Liu Tienan humpty-dumptied / Diary

-

Off the Horse

The term “severe violations of discipline” is a common euphemism for corruption, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) writes in its online edition today, in connection with an investigation against Liu Tienan (刘铁男), deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). I’m wondering if that definition of the violation term is 100 percent correct. There may be other severe kinds of violation of party discipline, too, and besides, if corruption constituted one of them, which top leader could keep his desk? Never been corrupt through all the decades?

The term as used by the SCMP doesn’t refer to Liu himself here, but to another vice-ministerial-level official brought down before, in the current anti-graft campaign. Usually, corruption seems to become a topic when too many opponents agree that one of their comrades must go.

But this story is somewhat different from the usual downfall tales: reportedly, it was a journalist, Luo Changping (罗昌平), deputy chief editor of Caijing magazine (财经杂志), who first investigated Liu’s record, and published his findings on December 6 last year, according to Asia Pacific Daily (APD). And Liu didn’t fall off the horse right away: he appeared at the Sino-Russian energy talks, at talks with the party secretary of Tibet, and on other occasions.

However, his name wouldn’t appear again in public reports after January 30, writes APD. By then, he had apparently been humpty-dumptied.

Luo Changping reportedly posted allegations against Liu on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblog platform. Microblogs are often the medium of choice for journalists when censorship would be likely on actual articles in papers or magazines, if printed or online.

[Update (May 14, 2013): In December, Caijing published an article accusing Liu Tienan's wife and son of illegal business dealings, according to the BBC.]

-

Diary

Not too frequent dustclouds this spring, even though I saw two modest, tornado-shaped swirls moving across the plain top of the mountain (a mountain by local standards) next to here last week. I was on my way home at the time, and watched them moving.

Amost rainy – May 12, 2013, some three hours after sunrise

It was unpleasant to think about what drought and wind are doing to the topsoil, but it was a great sight at the same time. I kept watching the swirls for a few minutes, until they had reached a cornfied, above which they withered.

But this spring isn’t nearly as dry as the two previous ones. The garden looks good, and vegetables, potatos and young trees are all growing, nearly without irrigation.

Shortwave Log, Northern Germany, April 2013

If you want to listen to the BBC, Deutsche Welle or the Voice of America on shortwave in central Europe these days, the easiest way to do so is to listen to their broadcasts for Africa. These stations broadcast from places like Ascension Island in the southern Atlantic, and Deutsche Welle has kept one of its formerly five own relay stations abroad in operation, from Kigali, Rwanda. VoA also broadcasts from São Tomé and Príncipe, an island in the Gulf of Guinea.

Shortwave radio continues to be popular in Africa, but not with everyone. Robert Mugabe and his regime aren’t fond of it at all, and reportedly issued a ban on shortwave receivers earlier this year. SW Radio Africa, an independent Zimbabwe radio station broadcasting from London in the United Kingdom (you never know who writes the Wikipedia entries) also rents airtime on shortwave, on 4880 kHz from Meyerton shortwave station in South Africa’s Gauteng Province, and can usually be received easily in central Europe during the evening hours.

Meyerton shortwave station, South Africa, 1986 QSL card.

Shortwave broadcasts from Meyerton started in October 1965, according to Jerome S. Berg‘s Broadcasting on the Short Waves^*). It was soon named after Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (H. F. Verwoerd SW Station), a prime minister frequently referred to as the architect of Apartheid who was assassinated in 1966.

China might consider providing Harare with some advanced jamming technology, but this would probably complicate relations with other African countries – and maybe this form of development aid would also be a bit too costly.

My log list for April is short – I spent most of my spare time on gardening.

-

============

Recent Logs

International Telecommunication Union letter codes used in the table underneath:
CUB – Cuba; IND – India, MNG – Mongolia;  RUS – Russia.

Languages (“L.”):
C – Chinese; E – English.

