Another Escape from Dongshigu

Chen Guangfu (陈光福), Chen Guangcheng‘s older brother, has escaped to Beijing, reportedly to find help on behalf of his son, Chen Kegui (陈克贵).

Chen Guangcheng leaves China

Chen Guangcheng, his wife Yuan Weijing, and their two children are on a plane to the United States, reports Die Zeit.

Zhou Yongkang, the University of Political Science and Law, and the Central Committee’s Warm Care for Law Research

The following is a partly direct, partly indirect translation / reflection of Zhou Yongkang‘s speech at University of Political Science and Law, on May 9, 2012, in front of teacher and student delegates – as (far as) published by People’s Daily online. The PD publication may or may not contain Zhou’s speech in full.

I will start with the direct translation of several paragraphs, to catch some of the speech’s “mood” or “atmosphere”. After that, I’ll turn to more indirect reflections of Zhou Yongkang’s speech. Links within blockquotes added during translation. Subtitles are not part of the original People’s-Daily publication.

Zhou Yongkang is the CCP’s Politics and Law Committee’s secretary, member of the CCP politbureau’s standing committee, and oversees China’s security forces and law enforcement institutions.

Translated off the reel, and posted right away.

Main Link 1: Opening Remarks and a General Description

On the occasion of the China University of Political Science and Law’s 60th anniversary, I, together with comrades in charge at the CCP Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, the ministry of education, the ministry of justice, and Beijing City, have come to this university especially to meet teachers and students.
在中国政法大学60周年校庆即将到来之际，我和中央政法委、教育部、司法部、北京市的负责同志一起，专程来学校看望老师和同学们。

In 1952, to respond to New China’s need for the construction of a rule by law^*), the China University of Political Science and Law came into being. For sixty years, under the warm care of the Central Committees’ collective leadership, led by Comrades Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin at the core, the University of Political Science and Law acted in accorance with the university’s spirit of “rich ethics, clear law, and principles, commitment to the public”, constantly improved educational quality, made great efforts to develop law research, actively participated in national legislation and popularization of law, served the practice of administration of justice on its own initiative, successively educated more than 200,000 law talents of all kinds, produced lots of noted academic masters, outstanding talents of politics and law, created a set of values, influential legal research achievements to promote government of the country in accordance with the law, to serve the economic development with outstanding contributions, thus developing into a domestically famous, internationally noted institution of higher eductation for legal education, becoming known as “the cradle of the People’s Republic’s cadres of politics and law”. The University of Political Science and Law’s course through the past sixty years of history reflects the colossal development of our country’s cause for legal education and research, and proves the colossal progress of the building of socialism-with-Chinese-characteristics rule by law. I herewith, on behalf of the Central Committee, the State Council, and Secretary General Hu Jintao, express warm congratulations on the occasion of the university’s 60th-anniversary celebrations, and sincere greetings to the entire university’s teachers, students, staff, and friends at home and abroad!
1952年，为适应新中国法治建设的需要，中国政法大学的前身北京政法学院应运而生。60年来，在以毛泽东、邓小平、江泽民同志为核心的党的三代中央领导集体和以胡锦涛同志为总书记的党中央亲切关怀下，中国政法大学秉承“厚德、明法、格物、致公”的校训精神，不断提高教学质量，大力开展法学研究，积极参与国家立法和普法宣传，主动服务执法司法实践，先后培养了20多万名各类法律人才，涌现出一大批学术名师、政法英才，创造了一系列有价值、有影响的法学研究成果，为推进依法治国进程、服务经济社会发展作出了突出贡献，发展成为国内著名、国际知名的法学教育高等学府，被誉为“共和国政法干部的摇篮”。中国政法大学60年来走过的历程，折射了我国法学教育和研究事业的长足发展，见证了中国特色社会主义法治建设的巨大进步。在此，我代表党中央、国务院和胡锦涛总书记，向中国政法大学60周年校庆表示热烈祝贺，向全校师生员工及海内外校友表示诚挚问候！

