mercredi 31 décembre 2014
mardi 30 décembre 2014
Not in our interests
EDITORIAL
Published: 30 Dec 2014
Published: 30 Dec 2014
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was enthusiastic about China after his recent, brief trip to the Middle Kingdom. He felt China offers lessons to the world, and can serve as a model. He isn't wrong. There are plenty of admirable traits about both Chinese culture and the Chinese government's drive to excel. There is one field, however, in which China serves more as a bad example than a model, and on which the prime minister is wrong to ally Thailand with China.
The day after Gen Prayut returned from his overnight Beijing visit last week, China announced he had agreed to a joint effort to combat illegal immigration. That is quite a misleading way to put it. China wants Thailand to forget its history of welcoming distressed travellers. China is embarrassed by the current outflow of Uighurs from its northwestern region of Xinjiang. It wants Thai help to mitigate that embarrassment — and along the way to take global blame for mistreatment of the illegal immigrants.
China is one of the world's worst violators of human rights. But its general record of repression, violence and Big Brother-style surveillance of so-called dissidents and democrats is benign compared with its policies in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Most of the Xinjiang area is under harsh military-directed rule. Calling it "martial law" understates what is really going on, because the special regime in Xinjiang is in no way comparable to the relatively sympathetic martial law situation in Thailand.
On the day Beijing announced that Gen Prayut intends to cooperate in combating Uighur emigration, Chinese border guards encountered a group of the Muslim people at the Vietnamese frontier. The soldiers challenged the Uighurs under a law that forbids "religious extremists" from leaving China. The Uighurs objected, so the Chinese troops killed one person and arrested all the others.
This is so non-Thai that one struggles with the concept. A group of Chinese citizens — Muslims from the Xinjiang region — wanted to leave China. The army stopped them, killing one and arresting the others. The last time that Thai troops killed a group of people who were trying to leave the country was ... never. According to Beijing, Gen Prayut has agreed to side with the Chinese government in actions like this — actions neither he nor any Thai national, political or military leader would ever employ.
Part of China's push for Thai cooperation in using extreme violence against migrants is Beijing's knowledge of the group of Uighurs now staying uneasily in the South. Because of their well-founded fear of being sent back to China, the group has been secretive about its origins and destination. The Uighurs are openly fearful of attempts by the Chinese consulate in Songkhla to interview them. China insists they must be returned to face legal proceedings, and it is unfortunate that Thai authorities are likely to do just that.
It must be hoped that Gen Prayut will seriously consider the consequences if he accedes to Chinese pressure to "cooperate". Acting as China's partner or proxy in stomping on the rights of helpless migrants will bring heavy criticism against his government, and against Thailand.
China does not need Thailand's help to be an economic power, a proud country with a rapidly improving standard of living. It will prosper without Thailand returning dozens or hundreds of emigrants. Authorities in Beijing should carefully contemplate why China has become a country that citizens want to flee, instead of a beacon of hope and sanctuary for the oppressed and downtrodden.
Note to “The Diplomat” and Shannon Tiezzi: Uyghur is Not a Dialect of Chinese
by Bruce Humes
December 28, 2014
December 28, 2014
In her Dec 24 analysis of a document designed to guide China’s future ethnic policies, China’s Prescription for ‘Improving Ethnic Work’, Shannon Tiezzi makes a reference to “local dialects”:
noted for Foreign Policy, though, such well-meaning directives are often disregarded by local officials. “Han officials are encouraged by official directives to learn Uyghur, but, despite the availability of excellent Uyghur-Chinese textbooks, it is rare for any of them to make it past the level of ‘Hello,’” Palmer writes.
No doubt Palmer’s observation is correct. But Tiezzi’s use of Uyghur as an example, and use of the term “local dialects,” are both very unfortunate.
First of all, Uyghur is not a Sinitic language or a dialect of Mandarin. It is a member of the Turkic language family.
The term “local dialects” is indeed used in the English-language Xinhua news item to which Tiezzi refers(Minority Officials). However, in a longer Chinese Xinhua commentary widely available on the Internet (意见),the actual reference is 在民族地区工作的汉族干部应学习掌握少数民族语言文字. This clearly means the (written and spoken) native languages of indigenous ethnic minorities. Han cadres are being urged to learn such languages, not a dialect of Chinese.
