police is not giving in to pressure from friends and relatives who are threatened with their livelihoods all because you are speaking out. But even after all this time, I will still not be silenced, even though I am deeply sad that this intimidation is happening yet again. The King of Hell’s Palace will go ahead and I am really looking forward to seeing the production.

You know about kidnapping of foreign business people in China over business disputes.

You know about the hostage taking of three Canadians as political retaliation over the Huawei business.

You know about threats at academic conferences and threats to individual foreign teachers, in their own country, of whom Beijing disapproves.

You know about threats to Chinese students studying abroad, and their families in China.

You know about threats to the families of Chinese students studying in Hong Kong.

You know about threats to foreign businesses, such as Marriott and United and American and Delta airlines if they don’t cease calling the Republic of Taiwan the Republic of Taiwan.

You know about the threat to put Cathay Pacific Airlines out of business unless they policed the activities of their own employees in not supporting the Hong Kong protests.

Business is not safe from threat. Academics are not safe from threat in their home country. Students are not safe from threat. Now, theater is not safe from threat. One is reminded of the Niemoeller quote – “First came for the socialists, and I did nothing….” Or Edmund Burke – “All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Dr. Wang’s personal story is available at ChinaChange here. It is perhaps more detail than you want, but is a good example of how some Chinese exports will be expected to work if good people remain silent and do nothing.

Chinese Officials Threaten Mainland Parents of Student Attending Australian Protest

It is important to remember what we are dealing with. Let’s review –

From the Sydney Morning Herald, August 7 – Chinese authorities approached the family of an international student who participated in high-profile protests at an Australian university and warned his parents of the potential consequences of political dissent.

It has been clear for years that the Chinese government monitors words and actions of mainland students overseas. There are various means. Most prominent is the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) which operates as a student-run organization on most university campuses throughout the world. It is now common for students to record other Chinese students expressing negative feelings toward the mainland government or CCP. Chinese government officials in the foreign country support such efforts.

A mainland student who attended one of the pro-Hong Kong protest rallies at the University of Queensland in Australia later received a call from his mother. From the Herald –

But within days of the rally the student received a call from his mother in China to say the family had been approached by “a guest”. His mother told him the authorities had issued a warning about engaging in “anti-China rhetoric” in Brisbane and warned him not to “join any events where people are gathered together”. “As long as you do that, we can make sure you’re safe and we’re safe,” his mother told him.

Chinese officials in Australia praised actions by mainland students to disrupt the protests –

China’s consul-general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, subsequently issued a statement praising “the spontaneous patriotic behaviour of Chinese students” at the university in response to “people with ulterior motives [who] conducted anti-Chinese separatist activities”.

Government threats to families in China, or threats to Chinese abroad, are a despicable practice. But it has become standard operating practice in the last decade.

Put this down alongside threats to Yang Shuping the 2017 University of Maryland valedictorian, who praised fresh air and freedom in the US compared with her experiences in Yunnan. The former president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) at the University of Maryland, told the CCP sponsored Global Times – “Insulting the motherland to grab attention is intolerable. The university’s support to such critical speech is not only ill-considered, but also raises suspicion about other motives.” The CSSA called on students from China to make videos promoting their hometowns with the scripted words “I have different views from Shuping Yang. I am proud of China.” Yang received hundreds of negative or threatening social media posts.

Or the action by the Chinese Education Ministry in 2010 to remove the University of Calgary from its list of approved universities, after Calgary awarded an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama. That action threatened the ability of Chinese students at Calgary to have recognition of their degree in China.