At present, our national economy maintains its steadily rapid development, the society’s is generally harmonious and stable, and the overall situation is good. Having gone through more than sixty years of construction and development since the establishment of New China, and especially during the more than thirty years of reform and opening, our cuntry’s socialist modernization and construction has achieved successes which have caught the eyes of the world, has strengthened our country’s comprehensive strength, our international influence has rapidly risen, socialism with Chinese characteristics has been tested in the sudden global changes, and shown strong vitality. At the same time, we have to see clearly that our country remains in the initial stage of socialism, that there are imbalances, uncoordinated and unsustainable problems that keep emerging within development, with existing substantial factors which affect social harmony and stability. Especially under the conditions of all the aspects of opening to the outside world and social informationalization, domestic and international issues influence each other, economic and social issues and political issues are interlinked, and supposed and real society interrelate with each other. We are facing unprecedented challenges, and we are shouldering colossal tasks.
当前，我国经济保持平稳较快发展，社会大局和谐稳定，总的形势是好的。经过新中国成立以来60多年的建设发展特别是30多年的改革开放，我国社会主义现代化建设取得了举世瞩目的伟大成就，综合国力显著增强，国际影响力大幅提升，中国特色社会主义在世界风云变幻中经受了考验，展示出强大的生命力。同时，我们要清醒地看到，我国仍处于并将长期处于社会主义初级阶段，发展中不平衡、不协调、不可持续的问题依然突出，影响社会和谐稳定的因素大量存在。特别是在全方位对外开放和社会信息化的条件下，国内问题与国际问题相互影响，经济问题、社会问题与政治问题相互关联，虚拟社会与现实社会相互作用，我们面对的挑战前所未有，肩负的任务艰巨繁重。

Government in accordance with the law is our party’s basic strategy to lead the people and to rule the country. To build a country with socialism-with-Chinese-characteristics under rule by law is the goal the entire people is unswervingly striving for. In history, the Chinese people suffered more than two-thousand years of despotic feudalist rule, in more recent times, they bore the misery of Western great powers’ bullying and humiliation, and even the most basic rights to life were not guaranteed, not to mention exaggerated talk about democratic and lawful rule. [...]
依法治国是我们党领导人民治理国家的基本方略，建设社会主义法治国家是全体人民坚定不移的奋斗目标。历史上中国人民遭受了两千多年的封建专制统治，近代又饱受西方列强的欺凌，连基本的生存权都保证不了，更不用奢谈什么民主法治了。 [.....]

Zhou describes “the road of socialist rule by law, found through the efforts of several generations of people” after 1949, as the answer to the “national conditions” (and implicitly, probably, the past).

Main Link 2: Emphasizing Legitimacy inherited from Previous CCP Generations

But building a socialist country ruled by law is a long-term and formidable, major, historical task which cannot be accomplised at one stroke. Comrade Deng Xiaoping said that “Old China bequeathed many feudal, despotic traditions on us, but very few democratic and legal traditions”. Our country, with many inhabitants but uneven economic and social development, inevitably has to face difficulties and challenges in the process of building a legal system. Comrade Jiang Zemin emphasized that “socialist democracy must be broadened step by step, and a legal socialist system, a country ruled by law, a socialist country ruled by law, must be built step by step. This goal must unswervingly be implemented. Secretary general Hu Jintao demanded that we must “adhere to the basic strategy of a country ruled by law, establish a socialist concept of rule by law, and realize the rule by law, and safeguard the citizens’ legal rights. Comprehensive implementation of the basic strategy of rule by law and the acceleration of a socialist rule-by-law country is the party’s and the state’s established policy, striven for by the entire people. We must insist on these goals without letting our guard down, and unremittingly maintain forge ahead.
同时，在我国建设社会主义法治国家是一项长期而艰巨的重大历史任务，不可能一蹴而就。邓小平同志指出：“旧中国留给我们的，封建专制传统比较多，民主法制传统很少。”我们国家大，人口众多，经济社会发展又很不平衡，在法治建设进程中必然会遇到各种困难和挑战。江泽民同志强调：“要进一步扩大社会主义民主，健全社会主义法制，依法治国，建设社会主义法治国家。这个目标，我们要坚定不移地加以落实。”胡锦涛总书记要求：“坚持依法治国基本方略，树立社会主义法治理念，实现国家各项工作法治化，保障公民合法权益。”全面落实依法治国基本方略、加快建设社会主义法治国家，是党和国家的既定方针，是全体人民的共同追求，我们必须咬定目标不放松，坚持不懈地扎实往前推进。