While some ethnic groups no longer widely speak their own language, millions of their member do, particularly Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians and Zhuang. According to Wikipedia (Languages of China), the spoken languages of nationalities that are a part of the PRC belong to at least nine families. While specialists may debate how “close” they are to Mandarin in syntax, etc., the fact is that speakers of standard Chinese simply cannot understand or read these languages without training. To do so, they would have to invest the same amount of intense study time you or I would need to master a foreign language, i.e., several years.
Therefore, referring to them as “local dialects” is quite misleading, and coincides with Beijing’s desire to downplay the profile and inherent value of its indigenous languages.
Tiezzi should know better. She holds an A.M. from Harvard in East Asian Regional Studies, and has studied at Tsinghua U in Beijing.
Regisseur in China wegen Dokumentarfilm verurteilt
Peking – Der chinesische Filmregisseur Shen Yongping ist Angaben aus China zufolge wegen einer Dokumentation über die mangelnde Rechtsstaatlichkeit seines Landes zu einem Jahr Gefängnis verurteilt worden. Das Chaoyang-Bezirksgericht in Peking habe den Film als “illegale Geschäftstätigkeit” gewertet, sagte ein Anwalt des Verurteilten am Dienstag.
Bitte, klicken Sie hier, um den ganzen Artikel zu lesen:
Zugang gesperrt: China blockiert Googles E-Mail-Dienst Gmail
Der Nachrichtenverkehr war bereits am Freitag stark zurückgegangen. Am Samstag kam er fast völlig zum Erliegen, wie am Montag aus dem Transparenzbericht des US-Internet-Unternehmens hervorging.
Bitte, klicken Sie hier, um den ganzen Artikel zu lesen:
Respecting diversity
A Uyghur family walks through the old section of Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on May 30, 2014. Photo: Cui Meng/GT.
By Bai Tiantian – I landed in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in early May, shortly after a bombing at an Urumqi train station.
I was on assignment to report the terror attack, the motive behind it and the aftershock felt by the community.
For me, Xinjiang is a distant land. I have no friends or relatives from the area and had no personal ties with a Uyghur before this trip.
I felt like an outsider during my entire stay.
But I talked to as many locals as I could, and constantly observed. I watched locals chat on the bus, street vendors barbecuing lamb skewers and shoppers browsing head scarves. Yet I felt I knew nothing about them.
While reporting on the attack had its challenges, the real difficulty was understanding the reasons behind the bombing and predicting its consequences.
In the middle of my trip, I received a call from my editor, who asked me to report on passport policies for Uyghurs.
My interviews were unfruitful; I was shuttled between departments and passed off between officials.
Feeling dejected, I was sitting in the exit and entry office of the local police when I met Patigul (Pseudonym), a Uyghur woman working at a local hospital who was waiting to receive her passport.
Of all the Uyghur women I have met, Patigul, who has a master’s degree from a local medical school, ranks among the most educated. Her father passed away many years ago. Her mother, a strong Uyghur woman, raised three children on her own and worked very hard at a local factory to make sure her children had received the best education she could provide.
“Things were different when my children were little,” Patigul’s mother said. “I would leave my kids at my ethnic Han neighbor’s apartment when I worked a night shift. My Han neighbor’s children also ran in and out of our apartment and frequently dined with us.”
“But after the attacks, people grew more defensive and always kept themselves on guard,” she said.
Patigul’s family has always been close to ethnic Hans. For years, Patigul’s younger brother has been sponsoring a poor Han family in their community, bringing them flour, oil and other daily supplies. Patigul’s mother showed me a picture of her son receiving an award from the district government for his deeds. However instead of pride, she expressed concern.
“Other Uyghur people are calling us traitors. They ask us, ‘Why do you help the Hans but not your own people? Are you not one of us?’ My son believed that he was doing good but the others, some of our relatives included, think otherwise.”
Patigul’s family is not alone when it comes to pressure from Uyghur society. In southern Xinjiang’s Hotan, the number of young Uyghur Party members is drastically declining.
“Joining the Party would mean to give up their Islamic belief. Many people feel that’s unacceptable. Even if they do, the amount of pressure from the Hotan community, which is one of the most conservative in the region, would make it impossible for them to carry on their work,” a source close to the matter said.
