China delays Internet filter: state media

People use computers at an Internet bar in Beijing

BEIJING (AFP) — China has delayed a plan requiring that all new computers come with a Chinese-made Internet filtering software programme, state media reported Tuesday, hours before it was to take effect.
China had planned to implement the controversial rule beginning Wednesday but it has been postponed, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
"The pre-installation was delayed as some computer producers said such a massive installation demanded extra time," Xinhua said, quoting an unnamed ministry spokesman.
The spokesman did not give a new timetable for the software to be installed.
"The ministry would also keep on soliciting opinions to perfect the pre-installation plan," he was quoted saying.
The move is likely to be hailed by foreign and domestic critics, who have accused the government of trying to increase already tight controls over the Internet.
These claims were rejected by the spokesman, Xinhua said, quoting him as saying assertions in some foreign media that the software was an intrusion of privacy were "groundless" and "irresponsible".
Computer makers had been told that from July 1, they must either pre-install the Green Dam Youth Escort software or include it on a disc accompanying all new personal computers sold in the country.
The United States and European Union, industry groups, Internet freedom advocates and even some Chinese state media reports had criticised the plan as a new threat to Internet freedom in China, which has the world's largest online population at roughly 300 million.
Following the announcement, a US computer trade association welcomed the postponement.
"We're pleased with the delay on this issue that is part of a broader, historic struggle between openness and repression -- not just in China but Iran and North Korea," said Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association.
In Brussels, spokesman Martin Selmayr said the European Commission's standpoint on what it last week called China's intention to "censor the Internet and limit freedom of expression" was unchanged by the delay.
"We maintain our position. We believe that in every country of the world there should be freedom of expression and access to the Internet and we will watch the situation in China," he said.
Beijing has consistently countered that the filter is designed to shelter youngsters from pornography and violence, and give parents control over what their children view online.
China has a history of blocking sites carrying politically sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown on democracy protesters, the banned Falungong spiritual movement, or criticism of the government.
China's Communist Party censors have struggled in recent years to keep pace with an explosion of online content, which is often the only outlet for ordinary Chinese to vent concerns about official corruption and government abuses.
Authorities have typically couched periodic clampdowns in terms of halting the spread of obscene material.
But last week, US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the rule may violate World Trade Organisation regulations.
Researchers at the University of Michigan who examined the software also said it contained serious security vulnerabilities that could allow outside parties to take control of computers running it via remote access.
It added that the software's text filter blocked words that included phrases considered politically sensitive to authorities.
Some Chinese Web users had called for a boycott of all online activities on the July 1 roll-out of the regulation.

A Breach in the Green Dam

Beijing backs down on filtering software.
Iranian protesters have showed the world what a powerful tool the Internet can be against oppression. On the other side of the world we've seen the other end of this tug-of-war, as Chinese censors have had to admit the failures of their plan to impose Internet censorship by fiat.
We're referring to "Green Dam," spy software that Beijing was poised to mandate for all personal computers in China.

That order was supposed to go into effect today, but last night state media announced it was "delayed."

We hope that's code for "will never be implemented," but it's too soon to say.
Green Dam was billed as antipornography software, but it actually does much more. It censors political speech, stores screenshots of users' computers and has the ability to shut down non-Internet applications if a user is typing something it doesn't like.

A California-based software company, Solid Oak, says the software copies portions of its proprietary code and has threatened to sue computer makers that install it. Green Dam is also poorly designed: The porn filter doesn't work well and it has programming flaws that make users of the program susceptible to hacking.
Beijing's change of heart follows intense diplomatic and industry lobbying: On June 24, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke sent a letter of complaint to their Chinese counterparts requesting the Green Dam order be revoked.

They pointed out that the policy raised questions about China's compliance with World Trade Organization rules and put companies in an "untenable position" by requiring them to install flawed software on their machines. The European Union Chamber of Commerce also chimed in earlier this week.
Meanwhile, computer makers and trade associations world-wide signed on to an open letter to Premier Wen Jiabao, asking him to stop the order.

This is rare show of commercial bravery in a country where businesses usually fear to tread on the toes of the government; their demands echoed those of Chinese Internet users, who decried the program as unwieldy and patronizing.
It's too early to tell why Beijing backed down from its plan.

A statement posted on the Web site of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last night defended the software, saying it was compliant with China's WTO commitments and pointing out that users had the option of deactivating the program. The statement claimed the delay was permitted because manufacturers had not had enough time to prepare.
Maybe so.

But it's also possible that China's Internet censors are learning that when it comes to controlling online dialogue they are fighting a losing battle.

Chinese exports could crush fragile markets

By Ben Simpfendorfer
Talk of a “G2” is fashionable, and with good reason.

The trip by Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, to Beijing last month underscored the substantial economic and financial interests at stake in the US-China relationship. His trip also signalled growing co-ordination between the two sides. The US avoided criticising an undervalued renminbi, while China committed itself to the dollar and its massive holdings of US government debt.
This change in focus is reflected at an institutional level in China. There is a growing body of research, for example, published by academic and official institutions, looking at China’s purchases of US government debt and the implications of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing. There is also anecdotal evidence that the same institutions are focusing more attention on G2-related issues at the expense of other countries.
The change makes sense, as the economic crisis has provided China with an opportunity to assert its economic influence.

The push to test renminbi trade settlement, for example, is partly driven by pragmatic interests in reducing exporters’ currency exposure and transaction costs. But it also resonates with an official desire that the currency’s importance to the global economy will grow in line with China’s own economic power.
This shift in attention towards G2 may not last long. There is an equally important, but less well-observed, change taking place.

It is a change that will strain China’s foreign relations with the emerging markets and make the argument for a stronger renminbi even more compelling.
China’s exports to emerging economies have surged. The value of shipments to Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East has risen from $38bn to $192bn (€137bn, £116bn) in the past five years. In fact, China recently overtook the US as the world’s largest exporter to the Middle East.
Indeed, it is increasingly common for Chinese exporters to distinguish between their traditional markets of Europe and the US on the one hand, and China’s domestic market and the emerging markets on the other. So, even as the world looks to China’s market as a potential saviour from today’s economic crisis, Chinese exporters are turning to the emerging markets in the same fashion.
It is not hard to find hard evidence on the ground of the change.

I recently spoke to the Beijing Furniture Manufacturers Association, whose female president donned a black abaya to visit Saudi Arabia in March. She was taking part in just one of many Chinese trade missions to the Middle East. Chinese porcelain sellers in Dubai, meanwhile, talk of importing less blue porcelain, popular with European buyers, and more red, among which is preferred by Arab buyers.
The decision by Chinese exporters to look to the emerging markets in part reflects economic problems at home.

Export manufacturers face intensifying domestic competition. The local media frequently quote factory owners as saying that it is easier to sell goods in other emerging economies than it is at home. So, the rise in China’s exports to countries such as Brazil and Egypt underscores the challenges faced by domestic manufacturing – in particular, overcapacity and thin profit margins.
The policy response to these economic challenges has only accelerated the rise in exports.
The recent hikes in export rebates of value added tax, for example, have typically targeted the type of low-cost goods, such as textiles and furniture, that are popular in the cost-conscious emerging markets. So, whereas VAT export rebates once spurred exports to Europe and the US, especially during the last global downturn in 2001, they are now spurring exports to emerging economies.
However, what is good news for China is not always good news for the rest of the world, as the surge in exports has meant factory closures in emerging economies.
The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry recently noted that two-thirds of small and medium-sized enterprises are suffering from the sudden rise in imports of Chinese capital and consumer goods. Syria’s government imposed tariffs on Chinese textile imports in response to rising factory closures in Aleppo, the country’s historic centre for textile production.
China’s focus on the G2 is important. But its focus on the emerging economies may soon steal the spotlight.
The argument for a stronger renminbi is even more compelling as a result of these changes. Chinese low-cost producers compete more directly with producers in emerging economies, increasing the risks of factory closures and job losses. Moreover, many governments in the emerging markets do not have sufficient fiscal resources to pay unemployment benefits or to fund economic reform.
Watch for China to increase its capital flows to the emerging markets to placate critics. Aid flows are already rising. Private direct investment may follow, especially as a way to circumvent trade protectionist measures. Rebalancing at home will also raise the cost of domestic production and spur more investment abroad, not just in Asia, but further afield.
The G2 is a symbol of China’s rise as an economic power. However, the country’s relations with the emerging world will be more instructive in how it intends to wield that power.