-

kHz	Station	Ctry	L.	Day	Time GMT	S	I	O
7550	AIR Delhi	IND	E	April 4	20:45	5	5	4
15300	Vo Russia	RUS	C	April 19	10:45	3	5	4
15300	Vo Russia	RUS	C	April 19	11:00	3	5	4
7550	AIR Delhi	IND	E	April 22	18:20	5	5	4
6000	RHC Habana	CUB	E	April 23	04:00	x	x	x
12085	Vo Mongolia	MNG	C	April 24	10:14	3	5	3

-

____________

Note

^*) Jerome S. Berg: Broadcasting on the Short Waves, Jefferson NC, 2008, page 171.

____________

Related

» World Press Freedom Day, UNESCO, 2013
» Previous log, Febr/March 2013, April 1, 2013

____________

Deutsche Welle: Limbourg succeeds Bettermann

Deutsche Welle director Erik Bettermann will retire on September 30 this year. His successor will be Peter Limbourg, currently working in a leading position for German private mass media company ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG. DW broadcasting board chairman Valentin Schmidt announced the decision on March 15; the DW press release was written by the broadcaster’s spokesman Johannes Hoffmann. A press release in English is also available.

14 of the 17 board members voted “Yes”; one voted “No”, and two abstained, according to the German release.

Limbourg might count himself lucky, even if his job at Deutsche Welle, under growing budgetary constraints, won’t be an easy one. He is currently Senior Vice President for news and political information at ProSiebenSat 1, which sounds pompous, the Tagesspiegel (Berlin) wrote on March 15, but the hard truth was that information counted very little at his current employer. Information, the Tagesspiegel continues, counts all the more at Deutsche Welle.

On March 14, the Frankfurter Rundschau wrote that only four weeks earlier, Valentin Schmidt had still ruled out an early decision – that would have to wait until June. The search for candidates to succeed Bettermann hadn’t been completed, and the broadcasting board also wanted to wait and see how the candidates to date presented themselves. Applicants from within Deutsche Welle, among them Gerda Meuer, head of the DW academy (and once working for the German service of Radio Japan) weren’t even invited. By the end of February, only Limbourg had delivered a convincing presentation, and Limbourg it was.

In one respect, however, a trend described by Frankfurter Rundschau on February 17 made it into the vote: Limbourg was a journalist, rather than a politician. A complaint of unconstitutionality was pending at Germany’s federal constitutional court, critical of the oversized influence of political parties in the boards and commissions of German broadcasters, and apparently, the DW broadcasting board didn’t want to risk criticism in line with that complaint. The more, however, representatives of the churches were emerging. Valentin Schmidt, a 72-year-old evangelic Christian, is likely to be succeeded by a catholic prelate, Karl Jüsten, at the end of this year, wrote Frankfurter Rundschau. Both Limbourg and one of his most likely competitors (Stephan-Andreas Casdorff, who withdrew his candidacy before March 15) are catholic.

German chancellor Angela Merkel probably liked the emerging constellation, the Focus (Munich) speculated one day after Limbourg was chosen. Soon, the director and three out of his five sub-directors would be on a ticket of the Christian Democrats (the incumbent director, Erik Bettermann is a social democrat), and Karl Jüsten, the probable next chairman of the broadcasting board, was catholic and therefore close to Merkel’s Christian Democrats anyway.

Limbourg will be the first director at a public broadcaster who previously worked for privately-owned television.

Guanchazhe (Observer), a Shanghai-based website, quotes a scholar from Berlin as saying that the high-sounding election of the new DW director, as well as a low-key restoration of Feng Haiyin (apparently von Hein, a German) as head of Deutsche Welle’s Chinese department could bring about a new atmosphere, with some more objective reporting and less ideology in China-related reports (柏林的一名学者18日对记者表 示，“德国之音”选出新台长和冯海音重新担任中文部主任，可能会给该台涉华报道带来新风气，多-些客观报道，少一些意识形态).