The Communist Party of China is officially atheist and requires its members to conform.
Like many other Uyghurs I have met, Patigul’s mother felt that the more important job positions are controlled by the Hans and Uyghurs are at a competitive disadvantage.
In our conversation, she repeatedly mentioned that no matter how hard her son works, promotions always go to his Han coworkers.
Some Hans I met also said they feel mistreated.
“Government policies are tilted toward the Uyghurs. The score requirements for Uyghur students to get into a first-tier universities are much lower than those for Han students in Xinjiang. Local Uyghur officials have better chances of getting promoted than their Han coworkers. Even Uyghur criminals are treated with more leniency, as authorities often fear a harsh verdict might incite ‘ethnic conflict,’” said a local Han official from Aksu prefecture.
Travel in the region has become a nuisance for everyone.
Flights in and out of Xinjiang require extra security checks.
IDs for Xinjiang residents, which usually start with the number 65, are more closely scrutinized at hotels and transportation stations.
Anxiety has been quietly growing, and frequently surfaces online.
Reporters are extremely careful not to imply that there is a connection between terrorists and Xinjiang in order to avoid enraging Xinjiang readers.
One Weibo post in December that read “Xinjiang thieves stole my bag” was severely criticized as angry and defensive Xinjiang netizens lashed out, asking “Are there no thieves in other parts of China?!”
Both Hans and Uyghurs living in Xinjiang see themselves as victims of the terror attacks, while the rest of the nation labels them as perpetrators.
In my days in Urumqi, when I was not out interviewing people, I spent a lot of time wandering in the Uyghur communities.
I went shopping at a bazaar where the wife of a scarf merchant from Hotan, whose was covered head to toe by a black gown, taught me how to properly tie a head scarf, or hijab. I learned the correct way to wear a Uyghur hat, and picked up a few salutations in Uyghur.
I began to admire the good qualities in Uyghurs.
Rich or poor, the Uyghurs I saw dressed properly and looked dignified. They respect their elders and follow their traditions.
The local government has been trying to stop the city from becoming segregated by discouraging Han from selling their properties and moving from Uyghur communities. But many still leave.
I asked Patigul’s mother what has been the biggest impact of the terror attacks on her life.
“People stop trusting each other. Not only just Hans and Uyghurs. Uyghurs stop trusting each other,” she said.
Turkey's diplomatic steps save lives of Uyghur refugees in Thailand
Thanks to diplomatic actions taken by Turkey and the United Nations, some 300 Uyghur refugees in Thailand will not be sent to China, from where they had escaped and face death if they return. Seyit Tümtürk, the vice president of the World Uyghur Congress, visited the captured refugees during his visit to Thailand. He told media that Turkey had taken the necessary steps to bring nearly 300 Uyghurs to Turkey, who were found at a human smuggling camp in Thailand a few months ago.
Stating that the Turkish embassy officials in Thailand are closely following the case, Tümtürk said China's pressure prevents the Thai government from sending Turkic Uyghurs to Turkey. He also expressed his concerns regarding the democratic gap caused by the military coup ruling in Thailand and said the current administration might send refugees back to China.
The HRW has applauded a request by Turkey to have a group of Uyghurs discovered in a Thai border camp in March relocated to Ankara, highlighting the country's role in providing them with consular services. Phil Robertson, the deputy director of the organization's Asia Division, stated that the organization believed they should be allowed the freedom to go.
"Thai officials have informed us that there is a human smuggling situation going on and say they will closely investigate the issue," Turkish Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu said recently. "I brought the issue to the notice of the Thai foreign minister in New York and the Chinese foreign minister in Beijing as well, and told them that Turkey wants to shelter those Uyghurs," he said.
Thai immigration police detained dozens of people at a human smuggling camp in southern Thailand in March, who were later declared as illegal immigrants. Chinese officials in Thailand had identified the group as Uyghurs from China's northwestern restive province of Xinjiang. The illegal immigrants, however, claimed to be Turkish nationals, fearing that they could face death if sent back to China.
"Since the government of Turkey has stated they are prepared to receive them, it's hard for us to understand why Thailand doesn't just allow this group to be repatriated to Turkey," Robertson said.