And the experience of Chemi Lhamo, who by the nature of being Tibetan, and then earlier this year elected as student president at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, was so threatened by Chinese vitriol, including death threats, that she needed university support;

And threats to Rukiye Turdush, Uighur activist, whose speech earlier this year at McMaster University in Ontario was disrupted in what some claim was activity promoted by the Chinese government. University students clearly sought Chinese consulate advice on how to proceed with disruption. Chinese officials in Canada applauded the threats from mainland Chinese students against Turdush;

And Uighur university students throughout the world asked by the Chinese government to return home immediately, under hostage and harm threats to their parents and relatives in Xinjiang;

And physical destruction of the Lennon Wall at the University of Queensland on August 6. From the Guardian – The University of Queensland has promised to take action after a pro-Hong Kong Lennon wall on its campus was torn down on Monday night by four masked men. The colourful protest wall – similar to those around Hong Kong and the rest of the world – had attracted hundreds of notes calling for democracy and solidarity with Hong Kong, and opposing the totalitarianism of the Chinese government. Two weeks ago pro-Beijing government protesters clashed violently with Hong Kong international students on the university’s Brisbane campus, punching and shoving.

Four masked men were seen destroying the wall. Students have since put it up again.

And, of course, the old standby –

Chinese rights lawyer Chen Jiangang-flees to US to escape persecution

In terms of (legal) human traffic, China still exports far more to the US than we export to China. No sign of that changing anytime soon. I reported on that at Let’s remember what we are dealing with.

Let’s remember what we are dealing with …

News reporting is so uneven. No mass shooting in the US is censored information in China – in fact, the news is prominently featured. From China Xinhua News on Twitter –

China Xinhua News

@XHNews

Shootings this weekend at a Texas Walmart and a bar in Ohio have left 30 people dead. Retail employees are taking to social media to say they’re terrified to go to work. Workers fear getting shot at their workplace

The Chinese government twitter account has several posts on the shootings, with video.

At the same time, Xinhua completely missed this story –

Chinese rights lawyer Chen Jiangang flees to US to escape “persecution” in China

The South China Morning Post did report the story.

Chen is a human rights lawyer who has been threatened and harassment before. He was representing Huang Yang, daughter in law of disgraced leader Zhou Yongkang. Huang is an American citizen. She has not been allowed to leave China over what is termed a rental disagreement, but it is not uncommon to punish relatives of disgraced CCP leaders without evidence of any wrongdoing.

Huang explained that Wang Cun, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice, threatened Chen if he continued to represent her. Chen was told that he would disappear if he continued to represent his client.

Chen had been threatened before. In April of this year, he was not allowed to leave China for a fellowship funded by the US government, citing national security concerns.

In 2017, Chen’s entire family was put on an exit ban list, which has become a common means of targeting Chinese and foreigners who displease the government.

It is not clear how Chen and his family were able to get out. News reports say that they traveled through several countries before finally arriving in the US. China Aid, a non-profit reporting on human rights abuses in China, seems to have helped Chen and his family get out.

Lawyer Chen Jiangang (second from left) and his family have fled China for the United States Source: ChinaAid

China Aid, by the way, is a remarkable organization. It seeks to expose persecution, torture, and imprisonment of Christians and human rights lawyers in China.

Xinhua seems to have missed this story. Perhaps international news is more compelling in this case.

How to End June 4, et al.

A Country That Controls the Internet Should be Able to Control the Calendar

A few years ago, it was reported in the Australian Financial Review that senior party members in the Chinese Communist Party were reading deTocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution. This was at the suggestion of Xi Jinping, who apparently wanted to call attention to the fate of leaders who ignore the people in favor of corruption and the easy life. The end times of the French monarchy is a good model for what rulers should not do.

We now have the anti-corruption campaign and the tigers and flies and the framing of enemies by other Party members. And we have the mandate to remove evil western influence from China (free speech, free press, democracy, and the western books and teachers who are unfortunately a product of those ideas). This was the pronouncement from Yuan Guiren, the Chinese Education Minister.

An aside – Communism, you know, is a German import. What CCP should do about that is overlooked. No doubt this will be the subject of investigation. Someone, somewhere, within the CCP, at a very senior level, is protecting Communism, this western import, from being attacked. Is this more corruption?

Anyway, the French Revolution has spawned lots of interesting ideas, in addition to “liberty, equality, fraternity.” One of the more interesting was the French Revolutionary calendar. Those of you who can get access to the internet outside China can look at French Republican Calendar.