PC makers to miss China’s deadline

By Kathrin Hille in Beijing and Richard Waters in San Francisco
Beijing’s order that all new PCs should include internet filtering software is about to be put to the test, with personal computer makers set to miss a deadline on Wednesday for supplying all new machines with the program.
As a practical matter, it would be several weeks before most new machines available to Chinese purchasers could carry the software, even if China pushes ahead with the order in spite of international consternation, say retail and PC industry experts.
That delay could serve to defuse the issue and provide more time for a face-saving compromise to be found, some observers say. The Chinese authorities “are kind of embarrassed about this, finding a graceful way out of it would be very welcome”, said Rob Enderle, a US PC industry analyst.
Sales staff at several electronics retailers in Beijing visited in recent days said PCs with the software, called Green Dam/Youth Escort, would not be available for another two months.
In May, the ministry of industry and information technology ordered PC makers to pre-install or bundle Green Dam/Youth Escort on all PCs sold in China from July 1.
The order triggered an outcry among the industry and free speech advocates as testing showed the tool, characterised as a parental control program by Beijing, had censorship functions and could make computers vulnerable to spy attacks.
PC makers, wary of opposing the Chinese government, have been dodging questions over whether they plan to comply with the order.
Acer has been the only one to say that it sees no choice but to do so.
Industry associations, such as the Information Technology Industry Council, which heads the lobbying effort against Green Dam, have argued that PC makers cannot comply by July 1.
Retailers echoed that argument on Monday.
“If you buy a PC tomorrow or next week, it will not have Green Dam,” said a young man surnamed Wang selling Hewlett-Packard computers at BuyNow, an electronics retailer in eastern Beijing.
Staff selling Lenovo, Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Acer, Asustek and Founder computers at a branch of Suning, a big electronics retailer in northern Beijing, all said Green Dam-equipped PCs would not be available for about another two months.
An information technology ministry spokesman declined to comment on whether the government would penalise PC makers who failed to comply with the July 1 deadline.
Some retail staff said they did not expect the government to enforce its order strictly.
“You tell me, is China’s enforcement power strong [enough]? They can’t even enforce some laws properly, so forget about some piece of software,” said a clerk at BuyNow in Shanghai in a telephone interview.

China filter software faces tough sell in digital bazaar

By Chris Buckley
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's latest Internet controls have been assailed by rights advocates and Washington, and yet the real challenge to its "Green Dam" plan may be the nation's own computer market, an anarchic digital bazaar.
Starting from Wednesday, the government has ordered that personal computers sold in China must leave manufacturers with Green Dam filter software intended to block obscene images and, critics say, deter political dissent.
Such schemes sound easy enough for a one-party state, and this is just the latest Communist Party initiative to control the Internet, which has about 300 million users in China, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
But a walk through Zhongguancun district in northwest Beijing, hub of the nation's digital market, and the hurdles to such controls seem as numerous as the shops and hawkers selling computers, software and pornography.
For all the domestic and international uproar about Green Dam, many retailers here who will be selling computers packaged with it were either oblivious or dismissive.
"What's Green Dam?," said Wu Baobao, a woman in her 20s who was selling Dell laptops in the raucous Hailong electronics mall.
"When you buy a computer after July 1 it will come with the software," she added after asking a colleague in a neighbouring stall. "But don't worry... we can take it out easily."
Multi-nationals have for years fretted about the inability of the Chinese government to stamp out pirate software sold for a fraction of the cost of legitimate copies.
Now that unruly market may also frustrate censors and ensure Green Dam ends up more often junked or ignored than used.
"The Green Dam plan is a serious violation of market rules. Governments shouldn't impose a particular brand of software," said Mao Shoulong, professor of public policy at Renmin University, just down the road from Zhongguancun.
"But in practice the impact will be limited," said Mao. "It's optional software, and you can't easily control such a fragmented retail sector. Big companies will follow orders, but who can just order around thousands of small ones?"

CHINA'S "SILICON VALLEY"
Zhongguancun in Beijing's university district promotes itself as China's "Silicon Valley." Microsoft, Google and plenty of other digital giants have research labs or big offices there.
But the digital retail sector that has sprung up since the 1980s resembles more of a vast, multi-storey bazaar, with big-name retailers jammed up against stalls and furtive hawkers.
Until the financial crisis hit, business was booming. In 2008, Zhongguancun recorded 60 billion yuan ($8.8 billion) in sales of digital products. That was 4.5 percent more than in 2007, ending a long run of double-digit growth, according to the Zhongguancun Electronic Trade Chamber of Commerce.
The district has 3,147 registered electronics retailers who last year sold 2.4 million personal computers, the Chamber told Reuters. But there may be even more uncounted stalls.
The district has attempted to clean up, and pirate software is not as openly sold as a few years ago. But it is certainly still there, as is the pornography Beijing wants to block.
On street curbs, dozens of people, mostly ragged women clutching babies or small children, approach passersby urgently whispering that they can sell pornographic DVD discs. The babies are meant to deter police from carrying out body searches.
A brisk walk with one of the women through a warren of dirt-floor alleys and run-down brick huts soon brings the prospective customer to stashes of luridly titled videos.
Yang Fuying, a gangly salesman in the Beijing Silicon Valley Computer City, said business was too tough to spare much thought about the government's Green Dam plans.
"Mid-year is always a low season, and the financial crisis has made things worse," said Yang. "We'll have to tell customers about the software, but I don't think it will have much impact. You can either tear it out or dump the disc. So what?"

Asia’s Biggest Iron Deposit Found in China’s Liaoning Province

Bloomberg -- Asia’s biggest iron ore deposit, with reserves of more than 3 billion metric tons, was found in China’s northern province of Liaoning, according to a local government.
The Dataigou deposit, located near Benxi city, has material with iron content of between 25 percent and 62 percent, the Benxi government said in an e-mailed statement, confirming a China News Agency report. Deposits were found from 1.2 kilometers (0.7 miles) below ground to 2.015 kilometers.
China, the biggest buyer of iron ore, wants to lift output to reduce imports from Vale SA, Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd. The deposit is deeper than any Chinese mines in production, according to Zou Jian, a consultant and former chairman of the China Metallurgical Mining Enterprise Association.
“Production costs for this mine could be high because the deposit is very deep,” said Hu Kai, an analyst at Umetal Research Institute. “It can’t compete with Australian imports, which are cheaper because they have higher grades and are above ground.”
Angang Steel Co., China’s second-largest listed steelmaker, rose 7.4 percent to close at 14.18 yuan in Shenzhen today. Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., the largest mill, rose 3 percent to 7.20 yuan in Shanghai. Bengang Steel Plates Co. rose 10 percent, the daily limit, to 7.48 yuan in Shenzhen.

Angang Benefits
The find is “very long term good news for Angang,” Cazenove Asia Ltd. said in a note to clients. “Its parent already has the largest iron ore reserves in China, and this potentially doubles it.” The mine could start in four years, the note said.
The Anben Steel Group, parent of Angang and Benxi Iron & Steel Group, is the nearest steelmaker to the deposit, Zou said. Still, “it’s up to the central government to decide on whether to allow Anben to develop the mine,” he said.
Angang board secretary Fu Jihui and Benxi Iron and Steel Group’s spokesman Liu Dahong said they didn’t have any information regarding the new deposit.
The deposit, which contains both magnetite and hematite ore, is equivalent to the combination of all the iron ore reserves in Liaoning’s Anshan and Benxi areas, today’s statement said.
The exploration team drilled 17 holes, of which 12 found iron ore. The area covered was about 4 kilometers in length and 3 kilometers in width, the statement said.

Higher Grade
Chinese underground deposits are typically between 500 meters and 600 meters deep, consultant Zou said. Mines in China have iron content of 20 percent to 40 percent, compared with over 60 percent for production by Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton at their projects in Brazil and Australia.
The cited iron content figures for the deposit suggest it’s “a high grade discovery for China,” Mark Pervan, a senior commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said in Melbourne.
“In global terms, that’s not very high grade. Brazilian ore has a grade of between 65 percent and 70 percent,” Pervan said. “But if they can reduce their reliance on high-cost iron ore imports and look for very low-cost domestic supply, that’s very positive for domestic steel mills.”

Foreign Imports
China has rejected a 33 percent price cut accord offered by Rio this year on contract iron ore and called for prices to drop as much as 45 percent because of losses by its steelmakers.
The nation’s reliance on iron ore imports may rise to 70 percent this year from about half in previous years, the Shanghai Securities News reported yesterday, citing Sinosteel Corp., the nation’s biggest iron ore trader.
Imports have jumped because of the closure of high-cost domestic mines, Vale said in April. Mines that started after 2005 are mostly unprofitable, China Metallurgical’s Zou said April 29. About one quarter to one third of mines in the country started before that period.

