Countdown Beijing

It's Showtime: A Spectacle of China's Might -- and Redemption

Melinda Liu — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:08:08 GMT

For up-to-date coverage of the 2008 Olympics please see our new blog on the Games, "Beijing Beat". Here's our Web story on the stunning Beijing Olympics opening ceremony:

...Photo for NEWSWEEK by Mike Powell

From inside the 91,000-seat Bird's Nest stadium, fireworks dazzled and the thunder of 2,008 performers drumming on traditional fou percussion instruments rolled throughout the stadium. High-tech special effects gave even the kitschiest subject matter a startling edge. An ode to China's invention of movable type—ho hum, you might say— morphed into a vast sea of undulating cubic shapes, simulating a giant computer keyboard—and took my breath away.

When five-time Olympic medal winner Li Ning prepared to ignite the Olympic flame, invisible wires swooped him skyward for a gravity-defying space-walk around the stadium's rooftop opening. When gymnast Li, who launched a successful sports clothing and accessories empire after snagging three gold medals in Los Angeles, finally lit a gigantic torch perched on the rim of the Bird's Nest, the crowd went wild.

This was China's soft-power version of "shock and awe ." Or at least, that metaphor ran through my mind as the pyrotechnics reminded me of watching the U.S. "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad in 2003 from my Palestine Hotel room balcony. Just as Washington's adventure in Iraq today symbolizes the beginning of the decline of U.S. influence around the world—despite its military might—so will China's hosting of these Olympics be seen as a sign that it has arrived as a global power, despite its tarnished human rights record. Nowhere will this tilting balance of power be more pointedly symbolized than in the Olympic medal count, where China may have a better than even chance of snagging the highest number of gold medals, displacing the U.S.

Flanked by leaders of the United States and Russia—among 80-some other foreign dignitaries—Chinese president Hu Jintao stiffly declared the 2008 Games had begun. Inside he had reason to feel triumphant: one theme hammered (or, more accurately, drummed) into the audience again and again was "harmony," a codeword for Hu's Confucius-influenced call for a "harmonious society." Yet Hu could also be excused for feeling jittery and overwhelmed by today's tsunami of national pride. China has always felt more comfortable in the role of an underdog, as a feisty champion of the developing world, than as a big world power.

That's because global clout brings with it global responsibilities. As a rainbow coalition of anti-China activists has shown in a series of protests this year, Hu and his comrades have dwindling excuses for standing to one side when genocide is unfolding in Darfur (Khartoum looks to Beijing for aid and moral support) or the Burmese junta (Rangoon ditto) ratchets up its repression or, indeed, the Chinese regime tightens the screws on its own population.
Shortly after tonight's opening ceremonies began, Russian tanks were reported to be rolling into Georgia—a stark reminder to Hu (and Putin for that matter) that even a sacred event such as the Olympics cannot prevent harsh political realities from intruding.

Most pundits analyzed tonight's festivities as a celebration of Chinese might. I saw a somewhat more complex message. True, the sight of goose-stepping soldiers carrying the Olympic flag (shades of Berlin 1936) or the sheer precision of thousands of performers moving intricately as one (a la Pyongyang's Mass Games) made it easy to focus on China's autocratic demeanor.

But if you read the cultural icons carefully, they also weave a tapestry of loss and redemption. The unique thing about China's current aspirations to greatness is that it's been down that road before. While Beijing's economic achievements over the past three decades have been mind-boggling, similar accomplishments took place at least twice before in its long history—a history that dominated tonight's performance, starting with the arcane fou bronze drums dating back to the Xia Dynasty (ca 2070 BC).

During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), China's trading routes stretched along the Silk Road to Constantinople, and the Middle Kingdom was a famous source of silks, Buddhist teachings and innovations in printing and cartography. In the Ming Dynasty, China's legendary eunuch admiral Zheng Ho (1371 -1433 AD) navigated his treasure fleets as far away as West Asia and Zanzibar, returning with tribute from vassal states and exotic finds such as giraffes. But those golden eras ended after economic setbacks and internal decline.

Tonight's show strummed many of those themes. The wire-suspended dancers who flitted across the sky high above the audience, a la Peter Pan, were apsaras (like angels) whose likenesses are painted in many Tang-era Buddhist grottoes such as those at Dunhuang, along the ancient Silk Road. And Zheng Ho warranted a whole dance performance dedicated to his seven fleets, which carried 27,000 people in all to distant lands.
Yet many of the Chinese inventions extolled (however imaginatively) tonight—from gunpowder to paper to movable printing type—were innovations that ultimately stalled in China, only to be advanced in leaps and bounds by other nations. And while the entire evening was an homage to the 2500-year-old Analects of Confucius—an ancient Chinese thinker who "comes first among the top 10 historical celebrities in the world," as the official Opening Ceremony Media Guide puts it—nothing was said of China's Great Helmsman Mao Zedong.

It was Mao who jettisoned Confucian ethics and unleashed the incredibly destructive 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution which gutted China's educational system, lobotomized the intelligentsia, and rendered the economy a basket case.

