arnie.cn

The China Post
October 14, 2010
By Christopher Bodeen, BEIJING, AP

A group of Communist Party elders in China has issued a bold call to end the country’s wide-ranging restrictions on free speech, just days after the government reacted angrily to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo.

In an open letter posted online, the retired officials state that although China’s 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the right is constrained by a host of laws and regulations that should be scrapped.

“This kind of false democracy of affirming in principle and denying in actuality is a scandal in the history of democracy,” said the letter, which was dated Monday and widely distributed by e-mail.

Wang Yongcheng, a retired professor at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University who signed the letter, said it had been inspired by the recent arrest of a journalist who wrote about corruption in the resettlement of farmers for a dam project.

“We want to spur action toward governing the country according to law,” Wang said in a telephone interview.    [FULL  STORY]

Reuters
By Walter Gibbs and Gwladys Fouche
Oct 12, 2010

OSLO (Reuters) – China broadened its retaliation against Norway on Tuesday for the selection of a Chinese dissident for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, cancelling a second cabinet-level meeting and a Norwegian cultural event in China.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told a news conference in Beijing the award to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo last week showed a lack of respect for China’s judicial system and damaged ties between the two countries.

In Oslo, the Nobel Committee said it would be “delighted” for Liu’s wife to accept the award at a ceremony on December 10 in Oslo if Liu, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for “subverting” the Chinese state, were prohibited from traveling.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing urged China to lift any restrictions on Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, who has sent out messages she is under house arrest in Beijing, according to news reports and overseas human rights groups.

In actions against Norway’s government, which says it has no influence over the Nobel Committee, Beijing canceled a meeting scheduled for Wednesday between Norwegian fisheries minister Lisbeth Berg-Hansen and Sun Dawei, the vice minister of China’s food safety authority, Norwegian officials said.

On Monday, the Chinese canceled a meeting between Berg-Hansen and Chinese vice fisheries minister Niu Dum, also scheduled for Wednesday.

Expanding retaliation to cultural exchanges, Chinese authorities called off a Norwegian musical due to be performed next month in Beijing, the show’s composer said on Tuesday.

“The show is canceled, and we have been told (it’s) as a punishment for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Thomas Langhelle, the composer of the musical “Some Sunny Night,” told Reuters. “We are told that Norwegians now cannot perform in China.”

Ragnhild Imerslund, a spokeswoman for Norway’s Foreign Ministry, told Reuters: “Other meetings at the working level are proceeding as normal but meetings at the political level have all been canceled.*    [FULL  STORY]

guardian.co.uk

China’s best-known dissident, who is serving 11 years in prison, is probably unaware he has won prize

China’s best-known dissident today won the prestigious Nobel peace prize from the prison cell where he is serving 11 years for incitement to subvert state power.

The Norwegian Nobel committee praised Liu Xiaobo for his “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. The … committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace.”

As the news was announced, transmission of both BBC news and CNN television channels was interrupted in China.    [FULL  STORY]

Associated Press
2010-10-09
By DAVID WIVELL

The world’s newest Nobel Peace Prize winner remained unreachable in a Chinese prison Saturday, while his wife’s mobile phone was cut off and the authoritarian government continued to censor reports about democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo’s honor.

Police kept reporters away from the prison where Liu is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion, and his lawyer said that Liu’s wife _ who had been hoping to visit him Saturday and tell him the news of the award_ has “disappeared” and he is worried she may be in police custody.

Chinese authorities, who called Liu a criminal shortly after his award Friday and said his winning “desecrates the prize,” sank Saturday into official silence.

Only an editorial in the state-run Global Times newspaper spoke out Saturday, saying in English, “Obviously, the Nobel Peace Prize this year is meant to irritate China, but it will not succeed. On the contrary, the committee disgraced itself.”

The paper’s Chinese-language edition called the award “an arrogant showcase of Western ideology” and said it disrespected the Chinese people.

But one Chinese newspaper cartoonist, Kuang Biao, posted an image on his blog Friday of a Nobel prize medal behind bars.

In naming Liu, the Norwegian-based Nobel committee honored his more than two decades of advocacy for human rights and peaceful democratic change _ from the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 to a manifesto for political reform that he co-authored in 2008 and which led to his latest jail term.

President Barack Obama, last year’s peace prize winner, called for Liu’s immediate release.

But there was still no word from the winner himself. The mobile phone of his wife, Liu Xia, was turned off Saturday as she was expected to be en route with police to the prison to meet her husband.

“She’s disappeared. We’re all worried about them,” Liu’s lawyer, Shang Baojun, told The Associated Press on Saturday.