Human rights organizations, activists and analysts have said that Uyghurs have been subject to religious, cultural and language restrictions, which have led them to flee China and helped fuel their demands for a separate state. They have frequently fallen victim to people smugglers as they look to seek a better life.
Hidayet Oğuzhan, Chairman of Eastern Turkistan Education and Solidarity Foundation, recently told Daily Sabah that Uyghurs appreciate Turkey's efforts to shelter those in Thailand and added that if those who fled Xinjiang get deported to China, they could all face death sentences. "We have had the opportunity to speak with some of the people in Thailand and they told us that their families are being pressured by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang to sign documents, seeking their return back to China. Their life will be in danger if they return," Oğuzhan said.
Gmail : il est “peu vraisemblable” que le blocage vienne de la Chine
Depuis quelques jours, les utilisateurs de Gmail en Chine n’ont plus accès à leur boîte mail. Blocage ? censure ? Un quotidien officiel dément.
Depuis le 26 décembre, les utilisateurs de Gmail en Chine n’ont pas accès à leur boîte mail. “A l’étranger, on a été prompt à dénoncer un ‘renforcement du contrôle d’Internet’, note le quotidien officiel Huanqiu Shibao. Mais ces difficultés peuvent venir tout aussi bien de Chine, de Google lui-même que d’une combinaison de causes”.
Depuis que Google a retiré son moteur de recherche du pays, en 2010, les relations entre l’entreprise et la Chine ont été ténues, souligne le journal. Mais “le retrait de Google était le fait de Google, et non celui d’une prétendue attitude de fermeture de la part de la Chine”.
“Le blocage doit venir de Google”
“Pour les raisons que chacun connaît, tandis qu’elle maintient une attitude de grande ouverture vis-à-vis de l’occident, la Chine a le devoir de préserver sa sécurité nationale. La sécurité de l’Internet chinois et la sécurité idéologique sont des considérations inévitables lorsque nous sommes en relation avec les grandes compagnies technologiques occidentales.”
Mais l’ouverture est “une position ferme de la Chine”, insiste le journal. Aussi est-il “peu vraisemblable que la Chine ait fermé l’accès aux services de Google uniquement pour des raisons de sécurité”. La raison du blocage doit plutôt être technique et venir de Google. Et si la Chine était à l’origine du blocage, c’est qu’il y aurait de “nouvelles et sérieuses raisons de sécurité”.
Les relations sino-américaines sont complexes. “Nous devons être certains que la politique liée à Internet en Chine a sa logique. Elle est déterminée en fonction des intérêts fondamentaux de la société chinoise, écrit le quotidien. La Chine ne saurait se fermer. Chacun sait que ce ne serait pas dans nos intérêts”.
China police fire on Tibetans after self-immolations: rights group
(Reuters) - Chinese police have fired on Tibetan protesters demonstrating after a series of deadly self-immolations by people from Tibet campaigning against Chinese rule of their Himalayan region, a rights group said on Friday.
A monk was shot in the arm after police used teargas and opened fire during a clash with Tibetans outside a police station in the western province of Sichuan, which borders Tibet, British-based Free Tibet said in a statement.
The group did not say when the violence happened and police in the area could not be reached for comment.
Human rights activists say China tramples on religious freedom and culture in Tibet, which it has ruled strictly since People's Liberation Army troops "peacefully liberated" the region in 1950.
China rejects such criticism, saying its rule ended serfdom in Tibet and brought development to a backward, poverty-stricken region.
Tibetans in Tibet and in other parts of China have in recent years been protesting against Chinese rule by setting themselves on fire after pouring petrol over themselves.
In 2012, more than 80 Tibetans staged such fiery protests, according to rights groups. Most of them are believed to have died.
The number of self-immolations has fallen in the past couple of years but a 37-year-old Tibetan monk set himself on fire outside a police station in Sichuan's Dawu county on Tuesday, the third fatal self-immolation in eight days, Free Tibet said.
A 20-year-old woman set herself on fire on Monday in Ngaba County in Sichuan, and last week, a 34-year-old men set himself alight in front of a police station in the western province of Gansu, which is also adjacent to Tibet.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
He has called the self-immolations "sad" but "understandable". He says he does not encourage them and has questioned their effectiveness.
China denounces the Dalai Lama as a separatist but he says he is seeking autonomy for Tibet.