So, yes, this was a celebration to China's illustrious heritage—and of its promising future. But tonight's razzle-dazzle painted the portrait of an idealized Chinese past, of a gauzily perfect what-should-have-been instead of the rather more tawdry what-really-was. And it isn't only the ancient, imperial past that has been treated to this collective amnesia. At the finale of the evening, as sports-and-business icon Li Ning trotted like an astronaut, parallel to the ground, around the rim of the Bird's Nest, images of China's Olympics torch relay were projected against the flat panels of the rim. Predictably enough, the stops in Paris and London showed nothing of the rambunctious anti-China protests that had erupted in those and other cities to underscore China's poor human rights record, particularly in Tibet.

Not everyone believes Beijing deserves another chance to be a great power; China's hosting of the Olympics has been hotly debated and fraught with controversy ever since Beijing won its bid seven years ago. When China's critics launched protests against its policies in Tibet—after violent riots which erupted in Lhasa March 14—emotional Chinese both at home and abroad rallied to their government's defense, calling for a boycott of French goods (because of the anti-China protests in Paris) and stridently criticizing Western media for allegedly biased reporting. Some Western journalists based in Beijing received death threats.

But in a year of many surprises, the story line shifted yet again after yet another unexpected development. The devastating May earthquake in Sichuan province grabbed domestic attention and triggered an unexpected outpouring of domestic philanthropy and volunteerism that took even the government by surprise. In a flash, it seemed, strident anti-Western voices quieted down, and so did much of the Western criticism of China, at least for a time, as the international community scrambled to send rescue personnel and relief supplies to the stricken area.

China's post-Mao economic boom, which lifted hundreds of millions of residents out of poverty, has given the country another shot at the sort of international influence it had enjoyed in the Tang and Ming dynasties. And the international sympathy triggered by Sichuan's quake, which killed 70,000 people, also paradoxically gave Beijing a second chance to get the Olympics right after the PR disasters of the European torch relay.

The quake's significance was acknowledged by some of the Olympic pageantry. When the 183-person Chinese Olympics team entered the stadium to thunderous applause tonight, flag-bearer and basketball celebrity Yao Ming walked alongside a 9-year-old Sichuan quake survivor. President of the Beijing Games Organizing Committee, Liu Qi, said that after the quake the international community's "heart-warming support has heightened the morale of the Chinese nation in the reconstruction of quake-stricken areas and boosted our confidence and determination in staging successful Games." For the next two weeks, China's every move will be scrutinized as never before—will the crackdown on dissidents continue? Will the contest for gold get ugly? And Beijing will be bending over backwards not to flub this hard-fought chance to be great once again.

Traffic: Celebrating on Beijing's Ring Roads

Mary Hennock — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:04:07 GMT

It's showtime as Olympic athletes and tourists stream into Beijing. For those of us who've waited months for the Olympics amid construction dust and growing traffic congestion, the rewards are now here. Tuesday brought my first Olympic perk, and it was fabulous.

But it didn't start out well. A sudden late afternoon text message telling me of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) press conference sent me scurrying to the Olympic Green. It was peak rush hour and after 30 minutes hunting for a taxi in the snarl-up near Newsweek's bureau I was ready to abandon the idea as it seemed impossible to get there in time. Then an empty cab appeared. The driver—more switched on to the possibilities than I was—demanded to see my Olympic press pass.

Soon we were waving it at policemen and hitting Beijing's Second Ring Road at 100 kilometers an hour (63 mph). Driving in Beijing is normally not fun. It's frustrating. Anyone who enjoys driving—especially driving fast—should avoid a Beijing traffic jam. But on Tuesday evening the Torch came back to Beijing and Second Ring Road—one of Beijing's most congested roads at any time of day—was cleared to greet it.

We raced round policemen, almost taking their legs off at the knee, but they cheerfully waved us on. OK, I know the buzz I felt was anti-social, and ecologically unsound. Others suffered as Second Ring Road's usual heavy traffic was crammed into service lanes and bike lanes to make way for us. Just south of the Bird's Nest stadium we too became small fry, forced to the roadside by a stream of black Audis and SUVs heading towards the stadium, carrying officials to watch Opening Ceremony final rehearsals. But a 30 minute journey took just 12, and for those 12 thrilling minutes I got to see life through their eyes.

NOTE: THIS IS A CROSS-POSTING FROM "BEIJING BEAT", OUR NEW BLOG ON THE 2008 OLYMPICS

Torch Relay Enters Beijing: the Square, Circled

Melinda Liu — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:08:08 GMT

Today I de-camped at dawn to watch the torch relay in that you-know-which-famous-square. A couple dozen other journalists and I were herded to a spot facing Mao’s portrait, We waited and waited. The last time I’d waited that long in that place, that early in the morning, was in 1989 during a brief and ill-fated Beijing Spring.

Back then I was waiting for Chinese police to come clear the square of hundreds of youthful protestors who’d hung colorful silk banners off official flagpoles in front of the granite obelisk known as the Monument to the People’s Heroes. (Chinese look down on your political movement if you don’t have flags made of luxuriant silk, and if you don’t know how to brandish them just right so that the fabric floats like butterflies’ wings.) These kids in 1989 – about the same age as the youth in the square this morning -- chanted pro-democracy slogans and strummed folk-songs on guitars.