Snitching for China leads to sorrow and exile

Phromlak Sakpichaimongkol, a lawyer of Li Yuzhou, a former Chinese spy, holds an appeal letter for Li to be submitted to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) regional office in Bangkok, Thailand on June 19.

Li Kejun waits outside a detention center in Bangkok, Thailand where her husband Li Yuzhou is being held on Feb. 3.

Li Yuzhou is seen led away in shackles after being charged with overstaying, at a court in Bangkok, Thailand in this September 2008 file photo.

By Alexa Olesen

Dozens of small white scars mark the inside of Li Yuzhou's left arm, where he slashed himself repeatedly with a piece from a broken tea cup. The scars speak of his terror of being deported from Thailand back to China.
Li has more reason to fear than most: He used to be an informant for China's secret police.
When he learned his snitching had sent four innocent people to jail, he fled to Thailand. But now, after eight years, he and his family face being sent back to China, with his betrayals following them - first of his friends, and then of the Chinese government.
"I'll die for sure," said the 33-year-old, sitting on a bench at the immigration center in Bangkok where he has been held for nine months. "They'll charge me with being a traitor or a spy and it will all be done in secret."
Li's life in Bangkok fell apart after Thai police arrested him in September on suspicion of planting a fake bomb on a Chinese Embassy shuttle bus. Li denies it, saying he was framed by Chinese agents, and he was never charged. But the arrest triggered his detention on immigration violations and the U.N. withdrew his refugee status.
Li's life embodies the moral shades of gray in China, and how the same person can be both participant and victim in a society where walls have ears.
In the communist heyday of the ?0s and ?0s, colleagues, neighbors, even family members informed on each other. In today's freer, wealthier China, informing on others is much less common. Yet in a one-party authoritarian state, police can still bring tremendous pressure on people to inform, offering to boost or wreck careers and making it hard to say "no."
Zhang Honghai, one of the people Li helped send to jail, said he still puzzles over Li's choices.
"I don't know. Money? Patriotism?" said Zhang, who was freed in March after eight years in prison. "People are complicated and Li is more complicated than most."
A burly go-getter who grew up on a modest vineyard in eastern Shandong province, Li defied the odds by landing a spot at Beijing's elite People's University.

When he was a sophomore in the philosophy department, agents of the Ministry of State Security asked him to keep an eye on student activities and report back. In his junior year, he was told to befriend a group of young graduates who met to discuss democracy and politics.
"I was proud when they recruited me and curious. It is such a mysterious organization. Of course I wanted to know what it was like," he said.
Li denies doing it for money. For nearly three years of work, he said, the ministry paid him about 3,000 yuan (US$450) mostly to cover expenses. On the side, he was also managing an Internet cafe, which earned him more than he needed, he said.
Rather, he said, it answered a boyhood dream of becoming a police officer after watching his father, a poor peasant who grew grapes and other fruit, bullied and beaten by gangs. Being an informant was like being a police officer, he thought, and it was easy work because he loved to socialize.
Li turned in four reports documenting in a brief, spare style what the members of the New Youth Study Group said. Less than a year after the group was formed, in March 2001, four of the members were arrested. They were convicted of subversion and sentenced to jail terms of eight and ten years in 2003.
Li was distraught. At first, he wrote letters to the courts insisting the suspects had done nothing wrong. When his efforts seemed pointless, he fled to Thailand in 2002 with the help of a travel agent in south China who got him a passport and visa.
Li's girlfriend soon joined him. They found occasional work as tour guides for Chinese tourists, had their first child, a daughter, in 2003 and applied to the UN for refugee status. Their son was born a year later.
The U.N. twice denied them refugee status, then gave it to them in 2005, the same year Li registered the Thai-Chinese Student Association. While its declared mission was cultural exchange, he said he also used it to promote democratic ideals among overseas Chinese students, and believes that was what angered the Chinese Embassy.
All the while, he said, he thought about the four he helped send to prison. He pointed to another scar on his arm, saying anger and regret drove him to burn himself with a cigarette when he learned the others had been arrested.
"While they've been jailed, I've also been suffering and been in a jail in my mind for eight years," Li said.
In September last year, someone left a black bag stuffed with toy horns and bits of plastic foam on a Chinese Embassy bus in Bangkok and made a call saying it contained a bomb. Thai police arrested Li, then said they had no witnesses or evidence to charge him. But because Thailand is not a signatory to the U.N.'s convention on refugees, it said Li overstayed his visa and jailed him in October.
Li insists it was all a Chinese government ruse to get him detained and destroy the Thai-Chinese Student Association. He claims an acquaintance confessed to planting the bag but disappeared as soon as Li was arrested.
Now Li is convinced the acquaintance, a Chinese businessman, was actually a Communist Party or embassy operative. The Chinese Embassy did not respond to faxed questions. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said in a brief statement that Chinese authorities were in touch with their Thai counterparts about his case.
A review by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees decided last month that Li's past as an informant made him ineligible for refugee status.
The UNHCR said it never discusses details of refugee or asylum cases. However, Li's wife showed reporters a copy of the UNHCR's cancellation letter. It said Li's actions had led to the arrest and imprisonment of people exercising rights to freedom of expression and association. "Some of these individuals were also reportedly subjected to torture," it added.
In response, Li dashed off an emotional three-page handwritten plea begging the commission to reconsider.
Friends and family of Study Group members still in jail say the detainees have been mistreated.
They say Xu Wei has had frequent confrontations with prison guards and staged a prison hunger strike last year. Jin Haike has an intestinal disorder that has worsened since he underwent surgery in 2007. His father said he is not getting proper treatment.
Zhang, who was freed in March, said he was allowed one meal a day in prison and went weeks without a shower. Guards pulled him out of the bathroom and kicked him if he spent more than three minutes on the toilet or more than 90 seconds washing his hands and face.
Despite the suffering Li caused, Zhang said he didn't want him deported. "I know how hard it is inside" China's jails, he said. "I hope it ends up all right for him but I can't help him."
Yang Zili, the fourth member, said his last two years in jail were the hardest because he was lonely. His wife had moved to the U.S. and no longer visited. When he got out, she asked him for a divorce.
Shortly after he was freed in March, Yang went to his lawyer's office and read everything on file, including the letters Li had written to the court defending him and the other suspects.
"I felt very sympathetic toward him then. From those letters, I saw that he had not lost his conscience," Yang said. "I think if he is sent back to China, he could face punishment more severe than we did. The party in power was once a revolutionary party and it has a tradition of punishing its own even more harshly than it punishes its enemies."
"The essential reason behind the detention of the New Youth Study Group was the authoritarian nature of the Chinese Communist Party. Under such a system, are all government workers to be considered guilty?" Li wrote.

Liu Xiaobo and China's Future

By Minky Worden

"He's an intellectual, a nerd. He only has a pen and a piece of paper."
--Liu Xia, the wife of arrested Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo

It's hard to believe, but the man described by his wife as a "nerd" is apparently a security threat to an emerging superpower.

China has progressed in many vital ways in the two decades since the June 1989 Tiananmen crackdown on peaceful protesters. But the recent arrest of Liu Xiaobo, a mild-mannered and witty writer in Beijing, shows that the government still lacks the confidence to tolerate political criticism.
This week Chinese authorities formally arrested Liu, a leading intellectual who spent nearly two years in prison after the Tiananmen crackdown, and who has been held incommunicado since his detention last December 8.

He was charged with "alleged agitation activities aimed at subversion of the government and overthrowing of the socialist system," and faces 15 years in prison.

Liu's apparent "crime" is that he is seeking reform as one of the more prominent signers of Charter 08, a petition calling for a greater respect of the rule of law and human rights in China. Charter 08 was released two days after Liu's arrest, on December 10 -- a date celebrated worldwide as Human Rights Day.
Two years ago I came to know Liu Xiaobo remotely, when he contributed a chapter to China's Great Leap, a book I edited on thirty years of change in China and the human rights hurdles to the 2008 Beijing Games.

China's writers are good judges of the challenges their writing poses to the authorities, and I felt it was essential to include voices from inside the country in a book about China.

As I wrote in my acknowledgments, I was heartened by the fact that several contributors wrote and edited chapters from inside China, which I took as "proof that at least in some respects, the country is more free than it once was."
Most of all, I appreciated Liu's lively writing. His chapter was submitted in Chinese and unfortunately too few of his writings are available in English for the world to appreciate his sharp sense for detail and clever writing style.