The rationale for the calendar was to sweep away the ideas, the habits, the customs of the old system – the ancien régime, as it is called. The concept was to erase the memories, the Four Olds of France as it were, and pave the way for a new France.

Sort of like a New China.

On October 23, 1793, the Revolutionary Calendar was adopted by the National Convention, acting as the government in France. The idea was to make the calendar rational, and modern.

In the spirit of the times the calendar was designed to do away with the old names of months, irrational numbers of days in the month and the week and hours in the day, and replace them with systematic, metric, and base-10 representations. Very modern.

The wiki article describes the months, days, and hours –

There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called décades. The tenth day, décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity….

Names of the days, names of the months, and number of days in the month and hours in the day were all changed. Controlling the calendar was rational, and modern.

How the old New France can help the New China

There has been a lot of anxiety within China about the date of June 4. Many people think that June 4 is part of the modern calendar, and should come after June 3 and before June 5. But in New China, old ideas should be eliminated.

Others in China seem to fear the date of June 4, and would like to see it banned. Certainly, the Chinese Communist Party has taken that position, in action if not in policy statement. References to June 4, particularly if they include a year, such as 1989, are blocked by the Chinese government. References to related terms, such as May 35, or characters or words that could be generally understood as meaning “June 4” are also blocked by the Chinese government. Attempts to talk about June 4 can land people in jail.

Now we know that the Chinese government supports modernization of everything in China. Getting rid of the Four Olds is itself an old term, but still a useful idea.

In the spirit of modernization, and using modernist ideas from the French enlightenment to support the CCP, we recommend that June 4 just be eliminated from the calendar. This should eliminate the anxiety felt within the government about June 4, and make it possible for millions of Chinese to get back to the business of making money, which, after all, is what a society is for.

How to do it

There are many ways to eliminate June 4. Perhaps the easiest would be to simply print calendars that go directly from June 3 to June 5. The extra day can be added somewhere else, like February, which really could use another day in any case.

If this program were implemented immediately, then the calendar revision could be accomplished in conjunction with the map revisions that show dotted lines in the South China Sea and Taiwan as part of traditional China. Maybe include some proposed acquisitions, as well. Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, and diaoyudao in the East China Sea. Mongolia? Surely some argument can be made for ports in Sri Lanka, or along the coast of Africa. With all those dotted lines, it would be easy to draw a dotted line between June 3 and June 5 to February 29.

Another idea – print calendars that call the day between June 3 and June 5, June X. There will be confusion with people thinking we are using Roman numerals, like the French Republican calendar. But we already have a June 10, so the confusion should be small, even if unavoidable for some people. We all have to pay a price for progress.

There are other ideas. June 3.99 has a nice look to it. Chinese citizens can come up with variations.

And the beauty of that sort of choice is that there are an infinite number of variations. If some people don’t like June 3.99, then they can try June 3.999. Or June 3.1. Lots of choices.

Some people – looking at you, CCP – get so anxious about June 4 that they try to eliminate June entirely from the calendar, or at least eliminate internet use during June. We can fix that, too, by eliminating the word “June” from the calendar.

Early June in the French Revolutionary calendar would be Prairial, from the French word for prairie, or pasture.

And senior Communist Party officials who are reading deTocqueville should really have no objection to naming a month after a French prairie. So Prairial 3.99 could be just what is desired, for all Chinese people. So the sequence could be, Prairial 3, Prairial 3.99, Prairial 5. So much more modern feeling. And the internet doesn’t have to go down, again, for maintenance, every year during May and June. There is no June.

As a final solution, we could just replace June 4 with nothing. We would write June , 2019, or 2019 – Prairial – . That way, the people who want to eliminate June 4 will have done so. Everyone else can just remember what goes in front of the comma or behind the dash.

And then, on Prairial , Chinese web-users should show their solidarity, and go silent. Post nothing on Prairial , and show your support for June 3.99. This might be the most effective way to deal with the June 4 problem. Post nothing on that date.

If enough people comply, government will be flustered. What does it mean to protest when no one shows up? What if they blocked the internet and no one complied by being blocked? And how about all those millions of Chinese who failed to post anything on June 4? Which side are they on?

