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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, July 12, 2012

Part 1 of a three part series on the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act & foreign journalists in China

Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on the “Chinese Media Reciprocity Act” (H.R. 2899), a bill introduced last fall by Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California.   The Act attempts to combat China’s restrictive visa policies for U.S. government-employed journalists.  Instead of issuing journalist visas to most if not all Chinese journalists in the U.S., the Act would require that the number of visas issued to Chinese government journalists be identical to the number of visas that China issues to U.S. government reporters.

In reality, the impact of the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act is anything but reciprocal.  The U.S. has two government-sponsored news agencies in (or trying to get in) China: Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA); the remaining U.S. journalists in China work for private media outlets.  China on the other hand, with its state-owned media, has 13government-run agencies and over 800 media personnel working in the U.S.  If passed, within 30 days, the State Department would be required to revoke the number of visas issued to Chinese journalists to equal the number of visas issued to American government journalists in China which currently stands at 2.  The Act would all but eliminate a Chinese media presence in the U.S.

Given its extreme and inflexible nature, the Act shouldn’t be passed.  But it does highlight a truly important issue: the harassment, censorship and expulsion of foreign journalists from China and raises the issue of what the U.S government should do about it.

The Act has many problems.  First, it solely focuses on China, giving it the air of a Chinese Exclusion Act.  China is not the only country which denies foreign journalists visas – a quick review of the worst countries for journalists on Reporters Without Borders’ website reveals that Burma, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Eritrea similarly deny foreign journalists visas.  But this Act is exclusively about China.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher

Second, the rhetoric by the Act’s proponents leads one to believe that they are more motivated by a Cold War mentality than a true concern about U.S. journalists’ access in China.   Rep. Rohrabacher’s testimony in support of the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act is filled with red herrings concerning Confucius Institutes, billboards in Times Square, and the Chinese purchase of AMC movie theaters (in order to flood the US with Chinese propaganda films).  Testimony by John Lenczowski focused more on Russian spies in the US Embassy in Moscow during the Cold War than the actual treatment of U.S. journalists in China today.

Third, passage of the Act could lead to even worse retaliation by China.  China repeatedly harasses the two VOA reporters in China (see Nick Zahn’s testimony, p. 5-6) and it has consistently denied visas to RFA reporters.  Perhaps the most famous incident was when the Chinese government rescinded the RFA reporters’ visas only days before they were to accompany President Clinton on his 1998 trip to China.

But other major media outlets, like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and CNN, just to name a few, have reporters on the ground in China doing some hard hitting reporting.  Yes these reporters are also often harassed and are often forced to wait months for a visa or are threatened by the Chinese security apparatus that visa renewal will be denied (one of the Washington Post’s China reporters – Andrew Higgins – has been waiting for a visa since 2009, forced to report from Hong Kong).   But in general, most reporters are able to renew their visas and solid reporting from China is able to make it to our shores.  But some, like the Committee to Protect Journalists, warn that passage of the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act could lead to an all out visa war, resulting in China denying a greater number of visas and exacerbating an already tense situation for foreign journalists there.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, is this who we want to be?  A free and vibrant press has been a central tenet of the United States; it was crucial to the success of the American Revolution, is encapsulated within the First Amendment, and is rarely if ever abridged.  As Americans, we understand that the press is a building block to creating a government truly accountable to its people; unfettered press access is an important goal in and of itself.

In recent years, China has seen some developments in a more professionalized and freer press.  Yes, the Chinese press still has to take its most of its cues from the Chinese government, but there has been some development in more real reporting (see Susan Shirk’s Changing Media, Changing China).  But by essentially eradicating the Chinese press from U.S. shores, the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act undermines our goals of this burgeoning freedom of the press in China.  Even the reporters harassed by the Chinese government do not agree with such actions.  Peter Ford, president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (“FCCC”), told China Law & Policy that they “do not support efforts to restrict press freedom in one country in an effort to improve press freedom in another.  We remain committed to freedom of the press.”

But all the attention surrounding the Act raises the issue of Beijing’s treatment of foreign journalists.  Is there anything the U.S. can do to change what appears to be the Chinese government’s increased harassment of foreign journalists?

Continued in Part 2

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, July 5, 2012

From The Printed Image in China: Qing Dynasty "Folkloric" Print

For many, wood block prints are synonymous with all things Japanese.  But as “The Printed Image in China” – a traveling show from the British Museum currently on view at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – demonstrates, such a perception is totally wrong since it was China that first developed the technology, allowed it to flourish and made it an integral part of its culture and history.  The Printed Image in China is a must see, but must be seen by the end of July before it closes on the 29th.

This small, six gallery show begins with the earliest known prints in the world.  Although the Gutenberg Bible, printed in 1454, is commonly referred to as the first printed book, in reality, China was printing books, through wood block printing technology, as early as the 700s (likely even earlier).  The Diamond Sutra, purchased by Hungarian-British explorer Marc Aurel Stein in 1907 from a monk in the Dunhuang region of China, is the earliest, dated printed book in the world, with a date of 868 A.D.

Although the Diamond Sutra is not part of the show, some of the thousands of other ancient manuscripts that were a part of Stein’s Dunhuang purchase and estimated to have been printed around the same time if not earlier, start this phenomenal show.  For prints from the early Tang Dynasty (618 A.D. – 907 A.D.), the detail is truly astounding.  In particular, “Bodhisattva Mahapratisara with the Text of ‘Da Sui qiu tuoluoni,‘” gives one pause, reciting an entire sutra within the print along with detailed pictures of Guanyin, making one wonder about the difficulty of carving it and the patience required.

The show then jumps to prints to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), where the technology of wood block truly began to thrive and the industry flourished.  During the Ming, the use of multiple colors on a print – by carving different blocks for each color – developed, producing glorious prints that accurately copied the famous paintings of the day.  Later on in the show an entire gallery – and a highlight – is dedicated to demonstrating the genius of this technique with actual replicas of the differently colored blocks that would be used to create a single picture.  It’s easy to linger in that room, studying the intricacies of the method.