In the following paragraph, and the first of three enumerations, Zhou points out the importance that the party and the state council had attached to legal education of the young, and refers to a speech Hu Jintao held during the CCP Youth League’s 90th anniversary celebrations. The style of the very long paragraph following that mirrors the less informative passages of central party documents, in that it describes the steps of strengthening socialist legal construction, but without actually specifying such steps.

The second item of three is about innovation, solid (academic) support for socialist rule of law, and correct political direction. This bit could be meaningful:

[...] Currently, our national economy’s and society’s development and legal construction encounters many practical problems, and there is an urgent need for answers from theory. For example:
how to maintain the party’s leadership, the people as the masters of their own matters, governance of the country in accordance with the law with organic unity, the acceleration of building a country under the rule by law, how to continuously perfect the legal system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, to provide more powerful legal guarantees for ecomomic and social scientific development and improved livelihood of the people, how to strengthen and innovate social management, [...]

Main Link 3: Outlook

Zhou’s third point refers to the future roles of today’s students, and their future responsibilities to achieve the described goals. At the second paragraph on the third online page of Zhou’s speech as published by People’s Daily, there is another reference to Hu Jintao’s CCP Youth League 90th anniversary speech (this time, Zhou refers to it as Hu’s May-4 speech), and points out the need for talented lawyers not only in China’s more developed regions, but its western regions, too.

Finally, I want to express my heart-felt wish that the University of Political Science and Law will maintain Deng Xiaoping’s Theories and [Jiang Zemin's - name not mentioned here] “Three Represents” as major ideological guidance, at the thorough implementation of scientific development, under the leadership of the Central Committee with Hu Jintao as the Secretary General. From these celebrations of the university’s 60th anniversary, and at the starting point of another sexagenary cycle, keep working for a strong, globally first-class socialist law university with Chinese characteristics!
最后，衷心祝愿中国政法大学坚持以邓小平理论和“三个代表”重要思想为指导，深入贯彻落实科学发展观，在以胡锦涛同志为总书记的党中央领导下，以60周年校庆为新的历史起点，努力在新的一个甲子中建设成为中国特色、世界一流的社会主义法科强校！

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Note

^*) “Rule by law” is only one of many possible translations – I chose this option  in previous translations, too. “Rule of law” would be another.

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Related

» Where art Thou, Zhou Yongkang, March 27, 2012
» Social Management, Febr 21, 2011

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How Long will the Linyi Leaders last in Office?

Not the rule of law, but “social management”, seems to impose this question. Local party and state authority mostly remains faceless in the news, but there are heads who are responsible for the human-rights violations – apparently gross even by Chinese standards – which turned Chen Guangcheng into an activist, and heads who are responsible for more recent scandals which haven’t only rattled some otherwise callous foreign “old China hands”, but, more crucially, Chinese people, too.

There seems to be an exorbitant flush of revenge among the local or regional authorities. But “loss of face” may not be the only reason for the latest travesties of justice that apparently surround Chen’s wider family, and especially his nephew, Chen Kegui. My impression is that there are officials who are fighting for their political survival, or who want to do as much damage as they can before they are finished.

The party cares more about itself than about the state, but the center will have to sacrify some pawn comrades. No evidence – just a gut feeling.

Afterwards, we will hear from people who are “shocked” that those things could happen at all, as if the crimes had started only a week ago, and Huanqiu Shibao and the “Global Times”, its English-language sister paper will, once again, celebrate the “rule of law” in China.

Angry Citizens and Bad Religion

Scheiße, ich muss im Golf nach Hause fahren.

