Foundinchina.com

http://theutopian.net/

Few observers come close to matching John Pomfret’s insight when it comes to China matters. His latest offering, Why China won’t do more with North Korea, is no exception:

Reading all the stuff about North Korea’s nukes, one thing strikes me: the United States seems to want to outsource not just its jobs to China, but also its diplomacy. “It’s up to China!” and “China can do more!” are the operative phrases emerging from DC-think-tanks and the US government. As if….

First, there’s a silly assumption in Washington that our interests (no nukes in North Korea) are the same as China’s. But they’re not. China’s first interest in North Korea is making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. China’s second interest? Making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. From Beijing’s perspective, nukes in North Korea rank somewhere around 10th.

The article goes on to outline the reasons why China will almost certainly rebuff calls for a greater effort on her part to get tough with Kim Jong Il’s misguided madness. It boils down to this: China likes her backward, despotic neighbour just the way it is, nukes and all.

The only other reason I would be tempted to add to Pomfret’s list is that China takes delight in her strategy of doing nothing (or paying lip service to doing something) when by so acting she leaves the US frustrated and hamstrung in its attempts to orchestrate change. This not to mention the glee in Beijing when their global rivals have to spend so much time, effort, and resources cleaning up in China’s own backyard.

Globally responsible stakeholder? No. Not yet. Not by a long way.

http://minzhuwansui.blogspot.com/

China Beat continue their excellent series of excerpts from Philip Cunningham‘s soon-to-be-released Tiananmen moon, with the latest installment shedding some light on the author’s role as interpreter for a BBC camera crew, while at the same time describing the moment he encountered Chai Ling (I assume for the first time) and other student leaders in the lobby of the Beijing Hotel at midnight. Earlier that day Cunningham had befriended a student from Xi’an, Wang Li, on the Square.

Wang Li and Hu gulp down the juice and ravage the snacks as if they had just ended a private hunger strike. While they eat, I look at the other table where a group of four young people are talking in low whispers next to the ornate ghost screen that blocked view from the entrance.

“Listen, troops have arrived northeast of Beijing. There are thousands of soldiers, tanks, and I heard there are trucks full of ammunition,” Wang Li says, as if trying to earn his keep.
“How do you know?”
“We were there,” he says with a hint of pride. And then anticipating further questions, he adds, “We know a journalist needs evidence, so we want to go back and take pictures.”
“Isn’t that kind of risky?”
“No, we must do it, Jin. Can I borrow your camera?” He reads the doubt on my face. “You can keep my ID card until I return with the camera.”
“No, no, that’s not necessary. I trust you,” I respond, using the immortal words of someone about to be conned. Actually I didn’t trust him. If anything his offer of the ID made me a little suspicious. If he were really a student why was he flashing his ID around? No one else did that.

“I’ll tell you what, tomorrow you can shower and nap in my room if you want, okay?”
Even as the words left my mouth I wasn’t sure why I made the offer, but it got me off the hook tonight. And I did feel for these ragamuffins. We shared a powerful curiosity in common; we were interested in finding out what was really going on, but we weren’t journalists, not them, not me. I couldn’t forget how I was almost reduced to sleeping on the streets during the early vigils at Tiananmen.
“Can you give me some film, too?” he pleads, revealing sharper bargaining skills as my skepticism softened.
“Yeah, okay. By the way,” I ask, pointing to the figures in the shadows about 20 feet away, “Who are those people sitting at the table over there?”
“They’re our student leaders. That’s Wang Dan, Wuerkaixi, Chai Ling and Feng Congde.”
“The student leaders?” I ask in disbelief. Isn’t this a government hotel?

We got up to leave. I walked past the other table to get a closer look. The quiet conference in progress momentarily went silent as we walked by. On the way out, I give my camera to Wang Li, not sure if I’d see it or him again. Even so I felt a pang of guilt. Is it right for me to encourage him to go running after troops?

Intriguing stuff. I recommend Cunningham’s own serialisation, updated as a twenty-years-ago-today chronology, not least because of some of the amazing pictures he captured at that time.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/

It could be time for a long overdue reckoning.

The Timesonline reports that the people’s hero Zhao Ziyang managed to secretly record his account of the events of 20 years ago despite having been purged and forced to live out his days under the watchful, punitive eye of the paranoid state: 

The memoirs of the Chinese Communist Party leader purged for favouring the students during the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square – prepared with the utmost secrecy during years of house arrest – will finally been revealed.

So sensitive is this document, the first memoir ever to be written by such a senior Chinese party official, that even its existence had been kept a closely guarded secret. Speculation had been rife during his nearly 16 years of house arrest and after his death in 2005 as to whether the man with the most intimate knowledge of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led up to the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 3-4 1989 had provided his own account of those dramatic days.

The record made by Zhao Ziyang, Secretary General of the Communist Party from 1987 until his fall from power in 1989, are to be published this month as Prisoner of the State: The secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang.

Now let’s wait for the ‘hurt feelings’ or ‘interfering in our affairs’ squeals from China’s leaders. Read more of Jane Macartney’s report here.

Update

Jeremiah at Granite Studio has injected some great humour into Zhao’s possible embarrassing revelations. He also points to the NYT’s site where they are running excerpts of Zhao’s Prisoner of the State.

Update 2

Richard of Peking Duck fame has written a guest blog for Global Post in which he praises Philip Cunningham’s observations on the release of Zhao’s memoirs. Cunningham takes a swipe at Beijing’s revisionist policy on Tiananmen:

To blame it on the students, as many young people in China do today, is to fall for a propaganda line, to take one’s eye off the ball.

The value of releasing Mr Zhao’s belated memoir, which goes for the jugular by singling out a hard-line clique within the CCP, on this, the 20th anniversary of an unnecessary tragedy, is to get the public eye back on the culpability of those most culpable.

And well he might – he was most definitely there.

http://www.theage.com.au/

As the early dawn began to light up Beijing on the morning of 4th June 20 years ago, the tragic scene on the left was a shocking reality for the staff at hospitals all over the city.

Unless you adhere to the CCP handbook, that is; in which case nothing happened and anything that suggests otherwise must be hidden at all costs.

In a country where filial piety is valued highly, one would think that a man attempting to visit his ailing parents would be lauded. But instead of allowing human compassion to win the day, the Chinese government decided to detain him without charge. The reason? He was in Beijing in 1989 for the event that never happened.

This report from Yahoo News gives more details:

BEIJING – An exiled Chinese dissident and a leading figure in the 1989 pro-democracy movement has been detained trying to enter mainland China from Hong Kong and held without charge for more than six months, his family said Wednesday.

The phone call from police was the first official acknowledgment of Zhou’s detention. Shenzhen officials repeatedly denied having him in custody, Sufen said from the provincial capital of Chengdu.

It was the second time Zhou Yongjun, a permanent U.S. resident, has been detained while trying to enter China to visit his family. He spent more than two years in a Chinese labor camp in the late 1990s after being detained in Shenzhen, a southeastern city next to Hong Kong.

Zhou’s elder sister, Zhou Sufen, said Wednesday that her brother disappeared in October last year after entering the mainland from Hong Kong. Police informed her Monday that her brother had been transferred from a detention center in Shenzhen to Suining city in the family’s home province of Sichuan.

What is wrong with those fuckers?

I know, I know; it comes as no surprise that they behave in this way, and yet I cling to the expectation that sooner or later they’ll react in a less thuggish and infantile manner. It looks like it’s going to be later. Much later.

Update

The latest of The China Beat’s excellent series of excerpts taken from Phil Cunningham’s forthcoming Tiananmen Moon is now available. Well worth a visit.