Wood block printing continued and peaked as an art form during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).  By the middle Qing, wood block printing was

Etching of Qianlong Battle (c. 1770) in the European Style

becoming its own art form.  Whereas the goal of the Ming artists was to make the wood block prints appear as much as a painting as possible, the Qing artists began to experiment with more vibrant colors (think hot pink) and thinner paper which resulted in an embossed, tactile texture to the print, making it obvious this was not a painting.  In addition, under the Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799), China experimented with the use of copper plates, prevalent in Europe at that time, Viewing some the etchings of famous European battles that the Jesuits priests brought with them to court, Emperor Qianlong (1711 – 1799) commissioned Matteo Ripa to create copper-plated etchings of Qianlong’s own battles.

A high point of the show is the “folkloric” prints found in the third gallery.  Unlike the pieces found in prior galleries, these prints – exploding with color – would have been everyday art, hung for New Years in an average person’s home.  Depicting the doorway gods and the Kitchen God, these prints – dating to the mid to late 1800s – were likely purchased directly by British that were in China at the time and viewed them as art to be maintained.  For the Chinese, these pictures were utilitarian in that they warded of the spirits for that year and, in keeping with tradition, would have been burned in preparation for the next New Year.

Li Hua's Raging Tide - Example of Modern Woodcut Movement

The final century, the 20th century, saw a renaissance of the wood block not just once but twice.  With the fall of the Qing, the uncertain rule of the Nationalists and the impending invasion of the country by the Japanese, the average Chinese was suffering.  Author Lu Xun (1881 – 1936), along with Li Shutong, were the major proponents of the “Modern Woodcut Movement” which used the sharpness of the woodcuts to reflect the harshness of daily existence in China.  By the 1920s, woodcutting was on the rise throughout the world and would become a common medium for many artists attempting to depict and democratize the misery of the average individual.    China was right along with Western nations in using the art form to communicate democratizing thoughts.

Wood block printing had a second 20th century renaissance under Chairman Mao Zedong (1949 – 1976).  With the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the government became the only patron of the arts and art was there to only to serve the government.  With the Communists, mass production became essential and where as in the past, wood carving was only one technique an artist might used, under the Mao, with its ability to create rapid reproductions for wide dissemination, wood carving would become a sole medium for many of the state-employed artists.  As a result, a talented pool of woodcutters emerged, taking the skill of the craft to the next level; the artists were able to use the wood block prints to create a feel to the different materials and emotions depicted in the print.

With the death of Mao in 1976 and the re-emergence of the market economy, these artists have continued with their crafted, creating new wood blocks prints that express their own emotions instead of the Party line.

The Printed Imagine in China is a must see show before it closes on July 29 but not just for the astounding prints that fill every gallery in this show.  What also emerges from this show and the careful way it has been laid out and described, is how this art form is an integral part of China’s political and cultural legacy and will be a part of its artistic future.  From the first gallery, wood block prints were printed for political reasons –

Post 1980 Woodcut: Wu Jide - Chatting over Tea

with the Tang, the politics was religion.  Spreading Buddhism was essential to the Tang Dynasty and the wood block prints, with its quicker way to reproduce the Buddha’s teaching, was important to that goal.

Under the Ming, spreading the literati culture became its own mission.  Across the Empire, a cultural language arose amongst the elites – an educated man needed to have certain books on his shelves and certain paintings on his walls.  Wood block printing created that mass culture among the literati.  With the Qing dynasty, a foreign dynasty ruled by the Manchu people as opposed to the Han Chinese, wood block printing was used to solidify its rule, especially with the  battle depictions of Emperor Qianlong.  For much of the 20th Century, first under the Modern Woodcut Movement of Lu Xun and then the Communists of Mao Zedong, the political message was clear; under Mao, it was required.

Unlike the centuries before, the 21st century finds the art form – perhaps for the first time – unhinged from any political purpose.  As the final gallery, with its post-1980s wood block prints, confirmed, the art form has exciting, new places to go that will do justice to its long history.

Tang Dynasty Wood Block Print - ca. late 700s A.D. (from the Dunhuang Purchase)

The Printed Image in China: 8th through 21st Century
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(on loan from the British Museum)
1000 Fifth Ave (at 82nd Street)
New York, NY
Through July 29, 2012

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, July 2, 2012

"Yi Lu Ping An" - Chinese phrase for Bon Voyage

Some blogs come and some blogs go, so what are you going to do about it, that’s what I’d like to know…

That tune I found myself humming tonight when I opened my Twitter account to slews of tweets lamenting the end of an era, lamenting the end of the China Beat.

For the past four years, the China Beat, a blog out of UC Irvine, posted some of the most eclectic, insightful and best written posts on China.  Subtitled, “How the East is Read” and run by a group of Chinese historians, the blog covered a wide array of issues in a fun and engaging way, making China accessible to everyone.  But more than just the quality of its posts, the China Beat also afforded a platform for different voices in the field:  young students of Chinese studies, non-scholar observers of China, and women.

For much of the China Beat’s history, two women have been important members of the four person team  that ran the site: Kate Merkel-Hess and Maura Cunningham.  Does gender matter?  I think it does.  Each of us has a perspective through which we view this world and our experiences in life is what determines that perspective; gender plays a part in creating that perspective.  I’m making no normative assessments of these perspectives, just acknowledge that gender can at times offer a different viewpoint.

In the Western-based China world, women’s voices are often not at the forefront.  A review of my book shelf has just two China books written by women (Susan Shirk and Elizabeth Economy); my Google Reader lists blogs written by men (aside from Flora Sapio’s Forgotten Archipeligos); and most of the major journalists who regularly cover China are men (exceptions being Lousia Lim of NPR, Sharon LaFraniere of NY Times and Melissa Chan formerly of Al Jazeera).

So it was refreshing to have a blog that was 50% female-run, with high-quality women who offered amazing scholarship.

Regardless of the gender make up of the China Beat blog team, the fact that such an amazing blog is shutting down is a travesty in and of itself.

Bye-bye China Beat

As with many blogs, the China Beat editors were finding it increasingly difficult to balance blogging with their paid jobs and ultimately it was the blog that had to go.  As much as we all try, you cannot make a living on China blogging  and some other job must pay the bills.  But with all the efforts to improve Americans’ understanding of China such as the State Department’s 100,000 Strong Initiative, blogs like the China Beat, which helped to illuminate the mysteries of China to the average American, has to close its doors.  It’s a pity that there are no grants out there to support the work of the China Beat which lessened the distance between the American people, especially the vast majority who will likely never visit China, and the Chinese.