Liu turned a wry eye on the Olympian circus in Beijing, calling the city a "hot wok of nationalism." He ended his chapter on a prophetic note: "Unless the Chinese government can be persuaded to undertake meaningful human rights forms, the flickering hope for a truly better China could vanish once the flame of the Olympic Torch has been extinguished."

Despite China's official assurances that hosting the Olympic Games would help to strengthen the development of human rights in the country, Liu was right.
The Beijing Games led to a worsening of human rights in China: residents were evicted from their homes to make way for Olympic venues, migrant workers built venues under hazardous conditions, and protests were banned.

Journalists and the internet were censored, despite the Chinese government's express media freedom pledges.

Perhaps most damaging to the long-term prospects for reform in China, before, during and after the 2008 Olympic Games, many courageous members of civil society and rights defenders were harassed, unlawfully detained, subjected to "disappearances," and some were given long prison sentences.

They had mistakenly taken their own government at its word that there would be more space for rights in China.
And it is that same determination to continue the fight for basic freedoms that inspired Charter 08, which does not call for an overthrow of the Chinese government but rather for constitutional reform and a greater respect of human rights.

The document's preamble states that "freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humankind" and that "democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values."

It is a high form of irony that Liu and others who have exercised their basic rights to press for reform have become poignant examples of the Chinese government's failure to live up to its own constitution.
Originally signed by 303 Chinese citizens including rights defenders and legal activists, Charter 08 was circulated online and has now collected close to 10,000 signatures -- despite Beijing's efforts to suppress its availability on the Internet.
A former professor of literature who headed the Chinese section of the international writers' organization PEN, Liu has already paid a heavy price for seeking to exercise the right to free expression.

In addition to being jailed for his support of Tiananmen Square protesters, he was sentenced in 1996 to three years of reeducation-through labor after circulating a petition for freedom of speech and the right to form independent political parties in China.
Last December 22, an international group of rights defenders, lawyers and writers -- including three Nobel Prize winners -- sent Chinese President Hu Jintao an open letter calling for Liu's release.

They wrote, "For the international community to take seriously China's oft-stated commitment to respect human rights and the rule of law... it is urgent that China's central leadership ensure that no one be arrested or harassed simply for the peaceful expression of his or her views."
The Chinese government has consistently said that it wants the world to view China as a "responsible power."

The best way to prove this would be to free Liu Xiaobo and allow an open discussion on the merits of Charter 08, a document which -- like Liu himself -- represents China's future rather than its past.

Vietnam asks China to free boat, fishermen

A fisherman sleeps on his boat in a fishing port in the central coastal city of Da Nang

HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam has asked China to release a fishing boat and 12 sailors detained about one week ago while fishing in waters around the Paracel archipelago.
The boat was one of three Vietnamese fishing vessels captured on June 21 in the area, foreign ministry spokesman Le Dung said late Friday.
"This act of the Chinese side is a clear violation of Vietnam's sovereignty and sovereign rights in the Eastern Sea," he said, using Vietnam's term for the South China Sea.
Vietnam's foreign ministry announced in early June that China had ordered a fishing ban in some areas of the South China Sea "including those under Vietnam's sovereignty".
A long-standing dispute between the two countries over ownership of the Paracels and a more southerly archipelago, the Spratleys, has recently escalated.
Fishermen are caught in the middle.
Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a diplomatic note last Monday to the Chinese embassy in Hanoi, asking for the three boats and 37 fishermen to be released, Dung said.
Two of them returned home on Thursday with 25 fishermen. Dung said Vietnam was asking China to return the other boat "and not to conduct any further acts to prevent the normal activities of Vietnamese fishermen in the waters under Vietnam's sovereignty."
Fishermen interviewed by AFP in central Vietnam last week said they have seen an increasing number of armed Chinese patrol ships over the past two months in disputed waters around the Paracel archipelago, and near China's Hainan Island.
The fishermen say they try to avoid the controversial areas but China's stepped-up enforcement has put their incomes at risk. They allege some of their colleagues have been detained on Hainan or had their nets and fish seized.
Sailors claim thousands of dollars in fines have to be paid to secure a crew's freedom.

How the west was lost

When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World; by Martin Jacques; 592pp, Allen Lane, £30

A sympathetic analysis of China's onward march towards global domination

Michael Rank
Martin Jacques has written movingly and angrily about the death of his Indian-Malaysian wife in a Hong Kong hospital, claiming that the tragedy arose from a deep Chinese prejudice against anyone with a dark skin.

So it comes as quite a surprise to discover that, far from warning of the dangers of a world likely to be dominated by a racist superpower, the author admires the Chinese enormously and views China's self-proclaimed "peaceful rise" with a remarkable degree of equanimity.

Jacques claims that "In an important sense, China does not aspire to run the world because it already believes itself to be the centre of the world, this being its natural role and position", and discusses sensitively and in depth what it means to be the "middle kingdom".

He also argues that China is essentially a "civilisation state" rather than a western-style nation state.

"The term civilisation normally suggests a rather distant and indirect influence and an inert and passive presence," he notes. "In China's case, however, it is not only history that lives but civilisation itself: the notion of a living civilisation provides the primary identity and context by which the Chinese think of their country and define themselves."
One of the fundamental features of Chinese politics is the overriding emphasis placed on the country's unity, Jacques claims.

This occasionally leads to contradictions which he does not entirely resolve, for he also stresses China's diversity, going so far as to claim that "China's provinces are far more differentiated than Europe's nation-states, even when eastern Europe and the Balkans are included".

The question of unity and diversity leads to a stimulating comparison of China and India, a far more pluralistic - and democratic - nation, and Jacques notes how the enormous cultural differences between the world's two most populous countries have resulted in "an underlying lack of understanding and empathy".
The book is based on a well-informed and subtle analysis of Chinese history and culture, and as the title implies, Jacques is convinced that it is not a matter of whether China will dominate the world over the next few decades, but how.

He is careful to avoid over-confidence in his predictions, however, and notes that "China's present behaviour can only be regarded as a partial indicator, simply because its power and influence remain limited compared with what they are likely to be in the future".

But he is surely right to say that American confidence that "the Chinese are inevitably becoming more like us" is misplaced and is based on a view of globalisation that is seriously flawed.
Jacques is likely to raise eyebrows in some quarters by playing down China's military potential; he sees China's arms buildup as being aimed largely at blocking any possible Taiwanese moves towards independence rather than at achieving world domination, and he claims that its own technological level remains relatively low.

In the face of US and EU bans on selling weapons to Beijing, its only potential foreign supplier is Russia, Jacques says, and Moscow is hardly eager to see a militarily powerful China.
But it is China's fast-growing economic power which has the world transfixed right now, and Jacques is confident that this will grow further.

In the long term he expects China "to operate both within and outside the existing international system, seeking to transform that system while at the same time, in effect, sponsoring a new China-centric international system which will exist alongside the present system and probably slowly begin to usurp it".
In perhaps his most provocative remarks, Jacques praises China's communist leaders for their "remarkable perspicacity... never allowing themselves to be distracted by short-term considerations".

He appears to defend the party's failure to move towards democracy, stating that China has devoted itself to economic growth, having concluded that it cannot afford to be diverted by what it "deemed to be non-essential ends".
Jacques observes, as commentators such as Jonathan Fenby have also noted, how the party has confounded western assumptions that the consumer boom over the last 20 years, the internet and the flood of Chinese travelling abroad on business or for pleasure would inevitably result in moves towards western-style democracy. He is not perturbed by this and is indeed sympathetic to the "not misplaced view that any move towards democracy is likely to embroil the country in considerable chaos and turmoil".
It is on race, not unexpectedly, that Jacques is most critical of China.

He says "racialised ways of thought... have been on the rise in both popular culture and official circles", and he expects this to continue, with China's "sense of superiority resting on a combination of cultural and racial hubris".
Some flaws are inevitable in such a lengthy and wide-ranging book.

Jacques's discussion of Japanese culture is cliché-laden (the Japanese are "exquisitely polite", "You will never seen any litter anywhere" and the country is virtually crime-free) and it is surprising that his discussion of China's historical scientific and technological achievements makes no mention of Joseph Needham's towering contributions to the field.