The Dalai Lama told a French broadcaster last week that hardliners in the Chinese government were holding back President Xi Jinping from granting Tibet genuine autonomy.
(Reporting By Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Robert Birsel)
lundi 29 décembre 2014
La persécution des Ouïgours en Chine (1)
http://www.franceinter.fr/emission-rendez-vous-avec-x-la-persecution-des-ouigours-en-chine-1
Chine-Japon, l'affrontement
http://www.franceinter.fr/emission-la-marche-de-lhistoire-chine-japon-laffrontement
Le demi-monde très à cheval
http://www.franceinter.fr/blog-autopsie-dune-photo-le-demi-monde-tres-a-cheval
La privatisation de la chambre
http://www.franceinter.fr/emission-la-marche-de-lhistoire-la-privatisation-de-la-chambre
dimanche 28 décembre 2014
Search for AirAsia Flight Is Suspended After Nightfall
BANGKOK — Search-and-rescue teams were mobilized from across Southeast Asia on Sunday after a commercial airliner with 162 people on board lost contact with ground controllers off the coast of Borneo, a search effort that evoked a distressingly familiar mix of grief and mystery nine months after a Malaysia Airlines jetliner disappeared over the Indian Ocean.
This plane, too, had Malaysian connections: The Airbus A320-200 was operated by the Indonesian affiliate of AirAsia, a regional budget carrier based in Malaysia.
And while it seemed premature to make such comparisons, the Indonesian authorities could not explain Sunday why the AirAsia jet disappeared from radar screens about 40 minutes after leaving the Indonesian city of Surabaya around 5:30 a.m.
By nightfall, more than 12 hours later, searchers facing bad weather had found no sign of the wreckage and the search was called off for the night, Indonesian officials said.
The weather along the path of Flight QZ8501 to Singapore was cloudy, and a weather monitoring service based in the United States reported a number of lightning strikes along the way. But the monsoon conditions did not seem insurmountable for a modern airliner.
The route was a well-traveled part of the Indonesian archipelago; six other aircraft were in the vicinity of Flight QZ8501 when it disappeared according to data by Flightradar24.com, an organization that tracks aircraft.
Boats and planes from at least three countries had joined the search along a 100-mile stretch of the Java Sea near the island of Belitung, between the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the plane’s last known location. The search was to continue Monday morning.
Shortly before contact was lost on Sunday, the cockpit crew informed air traffic controllers in Jakarta that they were planning to rise to 38,000 from 32,000 feet to avoid a cloud, Djoko Murjatmodjo, the acting director general of Air Transport at Indonesia’s Ministry of Transportation, told reporters at a news conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Path of AirAsia Flight QZ8501
Contact with the plane was lost about 40 minutes after takeoff. FULL GRAPHIC »
MALAYSIA
MALAYSIA
Kuala Lumpur
2 hours, 10 min. after takeoff
Scheduled landing
in Singapore
INDONESIA
Estimated position
when AirNav Indonesia
lost radar contact
APPROX.
FLIGHT PATH
Java
Sea
Indian Ocean
Jakarta
5:20 a.m.
Scheduled takeoff
from Surabaya
300 miles
“At the moment, we don’t know where the exact location is, except that this morning at 6:17, we lost contact,” Mr. Djoko said. The Singapore authorities said contact was lost at 6:24 a.m. Jakarta time; the discrepancy has not been explained.
Mr. Djoko said the authorities had not detected any emergency distress beacons that were normally triggered by an accident.
“Therefore we cannot assume anything yet,” he said.
The newspaper Kompas in Indonesia quoted Mr. Djoko as saying that the plane’s request to divert from its flight path was approved but that air traffic controllers denied the request to ascend to 38,000 feet “because of traffic.” He did not elaborate.
The paper also quoted Syamsul Huda, director for aviation and meteorology at the Indonesian state weather agency, as saying that there were “many clouds along the route,” including large cumulonimbus clouds.
Earth Networks, a company that tracks weather conditions across the globe, said it had recorded a number of lightning strikes “near the path” of Flight 8501 on Sunday morning between 6:09 and 6:20.
While it is rare for a lightning strike to cause serious structural damage that threatens the safety of an aircraft, it can disrupt navigation systems, such as magnetic compasses. A lightning flash, particularly at night, can also momentarily disorient the pilots.