With the China Beat closing its doors, its left to other blogs to try to pick up the mantel of honest, interesting and smart blog posts.  While China Law & Policy will try, most likely no one will be able to replace the China Beat.

Good-bye the China Beat; we hardly knew ye’.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, June 27, 2012

Meg Davis

This year Asia Catalyst celebrates its fifth anniversary.  If you have never heard of Asia Catalyst, then you are missing out on this tiny but powerful U.S-based NGO doing work in China.  Founded and headed by Sara L.M. Davis, aka “Meg”, a former China researcher at Human Rights Watch, Asia Catalyst is doing what others might think is unsexy work, but in reality is perhaps the most necessary work: assisting Chinese grassroots NGOs with developing the skills and best practices to become effective organizations.

Asia Catalyst is one of the few groups on the ground in China making civil society a reality.  By training China’s nascent grassroots NGOs in the nitty-gritty of running a non-profit, Asia Catalyst guarantees that Chinese civil society will have a strong foundation upon which it can successfully grow.  Asia Catalyst also teaches the tools necessary to effectively advocate both on the domestic and international levels.

China Law & Policy sat down with Meg Davis to discuss Asia Catalyst’s work with NGOs, its recently co-authored report with Beijing’s Korekata AIDS Law Center about the HIV/AIDS blood disaster, and what the future holds for civil society, rule of law and Asia Catalyst.

For those also impressed by its work and interested in supporting it, donations can be made here. For its Fifth Anniversary Campaign, Asia Catalyst’s Board of Directors has generously offered to match all individual gifts donated in 2012 (up to $8,000).

Click here to listen to the interview with Asia Catalyst founder & executive director, Meg Davis, or read the entire transcript below.
Length: 19 minutes (audio will open in a separate browser)

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[01:06] EL: Thank you for joining us today Meg.  So five years ago, what inspired you to create Asia Catalyst? 

[01:13] MD:  It was really kind of an exciting moment in the development of Chinese civil society.  You were starting to see a lot of small groups springing up around the country to address health issues and environmental issues.  These were groups that were started by charismatic individuals who had a clear vision for the future, but maybe hadn’t worked at a non-profit before or had just worked at a similar kind of grassroots start-up.  It was the fact that I had worked with some of these folks at Human Rights Watch in my capacity as a researcher there that led me to have relationships with them.  When I left Human Rights Watch they didn’t really let me leave; they kind of followed along and said ‘can you look at this grant proposal,’ ‘can you help me to meet with this UN person,’ ‘I’m at risk of arrest, can I sleep on your sofa for a week.’ So there was a lot of that kind of stuff that eventually led to the development of Asia Catalyst.

[02:07] EL:  Just in terms of the grassroots situation in China, you keep referring to these NGOs that you work with as “grassroots NGOs.”  Can you perhaps just explain a little bit more about the NGO structure in China and how these “grassroots NGOs” that you help fit into that structure?

[02:25] MD: Grassroots is really an English appropriation of a Chinese term – caogen.  A lot of the groups we work refer to themselves as “caogen,” as grassroots groups.  It’s their way of saying they are independent.  In China, you can only really register at this stage as a non-profit, if you have, in most parts of the country, a sponsoring government institution.  For groups that do policy advocacy, no sensible government official is going to stick their necks out and sponsor one of these groups to get registered.  Some of them are unregistered and a lot of them are registered as businesses, as commercial enterprises.

[03:03] EL:  If these groups are unregistered with the government, how do they develop the skills? If you’re not there to help them, how would they develop the skills to become a professional and effective organization without you if they are kind of in the shadows?

[03:18] MD: Some groups that are more established are getting support from capacity building organizations that do exist in China.  There aren’t many people who are offering what we provide to these very small start-ups which is really one-on-one tailored coaching.  A lot of the groups we work with are founded by people with very limited education so we’re developing tools that don’t require a very sophisticated vocabulary that they can use to do strategic planning, budgeting, staff management, they can do basic qualitative research without a sophisticated background.

[03:51] EL:   In terms of Asia Catalyst’s focus, you’re focusing right now on which types of grassroots NGOs?  I imagine there are a lot of grassroots NGOs [in China], which are you focusing on?

[04:01] MD:  There are more every year.  We mostly work with groups involved in health and legal rights.  That includes groups working on HIV/AIDS, some marginalized communities including lesbian and gay groups, sex workers, drug users, people living with HIV.  But we’re starting also to work with groups that work on disability rights and with groups working on pollution and other kinds of health-related issues.

[04:26] EL: What caused you five years ago just to focus on health rights groups?

PSA in China to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS

[04:31] MD: It was an area of growth and I think it’s also an area where forward-thinking, progressive government officials can easily engage.  If you go to them and say ‘we want to support human rights groups that are working on democracy promotion or censorship issues,’ that’s hard for someone who is a devout believer in Communist Party ideals to support.  But someone who is a socialist can get behind health rights because it is really is not that far removed.

[04:58] EL: So today, five years in, how many organizations in China does Asia Catalyst currently partner with and how does Asia Catalyst find its partners? 

[05:07] MD:  Currently this year we’re working with about 17 organizations around the country.  They’re from all over the place; from northeast China to all the way down to Yunnan and southeast China as well.

[05:18] We find most of our partners through online, open applications and we do this because when I was starting Asia Catalyst, there was a growing number of NGOs but there was a very small number that had international partners or international funding and we really wanted to cast a wider net and get groups that maybe not everybody had heard about.  I think we are starting to do that.

[05:39] EL: So just to follow up on that.  That’s one of the things that I find exciting about Asia Catalyst is this open call for applications.  I know you have a report on your website about how you put out an open call and that people can just come in.  I know most US-based organizations do partner with Chinese organizations that have been recommended through other people, so a lot of the same organizations are getting support internationally.  Sometimes some of those organizations – the US organizations – believe that it that these organizations are more reliable.  But by opening your application process to the public, do you feel that you risk spending resources on grassroots NGOs that might not be as reliable and that might just disappear.  What has your experience been?