There are also occasional factual mistakes: Japan annexed north-east, not north-west China in 1931, and Shanghainese is not a dialect of Mandarin. In addition, the author occasionally cites dubious statistics: for example, I find it impossible to believe that 100 million Chinese tourists will visit Africa annually in the near future.
Despite such foibles, this is an extremely impressive book, full of bold but credible predictions. Only time will tell how Jacques's prophecies pan out, but I suspect his book will long be remembered for its foresight and insight.

Largest Number of Africans in China Live in South of Country

Africans line up for an English service at Guangzhou's Sacred Heart Stone House cathedral

By Stephanie Ho
Guangzhou, China -- China's continuing economic boom has attracted a growing number of immigrants from around the world, who mostly come to do business. Africans are no exception.

Thousands of Africans flock to the Sunday afternoon English service at Guangzhou's Sacred Heart Stone House cathedral. The church is packed, and wardens at the door keep stragglers from entering the overflowing sanctuary after the service has begun.
In 2007, the Ministry of Commerce says China surpassed France to become Africa's number one trading partner. Commerce between China and Africa reached nearly $107 billion last year, a historic high. Many of the estimated 20,000 Africans who now live in Guangzhou are there because of the growing business opportunities.
But few want to talk to reporters. One reason may be that they themselves have dubious legal status.
College student Meng Jia and several of her classmates are working on a study of foreigners in Guangzhou.
"In our country, we still lack a real policy for dealing with international immigrants," she said. "So, many black people who are currently living here have an awkward situation."
Another Guangzhou resident, Mr. Shao, has driven a taxi for six years. He says many ordinary people do not have a good impression of Africans. But he says he sees the growing number of Africans in Guangzhou as a good thing for China.
"This means we have more and more communication with people from all over the world," he said. "If more foreigners come to China, we could feel China is doing really well."
Rwanda is among the growing number of African nations that have opened a trade office in Shenzhen, an economic boomtown next to Guangzhou. The office has gone from one employee to five, since it opened four years ago.
Rwandan Ambassador to China, Ben Rugangazi, says Rwandans in southern China bond comfortably and easily with other Africans.
"To the African, when he reaches Guangzhou and he's in a society that is very different culturally and linguistically, and he sees an African with whom he can easily communicate and he can identify himself with, you know, this is a feeling of a sense of oneness," he noted.
The Africans in Guangzhou come from all over the continent, and bring their customs and traditions along with them. People from Congo, Nigeria and Mali have the largest representation in southern China.
But, while Africans apparently get along well with each other, college student Meng Jia says they have little interaction with the local Chinese.
"They live separated from Guangzhou residents, so these two groups don't know much about each other," she added.
She says studies like hers seek to help Chinese people better understand the lives of Africans in China. This topic is taking on added urgency, as the number of African residents in southern China continues to grow.

Beijing Bolsters the Barriers

Despite appeals to the WTO, there's not much the U.S. can do about China's protectionist policies
By Pete Engardio
When Beijing announced its $586 billion economic stimulus plan earlier this year, optimists hoped it might help the U.S. address a nagging problem: its staggering trade deficit with China. With the Chinese economy growing more briskly once more, the reasoning went, mainland companies would suck in lots of U.S. machinery and technology just as financially strapped American consumers bought fewer Chinese DVD players, sneakers, and the like.
Those hopes may have been overblown.

Though the U.S. trade deficit has slimmed, Beijing has recently introduced a host of policies aimed at boosting exports while making it harder for foreign companies to sell in the mainland. China has renewed steps that keep its currency undervalued against the dollar, reinstated tax breaks on exports, and told government entities to buy Chinese products.

With efforts to boost domestic consumption flagging, Beijing remains reliant on the "narcotic" of export-led growth, says former U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab.

"Accumulating surpluses makes [China] feel strong and powerful."
On June 23, Washington filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that Beijing has reserved key raw materials such as magnesium and zinc for its own companies.

U.S. and European experts say that gives Chinese industry an advantage over foreign manufacturers who need those materials too.
Lots of smoke, to be sure. But that doesn't mean a trade war is imminent.

While many of Beijing's policies spark anger in the U.S., Washington has few clear remedies. It can file cases at the WTO on issues it believes it can win and crank up diplomatic pressure on Beijing.

But many "protectionist" measures decried by American trade hawks are acceptable under WTO rules. For instance, Beijing never signed a WTO agreement on government purchases when it joined the trade body in 2001.

Likewise, Beijing's moves to exempt many exports from a 17% value-added tax would seem to comply with WTO rules and are similar to policies in Europe and elsewhere.

Essentially, China is restoring old tax breaks it revoked a few years ago, says China expert Nicholas R. Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

NO "LEG TO STAND ON"
The U.S. may have a more solid case regarding Chinese efforts to restrict sales of scarce minerals. The fact that Chinese companies can buy these materials while foreigners can't violates WTO rules, U.S. and European experts say.

There is a good chance Beijing will back down on this issue "because they don't have a leg to stand on," says Lardy.
Whether or not Beijing is within its rights, the appearance of protectionism is likely to fuel pressure for retaliation.

Before 2007, China enjoyed trade surpluses with the U.S. but had a deficit with other countries. By last year, China's surplus with the entire world had passed $400 billion, notes University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business economist Peter Morici.

And with the yuan still undervalued against the dollar by at least 20%, the U.S. deficit could start ballooning when Americans start buying again.

"We cannot grow with the kind of trade deficit we have with China," Morici predicts.

"And we'll continue to have that trade deficit as long as China keeps changing the rules."

The policy dilemma for Washington, meanwhile, will only grow more wrenching.

Tit for Tat on Trade

China and the U.S. take their differences to the WTO.
Wall Street Journal
The U.S. and the European Union raised complaints this week at the World Trade Organization over China's export restraints on raw materials.

Meanwhile, China has escalated a WTO complaint against the U.S. on poultry imports. This may sound like childish tit for tat, but it's actually a grown-up conversation.

Both cases have merit, and the WTO is the right place to resolve them.
The complaints brought by the U.S. and EU center around China's exports of nine raw materials, including coking coal (used in steel production), bauxite (used in aluminum production) and zinc. When China joined the WTO in 2001 it agreed to eliminate most export duties, including on the materials listed in this case.

But it hasn't done so: Coke duties stand at 40%; bauxite at 15%; yellow phosphorous at 70%. The duties are designed to encourage these raw materials to stay in the country and allow domestic producers to purchase them at cheaper prices than those paid by the rest of the world.
The U.S. may have a strong legal position against China in this case, but it doesn't exactly have the moral high ground.

This is the Obama Administration's first WTO complaint, and it's a convenient gift to the Steelworkers Union, which supported him during last year's election.

Several of the materials are products used in steel production, and lower duties would mean cheaper inputs for U.S. steel mills and other manufacturers. That's a good outcome, but it would be nice to think that the Administration was acting on free-trade principle not because it's payback time.
Beijing was quick to hit back, announcing on the same day that it would request a WTO panel to investigate an effective U.S. ban on imports of Chinese poultry. This doesn't come as a surprise -- Beijing first announced this complaint in March -- but the timing of the announcement is a reminder of the political overtones these cases can take on. Chinese poultry has effectively been banned from the U.S. for the past two years because of misplaced concerns about avian influenza.
Although it may appear at first blush that a trade war is brewing here, both of the cases have been building slowly for years, and the good news is that the WTO dispute resolution process offers a neutral way to work through them.

More worrying signs of deterioration in the U.S.-China trade relationship are coming from other quarters.
In the U.S., Congress inserted a "Buy American" provision into the stimulus bill requiring that construction funds approved by the act be spent only on American iron, steel and manufactured goods. Beijing announced a similar "Buy Chinese" rule this month, which requires government stimulus projects to obtain permission before purchasing imported goods.

In coming months, the Obama Administration will make a decision on a trade case that could impose import quotas on Chinese tires.
Beijing and Washington now have 60 days to consult each other about China's export restraints, and about a year for the poultry case to run its course.

When presenting the export restraints case, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the Administration was "insisting on the rights of American businesses and workers to a level playing field."

We'll see whether the Administration is willing to extend these rights to U.S. trading partners too.