The turbulence associated with a big storm can sometimes be severe and sudden shifts in wind direction could disrupt the airflow through a jet engine, potentially causing it to shut down. However, a shutdown of all engines in such a situation would be highly unlikely and the Airbus A320 is certified to fly up to three hours on a single engine, in compliance with global aviation safety regulations.
The Malaysian founder of the airline, Tony Fernandes, said in a Twitter message on Sunday that he was traveling to Surabaya where most of the plane’s 155 passengers were from.
Indonesia sent at least three warships and five aircraft to search for the plane, Malaysia deployed three boats and three aircraft, and Singapore said it sent a C-130 plane to assist in the search. Australia also offered to lend ships and aircraft to the effort.
AirAsia said in its statement that the passengers included 16 children and one infant. A crew of two pilots and five cabin crew members were also on board.
The passengers and crew were listed as 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans, one Singaporean, one Malaysian, one Briton and a French citizen, AirAsia said.
The captain was identified as Irianto, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. France’s Foreign Ministry said the French citizen was the co-pilot.
Airbus said in a statement Sunday that the aircraft was delivered to the airline in 2008, and it had flown around 13,600 flights.
The missing plane capped a disastrous year for Malaysian airlines. In addition to the Malaysia Airlines jet lost over the Indian Ocean in March, which has yet to be found, another Malaysia Airlines jet was shot downover eastern Ukraine in July. Both of those planes were Boeing 777-200ERs.
But the AirAsia plane’s disappearance was perhaps even more rattling for Indonesia, which has seen explosive growth in air travel despite a troublesome safety record and a string of plane accidents over the years.
While many accidents have not caused fatalities, the recurring headlines and images of dazed passengers swimming ashore have raised concerns abroad that Indonesia’s air safety regulations have failed to keep pace with the industry’s growth.
Since 2007, the European Union has barred dozens of carriers from Indonesia from its skies, in an effort to pressure local regulators to shore up air safety standards. The majority of airlines that appear on the European Union’s so-called aviation blacklist — which includes airlines from several African countries — do not operate flights to Europe. However, travel agencies across the 28-member bloc are required to inform all European passengers who have plans to travel on a carrier listed on the aviation blacklist.
AirAsia, one of the world’s fastest-growing airlines, has an excellent safety record. Its Indonesian subsidiary is not included on the European safety list, which was most recently updated this month. However, a budget long-haul affiliate, Indonesia AirAsia X, is among the airlines listed.
The missing aircraft last underwent scheduled maintenance on Nov. 16, AirAsia said.
AirAsia waited more than four hours to announce on its Facebook page that the aircraft was missing. The airline did not explain the delay.
American officials said Sunday that no assistance had yet been requested by the Malaysian government or any of the other authorities conducting the search, but that the United States stood ready to help.
Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said that President Obama, who is vacationing in Hawaii, had been briefed on the search for the plane, and that “White House officials will continue to monitor the situation.”
In the hours after the plane was reported missing, American law enforcement agents and intelligence analysts began combing through recent collections of phone intercepts, Internet postings and other communications but found no indications of a terrorist threat or other foul play, officials said.
On Sunday, Malaysia Airlines posted a message on its Twitter account: “#staystrong @AirAsia — Our thoughts and prayers are with all family and friends of those onboard QZ8501.”
The Elusive Chinese Dream
In 1989, Chinese cities were rocked by huge protests, most notably the Tiananmen Square crackdown, while in Europe, the Berlin Wall fell and talk of a global Marxist-Leninist extinction began. Many observers, both in China and abroad, assumed that the Chinese Communist Party was on its last legs.
How wrong we were. A quarter-century later, the party — the world’s largest political organization, with 86 million members — seems as robust as ever. China’s geopolitical clout is greater than it has ever been in modern times, and the size of its economy has just surpassed that of the United States.
The party has, in President Xi Jinping, a strong leader who often strikes a supremely self-confident tone. He makes bold claims to islands in the East and South China Seas that neighboring countries insist are theirs. He chides Mikhail S. Gorbachev for having failed to be “manly” enough to hold the Soviet empire together. And he encourages the state media to promulgate the idea that the “Chinese dream” — a grand process of national resurgence that will return China to the position of global centrality it enjoyed before a “century of humiliation” at the hands of the West, and Japan, between 1842 and 1949 — is about to be realized. And he insists that, when it is, this will satisfy not just his aspirations but those of “each Chinese person.”