[06:30] MD: It’s actually…our experience is the opposite.  Our experience is that some people who become, frankly, kind of donor favorites don’t necessarily have very strong infrastructure, don’t have a core team, don’t have a strategic plan or a solid budget, don’t necessarily have strong financial controls.  So by throwing the application process completely open, it’s a little bit more democratic, it’s a little bit more in line with the ideals that we espouse of transparency and accountability, and it means that groups, any groups that applies for one of our programs has to go through a process of being vetted which is quite intensive and a little bit painful for them.  They have to submit a lot of materials, they have to go through multiple interviews, they have to provide references, and in that way we try to identify groups that have certain fundamentals and one of those is a core team.  It’s easy to have one person who is very charismatic [as a] founder but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there is an organization behind them.  We’ve learned that the hard way.  So that’s one of the things that we try to identify through our intake process.

[07:33] EL: After you have done the intake and you find an organization that has been vetted, what kind of services does Asia Catalyst provide to help develop them?

[07:41] MD: The way our program is structured now, the first kind of level of engagement is through our non-profit leadership cohort which is a year-long program where 10 health rights group get intensive training in budgeting, strategic planning, and volunteer management.  Out of that, we pick two people who will continue on for a second year who will then become training assistants with a small stipend.  At the end of the second year, if they pass a certification exam, they can start their own cohort using our curriculum.

[08:15] Groups that go through the cohort then become eligible to get other kinds of assistance and sometimes that means leveraging our own donor connections to introduce them to donors, sometimes that means helping them come to international conferences.  So it can mean a variety of different possible partnerships.

[08:29] EL:  I also know that you guys have this survival skills guide.  Is that accessible to Chinese NGOs in Chinese on the web?

[08:39] MD: It is.  It’s available in English and in Chinese.  We’ve circulated hard copies through our networks in China and we’ve also made it available for free download.  That’s actually the most popular thing we developed is that tool kit which uses tools we developed with groups over the past years.

[08:53] EL: And that’s accessible to all grassroots organizations in China?

[08:55] MD: Absolutely.  Any of them.  And also our human rights curriculum which we’re still in the process of developing with Chinese and Thai partners which is called “Know It, Prove It, Change It” and is a three part curriculum series on how to analyze human rights issues, how to document them and how to conduct advocacy around them.

[09:15] EL: And then the organizations that you work with in China, I know you have this philosophy of “pay it forward” where they’re supposed to help others.  Can you just talk more about that and how you make sure that happens.

[09:25] MD:  That was something that came out of our initial partnership with the Korekata AIDS Law Center in Beijing.  After we had worked with them for a couple of years and they were ready to become independent, we asked them for some input into our strategic plan and they said, ‘How about a pay it forward element where we would then help another organization with some element of their work?’  So some of the groups that we work with now that have had a little bit more experience, we ask them to assist with some of the other organizations whether it is advising on a project or giving them a little workshop or something else.

[09:56] EL: So then they are creating a real civil society where other organizations in China teach other organizations.

[10:00] MD:  That’s the hope.

[10:02] EL:  That’s cool.  So I just want to also now turn to some of the substantive work that Asia Catalyst has published and co-authored, specifically, the March 2012 report that Asia Catalyst co-authored with Korekata AIDS Law Center entitled “China’s Blood Disaster: The Way Forward.”  Can you just give our listeners a little bit of background on the report, what role Asia Catalyst played in drafting the report and how Korekata was able to obtain the information for that report?

[10:33] MD: Sure.  I think as most people who follow China at all know, in the 1990s tens of thousands of people contracted HIV through a state-sponsored, for-profit blood collection scheme in which people were encouraged to sell their blood in ways that were unsafe and that spread tainted blood to whole villages of people. [Hospital blood supplies became contaminated, spreading HIV to more people.]

[10:54] Ten, fifteen years further down the line, a lot of those people are struggling with HIV and are still trying to get compensation and still trying to get some acknowledgement of what happened to them and their families.  Some of them suffered just overwhelming losses.  It’s really the largest blood disaster in the history of AIDS.  China has had one, and certainly the US, Canada, France, Japan, every country has had a blood disaster but China dwarfs the others by several orders of magnitude.

[11:23] So activists and people living with HIV  in China have been pushing, through petitioning and through lawsuits, to try and get compensation.  The weak legal system in China has made it difficult for them.  But in the past year or so we got some signals from UNAIDS that the government might be willing to engage on this issue and to address this vast need by creating a national compensation plan.

[11:47]  We were asked by UNAIDS to work with Korekata AIDS Law Center as they conducted research to document some of the cases.  It’s not possible to document all of them when you’re a tiny, little NGO, but to gather some of the cases from different parts of the areas that were affected and to show what some of the challenges were with obtaining compensation.

[12:06]  So Korekata conducted several dozen interviews, they got very rich testimony from people in very remote villages.  I worked with them in training them on how to do the research and then how to analyze the data.  We had a week of eating dumplings around a table and arguing about how a compensation fund should be managed which was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.  Imagine trying to make policy for a country of 1.2 billion.  If you’re not someone already doing it it’s a challenging task.  Based on that, Korekata drafted a report which we translated into English and was submitted to the UNAIDS and to what’s called the Red Ribbon Forum, a national platform for dialogue on HIV/AIDS policy.

[12:49] EL: When you say the Red Ribbon Forum is a national platform, is that a national platform within China?

[12:55] MD:  It is.  It’s unique actually and they have kept it a little bit quiet.  Basically as far as I know it is the first platform in which the government and NGOs engage in a dialogue about human rights, and it’s about human rights and HIV/AIDS.

[13:09] EL: And just in terms when you say the government and NGOs, including these grassroots NGOs that are kind of in the shadows?

[13:17] MD:  That’s right.  Absolutely.  It’s grassroots NGOs and it’s the Ministry of Health.  And when I say dialogue it is often Ministry of Health officials giving a speech and then NGOs giving a speech.  So it’s not really a very hands-on, face-to-face discussion a lot of the time.  But it is a first to have them in the same room and talking to each other

[13:36] Out of that there was a working group [led by Professor Qiu Rrenzong] that then created proposals that went to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference which met in March, [and then to the National People’s Congress, and was submitted up from there.]  So there is a proposal now for a national compensation fund that is in that process.  So we’ll see.

[13:54] EL:So this report has basically gone to the high levels of the Chinese government and hopefully has some kind of impact?