Those who had suggested that Feng Haiyin was “close to the CCP” had apparently never listened to the DW broadcasts, scoffs Dream Tramp, a commenter in the thread. All his scripts were full of vicious attacks (说冯海音“亲共”，显然是没听过德国之声广播。他写的每一篇稿子都充满着对土共的恶毒攻击。). German media are more anti-communist than British or American media, suggests another.
Correct, replies Dream Tramp. And [the German media were] stupid at that. I’ve frequently heard them recklessly rushing at rumors – their professional level is far behind Britain’s and America’s.

____________

Related

» Interview with Wang Fengbo, Jan 26, 2012
» Negotiations with Politics, Dec 26, 2011

____________

Obituary: Margaret Thatcher, 1925 – 2013

It wouldn’t make much sense to write about Margaret Thatcher in English, but here is one in German.

And this video, of course:

Early April: Spring by Day, Winter by Night

-

Update/Reading Recommendation:
The Historical Roots of Defensive Fundamentalism in North Korea,
Sino-NK, April 3, 2013

-

Spring by day, winter by night.

Compare this picture with that one of 2011, and you may find that April 2013 looks like February 2011 in this place. Spring is late, to put it mildly, but it seems to be coming in now.

Sprinkling the cottonwood plants.

Dry as usual, though, with the exception of occasional snowfall at night – and the wind has dried the brushwood to a degree that the authorities have released fire alerts.

Shortwave Log, Northern Germany, February/March 2013

============

When you switch on a shortwave receiver in central Europe these days and scan the bands, chances are that you will get to hear a Chinese, a Mid-Eastern, or a religious broadcaster first (in that order, probably). When it comes to Chinese stations, many of them are actually domestic broadcasters. China still relies on shortwave for some of its domestic radio, but this also seems to be a handy way to jam broadcasts from outside China more casually than with the more obvious Firedrake approach.

Among the religious broadcasters, some are merely about religion, some include coverage on current affairs (like Vatican Radio), and some are state broadcasters, but religious anyway – after all, state and religion aren’t separate in countries like Iran or Saudi-Arabia).

Tape drives: KTWR QSL, 1986

KTWR Guam is a merely religious broadcaster, operated by Trans World Radio (TWR), an international protestant missionary radio network. It was officially inaugurated on December 17, 1977, but had started broadcasting for Asia and Oceania on September 4 that year. Their initial target area was China. Although the northern Marianas, among them Guam, have seen a lot of typhoons, in 1983, 1990, 1992, 2002, and 2006, it usually only took the operators a few days to get back on air, writes Hans-Jörg Biener, a theologian (and a shortwave listener) in Nuremberg. Staff had been continuously reduced, Biener wrote in 2007, and only six employees still lived in the place by 2007. At times, Guam had also been a site for program production.

-

============

Recent Logs

International Telecommunication Union letter codes used in the table underneath:
AFS – South Africa; AUS – Australia; CHN – China; CUB – Cuba; GRC – Greece,  GUM – Guam; IND – India; KRE – North Korea; PHL – Philippines; NZL – New Zealand.

Languages (“L.”):
C – Chinese; E – English; F- French; G – Greek.

-

kHz	Station	Ctry	L.	Day	Time GMT	S	I	O
9765	Radio New Zealand	NZL	E	Feb 20	18:15	5	5	4
12015	Vo Korea	KRE	E	Feb 27	18:00	3	4	3
3950	PBS Xinjiang	CHN	C	Mar 30	23:15	4	3	3
5040	RHC Habana	CUB	F	Mar 2	01:30	4	3	3
6000	RHC Habana	CUB	E	Mar 3	04:00	4	3	3
17605	CNR	CHN	C	Mar 3	07:30	3	4	3
11535	Vo Korea	KRE	E	Mar 8	19:00	3	3	3
7550	AIR Delhi	IND	E	Mar 16	17:45	5	5	4
15225	KTWR Agana	GUM	E	Mar 18	14:00	5	5	4
15235	Channel Africa	AFS	F	Mar 18	16:46	5	5	4
15235	Channel Africa	AFS	E	Mar 18	17:00	5	5	4
9545	VoA Tinang	PHL	C	Mar 19	22:08	4	3	3
15340	HCJB	AUS	E	Mar 26	14:45	4	4	4
15630	ERT Athens	GRC	G	Mar 26	15:00	4	5	4
9600	Vatican Radio	PHL	C	Mar 26	22:00	4	5	4