Mr. Xi’s self-assurance is not surprising, but his words and deeds betray a deep vein of insecurity. The talk of 1.3 billion people dreaming the same “Chinese dream” can’t hide the fact that China’s leaders continue to be plagued by nightmares not unlike those that haunted them in 1989.
Under Mr. Xi the party has carried out a fierce crackdown aimed at limiting dissent, often described as the harshest since 1989. It has tightened control over the press and social media. It has relentlessly censored coverage of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. It has prosecuted activist lawyers who favor peaceful reform within the existing system. It has scrutinized the teaching of history in classrooms. And it has ramped up scare tactics against members of restive minority groups, such as the largely Muslim Uighur community — staging swift, secret trials and public executions of those accused of terrorism, and sentencing a moderate Uighur scholar to life in prison.
To understand these actions, we need to look more closely at what exactly bombastic talk of a shared Chinese dream means — and what it obscures. Mr. Xi’s dream envisions a country that has completed a process of economic and geopolitical resurgence that began with Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. In this fantasy, a modern, stable and unified China has resumed its traditional place as East Asia’s dominant power, led by a party that, despite its recent focus on rapid growth and its roots in an ideology imported from abroad, has reconnected so fully with China’s deep past that it has become natural for people of Chinese descent around the world, from Macau to Manhattan, to look to Beijing for authoritative pronouncements about the relevance of Confucian classics for contemporary problems. (The irony of reviving Confucius, who for years was denounced as the intellectual wellspring of feudalism and backwardness, is lost on few Chinese.)
It was under Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, in office from 2002 to 2012, that growth rates soared, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, with their high-tech venues and soaring ceremonies, wowed global audiences, and China launched a flashy space program. Mr. Xi has gone further even than Mr. Hu in trying to show that symbols of the old and the new, the classical and the revolutionary, Confucius and Mao, can be synthesized.
If the dream’s realization is close at hand, what is there to fear? Plenty, it turns out. One specter that continues to cause anxiety is a possible recurrence of the wave of protests that erupted in 1989. Newer fears include a Chinese variant of the Arab Spring and a possible economic crisis, triggered by a collapse of the inflated housing bubble, that would undermine the party’s basis of legitimacy: its ability to steadily raise living standards.
Perhaps the most urgent fear is this: a sense among even those Chinese whose living standards have soared that frantic development has come at too high a price. Never in history have the promise and peril of head-spinning modernization been so apparent within the space of a single lifetime. A country where the authorities call the air in the capital “fine” on days when nearby skyscrapers are completely shrouded from view, where waterways are suddenly and inexplicably clogged by enormous numbers of pig carcasses, where once-revered elders live in rural poverty and isolation — this is the stuff of nightmares. The party’s anxiety over these bad dreams can be seen in many things — in its calls for official think tanks to study carefully the “color revolutions” that toppled East European and Central Asian autocrats, and in the suggestion that party cadres read de Tocqueville’s account of the French Revolution, to ensure that China avoids the mistakes of the ancien régime.
Beijing’s handling of the Hong Kong situation was the latest illustration of the party’s fear that its grip on the national rejuvenation package is weaker than outsiders sometimes imagine. What was striking was not just the party’s refusal to make concessions to the protesters, but the lengths to which it went to control information about, and even photographs of, the Hong Kong protests from flowing into the mainland — and to present a locally rooted popular movement as the brainchild of foreign conspirators. Officials told a British delegation planning to investigate the situation in Hong Kong that it would be barred from setting foot in the former British colony, which typically does not require Western visitors to obtain visas.
Hong Kong’s protesters often spoke of their attachment to a distinctive and robustly cosmopolitan civic identity, as opposed to any kind of Chinese national one. And yet the symbolic challenge they presented to Mr. Xi was very significant. The eclectic imagery of their movement — in which quotations from international figures like John Lennon were placed beside statements by Chinese writers like Lu Xun — showed that there were other, perhaps more compelling, ways to make elements of China’s culture and past speak to 21st-century concerns than the mainland’s heavy-handed patriotism. It made the Communist Party profoundly uneasy to watch Hong Kong youth show such creativity and determination and demonstrate so clearly how misleading it is for Mr. Xi to claim that “each Chinese person” is capable of dreaming only the party’s authoritarian dream. Thus the lurch from bravado to paranoia.