I don’t know who’s angrier. Is it those who wave cartoons of the prophet (Mohamed) around to make some Salafists explode – and to hurt the feelings of Muslims who may feel angry, saddened, or who won’t care (yes, that happens, too)? Or  is it the Salafists who are angrier?

Police people may be angry, too, because they have to bear the brunt of keeping idiots on both sides apart from each other – and to expose themselves to danger. Police people have more reasons to be angry than anyone else, in my view.

But I seem to understand that a free society can either live with Salafists who are handing out Korans, and with people who are waving Mohamed cartoons around, or it isn’t much of a free society after all.

Helping Dissidents: When People Die for Wealth, and Birds Die for Food

Main Link: He Qinglian’s BBC article

He Qinglian is a Chinese economist and author who has lived in the U.S. since 2001. In an article published by the BBC‘s Chinese website (last updated on May 9, 2012) [ this account of it based on the May-7 updated version], she argues that in terms of national interest, America is rather selling benefits, than gaining them, to act in accordance with its values. There was no economic benefit to be gained by focusing on human-rights issues in its talks with China. Accusations that America was using human rights issues as a “tool” to serve its national interest, as claimed both by the CCP and by a number of dissidents, too, therefore made no sense.

It’s the case of Chen Guangcheng and his family which prompted her article. But her advice on how to help with human-rights issues goes beyond the current situation.

The efficiency of Metternich-style diplomacy had become very limited, she writes. Global decisions sought by America depended on China’s cooperation, and Europe was busy with its sovereign debt crisis (and was seeking cooperation from China, too). America’s best diplomatic “weapon” now was to apply its “soft power”, to influence China by persuasion (劝说, quànshuō) and by exchange of benefits. Otherwise, the inevitable result of situations like the current one was international humiliation of China – it would either turn a deaf ear to the matter, or fight back.

The idea that America “used human right criticism as a tool to pursue its national interests” had been an educational and propaganda line which had become deeply rooted in China – a country with a popular saying of “peole die for wealth, and birds die for food” (人为财死，鸟为食亡). CCP propaganda which kept using the concept of natonal interest was therefore highly efficient, exactly for the situation as it was at home, within China.

He Qinglian sums up why, she believes, the American-Chinese talks didn’t get derailed while secretary of state Hilary Clinton was in Beijing:

I don’t believe that China could be inspired by American soft power, and I can only guess what China got [from America] so that the good “partnership” continued.

Taking refuge in the American embassy was therefore – probably – no regular approach Chinese dissidents could take, writes He Qinglian. Each of them would have to seek international help in some ways, to different extents, in accordance with their individual situations.

One may agree or disagree with her, but I seem to sense the soulsearching and the trouble she felt when writing her article. One of the commenters underneath, under the pseudonym of Grief and Resentment (哀怨人), commenting from the U.S., suggests that there is a kind of helplessness (一种无奈感) in it.

Basically, if anything, He Qinglian seems to endorse the U.S. State Department’s approach, rather than calls from Capitol Hill, from news comments and elsewhere, to do more than what has been done so far.

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Related

» A Division of Labor that Can’t Work, Febr 23, 2010
» He Qinglian about Deutsche Welle (interview in German), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nov 11, 2008

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The Weeks before June 4 – Role Allocations

« An explanation of this 1989 series

» Previous post in this series

I won’t be able to describe Wu Renhua‘s entire document on the 1989 movement, at least not during this spring. I never planned to achieve such an ambitious goal anyway, but in the process of reading and roughly regiving the document’s content, I do feel some regret that I don’t have as much time for this as I would like to have. It might be a different story if I was more familiar with the weeks when a civil society in Beijing seemed to develop, and all the people and organizations involved. But in fact, the series on this blog is a process of making myself more familiar with the weeks prior to what we often narrow down to that one bloody night in June, 1989.

Wu’s document is a who-is-who, and a collection of locations in Beijing. Rather than trying to go through every day recorded in his tweeted today-in-history collection, I’m adding to a project, as suggested by C. A. Yeung a few weeks ago.