He said even Liu Xia’s mother had been unable to reach her.    [FULL  STORY]

AFP
September 23, 2010 – 3:14AM

Typhoon Fanapi, one of the strongest storms to hit China in years, has left 33 dead and 42 missing in devastating flooding and landslides in the nation’s south, state press said on Wednesday.

Fanapi made landfall on the mainland on Monday, one day after slamming Taiwan with heavy rains, killing two people and leaving more than 100 injured on the island.

All of the mainland deaths occurred in southern China’s Guangdong province, which saw its worst rains in a century, the official Xinhua news agency said.    [FULL  STORY]

BBC News
21 September 2010

Japan has warned China that both nations must avoid stirring up “extreme nationalism” in their ongoing row over the detention of a Chinese sea captain.

The Japanese government said it wanted to use all possible channels to avoid any further escalation.

China responded by saying it would not meet Japanese leaders on the sidelines of a UN summit in New York this week.

Beijing has demanded the release of the skipper, whose boat hit two Japanese patrol vessels in disputed waters.

The BBC’s Roland Buerk in Tokyo says Japan’s government is trying to persuade China to take the heat out of the damaging row.

The Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshito Sengoku, said officials “should be careful not to arouse narrow-minded extreme nationalism”, not just in China, but in Japan and other countries too.

Just hours later, the Chinese foreign ministry said a meeting between Premier Wen Jiabao and his Japanese counterpart Naoto Kan would be inappropriate.

The dispute began two weeks ago when a Chinese fishing boat collided with two Japanese patrol ships near uninhabited islands in the East China Sea which both countries claim, as does Taiwan.    [FULL  STORY]

BBC News
19 September 2010

China has suspended top-level exchanges with Japan in a row over the detention of a Chinese ship captain following a collision near disputed islands.

Chinese state media said ministerial and provincial-level contacts had been suspended, including talks on aviation and coal.

Earlier, a Japanese court extended the detention of the captain, held after the collision in the East China Sea.

The disputed islands are known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.    [FULL  STORY]

BBC News
19 September 2010

An adviser to China’s central bank has rebuffed criticism from the US over Beijing’s exchange rate policy.  In a speech in Beijing, Li Daokui said China “will not appreciate the yuan solely because of external pressure”.  His comments follow strong criticism in America that the yuan is significantly undervalued, damaging US exports.

Last week US the Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, said he was considering ways to press China to let the yuan appreciate.  In June, after months of pressure from the US, China pledged to relax its grip on its currency.  But on Thursday Mr Geithner renewed the criticism, saying that the yuan’s value was “essentially” unchanged because of “very substantial” intervention by authorities.

China denies keeping its currency artificially cheap, and has warned against foreign pressure over what Beijing regards as an internal matter.  Mr Li said: “China as it stands now is not Japan in 1985, it is not a country that completely relies on external demand.”  That was a reference to a 1985 accord where Japan agreed to let its yen currency appreciate against the dollar.    [FULL  STORY]

NTDTV

Mr. Chen, who is blind and a self-taught lawyer, began defending the rights of farmers and the disabled in 1998. He later represented women who were forced to have late-term abortions and sterilizations under the Chinese regime’s one-child policy.

Mr. Chen was arrested in 2006 after documenting late-term abortions in Linyi City, and charged with damaging public property and gathering people to block traffic. His supporters say the charges were fabricated.    [FULL  STORY]

The Epoch Times
By Lin Hsin-Yi

Two months out from the 2010 Asia Games in Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong Province in south China, the city’s Public Security Bureau has laid down a new law which citizens say is as irksome as it will be ineffectual: that is, everyone who buys knives or similar instruments from now until the end of the Games will have to provide at least six pieces of personal information.

Like during other mass events organized by the authorities, before November 12 when the Games begin there will be frequent inspection points around the city with often onerous demands on passers-through, the prohibition of balloons, kites, sky lanterns and carrier pigeons, and a regime of stiff fines for incompliants.

The Guangzhou police announced the measures on August 21, titled “Notice to Enforce Safe Knife Management in Guangzhou.” It goes for cleavers, large fruit knives, craft knives, files, and ceramic knives; only approved vendors can sell them, and buyers need to yield their name, address, ID number, types of knives, number purchased, and intended use. The policy has currently been put into effect in a few districts.

The police will also be inspecting all inbound vehicles at checkpoints along major roads into Guangzhou during the Games.

Internet users have called the measures boring, useless, a waste of resources, as well as a true reflection of how China’s rulers imagine the citizens to be enemies.    [FULL  STORY]