The Toll of the Disaster: AIDS orphans in China

[14:00] MD: Yes.  I have written a lot of human rights reports in China and that’s the first one.

[14:04] EL: And in terms of the report, outside of the Chinese government, I know you received coverage with the South China Morning Post, but domestically, has the report received any media coverage in China or is this issue still a little bit too sensitive.  I guess, how is the media handling the report and then just the issue in general?

[14:22] MD:  We did what is called a soft launch, so we didn’t send it out to all our press contacts and Korekata also did not because it was the “Liang Hui,” the “Two Sessions Period” which is often politically sensitive.  So we opted to do something that was a little bit more low key and just send it to a few key people we knew were interested in the issue and that would cover it.  So there was a beautiful article by Paul Mooney in South China Morning Post, the British Medical Journal and then as it happened, the Shenzhen CDC, Center for Disease Control, also reported on it.

[14:52] EL:  Wow, so this is having a lot of impact then.  In terms of the report itself, when I read through it, what I thought was the most interesting as a attorney was just the difficulty that many of these people have in getting into the court system in order to compensation cases. So you can just explain to our audience how these cases are kept out of court?

[15:18] MD:  Sure.  What’s happened in Henan province is that courts have flat-out refused to accept cases.  So a lawyer will approach the court, say that he wants or she wants to submit a case for consideration and the court clerk will just take it and then bring it back to him and say ‘sorry we cannot accept this case because it relates to HIV AIDS.’  In Henan, courts are saying that they have been issued an order from on-high not to handle any cases relating to HIV AIDS of any kind.

For AIDS compensation cases, the courthouse doors are always locked

[15:49] EL:  Have you ever seen this actual order?

[15:52] MD:  No one has seen it.  No one has ever seen this order.

[15:55] EL:  And Henan is kind of the epicenter of the crisis?

[15:57] MD:  Henan is the one that’s the hardest hit province in the whole region. [In other provinces, courts sometimes accept cases, but plaintiffs then face many procedural barriers to getting a judgment. In a few cases, people have gotten judgments but then never succeeded in getting them implemented.]

[16:01] EL:  So what I thought actually was really interesting is that in your report you actually had a list of 26 HIV/AIDS compensation settlements where you document whether it was an out of court settlement or an in-court settlement or a court judgment.  There were actually 6 cases where it was either a court-mediated settlement or a court judgment and they actually had the highest awards when I compared it to others.  And even in one of them, what I thought was interesting, the one out of Heilongjiang ordered over $30,000 for emotionally damages. 

[16:38] MD:  Heilongjiang is a good [place] to be a victim of a bad thing.

[16:42] EL:   Why are some courts taking these cases, or do you not know?

[16:47] MD: So Heilongjiang was very early on.  It’s a northeastern province in China, very sparsely populated, there was not a big blood disaster there.  So some provinces like Henan, it is tens of thousands of people.  Heilongjiang it may be a few thousands or it may be less, we don’t really know.  And so, I think what’s happening is that early on some provinces said ‘Fine, no problem, let’s address this.’  But other provinces said ‘We are going to open the flood gates and we cannot cope with this.’  And that’s part of the reason why we are calling for a national compensation fund.

[17:21] EL: Because you’re seeing such a disparity between provinces?

[17:24] MD: Yes, it’s deeply unfair.

[17:25] EL: Do you know….I mean, it was kind of unique, I mean as an attorney, seeing a judge give out a huge amount of money for emotional harm is even unique in the United States, let alone in China.  Do you have any idea why?

[17:39] MD:  I don’t and no one has been able to reach the lawyer in that case, so we don’t know all the details.  That was a case that happened fairly early on also.  So it gave a lot of people false hope I think in other places.

[17:52] EL:  In terms of new cases, I know that you had reported…Asia Catalyst had reported on its blog that there’s been a new case that a court has actually accepted about HIV/AIDS and privacy.  Do you think this is a result of publicizing the issue more?  What do you think is happening there?

[18:07] MD:  I don’t…I mean, I don’t know.  There have been a few attempts to litigate on discrimination and this was actually sort of like a discrimination case.  I think there is starting to be a little bit more awareness and more courts are accepting cases related to discrimination.  And privacy issues are probably an easier sell.  But the blood disaster remains very, very hard to litigate on.

Asia Catalyst in Action

[18:33] EL:  So it sounds like that in a short amount of time Asia Catalyst has been able to assist a good number of grassroots NGOs achieve justice for some of society’s most vulnerable.  What do you see for the next 5 years?

[18:44] MD:  Well, we are continuing to build on our work in China.  Some of the groups that come out of the cohort, we will be working with them to help them conduct their own research and do advocacy and hopefully building a system that will then self-perpetuate where people who come out of our program start to train others and it scales up and becomes really something that is locally managed .  We are also beginning to look at Myanmar and other countries in Southeast Asia to see whether we can take the tools and experience we have from China and make them work in other locations as well.  So we will see how that develops.

[19:16] EL: Okay, well that’s very exciting, it’s exciting times for Asia Catalyst and thank you for joining us today Meg.

[19:21] MD: Thank you so much.

******************************************************************************

To learn more about Asia Catalyst events or to support its work, please visit Asia Catalyst’s website at www.asiacatalyst.org.  For its Fifth Anniversary Campaign, Asia Catalyst’s Board of Directors has generously offered to match all individual gifts donated in 2012 (up to $8,000).

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, June 6, 2012

Have we hit a tipping point?

Last November I attended a fascinating talk by Rebecca MacKinnon, guru on all things censored and author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. At the talk, MacKinnon’s focus was on the Chinese corporations that do China’s censorship bidding. MacKinnon noted that China’s internet regulations are not enforced by the government; rather the companies that manage China’s various and extremely active blogs and microblogs are responsible for enforcing China’s online censorship laws and regulations. Yes such censorship leaves these companies’ customers angry, but its worth it for what they get in exchange: an exclusive monopoly that keeps out more sophisticated players like Facebook and Twitter.

But MacKinnon hypothesized that at some point it won’t be economically worth it for these companies to continue to censor. MacKinnon highlighted the complete internet shutdown that occurred in Xinjiang province in 2009 for the entire year. That shut down harmed the local and regional economy. But even that wasn’t enough to cause these internet companies to push back against the government’s internet censorship and control. Instead, MacKinnon mused about the impact that such efforts would have in a more populous region or city, say like Shanghai.