This also means that I may be dwelling on events in early May 1989 even in a few weeks, when the actual day in the year 2012 will be June 4. And in that case, I will simply continue this series with the events in May 1989, as described by Wu, in another batch of posts next year.

But at least every few days, I will keep adding posts to this series, until June.

We must restitute to past generations what they once possessed, just as every present tense is in its possession: the abundance of a possible future, the uncertainty, the freedom, the finiteness, the inconsistency (…), Thomas Nipperdey, a German historian, once wrote.

That’s what commemoration is probably about. Before the bloodbath and the great dispair, there had been weeks of frustration, hope, and self-determination. If history came out of the gun barrels (as certain people appear to suggest), there would be nothing to read, nothing to remember, and nothing to expect.

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Main Link: 八九天安门事件大记 (Major Daily Events, Tiananmen 1989), by Wu Renhua.

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Sunday, April 23, 1989

In the morning, Zhao Ziyang meets with Hu Qili and Rui Xingwen, and emphasizes his three opinions on how to handle the students’ protests, and that “the news-related public opinion must be in accordance with the guiding principle of correct reporting”. In the afternoon, he leaves for North Korea by special train, as scheduled. Li Peng, Qiao Shi, and Tian Jiyun, see him off at Beijing Train Station. At about 14 h, the People’s University Doctoral Candidates’ Declaration emerges. It states full support for the Seven Demands, and all patriotic movements from all students and people of all walks of life in society; calls a complete student (and doctorate candidates’) strike; demands the resignation of the collective leadership’s and collective mistaken decision-makers’ collective resignations [or be obliged to resign] (Li-Peng language), later referred to as “collective responsibility” (Li-Peng language); strongly demands all cadres in the party, government and army who are older than 75 to resign; to oppose violence, to protect human rights, and the military forces should not take part and interfere in state affairs; CCP activities should not be paoid for by the state; and censorship to be removed, press freedom be established, and private press, radio and television be allowed; anti-corruption commissions be established, corruption on all party levels be investigated and removed, and business activities of cadres’ relatives be examined, and the results be reported to the public. Science and Technology Daily, under deputy chief editor Sun Changjiang (孙长江), is the first press publication to break into the censored field of covering the movement’s activities, which is commended by the students and from all walks of life. A number of young professors at the University of Science and Technology Beijing (北京科技大学) and other universities announce a strike; some university posters call for a general university strike or for “we won’t attend class unless we achieve our goals”, and some call for a nation-wide general strike. Between ten a.m. and around eight p.m. or after, students at Beijing University and Tsinghua University unsuccessfully try to take control of their respective universities’ broadcasting stations. Shen Tong (沈彤)¹⁾ takes a different approach – he runs a broadcasting system of his own from his dormitory, near the San Jiao Di (explanation for San Jiao Di here, underneath the list of the seven demands). Liu Gang (刘刚) is an organizer of a Universities’ Interim Committee (高校临时委员会), to be renamed Independent (or autonomous) Federation of Students from Universities in Beijing (北京市高等院校学生自治联合会), at which delegates of a number of Beijing Universities – if not all universities – are to participate. In the afternoon, Liu and Dai Zizhong (龚自忠) sees Wu Renhua at Wu’s place at the University of Political Science and Law. Wu hasn’t known them personally before. Liu asks Wu to attend the students’ assembly scheduled for that evening, at Yuanmingyuan or Yuanming Park²⁾. Wu Renhua declines, because participation in the Yuanmingyuan assembly or meeting wouldn’t correspond with his role as a professor. If he played such a role, this would also provide a handle for the authorities. Liu Gang, in search for a candidate to chair the conference, approaches Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) [the student who hit his own head with his megaphone, during Guo Haifeng's, Zhang Zhiyong's and Zhou Yongjun's kneeling petition at the entrance of the Great Hall of the People a day earlier], but Pu doesn’t believe that he has the abilities it takes to become chairman. Probably more crucially, he points out that his parents by adoption, who live in a rural area, are relatively old people who depend on him³⁾.