Waiting for Yao Ming and the torch relay...

That earlier time I had stayed overnight in the square, surrounded by this moonlit and surreal Chinese Woodstock scene, because the next day Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was due in town for a historic Sino-Soviet summit. I assumed police would come waving their truncheons, and maybe lobbing tear gas, to clear the square of this ragtag assembly of demonstrators before Gorby’s arrival. Otherwise the protestors would be able to hijack the summit spotlight, China’s leaders would be embarrassed, and things would get messy.

Police never came that night. Leaders were embarrassed. Things got messy.

We still don’t know exactly how many people died in the crackdown, and the topic remains an extremely touchy one still for authorities. Despite the unblocking of a number of websites on Aug. 1 -- after the IOC squawked and Chinese officials caved (sort of) -- many sites related to the 1989 crackdown remain inaccessible to ordinary Netizens.

Which is why this item will not mention the name of that famous-square-whose-name-cannot-be-mentioned.The last blog posting we did on this topic, by my colleague Jonathan Ansfield, (who did name names) not only created access problems for this blog but even managed to get certain pages of another blog blocked for a time because it had cited Jonathan’s item (sorry, Roland).

So, back to the torch relay, which entered Beijing amidst much hoopla on its way to the finale and the Aug. 8 Olympics opening ceremony. Today there were many, many luxuriant silk flags fluttering in the square. Red and white flags representing the Olympics and the Beijing Games. Lots of familiar red Chinese national flags. And a sea of crimson flags wielded by youth in matching red t-shirts, caps and backpacks all exhorting observers to revel in the glory of….Coca Cola.

Not to be outdone, on the opposite side of the square was another group of exuberant youth, with another Chinese national flag that was truly enormous. It required a number of excited kids to coordinate in holding it parallel to the ground, tilted slightly so that photographers could capture the true impact of its immense size. After all, who could be more worthy to be flag-bearers in China than these enthusiastic volunteers brought to you by….McDonald’s.

Indeed, the torch relay organizers who bussed us into the square amidst extremely tight security thoughtfully gave each journalist a bag of McDonald’s goodies. A Big Mac’s for breakfast is something I never dreamed of in Beijng (or anywhere else) in 1989.

In today’s China we don’t blink an eye as we chow down on carb-heavy Western fast food waiting for worldwide basketball celebrity Yao Ming to grab the Olympic torch and trot past icons of the Chinese Communist Party’s continuing supremacy (such as the national emblems on the Great Hall of the People), as onlookers organized by famous Games sponsors cheer and tiny shaven-headed boys dressed in daffodil-yellow pajama-style outfits perform martial-arts maneuvers while a massive security presence including a brand-new spit-polished black Hummer with police markings lurks in the alleyways, a CCTV news helicopter captures what will become the official version of the scene while flying lazy arcs over the square, and Chairman Mao Zedong’s portrait gazes sternly on the entire proceedings from the south gate of the fabled Forbidden City.

What would Mao think of all this? Marxist ideology has given way to McDonalds. The Communist party has linked arms with Coke. Beijing police watch CSI Miami for tips on how real police act and outfit themselves (even if Hummers are themselves wider than some Beijing sidestreets). The youth in the square today were not chanting “Democracy! Freedom!” as they did in 1989 but rather “Go China! Go Beijing!” Mao’s squat and stolid mausoleum was all but eclipsed by fluttering silk flags, floating over all of us like a red tide.The square has come full circle.

Gimme Shelter: Relief Efforts Continue in Sichuan

Melinda Liu — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:48:52 GMT

Jennifer Conrad reports on continuing post-quake relief efforts in Sichuan:

British industrial designer Luke Cardew was traveling in France when
he received a voicemail from a friend: "China needs shelters." The
Sichuan earthquake had just struck. For Cardew, who works out of
Shanghai as a freelance designer, the disaster provided an incredible
opportunity for him to use his skills to help people.

By all accounts, the efforts of Chinese volunteers and workers have
been tremendous, but sometimes foreigners have provided specialized
knowledge that filled important needs. Cardew, for example, knows
quite a bit about creating temporary shelters in disaster areas.

He was studying design at Central St. Martins when the Pakistan
earthquake struck in 2005. Assigned to work on a self-directed
project, Cardew designed a temporary shelter made of Beeboard
cardboard. "Central focuses more on the conceptual and theoretical
side of design. However I am from a more practical background. I
thought it might be interesting to combine Centrals' conceptual
approach with a more practical project. The solution half-satisfied me
and half the school. But I continued to be interested in finding a
cheap design solution for disaster relief."

During six months os research, he learned the types of
designs people prefer: straight, house-like side walls (rather than
the slanted walls of a tent) make a shelter feel more comfortable and
secure.

Back to work in Shanghai a few days after the May 12 Sichuan quake,
Cardew began working on a prototype for a temporary shelter; he
coordinated with partners to secure funding. The result was a
structure made of split bamboo with a waterproof tarpaulin cover. The
design, inspired by bamboo greenhouses from the Anhui provice, houses
a six-person family for up to a year.