And on Monday it looked like perhaps China reached that tipping point. Monday, June 4, marked the 23rd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, a sensitive date for China’s Communist Party. On Monday, the Shanghai stock market closed 64.89 points down. But 64.89 is not just any number, it’s the numerical translation of June 4, 1989. As reported in the New York Times, searches for “Shanghai stock,” “Shanghai stock market” and “index” were censored in response to this coincidence.

But can you imagine a country that censors words that are important for commerce? These aren’t searches for “Chen Guangcheng” or other Chinese activists; those searches would pull results that are obviously about human rights. But searches for business terms? To censor that in a market relies on the speed and effectiveness of the internet is not just plain wacky but bad for business.

Obviously the Shanghai stock market censorship is not yet the tipping point as internet censorship is still alive and well. But it makes me wonder, are we getting closer? Is what MacKinnon speculated – that eventually the goals of the Chinese government and of the Chinese internet companies will diverge – inevitable? To the extent that you buy into the hypothesis that the Chinese people have “made a deal” with their government – that in exchange for economic security the Chinese will give up some of their political freedoms – is it inevitable that that deal will be broken? The Shanghai stock market debacle hints that maybe in the end its the Party’s own paranoid censorship that will be its death knell.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, June 3, 2012

“For the great majority of young mainland Chinese, the events of the Tiananmen Massacre have never entered their consciousness; they have never seen the photographs and news reports about it, and even fewer have their family or teachers ever explained it to them. They have not forgotten it; they have never known anything about it.”

So ends Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years, an allegorical novel set in the near-future Beijing, where China is the only prosperous nation left after the great global economic meltdown of 2008. Most of its citizens are happy – unnaturally so – and fully satisfied with the materialism of their new lives.

But there is a small group of misfits- led by Fang Caodi – that is searching for a missing month from 2008 where martial law was imposed so that the government could bring on the fat years. All remnants of that month have been erased from society’s collective memory: newspapers published during that month no longer exist and no one ever speaks of it. It’s as if it never occurred. Fang and his posse go all over the country, trying to find any evidence of that missing month and trying to find more people like them: people who remember. They find almost no one but then hatch a plan to kidnap a high level government official and interrogate him. They find out about a government intent on guaranteeing that the mistakes of its pass are forgotten and only China’s glorious future is remembered.

Make no mistake, Chan is not talking about a missing month in 2008. What Chan is discussing are the seven weeks that led up to the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre, where martial law was imposed, high-level Chinese officials ordered the army to open fire on its own people, and hundreds of unarmed student protestors were estimated to have been killed.

On Monday the world will mark the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. But Mainland China will not. Every year, the anniversary of Tiananmen, known as Liu Si in Chinese, is forgotten on mainland China, unless you count the Chinese government’s stepped up security of Tiananmen Square and random detention of activists as a commemorating event.

Around June 1, 1989, over a million students converge on Beijing's Tiananmen Square

For 23 years, there has been no public mention of the Tiananmen massacre and aside from hushed whispers among older Chinese, in particular the Tiananmen Mothers who bravely try to keep the murder of their children alive, there is little private discussion of the event. The Chinese government’s 23 years of silence concerning Tiananmen isn’t just denial. It’s been a concerted and fairly effective effort to erase Tiananmen, and the government’s bloody actions on the night of June 3, 1989, from China’s collective memory.

Mainland Chinese born after 1989 largely do not know anything about the events surrounding those seven weeks 23 years ago nor the bloody repression on the night of June 3 into the early morning hours of June 4. To the extent that they have heard anything about it – from a professor who might have supported the students in 1989 or from a family member who was there – their recollections are muddied at best.

Chan’s The Fat Years is a warning: that the Chinese must not forget the past; that they must continue to remember. But that warning is mixed with the reality that perhaps some Chinese do want to forget, especially the young. Compared to 1989, times have never been better. Why rock the boat? Why be bothered with your parent’s history?  And that is Chan’s second note of caution to the Chinese: do not be lulled into acceptance by materialism.

But those messages will not be heard in China.  In keeping with their efforts to annihilate Tiananmen from collective memory,the Chinese government has banned The Fat Years. In the introduction to the English translation, Julia Lovell notes that the book has still

A rickshaw driver ferries two dying students on he morning of June 4, 1989

made its way around dissident circles in Beijing. But dissidents in Beijing are a small, insular group; the vast majority of Chinese will remain unaware.  The fact that today’s dissidents and rights activists still remember Tiananmen is one weakness in the Chinese government’s goal and might explain the two-year crackdown on activists.

For the first few years after the Tiananmen massacre, the question was, how long will the Chinese government refuse to investigate the murder of hundreds of Chinese students. Twenty-three years later, now the question is, will the Chinese ever know their own history? As time passes, memories fade, Tiananmen mothers die, and the Chinese Communist Party remains in power, the answer seems to be leaning toward no.

That is why we must never forget June 4, 1989 and continue to memorialize and investigate the events. As censorship increases in China, the western world is ironically becoming the repository of China’s modern history. Eventually, the Chinese people will demand that they be allowed to learn their own history; eventually they will be free to decide for their own what aspects of their history that they want to commemorate and what they want to forget.  Eventually, the West’s repository of knowledge will be accessed by the Chinese.

Chan’s The Fat Years should not be read for its literary style. At many points the narrative really slows down and “near future Beijing” is actually 2013, making it difficult for the current English reader of translation to find it even slightly believable. It also appears to peter out toward the end with the main characters just fading from the page. But for the ideas that the book presents about modern day China and its potential future, it is an important read.  Especially today, on this anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.

Rating:

The Fat Years: A Novel, by Chan Koonchung (Nan A. Talese, 2012), 336 pages.

A BBC news report from the early morning of June 4, 1989

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, May 28, 2012

Paul French describes his gripping new book, Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China, as a belated quest to bring justice to a young woman, brutally murdered 75 years ago in Beijing.  But the story is equally as applicable to the present, highlighting that our criminal justice system — and with the case of Bo Xilai, China’s criminal justice system — can easily fall victim to political agendas, singularly-focused investigations, and prejudices about who can and cannot commit a crime.