The Yuanmingyuan conference meets in the evening, with delegates from Beiing’s twenty-one university. Each university dispatches ten delegates. Zhou Yongjun (周勇军),  of the University of Political Science and Law, and one of the three kneeling petitioners on the previous day, is elected chairman. Wang Dan, Wu’er Kaixi, Ma Shaofang, and Zang Kai (臧凯) become standing-commission members.

According to what are believed to be Li Peng’s diaries, the CCP Politbureau Standing Committee holds a meeting at eleven a.m.. Li Tieying, in his capactiy as national education commission’s director, calls Li Peng to inform him that the mood at all universities in Beijing is very emotional, that student strikes are brewing, and that he hopes that Zhao listens to / reads the reports. Beijing Municipal Party secretary Li Ximing calls Zhao Ziyang on the phone and asks him to put his trip to North Korea off. Zhao tells the national education commission’s director Li Tieying see this post, footnote 3 that he had already authorized Li Peng to chair the standing commission’s work and to report to him.

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Notes

¹⁾ According to this online story, Shen was extremely lucky after the Tian An Men crackdown:

Fortunately for Shen, he had already been accepted to Brandeis University and had been issued a passport to study in the U.S. Six days after Tiananmen he went undisguised to the airport and boarded a flight for the United States though the state security police had put him on their most wanted list. Some have taken this as a sign that even many in China’s military had secretly been in sympathy with the democracy movement.

²⁾ Yuanmingyuan or Yuanming Park (the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, 圆明园) belongs to Beijing’s Haidian District. It is also referred to as the Old Summer Palace. The actual palace was destroyed in the Second Opium War.

³⁾ Wu Renhua writes in his document that he doesn’t remember having warned Pu Zhiqiang against chairing the Yuanming Park meeting in principle, but he does remember that he did warn Pu to mind his safety, for the sake of his adoptive parents.

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Related

» April 23, 1989, Under the Jacaranda, April 23, 2012

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“None of my Business – I will Endure” – Readers’ Comments on Shan Renping’s Chen Guangcheng Editorial

Shan Renping‘s article here.

Some of the latest comments (probably continuously censored, and there are no permalinks):

You’d better issue fewer of these articles! Otherwise, you will be submerged in a flood of indignation!! (这些文章今后还是少发！不然会被叫骂声淹没！！)

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When it is your fate to choose between rape and gang rape, how will you choose? (当你的命运注定要在被强奸和被轮奸之中选择的话，那么你的答案是什么？)

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The family-planning issue probably exists in reality. I’m from Rizhao, Juxian, which formerly belonged to Linyi County [corretion: City]. You can also have a look at Zhaoxian Town in Rizhao. There are no residential areas here, except for a housing district of the family-planning office. Some of the area consists of police stations, who help the family-planning office to take people into custody.  The family-planning office will take relatives of pregnant women with more than one child, or unplanned pregnancies, to a village here called Xiao Pu, to lock them up there and to attend classes. (事件中的计生问题应该是真的，我是日照莒县的，原先属于临沂。你可也去我们莒县招贤镇看看。我们镇没有什么住宅小区，除了一个是计生办的住宅小区。计生办小区有一部分是派出所的，因为派出所的帮助计生办的抓人。计生办会把超生或计划外怀孕的亲戚抓到我们一个叫小铺的村关起来，美其名曰学习班—)

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That’s none of my business. I will take care of my own business, and endure. (不关我我的事，关我的事时我忍).

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Provide more news that reveal negative aspects about America – that will be believable and cause no disgust, because China is also powerful!!! (多多揭露美国的负面新闻, 现在报道都会相信的不反感, 因为中国也强大了!!!)

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Great writing style! (文笔不错嘛！)

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Is there not a single person on this globe who would oppose America??? (全世界, 没有一个人反对美国???)

“Huanqiu Shibao [the paper which published Shan's article] is truthful” (环球真实。), writes one commenter, somewhere in between, and “五毛拿好” (take your fifty cents) writes another.

Links within blockquote added during translation.

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Related

When the Heavens won’t Respond, Nov 11, 2011

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