Chen Shuibian: Control your Wife

“Not even an execution can atone for my sins,” former Taiwanese president Chen Shuibian writes in his latest book, Voices that Can’t Be Locked Up (關不住的聲音).

He made eight mistakes during his presidency, writes Chen. From them, we learn this:

1. Control your wife.

2. Your enemies are never merciful to you. If you are benevolent to your enemy, you are cruel to yourself.

3. Be evil enough to claim your enemy’s stolen assets.

4. Being an exceptionally wise leader, don’t leave your succession to others.

5. Distrust your successor as party leader. Examine her bones. Especially if she happens to be a woman. Go back to rule one.

Two Deadlocked Affairs, One Constructive Approach

China Radio International reports that the Yuanmingyuan Rabbit-Rat-Head matter is deadlocked after a Chinese bidder refused to pay on an auction, but that replicas may solve the problem (replicas for the current owner, of course).

And JR’s demand that the Chinese post must hand over the letters it failed to deliver some years ago is deadlocked, too. JR suggests that the Chinese post sends him some copies of those old letters for his convenience. Actually, that should be much easier to do than to make Yuanmingyuan sculpture replicas.

In turn for the copies, the Chinese postal service can have these two heads:

JR's Replicas

Always ready to contribute to the deepening and strengthening of international friendship between the peoples of the world:

JR

National Human Rights Action Plan

At first glance anyway, it looks like a re-iteration of issues that aren’t defined or stipulated for the first time. China’s central government published its first working plan on human rights on Monday. Its scope is from 2009 to 2010, and is reportedly a response to the United Nations’ call in 1993 to establish human rights plans.

Details can be found on the China Radio International website, but I don’t want to leave it there without quoting a very tangible regulation:

“For detainees’ convenience, complaint letter boxes should be set up in their cells and a detainee may meet the procurator stationed in a prison or detention house by appointment, if the former feels he has been abused and wants to make a complaint.“

Besides, the plan contains a number of economic development items (as papers on human rights in China usually do):

– To create 18 million new jobs for urban workers while helping 18 million rural laborers move to cities and towns to find jobs by 2010;

– To increase net annual income of some 800 million rural residents by 6 percent from the 4,761 yuan (696 U.S. dollars) recorded in 2008;

– To have more than 223 million people covered by the urban basic old-age pension insurance, 400 million people covered by basic medical care insurance, 120 million covered by unemployment insurance, and 140 million covered by workers’ compensation insurance;

– To provide safe drinking water for 60 million rural residents;

– To invest more than 2 billion yuan to help areas inhabited by ethnic minorities to accelerate economic and social development.

The next stimulus plan is casting its shadow – it may come this week, or later.

Stimulus Package: “The Whole World is Looking on China”

Before you leap at the numbers and trends described in the following translation, be advised that JR is a bloody amateur who may misread sources, especially those written in Chinese, and washes his hands of every possible error.

北青网 (Bei Qing Wang, Beijing Youth’s Daily‘s news website) published a review of the central government’s stimulus package of November last year (four trillion Yuan) and its effects to date this morning. The actual news – or rumor – is that the State Council may discuss a second stimulus package on its Wednesday routine session (April 15), “on its administrative level”. The economic review was originally published by Jinan Daily, also this morning, and mostly refers to economic indicators of the first quarter, the first real data available to assess the impact of the stimulus package. The reporter refers to interviews with Fang Sihai (房四海, chief economist at Hongyuan Securities) and Gao Shanwen (高善文 , chief economist at Essence Securities) conducted in the last few days, and to comments by Frank Gong (龚方雄 , JP Morgan Hong Kong) and Ma Jiantang (马建堂, head of the National Bureau of Statistics).

The second package, if it comes, is supposed to focus on the people’s livelihood and on consumption rather than on infrastructure, says the article. It mentions the medical system, agriculture, new or renewable energy, real estate, banks, household appliances, cars, textiles, and communication electronics.

Gao Shanwen was more optimistic about China’s economic outlook in February, according to China Daily back then. He now says that with the exception of the machine-building industry, electric equipment, and transportation industries, the industrial indicators offer little reason to be optimistic. And Zhang Ping (张平, National Development and Reform Commission director) explained in March that while investment in infrastructure accounted for some 1.5 trillion Yuan of the stimulus package, domestic steel prices suggested that there were overcapacities, and that the infrastructure investments wouldn’t substantially change domestic demand for steel.

Other indicators such as electricity generation and consumption, CPI (consumer price indexes) and PPI (producer price indexes) are said to be pointing downwards. As for the latter two indexes, “an informed government official, talking with Overseas Xinhua Financial Report”, is quoted.

All that said, the article doesn’t leave its readers without words of encouragement. The state still has many cards to play, it says, referring to a statement by premier Wen Jiabao at the NPC’s annual session (or the parallel Consultative Conference) in March. Lowering taxes, subsidizing low incomes and intensifying support for labor-intensive service industries (to create jobs) are cited as options.