-
____________

Related

» Previous log, Nov/Dec 2012, Dec 31, 2012

____________

Germany’s Slow-Motion China Debate

When Mao Zedong died and Hua Guofeng succeeded him, there was much more China coverage on the German media than now – from what I can remember. I was ten years old at the time, but have never forgotten how the newsreaders pronounced the new helmsman’s name: Hu-ah Ku-oh Fang. The muscles in their faces were working hard during the two or three seconds it took to read his name out. The rather intense coverage probably lasted until 1979 at least.

China came back, bigtime, in Germany’s news coverage during 2008 (and, I’m sure, in 1989, too, but I hardly remember that time in the news). By that time, China was no longer a faraway country, with a few blurred television pictures “received in Hong Kong”, but more like news from an uncannily close neighbor.

Meantime, to use a cuisinary term, the clash with China – or the CCP – keeps simmering over low heat in the German press. On March 10 – twenty days ago -, a radio essay by Sabine Pamperrien, the source of many or most of the coverage on the Zhang Danhong affair at Germany’s foreign broadcaster Deutsche Welle  in 2008, was aired by Deutschlandfunk, one of Germany’s two nationwide radio broadcasters. She criticized the views of former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt on non-interference, arguing that in terms of international law, Schmidt’s opinion was a minority opinion, even if Schmidt argued as if his opinion was apodictic. Non-interference wasn’t codified, but derived from customary international law – just as human rights widely were. Pamperrien argues that the “international responsibility to protect (R2P) had been drafted, more than ten years ago, to define the concept of sovereignty within the UN Charter anew. This wasn’t codified either, but was becoming more and more customary:

Deshalb wurde vor über zehn Jahren mit dem Begriff der “internationalen Schutzverantwortung” eine Neudefinition des Souveränitätsbegriffs der Charta der Vereinten Nationen entworfen. Danach sind Menschenrechte nicht innere Angelegenheiten von Staaten, sondern supranationales Recht. Auch das ist nicht kodifiziert, setzt sich gewohnheitsrechtlich aber immer mehr durch.

It should not be forgotten, Pamperrien adds, that non-interference had been the central defense club (Abwehrkeule) of communist potentates during the Entspannungspolitik (détente), whenever dissidents in their countries – or expelled by their governments – became a topic.

Coincidentally or not, Wolf Biermann, a former East German citizen, expelled by the East German government in 1976, wrote an open letter to Liao Yiwu (published on March 27). Biermann expressed anger about Helmut Schmidt (in his capacity as the co-editor of German weekly Die Zeit, which had been speading stinking news lately. Stinking news, that is, about Liao Yiwu.

For sure, German sinologist Wolfgang Kubin had alluded to the topic of Liao Yiwu, and to a chance that Liao’s descriptions might require verification. Friends who had visited Liao in prison had told him (Kubin) that the conditions of Liao’s imprisonment hadn’t been as harsh as he [later] described them, that much what he couldn’t publish here  [in China, apparently] wasn’t documentation, but fiction, and that the case deserved closer investigation (“Der Fall lohnte einer genaueren Untersuchung”).

But that was in October 2012, and Biermann doesn’t state explicitly which comments about Liao Yiwu in Die Zeit caused his anger – Kubin’s, or anyone else’s. In another article, nine days ago, Die Zeit stated that Kubin hadn’t been able to prove his accusation against Liao.