Chinese censorship of Internet 'unacceptable': EU

People use computers at an Internet bar in Beijing

BRUSSELS (AFP) — The EU accused China of "unacceptable" Internet censorship Friday, as Brussels rejected Beijing's claim that an internet filter due to be introduced is instead aimed at blocking pornography.
"The aim of this internet filter, contrary to what Chinese authorities contend, is clearly to censor internet and limit freedom of expression," the European Commission said in a statement.
"We therefore urge China to postpone the implementation of this mandate and request that a meeting is organised at technical level to better understand what is at stake," it added.
The matter will be raised at "information society" talks hosted by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Beijing on July 9, the statement said.
China plans to include the filtering software with all PCs sold there from July 1.
Beijing says the Chinese-made Green Dam software will filter out pornography, ensuring that more young people can use the Internet in the nation with the world's largest online population.
China has also said that users can choose whether to load the software -- called Green Dam Youth Escort -- onto their computers or not.
However, overseas and domestic Internet users have viewed the new software rule as an attempt by China to filter sensitive websites.
"Blocking or filtering certain Internet contents is absolutely unacceptable to the EU," the commission said.
On Wednesday the United States said China may be violating World Trade Organization obligations by its actions.
The Chinese designers of the software last week said they were trying to fix security glitches in the programme.
Researchers at the University of Michigan, who examined the software, had said earlier it contained serious security vulnerabilities that could allow outside parties to take control of computers running it via remote access.
It also added that the software's text filter blocked words that included obscenities and phrases considered politically sensitive to China's ruling Communist Party.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm stressed that "freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of our democratic societies...
"Media pluralism, freedom of expression and press freedom are underlying elements of European democracy."
The row over the Chinese software comes as technology takes an emblematic role in the protests in Iran, where critics of the clerical regime have turned to micro-blogging site Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites to mobilize.
The commission statement went on to say that "China's insistence that the Green Dam filter be installed in new computers proves once again that censorship takes place in this country."
And it underlined that "China cannot compete with other powers of the world only at the economic level without paying attention to freedom of expression."

Engineer gave trade secrets to Chinese

In this Feb 19, 2008 photo, former Boeing Co. engineer Dongfan "Greg" Chung, leaves the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Calif. Chung knowingly possessed critical trade secrets on the U.S. space program and intended to pass them to China, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday, June 24, 2009, in her closing argument at the first economic espionage case to reach a U.S. courtroom.

By GILLIAN FLACCUS
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — The fate of a Chinese-born engineer accused of passing critical trade secrets on the U.S. space program to China for decades was in the hands of a federal judge Wednesday after closing arguments ended in the nation's first economic espionage trial.
Federal prosecutors said Dongfan "Greg" Chung used his 30-year career at Boeing Co. and Rockwell International to steal 300,000 pages of sensitive documents, including papers on the Delta IV booster rocket and a phased array antennae for the U.S. space shuttle.
Chung, 73, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, economic espionage, lying to federal agents, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent. He is free on $250,000 bail.
U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney was expected to issue a written verdict at a hearing sometime in the next two weeks. Chung opted for a non-jury trial.
FBI investigators found the papers stacked throughout Chung's house and even in a crawl space beneath the dwelling, according to court papers and testimony.
"Your honor, I'm just going to cut to the chase. Defendant is guilty of all counts charged in the indictment," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ivy Wang. "Defendant is guilty... because defendant intended or knew his actions would benefit a foreign government, specifically the People's Republic of China."
Wang said the information included specifications on a fueling system for the booster rocket that was so sensitive Boeing employees were ordered to lock away hard copies of documents related to it before leaving work each day.
The fueling system was designed to retract from the rocket in less than 30 seconds, just prior to liftoff, and the company invested $50 million in the technology over a five-year period using 30 engineers, Wang said.
"If any of Boeing's competitors in this field obtained this technology, Boeing will lose its competitive edge," she said.
The government case is being closely watched as a test for prosecutions under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. The law was designed to help the government crack down on the theft of information from private companies that have contracts with the government to develop future U.S. space and military technologies.
The legislation became a priority in the mid-1990s when the United States realized China and other countries were targeting private businesses as part of their spy strategy.
Defense attorney Thomas Bienert Jr. told the judge Chung was not a spy. He said prosecutors had grossly exaggerated the case and misinterpreted evidence.
Chung may have tried to share unclassified, publicly available information with China more than 20 years ago but balked when his overseas contacts began requesting information that was more sensitive, Bienert said.
He cited as proof of Chung's refusal to cooperate a series of letters in which a man prosecutors have called his Chinese "handler" rebukes him for not writing and wonders about his long silence.
The attorney conceded that Chung "did some dumb things" and may have violated Boeing policy, but he insisted Chung stopped short of doing anything illegal.

He added that his client simply brought thousands of documents home because he was a "pack rat" and said the government couldn't prove Chung had actually passed any of it to China.
"Mr. Chung walked an interesting line and certainly a risky line, but not a line that was criminal once we look at the evidence," Bienert said. "He's a guy who likes knowledge for the sake of knowledge, including sharing knowledge... but he does that because he wants China to become more like America, not because he wants America to be under the thumb of China."
In the government's rebuttal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples mocked that contention.
"The 300,000 pages of documents is not the work of a pack rat, it's a pack elephant," he said. "This is a very, very big red flag. It's as big as any red flag flying over China today."
Six similar economic espionage cases have settled before trial since the Economic Espionage Act was passed. Another is set for trial in U.S. District Court in San Jose later this year.
Chung, a naturalized U.S. citizen, worked for Rockwell International until it was bought by Boeing in 1996 and remained with the aerospace giant until he was laid off in 2002. He was brought back as a consultant on stress analysis after the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003 and was fired when the FBI began its probe in 2006.
The government believes Chung began spying for the Chinese in the late 1970s, just a few years after he became a U.S. citizen and was hired by Rockwell.
Prosecutors say they discovered Chung's activities while investigating the case of another suspected Chinese spy, Chi Mak. Searches of Mak's house turned up an address book and a letter containing Chung's name.
Mak was convicted in 2007 of conspiracy to export U.S. defense technology to China and sentenced to more than 24 years in prison. Mak was not charged under the Economic Espionage Act.

Book of the week: When China Rules the World, By Martin Jacques

By Mary Dejevsky
Well before it was published, even before the author had typed his final chapters, this book was causing a stir.

What Martin Jacques set out to do - and has done in meticulous detail - was to challenge what he regards as a dangerously false premise: that the rise of China will be benign.

Don't lull yourself into a false sense of security, he warns. China's ascent to global dominance is inevitable, and the Western world has much to fear.
In so saying, Jacques takes on a formidable global establishment and breaks a series of taboos. Chief among them is the idea that Western civilisation reflects the pinnacle of universal achievement and that the success of individual countries will forever be measured by how closely they match that model.
This ringing rejection of Western universalism is where he begins.

As he puts it, "There is still a widespread view in the West that China will eventually conform, by a process of natural and inevitable development, to the Western paradigm. This is wishful thinking."

By concentrating on similarities, rather than recognising difference, the Western world "excludes everything... that makes China what it is".
Increasingly, he posits, China will exemplify an alternative model for development, and one likely to spell the end of the West's dominance in every sphere: economic, political and cultural. China's differences concern the nature of the state (a "civilisation state", not a "nation-state"), its regional relationships (a "tribute system"), and a particular attitude towards race and ethnicity. China's scale, its long and consistent polity, and the fact that, even when its GDP outstrips the world, it will still be a developing country, are other elements that make China, in Jacques's view, different.
In arguing for China's difference, Jacques is treading on a lot of toes. That is all to the good.

The Western scholarly and political establishment has been extraordinarily complacent about the implications of an economically successful and more assertive China.

There has been a tacit consensus that, if we treat China nicely, as potentially "one of us", Beijing will return the compliment. The result has been very little real discussion of what a world with a dominant China would be like.
Jacques, as well as having extensive experience of the region, has his own axe to grind.

As founder and editor of the journal Marxism Today (which he astutely wound up after collapse of communism), he has long espoused the idea that the West is not the only, or necessarily the best, model of development. So the thesis of "contesting modernities" in this book is of a piece with his overall thinking. The fact that he comes from particular philosophical territory, however, should not negate his arguments.
Insofar as there has been high-level public debate about the rise of China at all, it has been - as Jacques notes - between, on one hand, those who believe China will rule the world, but only if it adopts "our" Western way of doing things, and on the other those who argue that Beijing's modernisation will ultimately founder because China's "Chinese-ness" will get in the way.

The conclusion drawn by both schools, however, is the same. "We" don't need to worry. Strong or weak, China will not challenge our way of life.
To Jacques, this is so much whistling in the dark.

He agrees with Will Hutton, that China and the West are culturally quite different, but he discerns in this a potential strength rather than fatal weakness.