Besides, after the G20 summit, its general agreement on the need for more stimulae, and Australia’s and Japan’s packages passed within a week after the summit, “the whole world is now looking on China”, Fang Sihai is quoted.

That feels good, doesn’t it?

Taiwan Media: Freedom Weakening?

“It’s sad that most people in Taiwan are not aware of it — they’re like frogs gradually cooking alive in warm water: By the time they realize the water is boiling, it’ll be too late.“

Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭), former Taiwanese Presidential Office secretary-general, on a forum on freedom of speech, April 12

Hermit: The Dubya-Shaped Business Cycle

Hermit the angry Taoist Dragonfly

Hello Children,

this is Hermit again with another scientific economic lecture for bird brains. Maybe you are sometimes reading Mr selegant’s hostile blog over there, with stuff like Gloom, Dr Doom and Maybe No More Boom. Of course, Mr selegant is just another envious American and afraid that we will surpass his sorry ass country soon, but at least, Dr Doom, though malicious and envious too, is a scientist. And we must never stop learning from scientists.

Dr Doom aka Nouriel Roubini says that judged on a number of indicators, there was no or virtually no growth in China’s economy during the last quarter of 2008, and only little growth during this year’s first quarter, but that indicators for the coming quarters (the current one from April to June included) are looking better.

But the scientist is also suggesting that the Great Stimulus may either be too small, or that the drugged (i. e. stimulated) economy will lead to further over-capacity (means that you can produce more than you can sell), and consequently to a rise in non-performing loans, falling profits, or rising losses.

Either, or, hehe. This envious scientist who hates China should make up his mind!

Me, Hermit, a great scientist, will soon show you how the coming great social insurance and economic growth are inter-related or not. But for now, let’s keep busy with Dr Doom and Mr selegant. Mr selegant refers to some more economists who think that the picking-up by the Chinese economy during this quarter could be a false dawn and that China could be headed for a “W” shaped recession. Something like this:

The "W"-shaped Business Cycle, read from left to right

OK, children. Let’s keep it simple. Before our times, something like a stimulus package was calledl a flash in the pan – easily lit and quickly burnt down.

And then came the test: where is the domestic demand?

So, this “W”-shaped bullshit is of course old news in a new shape only. We Chinese invented the W shaped business cycle 5,000 years ago. Whenever the harmonious central government freed the peasants from serfdom, there was growth. Whenever the local ganbu gentry had managed to enslave the peasants again, there was a downturn, and so on.

So, don’t trust the media which are hostile to our motherland. They are only selling old wine in new skins and make a big fuss about it.

That much for today, children. Stay tuned for a peasant’s balance sheet. When I’m in the mood. Got to fly now.

Lev Kopelev: No Easy Solution

Siegfried Lenz was honored for his lifetime achievements at an award ceremony in Cologne last month, with this year’s Lev Kopelev Prize for Peace and Human Rights. The following are excerpts from his lecture. At the center of it are his thoughts about Lev Kopelev.

“When a man is indicted, our insight may be twofold: We learn something about him, and we learn something about his times, about the spirit in which laws are written. The indictment which major Lev Kopelev of the Red Army was facing accused him of “bourgeois humanistic propaganda of compassion towards the enemy”. As what was then seen as an appropriate degree of penalty, the military court brought a ten-year Gulag sentence.

The reason which caused a stir with a lot of military judges – in the West, too – was that he kept making representations – Representations against the habit of triumphant soldiers of looting, raping, taking what had fallen to them at the end of the war. He later told me, “there is a shame of the victor, and it is about the temptation to give full rein to ones vengeance.” What an example of unheard-of relinquishment, of forgiveness, when bearing in mind the baggage of memory he carried with him: the scorched earth left behind by German soldiers in his country, confiscations, the countless dead. What a power it took, in an extreme situation, to remain true to the values which meant so much to him for all his lifetime: tolerance and humanity. The account of his life, called confession by himself, showes what enabled him. It’s compassion.

[…..]

Compassion – for Lev Kopelev, it wasn’t revolutionary messianism, but something which expresses the longing for brotherliness. Similarly as with Dostoevsky, this missionary of compassion, we learn from him that an unacceptable world can only be saved by altruism [or charity]. Departing from the experience that almost everyone is surrounded by a variety of misery, we are advised that the compassionate doesn’t only give, but that he also takes; by connecting a stranger’s fate with his own, he opens his relationship with the world. The own existence is stepped up. Compassion can’t only be found in positive samaritanism. Rather, compassion gives to those who exercise it, a strength of empathy which virtually on its own leads to the readiness to help others. From the confessions of his friend Lev Kopelev, Heinrich Böll saw a new sacramental teaching of elementary commitment between people.  It shows, not least, in the accentuation of the old sources of vitality: bread and water.

[…..]