Think of Tenzin Gyatso. the Dalai Lama, suggesting that if CCP demands that there be a new Dalai Lama to succeed him at death, then perhaps there should not be a new Dalai Lama. Atheistic CCP is insistent that there be a new leader, so CCP can control; the religious faithful are not so sure. What is the sound of one internet not buzzing?

Now I know it will be difficult to get hundreds of millions of people to adopt a system like this. Sometimes when something is very difficult to do, we say it would be like murder to accomplish. But that is what we suggest. Not posting would to be thinking of murder.

Even if it is like murder to not think about June 4, take up the banner for June X or, if you wish, for June , or Prairial 3.99. Your choice. Then we can completely forget June 4, and maybe that day, the internet can go silent, while millions remember.

What Chinese cannot not talk about …

In a previous post, I mentioned the heavy hand of CCP coming down on internet access each year in the weeks leading up to date of the Tian’anmen Massacre in 1989.

What CCP sincerely wants is for Chinese netizens to model the three monkeys – see, hear, speak no evil – evil, of course, being in the eye of the CCP beholder and specifically any sight, sound, voice or thought related to the events leading up to and during June 4, 1989.

But netizens are tenacious. They are inventive in devising terms to get around blocking of all sorts, but particularly the blocking of 6-4 remembrance.

China Digital Times maintains a list of terms, indicating the extraordinary lengths to which Chinese netizens go to communicate about 6-4, or May 35, or any of dozens of other made up ways to refer to the date. My current favorite is 8² = 64.

In spite of netizen tenacity, the government crackdown on public knowledge about Tian’anmen has worked very well. While the “tank man” photo is recognized worldwide, it is nearly unknown in China. My undergraduate students did not know what it was – or would not admit to knowing. In 2014, the Onion had a headline – Chinese Citizens Observe 25-year Moment of Silence for Tian’anmen Square Massacre. In 2013, Louisa Lim, author of Republic of Amnesia, found that 85% of Beijing college students could not identify the picture.

And in truth, 1989 was a long time ago for young Chinese. That was then, this is now. In June, 2014 Robert Hariman noted how complete the erasure of history has been for most Chinese – a public act of protest against the authoritarian state has been replaced with political quiescence on behalf of commercial consumption.

Michela Buttignol/New York Times

Also in 2014, China Law & Policy published a moving short biography of Wang Nan, originally published in People’s Republic of Amnesia. (Video at Louisa Lim at Google). In 2014, Wang Nan was a 45 year old photojournalist with a wife and family – except that he never made it to 45. He was killed at Tian’anmen as a 19 year old student.

China Law and Policy

His mother remembers her son. Along with others, she is monitored heavily around this time each year. She is one of the Tian’anmen mothers.

http://api.pictures.reuters.com/archive/CHINA-TIANANMEN-MOTHER-GM1EA640E8X01

Helen Gao, writing Tian’anmen, Forgotten in the New York Times in 2014 –

I do remember the first time the topic came up in conversation with my Chinese peers. On June 4, 2009, the 20th anniversary of the crackdown, I was shopping with a friend at a convenience store near Tsinghua University, when she, a junior at the university, turned to me, next to a shelf of colorful shampoos and conditioners. “Some people have been talking about this incident, liu si,” she said. “What was it all about?”

One of my minor subversive acts teaching in China was to accommodate Chinese undergrads who talked with me after class – “We want to know what happened.” I gave them a three hour video documentary in Chinese about the events of the days. The Gate of Heavenly Peace – part 1 and Part 2 was produced in 1995 with compiled videos and interviews with students, teachers, and observers of the events. This is an extraordinary documentary. There are some English subtitles.

No doubt that video has been shared. I felt a bit like Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, retrieving truth from the west.

Outside the mainland, remembrance persists – in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, in the Chinese diaspora. The date is remembered each year in Hong Kong, to the worry and dismay of mainland officials. The commemoration is one way that young people in Hong Kong express themselves as HongKongers, not Chinese. Typical of the response in Hong Kong is this from China Digital Times – Hong Kong Marks June 4 Anniversary. Some of my mainland Chinese undergraduates expressed some anger at students in Hong Kong, deriding them as bad Chinese – disloyal and “stirring up trouble” – a common arrest charge on the mainland.