In some cases his group, I Bought a Shelter, delivers the shelters as kits. And
sometimes, he adapts the shelter to fit local conditions.

Once he was sent by a Chinese relief group to Zundao, north of
Mianyang. After spending a few hours talking to the locals about their
skill levels and looking at available materials, he was handed a piece
of white chalk and asked, "Can you draw?"

With a deadline in half an hour, he sketched a housing solution on a
school blackboard. The walls are made mostly of rubble (reducing the
amount of wood used) and the scheme further stretches materials since it houses
two families, each with a bedroom, living room, and exterior kitchen.
The families would each be given 500 RMB for constructing
semi-permanent shelters, so he encouraged them to use that money for
corrugated cement roofing.

Although he later had drawings printed to distribute to other
villages, Cardew hopes the villagers don't build the shelter exactly
as he presented it, but adapt them based on their preferences and
skills.

"I want to see what they've done. If they've morphed the shelters,
then I'll learn something," he says.

Even the Propaganda Dept wants records broken

Jonathan Ansfield — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:03:12 GMT

Okay, so Xinhua's English-language break on the attack beat the Chinese version by more than an hour. Early info on Monday’s ambush in Xinjiang was spotty too: the perpetrators' identities absent, and suspicions of a “terrorist” plot hence, as usual, thin at best. Then broadcaster CCTV, after releasing the first whiff of news in Chinese on its News Channel at noon, skipped the story entirely on the tightly scripted Evening News. By afternoon the news began tumbling down top news charts of Chinese news portals. And the next day the headline was a minor blip on the front pages of mainland papers. The story was dumped deep inside in a single-paragraph summary, at a fraction of the column inches used by official English-language coverage directed at foreign readers.

Yet one thing did impress about Chinese coverage of the Monday morning attack in Kashgar, in which two Uighurs reportedly killed 16 border police and wounded another 16: not that official media broke it, but that it did so with uncustomary hustle. The lag was a little over three hours. That’s swift for state media when it comes to an incident of this magnitude, delicacy and geographical remoteness from Beijing. It’s supersonic for news out of Xinjiang, where Chinese reports of violent plots by separatist Muslim Uighurs tend to be a challenge to confirm or deny. We foreign hacks are used to working our way back days or weeks to chase iffy revelations by Xinjiang officials or stingy official press matchers issued only in response to a Radio Free Asia dispatch or the like. That's the way it was as recently as this Spring, in fact, when the government took its leisurely time to acknowledge a spate of clashes and foiled plots.

The comparative burst of speed Monday was no fluke, Chinese journalists inform us. After the hurly burly the country went through the first half of the year, the Communist Party leadership is placing never-before-seen demands on government media to gain the edge on reporting serious disturbances and manage crises more deftly. Key to the strategy is to get the official scoop on events before overseas media do, particularly around the time of the Olympic Games.

In recent weeks the deputy head of the Party’s Central Publicity Department, Li Dongsheng, has hammered home this agenda in meetings with provincial propaganda counterparts and top representatives of “central media” organs, according to two sources within Party media organizations. According to one formulation, they and other Chinese journalists say, the orders are to diyi shijian qiangbao –to “grab” the news as soon as it happens. “Central media” include the Party papers People’s Daily and Guangming Daily, news wires Xinhua and the China News Service, broadcasters CCTV, China National Radio, and China Radio International, and official dailies China Daily and the Economic Daily. Provincial propaganda bosses would relay word to local government media as well.

Li instructed them that over the two-month “Olympic period” - July 20-September 20, through the time of Paralympics - official media should take greater initiative to report “major sudden incidents” (natural disasters, accidents, riots, terrorist attacks, etc.) . As usual, the Xinhua News Agency was intended to act as the clearing house for such news and all other Chinese media were under orders to pick up its reports. But Xinhua and other official media outlets were not necessarily to wait for explicit instructions from senior propaganda authorities before running with the news. The official embrace of up-to-the-minute news is no secret here; Beijing has been touting it in the context of new rules on official accountability and such events as the Sichuan earthquake, and the idea of an express lane for breaking events has been floating around Party propaganda circles for some time. But for the department to expressly grant such leeway is “unprecedented,” according to one of the Party media sources, who were briefed on the recent meetings. They spoke on condition of anonymity so as avoid repercussions.

As to how official outlets are to report a “sudden incident”, well, that's not going to change. Any such story still had to reflect official conventions and the Party line, or what is known in Party jargon as its “guidance of public opinion” - “not your Newsweek stuff,” as one of the sources put it. Moreover, the leeway to bypass some of the traditional channels only applied during Olympic period. “It’s still represents a new direction of transparency. It’s more open than before. In that way it’s still a form of progress,” he said, adding, “but right now only for the Olympics.”

Nor were the Party newsmen under any illusion as to the primary intent: to strengthen the authoritativeness of the Party, and minimize embarrassment to Beijing. That's especially vital with well over 20,000 foreign reporters descending on Beijing to cover the Games this week. In the briefings, Li and other propaganda bosses have made clear that the objective is try to beat them in the event of major disturbances – at least out of the blocks. (No, this does not in any way explain why on Tuesday police in Kashgar beat two Japanese journalists trying to report at the scene of Monday's attack).