Committed to enlightenment, Kopelev made a decision one can only view with admiration and emotion. He went to camps where German prisoners of war were held. He gave lectures. To those who suffered from hunger or homesickness, he didn’t talk about the teachings of Marxism, but about German culture, the indestructible spirit of the country which had brought his own people unparalleled misery. He spoke about Hölderlin, about Kant, and Hegel, he reminded the exhausted, the defeated of what they once possessed, and, within the misery of internment, acquainted them with Dürer and Cranach. One can assume that for many of his listeners, it was their first encounter with German spirit, and I imagine how they reacted to the lecturer’s profound proficiency. I’m sure that, besides astonishment, there was admiration, and I wouldn’t rule out that, even if only with a few, a sensitivity for their own actions started to grow. The jurisdiction that applied saw a “glorification of bourgeois German culture” in it. We may explain it in a different way; we may see the ethics of forgiveness here. This was confirmed by repatriates who, after long imprisonment, often mentioned the humanity of the Russian people, their helpfulness, and also their compassion.

[…..]

[Lev Kopelev] raised his voice for embattled authors, he named the names of the ostracized, from Bulgakov to Pasternak, from Tvardovsky to the great poet Anna Akhmatova and pointed out their importance for Russia’s intellectual tradition. It had been a Russian – Pushkin – who called the printing craft a new kind of artillery, and thinking of that, one will understand why Kopelev translated the essay by Heinrich Böll, Language as the Bulwark of Freedom, an avowal which went from hand to hand in the Soviet Union, as samizdat copies.

[…..]

This man, who had always advocated a ban on all bans, had to get into conflict with a power which dictated ideological instructions to authors. He came to Germany, he was expatriated, he decided to stay here.

I won’t forget the days we stayed with our German publisher. Lev Kopelev was no foreigner. Similarly to Heinrich Heine, who spoke of a portable fatherland when in Paris, Kopelev, a Russian, spoke of Germany as his adopted country. […..] German poetry, philosophers too, were always part of his life, while the great, “holy” Russian literature lived in his heart.

[…..]

One turns to an author by reading him – a simple but essential experience -, and what the books by the undispirited author Kopelev have to offer, contains a lot of eye-opening truth. In Ease My Sorrows, he familiarizes us with substantial chapters of his autobiography, including the years spent in the so-called sharashka, the prison of scientists.

[…..]

That he could return to Russia after ten years in exile was a miracle to him, but as he said more than once that sometimes, all people can do is to hope for a miracle. Let’s honor this man who kept demanding freedom of speech as an advocate of tolerance and humanity, let us take the words he used to remind us, in merciless times, of the transforming power of compassion. Let us preserve what he has left behind. There are only few of his kind.“

My translation in extracts of the lecture by Siegfried Lenz probably leaves a lot to be desired. But I think it still reflects the spirit of the lecture. It reminds me of a Christian sermon, and maybe there lies my problem with it. Forgiveness on a personal level is a gift. That’s one of the things which made Kopelev a great man. But forgiveness on a national level is a different story. Forgiveness is something individual. To me, the lecture by Lenz doesn’t make it clear enough if Kopelev spoke for Russia, or for himself.

In our own interest, we shouldn’t believe that anything is forgiven.

That’s not to say that we should feel bad either. We should only be aware of a simple truth: that the murder of an innocent victim can’t be forgiven. It can’t be forgiven, because dead people can’t forgive. We can only work for the goal that there won’t be more victims in the future.

In 1979, one year before his exile began, Lev Kopelev, Heinrich Böll, and Klaus Bednarz (German Television’s correspondent in Moscow) had this discussion:

Kopelev: In 1933, when Heinrich Böll was just sixteen, I was twenty-one and already married. I must emphasise that from 1933 right up to 1941, our propaganda was never intended to sound anti-German, only anti-Fascist. We had a large German community here in Moscow and I had many German friends at the time, like Erich Weinart and Willie Bredel, both writers living in exile. The question was never put that way, nor did it have anything to do with our attitudes to Germany. My generation was more inclined to play down the threat of Nazism, to think it wasn’t as strong as it really was.
Böll: You mean people in the street…
Kopelev: Yes, it was, and still is, a problem with no easy solution.

I have a lot of respect for Siegfried Lenz, and for his works. But I have a problem with his lecture.

Academic sparks Anger and Protests

Petitioners protesting at Bei Da on April 9 (Sing Tao Daily, European Ed., April 10)

To be a petitioner in China is still risky. But even scientific dignitaries have to choose their words when commenting on them. Professor Sun Dongdong (孙东东), of Beijing University (北京大学), who apparently plays a role in drafting a mental health law,  has recently found out. The professor and head of the university’s judicial expertise center has apologized publicly for – allegedly – saying that 99% of people who take petitions to Beijing were suffering from mental disorders, and that forced hospitalization of mentally ill petitioners was appropriate.

Reportedly, students viewed or view him as one of Bei Da’s ten great humorous professors, but according to a Phoenix News online poll, not too many people found his theories on petitioners agreeable. On the other hand, Sun says that he had been misquoted by China Newsweek.

China Daily quotes Xu Zhiyong, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer, as saying that “to some extent, Sun is just a target. […] arguing with a scholar is much easier than with an official.”