CCP likes to use Confucian chapter and verse to support its policies. There is a paragraph in the Analects that would seem to recommend the stance of the three monkeys to all Chinese – “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety” (Analects Book 12 (Yan Yuan) para 1)

But this is not a recommendation to self censorship. Confucius is speaking of a man in control of his emotions, assured of his correctness, the Junzi– without anxiety or fear, as is pointed out in the same book, paragraph 4. Censorship is the action of a man anxious or afraid, suppressing citizens’ lack of confidence in rule. In paragraph 7, the Master said that military equipment and even food sufficiency may be given up in extremis, if the people have confidence in their rulers. Otherwise, the Master said, there is no standing for the state.

Censorship betrays the anxiety and fear in CCP. In a far different context, Bill Clinton reminded us that a strong grip is the sign of a weak hand. Netizens constantly remind CCP that the Chinese people are as Sun Yat-sen said in 1924 – a handful of sand, without a strong commitment to the CCP variety of nationalism and unmoldable to the model of a good communist soldier – willing to sacrifice all, even memory and moral freedom, for the benefit of the state.

CCP must walk a fine line – Xi Jinping just got through extolling the actions of student protesters of the May Fourth Movement in 1919, a foundational time for CCP. For CCP, also, that was then, this is now. Student protesters in 1989, and since, are subject to arrest, jail, or murder. See The Ideology of Occupation on arrest and disappearance of Peking U students trying to be good Marxists.

This year, 30 years later, the heavier than usual blocking should be starting about now. CCP must be always on guard against thinking that will pollute minds of Chinese. Otherwise, as the Master said, there may be no standing for the state.

What Chinese are talking about … fake news

You know that China is increasing pressure on every state it can bully. The bullying is easiest when the victim state has a substantial share of its GDP connected to China, whether as exports or as Chinese FDI coming in. Now come fake news stories published in China, quoting New Zealand politicians approving of Chinese policies on the Belt and Road initiative. New Zealand is in a tough spot.

It is one of the “five eyes” countries, those English speaking countries that share some cultural backgrounds and concepts of law and government. Others are the US, England, Canada, and Australia. These five share intelligence efforts in some detail. The US agencies involved include the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA). Security issues – now, the Huawei 5G business, and related Chinese hacking and theft – are top priorities among the five eyes countries. Even more than Australia, New Zealand is a western country in Asia.

New Zealand is isolated. It is more than 1300 miles from Sydney to Auckland and it cannot develop much stronger markets for agricultural goods elsewhere in the world. China is its largest trading partner, followed by Australia. Agricultural exports are about 27% of GDP, and food exports are about half of that. New Zealand signed a free trade agreement with China in 2008.

A good example of the position in which New Zealand finds itself is the relative lack of police response to the attacks on the home and office of Anne Marie Brady, a scholar at the University of Canterbury, who has written in detail about the means by which China is infecting media and politics and public opinion outside China. I wrote about these attacks in two places in the last couple of months. It is suspected that the intruders, who have also left threatening phone messages, are some local version of chengguan, the Chinese hired thugs who terrorize street vendors, old ladies who don’t want to leave their homes in the way of demolition, and anyone in the way of growth and development. A substantial contingent of chengguan were responsible for watching Chen Guangcheng for years before he escaped in 2012. New Zealand police have found no evidence, it seems, and do not seem too alarmed by the attacks. There seems no doubt that these despicable attacks are politically motivated. Brady’s recent article is Magic Weapons: China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping.

What is New Zealand to do?

Now From Bill Bishop in 2019 at Sinocism. This is a truly bizarre and damaging act.

4. Chinese pressure on New Zealand increasing

Fake OpEd on People’s Daily English site by former Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley – Foreign Minister Winston Peters slams former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley after China Daily article appears – NZ Herald:

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has launched a stinging attack on former Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley after an article appeared in China’s “People’s Daily” under her byline complimenting China on its reforms and the Belt and Road Initiative.