Midnight in Peking opens on a dark, cold morning in January 1937, in the dying days of old Beijing.  A young white woman’s mutilated body is found near the haunted fox tower by an old Chinese man who is up early walking his caged bird.  The body turns out to be that of 19 year old Pamela Werner, daughter of E.T.C. Werner, a former high-ranking British diplomat, China scholar, and single father who raised his daughter outside of the gated-off, foreign Legation Quarter of Beijing.

On the eve of the Japanese invasion, it was a murder that distracted Beijing as much as it obsessed it.  And rightfully so.  For the murder, and French’s amazingly detailed account of it, uncovers the debaucheries of some of foreign Beijing’s most elite, a young girl experimenting as a woman, and the official cover up that followed.  On the eve of World War II, there was no way that British officials would allow the Empire and its respectability to lose face, even if it meant short-changing a police investigation and letting a diabolic murderer to go free.

Pamela Werner becoming a woman - taken a few days before her murder.

French’s talent lies in his ability to transport the reader back to 1937 Beijing, back to the Grand Hotel des Wagons Lits, back to the Badlands where seedy expat Beijing lead much of its life but rarely talked about it within the Legation Quarter.  French also makes the characters come alive – with his seven years of painstaking research into the official criminal investigation and Pamela’s father’s own inquiry, French knows what each of the characters were doing, writing and saying at the time.

Midnight in Peking is known as a work of “literary non-fiction,” presenting the facts almost as a novel but unable to take any of the liberties that a work of fiction could permit.  In reality though, the work has more of the drama of a good closing argument – a winning closing argument – presenting the facts,debunking the police’s simplistic conclusions (including that it was a Chinese who did it; who else would kill and mutilate a body), and thoroughly presenting a stronger theory of who did it, a theory that the reader eventually adopts.

Midnight in Peking is a remarkable read, a page turner that kept me in one Friday night just to find out who did it.  But it is not just a story about the past.  Sitting there, reading  about a British murder investigation in China and seeing the prejudices that the police held about certain incidents, particular people and specific facts, made me think of the recent re-examination of the 1979 Etan Patz kidnapping case that is currently transfixing New York City.  In that case, it appears that the police misjudged suspects and had a singular focus on a specific interpretation of the facts, even with little facts to back that up.  Some 50 years after the Pamela Werner murder, police in New York City were making the same mistakes.  Fast forward 33 years to today and most likely these same types of mistakes are still being made.

But more than anything, the book also demonstrates the susceptibility of any criminal justice system to power and politics.  E.T.C. Werner was an outsider to British expat society of 1937, and not just because he chose to live outside of the Legation Quarter.  That pissed people off and when it came time to investigate the murder of his daughter, Werner, as an outsider, became a suspect.  The murderers that French eventually uncover were not just accepted in British society but considered the elites of Beijing.  That acceptance – and the fact that the British diplomats didn’t want a scandal on their hands – allowed them to live their lives as free men.  Ultimately politics – both individual as well as national – proved more important than justice.  Even when Werner conducted his own investigation and uncovered many of the lies of key suspects, British diplomats continued to ignore his pleas for justice for his daughter.

Not surprisingly, when reading French’s book, the Bo Xilai case – where Bo’s wife is accused of murdering a British national – was not far from

An old ETC Werner, around the time of his daughter's murder

my mind.  Given the politics involved in that case and the fact that perhaps Bo became an outsider to the Party system, it makes one wonder about the accuracy of the story that the Chinese government is currently presenting to the press.  If it could happen in British Peking in 1937, it can certainly happen in Chinese Beijing in 2012.  Likely, no criminal justice system is immune to political pressure.  It would be foolish – and dangerous – to think that any system is impervious.

Midnight in Peking is a remarkable story, wonderfully written and with characters that just come to life – some you love, some you hate and some you just despise.  For those who want to be transported to the past, Midnight in Peking is your ticket there; but for those who want to understand the present, more precisely the mistakes inherent in any criminal justice system, Midnight in Peking will take you there.  Whichever trip you decide to make, French will take you on a fun ride.

Rating:

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China, by Paul French (Penguin Books, 2012), 272 pages.

French also has a great website about the book, including his own explanation as to what propelled him to write the book and a walking tour of Pamela’s Beijing (with downloadable podcasts). For anyone who does the walking tour, I would be interested in you take of it. Please comment below!

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, May 18, 2012

Chen Guangcheng, entering a Beijing Hospital with US Ambassaor Gary Locke and State Dep't Legal Advisor Harold Koh

More often than not, I am my friends’ go-to China person; something in the news pops up with China, I get the questions.  So I wasn’t surprised on Saturday when over some carrot cake at the Chelsea Market a friend of mine had questions about Chen Guangcheng: if he cared so much about human rights in China, why would he leave?  What is up with the Chinese government, keeping a blind man trapped in his own home?  How did things get so messy between the U.S. government and Chen?

It’s been almost a month since Chen fled the home that illegally became his prison. So what exactly is up with Chen’s escape and to answer some questions – what does it all mean?

Chen’s Escape Has Propelled Human Rights to the Top of the US-China Agenda

My friend’s question on Saturday caught me off guard – does Chen really care about human rights in China if he fled to the protection of the U.S. Embassy, ostensibly to seek asylum and leave China.

To ask a man with a wife and two children to be a martyr for his cause is asking too much.  As this blog has recounted previously, since Chen’s release from prison (oddly convicted of a traffic disturbance) did not result in freedom.  Instead, for the past year and a half, Chen and his family have been subjected to illegal house arrest and at times, physical torture by his captures.

It is true that by departing China, Chen’s ability to change China’s current system will be much reduced if not extinguished.  But his heroic flight has perhaps done more to highlight the Chinese government’s recent illegal oppression of dissent than anything else.  Over the past year and a half, this blog has increasingly written about the Chinese government’s crackdown on China’s nascent rights defending (weiquan) lawyers. Aside from people already interested in the issues, these posts – and the acts of repression which they have focused on – have received little attention.

Chen’s escape and his subsequent stay at the U.S. Embassy  altered this focus. With Hillary Clinton arriving for the Strategic and Economic

Inspiring Architecture? The US Embassy in Beijing

Dialogue (S&ED), the focus of U.S.-China relations shifted to human rights.  For one week, as the world watched, the U.S. and China’s relationship was thrown back to a 1980s-Cold War paradigm, when ideology played a more governing role.  For one week, the Western media’s attention finally focused on the repression of rights defending lawyers, and the lip service the Chinese government gives “rule of law” when it comes to civil rights and civil liberties.