Xinjiang was not the first big test case of the new M.O. on faster reporting. Reports of bus blasts in Kunming last Monday also appeared to embody the edict, sources said. “The thinking is that if you don’t report it first, the country will be on the defensive from the very start,” said the first source.

But the new M.O. did not rule out that some incidents would still remain under wraps, the other Party media journalist cautioned, pointing to information he had received from official sources of at least one other bombing incident outside Beijing in recent weeks (but which we could not independently verify). “You still cover up what you can cover up. But when you can’t cover it up, you have to report it first,” he summarized: “The point is to contest the foreign media for the right to speak.”

Propaganda's orders to get the scoop stemmed partly from the “spirit” of an “important speech” by Party boss Hu in late June, Li and other propaganda officials also made clear. Hu visited the Party flagship People’s Daily to fete its 60^th birthday, and used the occasion to articulate the media’s “active role” in “guidance of public opinion” (David Bandurski at the China Media Project offers insightful exegesis of what Hu meant). That in turn followed on the state media lessons of the first half of 2008, Li also explained - from the poor and sluggish reporting of snowstorms which plagued much of the country in January to the internationally recognized boon from coverage of Sichuan earthquake in May, and the nasty internationally waged battles over ethnic Tibetan unrest and the Olympic torch relay in-between. The new instructions were packaged as the sum-total learned from those experiences, the sources noted.

Li specifically addressed the case of Tibet, the sources said. Internally, propaganda authorities have recognized for months that the slowness to release news of the outbreak of Tibetan rioting in Lhasa was a mistake which abetted the public relations disaster internationally, they said. But after the initial paralysis, authorities were convinced, they clinched overriding domestic support and stood up to international condemnation by releasing TV clips of the Lhasa riots a few days later. Footage showed Tibetans torching cars and smashing storefronts.

“’Fifty-plus seconds of television footage surpassed the force of 100,000 soldiers,’” one of the sources cited the deputy propaganda boss saying.

Coverage of the international torch relay too had boosted the leadership’s confidence in its ability to engineer public opinion. In conversations in recent months, these sources and other Chinese media insiders have marveled at how the trajectory of nationalist protests corresponded directly to the degree of detail people were exposed to via official press. When protesters marred the opening legs in Athens and London, Chinese media were mum. But as details seeped in over the Internet from overseas media images and Chinese-language press, sources said, anti-foreign anger engulfed the Web. Netizens could read and watch in plain view what they were not being told.

The Chinese leadership took note. After the London leg, the sources said, Chinese media organs received orders from on-high to fangkai wangluo, fangkai minjian – code for “open up the Web, open up public opinion.” That order hit in the nick of time for the Paris leg, where demonstrators lunged at paraplegic torchbearer Jin Jing. This time, the handful of officially designated outlets of international news reported the scene, most notably the Global Times, a staunchly patriotic, often polemical newsstand tabloid published by the People’s Daily. Its file from Paris got top billing on the mainland news portals. Soon people were clamoring for boycotts and protests against the French hypermarket Carrefour. But in fact, Carrefour became a target somewhat by happenstance. “The Paris protests were not really bigger than London but the backlash here was much, much bigger,” said one of the sources. “Because they were publicized.”

As soon as domestic protests threatened to spiral onto the streets, though, the government began tightening the few mainland spigots of overseas news on the torch relay. Clashes in South Korea were the last to be featured. By the time of the Japan leg the taps were turned off, just before Hu was to make a historic trip there.

The torch relay to-do seems to have shown the leadership that a few carefully parsed nuggets of fresh reporting can work more powerfully than decades of patriotic government rhetoric. “They definitely feel their propaganda strategy was ultimately successful,” commented one of the Party media sources. Domestically, since at least as early as late April, the Party leadership has conceived the publicity war over Tibet and the torch relay as a victory over the dreaded nightmare of “peaceful evolution” – shorthand for Western-style democratization and the peaceful overthrow of the Party. “The torch relay completely failed in its original aims” – that is, displaying before the world China’s benevolent progress – “but they won a much bigger victory, and this victory was not expected at all,” explained another Party media source. “Many young people got to see up close that the West is not always so friendly, that the West’s peaceful evolution was not such a good thing.” He added: “Two decades of patriotic education could not make the same impact.”

At one recent meeting, sources said, Li opined that the Party had faced the greatest risk of “peaceful evolution” when the “third” or “fourth generation” of Red babies born since the Communist takeover in 1949, i.e. in the 60’s and 70’s, came of age. That danger passed in the 1980’s and 90’s, and the Party survived. With the fifth and sixth generations, born in the 80’s and 90’s and coming of age today, Li said there was “basically not a chance [of peaceful evolution].”

So there you have it. More on China’s Olympic media game plan to come in future posts…

More Blasts Out West: How Big is the Terrorist Threat?