I wrote an article on Biermann’s and Pamperrien’s criticism on “my” German blog – on a platform provided by German weekly Der Freitag – on Wednesday, with a reference to the Zhang Danhong affair and the events that unfolded at Deutsche Welle, It dawned on me that I hadn’t asked myself too many questions about all those events for a long time, and that I hadn’t asked any stakeholders questions for a long time. The thread that followed my post on my German blog was actually instructive – it has given me several ideas on how to do some more research. That may require time, once again, and will inevitably reduce my blogging frequency further – at least for a while.

The funny bit about that is that I’m under no time pressure. No big newsagency, no big paper, no broadcaster is likely to pick up the Deutsche-Welle issues any time soon. But as time passes, more and more information is trickling down – not least from Li Qi‘s Deutsche Welle’s China Nightmare. The book remained available – as far as I can see, no judicial steps have been taken against the publishing house, and apparently, no counterstatements have been made.

The anti-CCP mill, too, is grinding its way rather slowly. Biermann’s reaction to the coverage of Die Zeit seems to suggest that, and so does Pamperrien’s: Helmut Schmidt had made his remarks about non-interference and other issues more than one years earlier, on January 31, 2012.

Back then, Tai De took issue with Schmidt’s remarks about the Korean War.

____________

Related

» Deutsche Welle Link Collection, Febr 3, 2012
» Xu Pei and the Dirty Old Men, May 17, 2010

____________

China Blogging: To Whom it may Concern

At least when it comes to China-related blogging, traffic in general seems to go down. An outspoken blogger told me that this was the case with his blog. Commenting activity on usually very lively blogs seems to suggest that even there, traffic is low, and it is certainly low my own blog.  Statistics do go up once I’ve posted something new – and even more so when I post more than just one article a time. It certainly didn’t help that I’ve put some voluntary limits on my blogging output by now. OK – semi-voluntary limits.

You aren’t a blogger – how do you know what bloggers enjoy?

But low traffic isn’t what I imagined five years ago, when I started this blog. I thought it would be more like publishing. In fact, it has become more like e-mailing. Most people seem to read this through a feedreader. And only rather little “comes back”, in terms of comments or emails.

Should that trouble me? It doesn’t, actually. It has led me to cutting back on blogging, because it’s influence was so small that it doesn’t justify two or even one  hours a day of blogging (blogging here includes lots of reading). But at the same time, I see this blog as a contribution to the vast resources on which I depend myself – to the internet. It’s Give and Take.

And once in a while, something comes back directly to this blog. A comment, some advice, some kind of input.

There is only one regret I do feel: it’s that this blog is rarely read in China, and rarely responded to from China. Now, you can draw your own conclusions, of course, and suggest that it is too cold-war-minded to attract readers.

But I believe that the contrary is the case.

It isn’t just that JR isn’t really cold-war-minded – he’s only outspoken. And even people who take offense, as a rule, tend to come back to what seems to offend them. It’s a global rule, not specifically Chinese, and I’m not trying to explore the motivation for such reading habits.

It would seem to me that censorship in China has become yet more efficient – that would be one factor in declining traffic. In the past, even when it was said that WordPress blogs were blocked in China throughout, one or another white point in China would still appear on ClustrMaps, every few days or weeks. Not anymore.

There is a blog in German, Doppelpod, which – I think – started early in 2011. It has seen some success so far  – it’s quoted on some of the more influential German blogs once in a while, for example. But the actual goal of its founders – to establish a platform where Chinese and German readers would discuss issues and build cross-cultural or personal links between each other – hasn’t been achieved, and that goal is now being abandoned.

Obviously, censorship isn’t the only barrier between a German and a Chinese public. Language is another barrier. Rather limited general interest in each other’s country is yet another.

But there’s a good thing about simply blogging for the fun it brings: cold numbers and economics don’t need to decide about its future. In fact, bloggers seem to be more free to write about what really concerns them, than professonal journalists.

And it doesn’t matter how many people read your blog. What matters is that those who care do read.