But Shipley did not write the piece, which appears under the Online opinion section. It is headlined “We need to listen to China” and carries Dame Jenny’s byline and on Tuesday night was the fourth best read piece on the website.

She was interviewed by the state-run newspaper in December for a feature article which has run already and was surprised to learn a new piece had been published under her name.

Some economic development issues are similar around the world. An American local government, faced with declining tax base, ageing population, loss of markets, and little ability to change the course of history is faced with tough choices. New Zealand is in a similar spot, with respect to China and the English-speaking west. But American local governments usually don’t have to deal with fake news stories planted by enemies in the town next door.

Url for the New Zealand Herald article –

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12205347&ref=clavis

Idle Thought – last week in January, 2019

What if this past weekend were the beginning of the end for the orange haired baboon? And, in the process, the GOP were so damaged that even a Pence presidency couldn’t do much harm, and we gained a president in 2020 who was smart, thoughtful, respected intelligence and loyalty to allies and was up for repairing the extraordinary damage, domestic and international?

Someone who might say something that would remind us of these lines –

“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Suppose we looked back on the past two years, or three, as having fought and emerged from a great conflict, knowing that the alternative was always looking us in the face, that if we had failed no one would never hear the American version –

… then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

And in an inaugural speech in January, 2021, we might hear echoes of –

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Good luck to us with that. How would that sit with all the tinpot dictators who have sprung up in the last five years, and their beleaguered people? And how would that sit with all those in Africa, and the –stans, and South America, who have looked hard and trembled at rapacious lending of China and the prospect of Chinese internet, Chinese censorship, Chinese media, Chinese rule of men, Chinese tribute, wishing for an alternative that left them some dignity?

Oh. And Reagan on walls –

“Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit,” he said. “And then while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here. And when they want to go back they can go back.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/12/21/analysis-heres-what-reagan-actually-said-about-border-security/

And –

“I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life…in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans…with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/547667

Update on Peking U Ideological Battle

January, 2019

In a recent post, The Ideology of Occupation, I described an ideological struggle being played out last month at Peking University, the combined Harvard-Yale of China. Now, a followup on what has happened to the “Old Marxist” students who questioned the manner in which CCP has been providing leadership of the proletariat. Spoiler – they are in jail.

Bill Bishop has the story at Sinocism – Seven Maoist Students Detained in Beijing After Talking to Foreign Media Original story from Radio Free Asia. A video was made by Peking student Zhang Ziwei immediately before he was himself detained –

“I’m Zhang Ziwei,” the recording says. “Six of my classmates have been detained already today, two of them just downstairs from where we live.”

“They were shoved into a car, shouting ‘call the police!,'” Zhang says, adding that he too is a target.

“Dark forces are conducting house-to-house searches right now,” he says. “They want to take me away too, just like they did to the others.”

It appears that the “Old Marxist” students have been not only defeated, but jailed. Their support for the Marxism of class struggle is out of date in the modern China of Xi Jinping.

I am reminded of the climactic scene in the movie A Few Good Men in which Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) rages against the upstart attorney Lieutenant Kaffee (Tom Cruise). In the setup, the Colonel is standing on the wall, battling the forces of evil, while Kaffee and his cohort stand for rule of law and honor to regulations and tradition, properly understood. Jessup rages against Kaffee and colleagues for questioning the manner in which Jessup stands on the wall – You Can’t Handle the Truth. You know the scene, and how it ends. Jessup claims a greater responsibility than Kaffee can imagine. So, too, at Peking U. In this Peking University struggle, the New Marxists are the forces of modernity, standing on the wall and battling the forces of western imperialism and western thought and western concepts. CCP will determine what socialism and Communism means, and there can only be one source of truth. There is no questioning of the manner in which CCP provides leadership. In the Chinese version of the movie, Jessup would be exonerated and honored. The “Old Marxist” students, representing the outdated western import of Marxism, can’t handle the truth.

China Reflections

Tag: Fear