Melinda Liu — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:39:25 GMT

This morning’s attack, which killed 16 police in the far western region of Xinjiang, did not exactly surprise me, but it may have startled at least one senior official from the area, Kerexi Maihesuti. Just last Friday in a Beijing press conference for foreign media the vice chairman of the Xinjiang region described the threat of ethnic Uighur separatists there as a disorderly band of wanna-be’s “with limited power” who are “not competent make the attacks which some hostile forces wish".

Are authorities dangerously downplaying the threat? Well, not always. A People’s Daily editorial last month warned grimly that “The Beijing Olympics is facing a terrorist threat unsurpassed in Olympic history.” With such mixed signals – and the Beijing Olympics just days away – Chinese Netizens are buzzing with questions and speculation about the most recent incident. What seems clear – perhaps the only thing that’s truly clear – is that already stringent security precautions in China’s capital will no doubt become tighter still.

　This morning Web postings on an Internet bulletin board popular with IT professionals revealed surprise, alarm, and conspiracy theories. One post starts out “F---! Xinjiang attacked by bombs. 16 armed police died, 16 injured. CCTV just reported it” and goes on to describe the 7:55 AM incident in which two vehicles tried to ram a group of People’s Armed Police engaged in their routine morning exercises, including jogging in formation. The drivers threw two grenades and slashed their victims with knives. “Terror” says one respondent. Update: later official reports said there was only one vehicle, a dump truck of all things.
　
　A person using the cybernym Orion frets “I was even thinking of driving to Xinjiang in August. It’s not safe even in a non-Games region.” To which another Netizen says “They’re too bold, even picking on the border troops. It looks like the border troops don’t have enough fighting force, so many died and injured.”
　
　 Then someone posts a news report of the press-conference comments made by Kerexi Maihesuti saying the East Turkistan separatists aren’t as powerful as reported by some media. “When I watched this news the day before yesterday, I realized the terrorists wouldn’t let this go,” says William920. “They did this because of that news,” agrees Eggcom. “Was Kerexi Maihesuti bragging or [public security personnel] not doing their jobs?” Concludes another, “Obviously it was not appropriate for him to give those comments at that moment.”

　To be sure, the deadly incident in Kashgar – an ancient Silk Road oasis town in Xinjiang where Muslim Uighurs are the largest single ethnic group – has not been proven (yet) to have been the work of separatists aspiring to establish an independent “East Turkistan”. But the official Xinhua news agency said the incident was “suspected to be a terrorist attack”. Xinhua said local public security department officials received intelligence that the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement would seek to disrupt the Games or their run-up with attacks between Aug. 1 and 8. ETIM is a categorized as a terrorist group by both the U.S. and Chinese governments though its size, effectiveness, and viability is a source of much debate.
　
　　 In other words, Uighur separatists have presented Beijing with a public-relations dilemma: is it better to scoff at them as incompetents, or hype them as a major security threat? At the moment we’re getting both messages, which leaves the public (and the foreign media) somewhat suspicious of official statements on the situation in restive Xinjiang.
　
　For months Chinese authorities have cited a number of foiled Muslim extremist plots to tarnish the Olympics, including a scheme to blow up an airplane and kidnap foreign visitors and media. Hence the Hongqi 7 missile batteries set up near the Olympic competition venues. Last month, in a video released on the Internet, a militant group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party promised to “target the most critical points related to the Olympics” and claimed responsibility for recent bomb blasts in Kunming, Shanghai and other cities. (The group is believed to be based in Pakistan which borders Xinjiang.)
　
　I’m waiting to see how that plays out. Sixteen dead in a terrorist attack is an extremely high number for China, the most deadly in years.(Another 16 police were injured). Then again, Kashgar is 4,000 kilometers away from Beijing, where the intensity of security inspections, credentialling, and surveillance are already unprecedented. After living here for a decade, this is the first time I’ve seen helicopters over my residential compound, except for a ceremonial fly-past during the National Day parade rehearsal in 1999 (which doesn’t count). While entering the Olympics media center yesterday my wedding ring set off the medal detection device, which was a first for me and suggested perhaps the settings were a tad sensitive. I’m still not sure whether to be reassured, amused or annoyed.

China's 'Finest News Source'

Jonathan Ansfield — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:24:03 GMT

Yesterday we brought you the Extrauterine Pregnancy Express, journalist-blogger Chen Feng’s Oniony news parody on Beijing’s Olympic prep work. The unseemly title, as was explained in the post, derives from a punning Chinese nickname for the Games that's been creeping around the blogosphere (Gongwaiyun). Chen bashed out his cycle of mock dispatches in a flurry on Thursday. When complimented on his wry wit, he could only scoff back. “What’s so creative about it!”

Anyway, translated herewith is another installment:

Extrauterine Pregnancy Express Number Two

The government announced today that they will require Beijing citizens to share one kitchen knife for every five households, so as to ensure 100-percent safety during the Gongwaiyun [read: Olympics]. When not in use, the kitchen knife is to be placed in a fixed location under the protection of a specially appointed individual. It will be subjected to random inspection. Migrants will have to share one kitchen knife for every ten households, and must have a Beijing resident as a guarantor in order to use it.

When in use, the knife’s user along with the purpose and length of use must be registered, and a record must be kept with local urban management personnel. Users must re-apply when using the knife over the appointed period of use.