It is amazing that a single man’s act, that one blind man’s heroic act, can still change the dialogue in U.S.-China relations.  It is a hopeful reminder that in this globalized world, individuals still matter; that one man’s quest for freedom is still “news.”  And don’t think Chen’s act was not a heroic one.  Not only was a blind man able to find his way to Beijing, but imagine if he wasn’t; imagine if he was caught.  Likely his fate would match that of Gao Zhisheng, a rights defending lawyer who, while in government custody, remains missing.

The U.S. Government’s Actions Supported Human Rights

Some have criticized the U.S. government – or more aptly, the Obama Administration – for its dealings with the Chinese government over Chen.  Initially, the U.S. Embassy worked out a deal with the Chinese government whereby Chen would stay in China, study law at a university in a coastal city away from the thugs of his hometown, and be left alone with his family.  This was what Chen initially wanted.

But once he left the safety of the embassy for a Beijing hospital, Chen began to reconsider his options.  As Prof. Jerome A. Cohen recounted to CNN, the promised U.S. Embassy official was unable to stay with Chen at the hospital and once he began speaking other rights defending lawyers – friends he hadn’t been able to speak to for a year – he began to more clearly understand the increased oppression of rights defending lawyers in China.  Chen was scared; Chen realized that without full information, he misjudged the situation.  That’s when he vocally requested that he be able to leave China for the United States.

Were some in the U.S. Embassy a touch too naive to rely on the Chinese government’s promises?  Most likely.  But being naive is not the same as turning one’s back to human rights.  It was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to allow Chen into the U.S. Embassy in the first place.  Chinese citizens cannot just willy-nilly enter the U.S. Embassy; even American citizens are allowed limited access to their embassy (which resembles a high-security prison).  As the N.Y. Times has recounted, embassy officials were notified of Chen’s flight to Beijing and on April 25, Secretary Clinton gave the authorization to sneak Chen into the embassy compound.  Secretary Clinton knew full well that by providing that approval, a throw-down with the Chinese government on the issue of human rights was certain and the ultimate outcome unclear. It is unfortunate – although not all together shocking given the current acrimonious status of politics – that Washington D.C. cannot view this moment as a proud one for America and its ideals; that the web of support that both parties have built for a human rights network in China over the years enabled Chen to come to our door.   Instead, it appears that what could otherwise be a proud moment for Americans, is becoming a political tug-of-war.

Who is Driving the Bus? The Chinese Central Government’s Lack of Control

Beep Beep! Who drives this bus??

What is perhaps the most shocking of all from this whole situation is the Chinese central government’s lack of control of local governments. Chen’s persecution has largely been conducted by the local government in his hometown, with local government officials still seething after his attempt to bring a lawsuit against them for forced abortions.  But even when Chen fled to Beijing, his safety could not be guaranteed, hence his changed desire to leave for the United States.  Many of his relatives left in their villages are being persecuted by local officials.  It makes one wonder – who really drives the bus in China?

Imagine a United States where Governor George Wallace could ignore federal law, have his way and continue segregation in his home state of Alabama.  Likely you can’t.  It’s unfathomable to think that a national government is unable to enforce its own laws, and in the case of China, that a supposed authoritarian dictatorship cannot control lower level party members.

Chen’s case reflects a center weaker than anyone previously thought.  And that is what is most frightening and should give people pause.  Does China really have the power to become a rising superpower or will it revert to its warlord past, where each city is governed by its own power broker and the central government remains impotent?

While China’s weakness appears to manifest itself often in human rights issues, it should not be just a concern for human rights advocates.  Anyone working in or with China – business people, government officials – should be troubled.  A weak center, especially as China undergoes an important leadership transition this year, does not bode well for China.

Prof. Jerome Cohen – The Fixer

On a final note, I want to focus on Prof. Jerome Cohen and his role in all of this.  As a research fellow for two years, I had the privilege of working

Prof. Jerome A. Cohen

with Prof. Cohen at NYU’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute.  In that time, I got to know a kind, brilliant man who never ceased to amaze me.  It was Prof. Cohen who first identified the ingenuity and necessity of Chen’s unschooled, “barefoot lawyer” approach in 2003 and deservedly catapulted him to the world stage.

While my two years with Prof. Cohen were filled with inspiring moments, I have never been more proud of him than I was with his handling of the Chen Guangcheng situation.  While this is all purely based on hearsay, it appears that it was Prof.  Cohen who got the U.S. and China out of what was becoming a crisis situation.  Prof. Cohen’s lifetime of experience with China, including high-level delegations soon after Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, allowed him to realize that all that was needed was a practical solution where everyone could save face: a scholarship for Chen to study law at NYU’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute and invitation for his wife and children to join him.

Now we wait and see.  The United States has approved Chen’s visa application and just yesterday he applied for his Chinese passport.  Although the Chinese government could renege on the deal, that looks increasingly less likely and ultimately not in their best interest.  It’s never a satisfying moment when one of your citizens essentially seeks protection from a foreign government for human rights abuses, but on some level, the Chinese government is likely happy that Chen, who has long been a rabble rouser and a cause célèbre for other Chinese rights defenders and foreign friends, is leaving the country.  Unfortunately for Chen and his family, he will likely never be able to return to his home country.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, May 4, 2012

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

For Immediate Release                                                                                       May 4, 2012

2012/707

STATEMENT BY VICTORIA NULAND, SPOKESPRSON

Chen Guangcheng

The Chinese Government stated today that Mr. Chen Guangcheng has the same right to travel abroad as any other citizen of China. Mr. Chen has been offered a fellowship from an American university, where he can be accompanied by his wife and two children.

The Chinese Government has indicated that it will accept Mr. Chen’s applications for appropriate travel documents.  The United States Government expects that the Chinese Government will expeditiously process his applications for these documents and make accommodations for his current medical condition.  The United States Government would then give visa requests for him and his immediate family priority attention.

This matter has been handled in the spirit of a cooperative U.S.-China partnership.

# # #

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, April 27, 2012

From the NY Times on Friday, April 27, 2012.