One of Chairman Mao’s favorite words was “contradictions,” and today’s China is riddled with them: rule by a party that is nominally Communist, but embraces consumerism and welcomes entrepreneurs into its ranks; widespread unease about the environmental, social and even moral consequences of growth; deep insecurity in the ranks of a party that outwardly brims with confidence. The dark side of the Chinese dream — the negative fantasy that haunts China’s psyche — explains why Mr. Xi, the strongest Chinese leader since Deng, is so skittish, so ready to jump at shadows.
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and the author, most recently, of “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.”
vendredi 26 décembre 2014
jeudi 25 décembre 2014
Chinese Authorities Kill ‘Religious Extremist,’ Detain 21 Others
Authorities said a group of 22 ‘religious extremists’ tried to cross into Vietnam through the Chinese border town of Pingxiang in Guangxi province.
RFA
Police in southwest China’s Guangxi province shot dead one person and detained 21 others who were part of a group of “religious extremists” seeking to cross into neighboring Vietnam, state media said Wednesday.
The report, carried by the official Xinhua news agency, did not identify the members of the group or say where they were from, but Chinese authorities frequently blame religious extremism for violence involving ethnic Uyghur Muslims from China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Xinhua said police had received a tip the group would attempt to cross into Vietnam through the Chinese border town of Pingxiang and sent a team to intercept them.
Other state media reports said one member of the group had stabbed a police officer as they were detained on Sunday night and was shot dead by authorities.
The Associated Press cited a statement by the official website for Guangxi’s Chongzuo city as saying that police reinforcements helped detain the 21 others, adding that the policeman who was attacked was recovering at a local hospital.
The Xinjiang region, which is home to millions of Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, has seen an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012, and which China has blamed on terrorists and Islamist insurgents seeking to establish an independent state.
But rights groups accuse Beijing of heavy-handed rule in Xinjiang, including violent police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people.
‘Extreme force’
Rights groups and exile Uyghur groups on Wednesday questioned reports that members of the group were religious extremists and said Chinese authorities may have used excessive force in detaining them.
“I’m very concerned about the plight and the ultimate fate of those held … [by] Chinese police, and the fact that one of them was shot indicates that the Chinese police used extremely harsh measures in the process of detaining them,” Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) told RFA’s Mandarin Service, suggesting members of the group were ethnic Uyghurs.
“It shows that the Chinese authorities do not shy away from using extreme force in their efforts to prevent Uyghurs from escaping China. Also, Chinese authorities resort to using extreme force when dealing with Uyghurs—an unbearable … reality Uyghurs must face.”
Raxit said that the Chinese government was likely to give members of the group “very hard sentences … to suit its own political purposes.”
He said the Chinese government should refrain from labeling all Uyghurs attempting to leave China as religious extremists and called on Beijing to reconsider its policies in Xinjiang, which he said were driving members of the ethnic group to flee their homeland despite the dangers they face.
Southeast Asia route
Henryk Szadziewski, senior researcher of the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, said Sunday’s shooting death might have been an “extrajudicial killing” by Chinese authorities.
“There exists the possibility … that excess force was used against the Uyghur trying to flee China, and in order to cover their tracks, the Chinese have labeled this person a religious extremist,” he said.
“Even if this person was a religious extremist, it doesn’t give them the right to shoot him. They’re also claiming there was an attack with a knife, but it seems like a case of unreasonable force has been applied here.”
He noted that Uyghurs fleeing China had been increasingly crossing into Southeast Asia, noting that nearly 300 Uyghurs have been held in immigration detention camps in Thailand since they were discovered during a raid on a suspected people-smuggling camp in the south of the country ten months ago.
On Wednesday, China and Thailand agreed to step up their cooperation in the fight against illegal immigration and terrorism, according to a joint communique issued by the Chinese government, and Szadziewski said the pact indicated Beijing was “hardening its stance against the [Uyghur] refugees.”
There was no direct reference to the Uyghurs in the Chinese foreign ministry statement.
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