Asked by a reporter why such stringent regulations were being introduced, a Gongwaiyun spokesperson noted that during the period 2008 Beijing Olympics, security checks are being carried out on cars from other places entering the city, and knives the least bit large are not allowed to be brought in. But on taking into account that every single household in the city owns knives, some sharper and bigger than those being restricted, the government decided on this measure, using Yuan Dynasty controls on knives as a reference.

Not enough? Here's a bonus installment:

Extrauterine Pregnancy Express Number Four:

The government is considering more stringent measures during the period of the Gongwaiyun, in order to ensure environmental protection efforts pass muster, a spokesman announced today.

The spokesman expressed outrage at the ulterior motives of some foreign media, who've criticized Beijing's recent spectacular skies as environmental pollution. He stated, “The inability to see clearly is a kind of misty beauty, and by no means represents poor air quality.” Citing one example, he said, “In a bathhouse you can’t see clearly. That’s called steam, not pollution.” Citing another example, he said, “On the moon you can see clearly. You think air quality there is good?”

He also said, however, that in order to enable the broad masses of foreign nationals to fully understand our level of commitment to the slogan “One World, One Spring Dream,” in addition to the recent orders to halt production at a greater number of enterprises, the government will consider restricting all people considered "Three Have-nots" (no power, no money, no background) from driving their vehicles, except for those whose license plate numbers do not end in odd or even digits. "Three Have-not" enterprises will only be allowed to operate after 25:00 in the evening.

Asked by a reporter what would be done if results cannot be effectively achieved on time, the spokesman said with a mysterious smile, “The government have already identified the largest source of pollution, and will adopt stringent measures to control it.”

The government’s stringent measures, sources have revealed, will include a ban on farting by the "Three Have-not" people. Violators will be fined.

Chinese Olympics Blogging: Comedy Sports on the Web

Jonathan Ansfield — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:41:55 GMT

Beijing's standout bloggers (like its natives) are an intrinsically grouchy lot. No surprise then that they’ve been griping on and on about Olympic-related hassles of late – though in many cases more offline than on.

“Achhhh, we’ve been spending half our days erasing posts,” groused the founder of one of China’s edgier blog forums, reached by phone earlier this week. Come Olympic time, he said, “I’m not even sure we’ll be operating.” He asked not to be named and declined to elaborate. “Please don’t ask me to talk about it.” (His site, incidentally, is still up.)

“I can’t really say what I want, so I’m not writing much at all,” carped a fellow blogger over an iced cappuccino a couple days later. A journalist with a large online cult following, he was planning to flee Beijing for China’s deep south to take care of some unfinished reporting during the Games. The shortage of non-Olympic-related cultural activity permitted in the months beforehand, he said, had left him with far less than usual to cover. He too declined to be named. “Please, don’t make things harder for me.”

Members of the foreign press corps arriving in town this week also are coming to grips with the reality that they won’t have completely “free and unfettered access” to the Internet during the Games, contrary to what Beijing Olympics organizers and their International Olympic Committee counterparts seemed to have promised. What a shocker. Welcome to Beijing!

The bigger surprise came Friday afternoon, when Beijing unblocked a number of sites after hashing out a new deal with the IOC (which later denied there was ever a previous “deal” sanctioning censorship). The unblocked sites include those of organizations the government has long treated as its personal nemeses: Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and the BBC’s Chinese service. Meanwhile those of others deemed “subversive” enemies of the state, like Falun Gong and the Free Tibet Campaign, figure to remain off-limits.

The Great Firewall of China can actually make for a thrilling tour, once you get used to the bumps. The unacquainted visitor may learn the lessons of forbearance and a handy tip or two from Beijing’s subculture of dark-humored bloggers, mostly thirty or forty-something and male. For them, playing volleyball with Web forum monitors and Internet filterers is a daily exercise. Their sociopolitical commentary can get them into serious trouble with the law, granted, but for most the consequences seldom amount to more than getting a blog shut down, at which point they decamp to a new hosting site. Through some sick perversion of Confucian dynamics, the whole gambit cultivates in many a sense of make-do kinship with Communist Party speech police, along with an abiding awareness of what is and isn’t politically correct. This is not all that unlike the way a grounded adolescent resents the “old man”, or a p-whipped husband the “ball-and-chain”.

Officialdom is projecting some serious Olympic harmony over the Internet, at least on the surface, via the home pages of China’s major private Internet portals (QQ, Sina, Sohu, Netease), which have been carrying strikingly similar firey-hued background motifs. Many official billboards look about the same. Hmmm.

The pressures on dissent have inspired the blogosphere to new feats of linguistic gymnastics. So as to deride by indirection and escape the radar of post scrubbers (not to mention humorless patriots), bloggers are up to their old tricks again. They're trying farce, spoof and other forms of couched criticism, rearranging compound words and entire blocks of text, and in particular, coining various snide twists on the Chinese for Olympic Games, ao yun (奥运) for short.