China could, he says - indeed, barring accidents, will - rule the world. This is not a view, to put it mildly, that will endear Jacques to the many China-watchers, diplomats and investors, who like to think that China will not become an enemy unless we make it one.
It would be wrong to say that Jacques is alone in his belief that China is alien and potentially hostile.

The view of China as a threat, the "yellow peril" of old, persists at a popular level in many Western countries, and in Russia.

Suspicions of China's motives also abound in parts of Latin America and Africa where the Chinese have moved in to exploit natural resources. Paradoxically, these are the very places where China's developmental model may offer more of a promise than a threat.
In the industrialised West, though, the view of China's rise as unthreatening - at least so long as the West allows it to be so - is so pervasive in polite society that it is refreshing to encounter another view. So how persuasive is it?
Japan is a country that embodies the argument both for and against his thesis. That may be one reason why Jacques devotes a whole section – to my mind one of the most interesting and perceptive – to Japan and the way it modernised in the Western fashion, while retaining its Japanese essence.
It is possible to discern something similar happening in the modernising parts of the Arab world. If China follows a similar course, then its rise could turn out to be less alarming than Jacques believes.

As for China's unique culture, including its attitudes to race, the state and the family, Jacques's arguments are challenging, and designed to be so. But hierarchical attitudes to race lurk in most cultures, including our own – and in Japan. The question is whether China will be able to "rule the world" from a position of exclusiveness, where its modernisation has so far relied on imitation.
A further question – of the dozens this thought-provoking book throws up - is whether overtaking the US in GDP terms will, by itself, equip China to rule the world, so long as its per capita GDP does not reach that of a developed country. If not, we could be looking not at 2050 as the timescale for the emergence of a dominant China, but somewhere much further in the future – and only then if there is no serious disruption to growth, such as a popular revolution.
Jacques's book will provoke argument and is a tour de force across a host of disciplines. It is also, a small point perhaps, commendably free of misprints; this is especially laudable, given the many different language sources. At the same time, he is not the most elegant writer, and his argument – the broad outlines of which are relatively simple – can seem quite repetitive.

You can understand why Jacques needed his 450 pages of text: his is an unfashionable and contentious argument; the scholarly back-up is essential to provide credibility in circles that will doubt him. But might there be a case for parallel publication of a shorter, more populist version?
Jacques's arguments deserve to be heard; they are part of a debate the Western world should be having but for whatever reason – academic orthodoxy, political correctness or fear – has left for another time.

By then, if Jacques is right, it will be too late.

Chinese intellectuals take on the state over dissident Liu Xiaobo

A pro-democracy activist holds a picture of Liu Xiaobo at a protest in Hong Kong yesterday
Jane Macartney in Beijing
A group of prominent Chinese scholars and lawyers has issued a bold appeal for the release of top dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was arrested this week on charges of attempting to overthrow the country’s socialist system.
Many of the 50 signatories to the open letter also put their names to Charter ‘08, a document demanding democracy and other freedoms co-authored by Dr Liu last year and believed to have prompted police to detain him.
“We appeal for the immediate release of Dr Liu Xiaobo and the real implementation of the freedom enshrined in the constitution,” the letter says.
Among those who signed it are leading sociologist Xu Youyu, elderly economist Mao Yushi and veteran lawyer Zhang Sizhi, who defended Jiang Qing - Mao Zedong's widow and leader of the so-called Gang of Four.
Such a move is relatively unusual in China since the authorities could well retaliate by increasing police surveillance of the signatories and restricting their freedom to publish.
The Government will want to suppress any dissenting voices as it prepares for its biggest party in a decade: The celebration of the 60th anniversary on October 1 of the day when Chairman Mao stood on Tiananmen – the Gate of Heavenly Peace – and declared the founding of the People’s Republic.
In their letter, the intellectuals say Dr Liu, a famed literary critic, could not have produced any writings without the knowledge of authorities since he lived under constant police watch. He is charged with engaging "in agitation activities, such as spreading of rumors and defaming of the Government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years".
The launch of criminal proceedings against Dr Liu appears linked to his role in gathering the signatures of more than 300 intellectuals to back Charter ‘O8 – a document modelled on the Charter 77 drawn up by Vaclav Havel in the former Czechoslavakia. It called for a new constitution guaranteeing human rights, election of public officials and an end to the Communist Party's hold over the military, courts and government.
This is the first time the longtime critic of the Government, detained for 20 months for his support of the student movement of 1989, has faced such serious charges.

He could be sentenced to a maximum of 15 years, said his lawyer, Mo Shaoping. He has demanded an immediate meeting with Dr Liu even though officials have told him he cannot defend his client because he too is a signatory to Charter ’08.
The United States has also joined calls for the release of Dr Liu. China responded by warning against foreign interference in the case.

A US embassy spokesman said: “The US Government is deeply disturbed by reports that Liu Xiaobo has been formally arrested and charged with serious crimes. We call on the government of China to release Mr Liu and respect the rights of all Chinese citizens who peacefully express their desire for internationally recognised freedoms.”

US calls for release of prominent China dissident

A group of pro-democracy legislators demonstrate against the arrest of Liu Xiaobo in Hong Kong

By Marianne Barriaux

BEIJING (AFP) — The United States on Thursday joined calls for the release of prominent Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, but China warned against any foreign interference in the case.
State media reported Wednesday that police had formally arrested Liu, a dissident writer who was a leading force behind a petition calling for democratic reforms.
"The US government is deeply disturbed by reports that Liu Xiaobo has been formally arrested and charged with serious crimes," Richard Buangan, a spokesman for the US embassy in Beijing, told AFP.
"We call on the government of China to release Mr. Liu and respect the rights of all Chinese citizens who peacefully express their desire for internationally recognised freedoms."
US House speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking in Washington, had earlier called for international condemnation of the arrest, calling Liu "courageous".
Liu, 53, was arrested Tuesday for inciting "subversion of the government and the overthrow of the socialist system," Xinhua news agency said, citing Beijing police. Authorities have not yet directly confirmed the arrest.
"Foreign countries should respect China's judicial sovereignty," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told AFP in a faxed statement.
"We firmly oppose anyone's wrong remarks and deeds that interfere in China's internal affairs by any means."
Liu, jailed previously for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement that was crushed by the army, has long campaigned through his writing for democracy and the rule of law in China.
He had been detained since December after signing Charter 08, a manifesto signed by hundreds of intellectuals, scholars and dissidents that called for political and legal reforms and respect for human rights in China.
Mo Shaoping, another Charter 08 signatory and Liu's lawyer, told AFP that police said Thursday he could not represent Liu, but they would not confirm whether this was due to his signing the manifesto.
Two other lawyers working for Mo would now represent Liu, whom they hoped to meet on Friday, he said.
Mo said arresting people on the basis of Charter 08 involvement would make China "the laughing stock of the whole world."
Buangan, the US embassy spokesman, said the US was "concerned" by reports that other Charter 08 signatories had been harassed by authorities.
Liu's wife Liu Xia, who last saw her husband on March 20 in a supervised visit, said she saw little hope for his release soon.
"For the moment, I cannot see any hope, given the seriousness of the crime he is accused of," she told AFP by phone.
Activists and rights groups strongly condemned Liu's arrest.
Ding Zilin, a retired professor whose son was killed in the 1989 crackdown, said in a statement released by New York-based Human Rights in China that Liu's arrest showed the government had "shut tight the door to so-called 'political reform.'"
Brad Adams, Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the arrest indicated a "political hardening" by China.
"But it also misses an opportunity to show the outside world that the government is confident enough to tolerate thoughtful and peaceful domestic criticism," he said in an emailed statement.
The political opposition in Taiwan, which has expressed concern over President Ma Ying-jeou's policy of promoting closer ties with longtime diplomatic rival China, also called for Liu's release.
A statement by the Democratic Progressive Party said China "should face up to these demands from the public for democratic reform" instead of suppressing them.

Beijing Adds Curbs on Access to Internet

By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG — The Chinese Health Ministry on Thursday ordered sharp restrictions on Internet access to medical research papers on sexual subjects.

It is the latest move in what the ministry calls an antipornography campaign that many China experts see as a harbinger of a broader crackdown on freedom of expression and dissent.

In the past month, central government officials have cited a need to control pornography in ordering that filtering software be preinstalled on all new computers sold in China starting July 1.

They have also forced Google to disable a function that lets the search engine suggest terms and on Wednesday night even briefly blocked access nationwide to Google’s main search engine and other services like Gmail.

Some users were still having problems accessing Google sites on Thursday night.