Many of these turns of phrase have multipile interpretations. Keyword filters have not caught up with them. There’s nao yun (闹运), which could be defined as “troublesome Olympics”, the “make-trouble Olympics” or just plain “no Olympics”. And there's bi yun （避运), literally to “shun” or “avoid the Games”, is also a homophone for the Chinese for contraception, and thus a dig at the snug wrap of security over the Games. Ergo a biyuntao, or condom, is the current tourism industry slang for a "package to avoid the Games". The blogger heading South may be about to head on one.

I myself am partial to an expression that I began using on my own: ao yun (熬晕), as in 我熬晕了, which in my mind roughly translates: “I’m so sick of the Games I could faint.” My Chinese friends generally don’t seem to get at first. Maybe that's because of the tonal discrepancy with the ao yun for Olympics. More likely, it's just not that funny.

On Thursday, the acclaimed journalist Chen Feng took to blogging a series of Olympic news satire named for yet another derogatory expression for the Games, the gong wai yun （恭外运）. Literally, the coinage is an abbreviation for an “event where foreign athletes are respectfully received.” Alternately, it’s a homophone for “extrauterine pregnancy”.

Chen pegs every dead-pan installment of the Gongwaiyun Express to some breaking news item about Beijing’s preparations. The security and environmental stopgaps are favored targets of ridicule.

Here’s Gongwaiyun Express No. 1, which Chen wrote after the city urged subway passengers to leave their bags behind:

"Authorities are bolstering subway security checks to ensure security during the Gong wai yun [read: Olympics]. In order to avoid congestion caused by security checks, relevant officials have urged the public not to wear clothes when taking the subway.

A reporter asked whether the measure would cause inconvenience to the public, questioning why such a strict measure was being introduced.

A Gongwaiyun spokesmen acknowledged that this would cause the public to feel inconvenienced, but pointed out that the during the 2008 Beijing Olympic period, authorities already have been urging the public not to carry bags when taking the subway. The spokesman noted that it is commonplace as well as necessary for the public to carry bags when they go out. Since the Beijing Olympics can still urge the public not to carry bags, there is also nothing wrong with urging them not to wear clothes.

The spokesman also pointed out that not carrying bags would in reality not resolve issues of security. It is entirely possibly for terrorists to conceal bombs in the crotch of their pants. So in order to ensure that the Gongwaiyun is 100 percent safe, it is only proper for the public to sacrifice some convenience. It’s a noble act accommodate the Gongwaiyun."

Look for more kicks from the Gongwaiyun Express to come in further posts on this blog.

Meanwhile, Chen has been doing some serious thinking about Olympic developments as well. A career muckraker, he won fame for his 2003 scoop of the death of a young graphic designer named Sun Zhigang, which fueled a media uproar that led the government to abolish the 20-year-old procedure by which migrants without proper residential permits could be held in detention centers and forcibly repatriated. After stints as a senior editor at The Beijing News and Sohu.com’s news channel, he’s now with the financial news portal Hexun, where he also keeps his blog. He calls it 'Journalistic Education' (新闻性教育), itself a flick of whimsy at the Advanced Education, Communist Party chief Hu Jintao’s 2005 propaganda campaign to reinvigorate the Party ranks and reincorporate basic Party values. Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of Chen’s 'Journalistic Education' were eventually shut down. The Hexun version is 3.0.

Recently, Chen revealed over noodle stir-fry, his own Web site rubbed out a couple of his more scathing entries on the Olympics. He responded by reposting them using vertical typesetting. The classic form of printing Chinese has become a tool for Netizens to circumvent censorship, and it’s not as much trouble as it looks, Chen noted. “There are programs to do this for you.”

Chen’s post from July 13 opens:

│屋│七│　│浪│就│　│性│人│执│太│都│，│抢│太│理│桥│今│　│然│前│
│﹂│旬│　│的│因│　│？│到│法│太│要│在│没│，│了│下│天│　│后│天│
│　│老│　│自│为│　│　│底│者│，│被│桥│骗│都│。│的│新│　│来│来│
│　│太│　│由│奥│　│　│有│的│可│清│下│，│７│这│流│京│　│了│了│
│　│告│　│都│运│　│　│没│妈│以│出│有│靠│０│位│浪│报│　│抓│查│
│　│别│　│没│，│　│　│有│妈│当│去│一│捡│了│拾│户│又│　│狗│暂│
│　│桥│　│有│我│　│　│一│的│这│，│个│废│，│荒│也│刊│　│的│住│
│　│下│　│了│们│　│　│点│，│些│这│小│品│没│的│要│出│　│。│证│
│　│小│　│。│连│　│　│点│这│所│位│窝│为│偷│老│被│来│　│　│的│
│　│﹁│　│　│流│　│　│人│帮│谓│老│，│生│没│太│清│，│　│　│，│

Translation:

"The day before last they came to check temporary residency permits. Then they came to capture the dogs.

Now today The Beijing News is reporting that the vagrants under the overpasses are going to be cleared out as well. This old lady who collects scrap, she’s 70 years old, she hasn’t stolen or looted or swindled, she survives off of picking up waste, she has a tiny nest underneath an overpass, and even she has to be cleared out. This old lady could be the mother of these so-called executors of the law. Do these guys not possess one shred of humanity?

Just because of the Olympics, even our freedom to be vagrants is gone…"