In addition, Chinese bloggers say they have detected evidence of a concerted effort to stain Google’s image. They say that someone in Beijing manipulated Google’s software to make it more likely to suggest a pornographic search term during a state television broadcast.

At the same time, the government seems to have stepped up harassment of human rights advocates.

Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s best-known dissidents, was formally arrested Tuesday on suspicion of subversion, six months after he was detained for joining other intellectuals in signing a document calling for democracy.

This month, the authorities refused to renew the licenses of more than a dozen lawyers after they agreed to represent clients in human rights cases.

The same public security agencies charged with fighting pornography are responsible for suppressing illegal political activity, said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch.

The government’s statistics forseizures of illegal publications tend to include both pornographic and political documents, he noted.

“The two are closely associated,” Mr. Bequelin said. “These campaigns work hand in hand.”

The emphasis on pornography echoes a similar crackdown in late 2005 and early 2006, rights advocates say.

At the time, seeking to allay official Chinese concerns about pornography, Google designed a new search engine for Google.cn, its Chinese service, that would not pull up references to politically delicate subjects like Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement, or the 1989 killings in and around Tiananmen Square.

While denouncing pornography, propaganda officials reined in publications that were challenging government policies. This included the closing of Freezing Point, a popular journal of news and opinion, and the replacement of top editors at three other publications.

The Health Ministry posted regulations this week requiring medical information providers to restrict access to articles on sexual subjects. The penalty for violations is up to $4,400, with the potential for criminal prosecution for a pattern of uncorrected offenses.

At a news conference on Thursday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, was quick to criticize Google for allowing too many links to unseemly sites, saying, “It is every government’s responsibility to protect their teenagers from porn and vulgar information on the Internet.”

On Wednesday, the American commerce secretary, Gary F. Locke, and Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative, sent a letter to Chinese officials protesting the country’s proposal that all computers sold in the country be equipped with filtering software.

“China is putting companies in an untenable position by requiring them, with virtually no public notice, to preinstall software that appears to have broad-based censorship implications and network security issues,” Mr. Locke said in a statement.

The United States government did not release the text of the letter.

Asked about the complaint on Thursday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said only that he had previously defended the decision to require the software.

Google said Thursday that it was trying to limit access to pornography.

“Google has been working to remove pornography from our search results in China, in accordance with our operating license there,” the company said.

“This has been a major engineering effort,” the company said, “and we believe we have addressed many of the problems identified by the government.”

The government began stepping up pressure on Google last week.

CCTV, the state-owned television monopoly, broadcast an interview in which the announcer typed the word “son” into a Google search engine and was dismayed that one of the search terms suggested in Chinese was an “abnormal relationship between son and mother.”

Google’s software makes it possible to analyze the frequency and source of search terms.

In a check on Thursday, Google’s Web site showed that no one had entered the phrase “abnormal relationship between son and mother” in Chinese for months until it suddenly became a popular phrase entered only in Beijing in the days before the show, making it more likely that it would pop up as a suggested search term.

The same CCTV show included an interview with a young man, identified as a college student, who expressed horror at pornography on the Internet. Chinese bloggers have since identified the man as an intern for CCTV.

Many Chinese regulations ostensibly aimed at controlling illicit sexual activity could also be used to restrict political activity unacceptable to the authorities.

For example, Chinese law requires that karaoke bars, nightclubs and Internet cafes be monitored 24 hours a day by closed-circuit television cameras on the grounds that prostitutes may try to find clients at such locations.

But according to security industry executives, China’s anti-prostitution surveillance regulations are stricter on the Internet cafes.

While nightclubs and karaoke bars are required to store their video records on their premises, Internet cafes must be wired to the nearest police station and provide a continuous, instantaneous record of who is using which computer.

If an e-mail message from a cafe’s computer later catches the attention of investigators, the police can review the video records to see who was using the computer.

The last major crackdown on pornography and political expression lasted several months and began to ebb in February 2006, after a dozen former Communist Party officials and senior scholars issued a public letter denouncing the closing of a prominent news journal.

But by then, the government had won some major concessions.

Not only had Google agreed to remove considerable political content from its Chinese service, but Microsoft had disabled some blogging activity critical of China, andYahoo had handed over the identity of an e-mail user who had shared a propaganda directive; the user was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

From a Beijing Suburb, Vibrant Strings

Violin lessons in Donggaocun, about an hour’s drive from downtown Beijing. The town manufactures string instruments.

By ANDREW JACOBS
DONGGAOCUN, China — Perhaps the only thing more aurally challenging than a roomful of novice violinists screeching their way through “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a roomful of novice violinists screeching along on out-of-tune instruments.

“Stop,” Chen Yiming shouted to her students, an enthusiastic bunch, ages 8 to 47.

“Can we please pay attention to our instruments and make sure they are tuned correctly?”

After a short break for adjustments, the cacophony resumed.

Violin fever has hit this drab rural township with hundreds of residents, young and old, picking up the bow as Donggaocun tries to position itself as the string instrument capital of China.

Once known primarily for its abundant peach harvest, the town, about an hour’s drive from downtown Beijing, has become one of the world’s most prodigious manufacturers of inexpensive cellos, violas, violins and double basses.

Last year the town’s 9 factories and 150 small workshops made 250,000 instruments, most of them ending up in the hands of students in the United States, Britain and Germany.

The city fathers have taken to boasting that Donggaocun produces 30 percent of the world’s string instruments, although another town in southeast China, Xiqiao, makes a similar, if slightly more credible, claim.

Feng Yuankai, of the China Musical Instrument Association, said that Xiqiao, in Jiangsu Province, is still the top producer, but that Donggaocun, which opened its first factory in 1988, is catching up.

“Even with the economic slowdown their output is growing very quickly,” he said, adding that Donggaocun is responsible for less than 20 percent of China’s violin market.

A disputed ranking, or the recent slump in orders, is not about to dent Donggaocun’s ambition of becoming China’s violin mecca.

Last month, officials began promoting the creation of a tourist attraction they are calling China’s first “string instrument experience center.”

When it opens this summer, Instrument City will include a museum of “world-famous” violins, a 500-seat concert hall, a musical fountain and what the vice mayor describes as a “folklore village.”

Then there was this spring’s annual peach blossom festival, which featured a violin extravaganza with 1,000 fiddlers taking to the stage.

Even if about half of the players — those too green for public consumption — were asked to refrain from actually playing, the concert was an auditory tour de force.

Since 2006 the local education department has trained 40 teachers to become violinists so that every school in Donggaocun and surrounding communities can offer music instruction.

Violins not only have become a driver of economic development, but also have elevated the town’s sense of itself, said Wang Junying, the department’s chief propaganda officer.

“They have helped us become a more cultured and elegant place,” Ms. Wang said.

The workers at Beijing Hongsheng Yun Violin Instruments Company largely agree. Most of the factory’s employees used to work in the same building, a paper plant that belched out noxious smoke.

But in their effort to clean Beijing’s air for the Summer Olympics last August, the authorities closed the plant and invested government money in violin production.

Although 200 workers lost their job when the paper plant closed, the two dozen people who were hired back by the violin workshop earn nearly twice as much as they did before.

Among the workplace perks are free instruments for the children of employees.

“Violins have made us richer, and they have raised our artistic awareness,” said Zhao Gangcai, who assembles violins six days a week and whose 13-year-old daughter recently started playing. “Her classmates think it’s cool, and now they want to learn, too.”

Some of Donggaocun’s most promising musicians end up in classes led by Ms. Chen, 28, a woman of inordinate patience who started playing the violin around the same time she began to talk.

She rejects the reluctant and those with stubby fingers, although she does take a handful of adults whose zeal makes up for their lack of raw talent.

Few students match the eagerness of Song Wei, 47, a retired kindergarten teacher who gave up the accordion for the violin after her husband and uncle began making string instruments.

She practices an hour or two each day, and several friends, also retirees, have also caught the violin bug, although they dare not play together.

“The noise would be unbearable,” she said with a laugh. “My only goal is to play a nice song when I hear it and to make myself happy.”

Ms. Chen has loftier goals. She hopes to turn Donggaocun into a talent factory, although she cautioned that prodigies usually emerge from musically inclined families, which, she suggested, were in short supply in this largely rural township of 33,000.

“I want this place to produce world-class musicians,” she said.

In the meantime, she is working on her 1-year-old daughter.

A few weeks ago, she gingerly placed a violin in the girl’s hands, and the results were encouraging.

“She knows how to hold it now,” Ms. Chen said. “I’m taking that as a good sign.”